Category: government corruption

In March, Der Spiegel claimed a yacht called ‘Andromeda’ had allegedly been used by a team of divers to sabotage the Nord Stream pipelines. The publication cited the discovery of traces of explosives in the cabin of the vessel and fake identification documents that were used in the hiring of the boat.  The outlet’s most recent report indicates that metadata from an email sent to enquire about the renting of the yacht “leads to Ukraine.” The president of a presumed…

Jeffrey Epstein was many things: a sexual predator, a friend to the rich and powerful and, for many years, a lucrative customer of the nation’s largest bank. Now the bank, JPMorgan Chase, faces a reckoning for its nearly 15-year relationship with the disgraced financier, one that could cost it a big payout in two civil lawsuits that claim the bank ignored warnings that he was trafficking teenage girls for sex because it was profiting from its relationship with him. New…

When then-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull called for heads to roll after the 2016 census was pulled offline – amid fears IBM’s data servers hosting the survey had been infiltrated – the American enterprise technology giant made an important decision. IBM ran most of the big mainframe systems that had powered core government functions for several decades, earning it billions of dollars a year in fees and making the Australian government one of its top global clients. No census data was…

European Union officials are considering whether to send Ukraine profits generated from Russian assets frozen within the bloc, the Financial Times has reported, citing people familiar with the discussions. EU member states and European Commission officials convened on Wednesday to examine how they might move funds held at Euroclear, the world’s largest settlement house, over to Ukraine, as Russian-owned assets there have accrued interest since they were first frozen. Targeted under an unprecedented Western sanctions campaign, the Russian assets stuck at…

The new owner of Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) US operations, First Citizens, is cutting around 500 roles held by former SVB workers, the BBC understands. Two months ago, First Citizens bought the business after SVB’s collapse. The failure of SVB, along with two other US banks, triggered fears of a more widespread banking crisis, which forced authorities to step in. SVB’s business in the UK was bought in March by London-headquartered banking giant HSBC for a nominal £1 ($1.25). In…

NEW YORK – Wall Street stocks fell again on Wednesday on rising anxiety over US debt ceiling talks as a critical deadline nears without an agreement. President Joe Biden offered to freeze government spending at current levels, a move that would reduce the deficit by US$1 trillion (S$1.3 trillion) and marks a concession to congressional Republicans. The US government could run out of money to pay for its existing obligations as early as June 1, according to Treasury Secretary Janet…

  (Bloomberg) — Blackstone Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Schwarzman said the investment giant is in talks with several US regional banks to explore purchases of assets and loans they originate. “Pressure on those regional banks won’t just come from the markets,” he said in a video interview Wednesday for the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha. “It will come from regulators, and that will make them less apt to provide credit.” Regional banks’ retreat from lending to swaths of the…

German police have carried out raids in seven states in a probe into climate campaigners suspected of forming or backing a criminal group because of their controversial activities. Seven people aged 22 to 38 are suspected. No arrests have been made. For months Last Generation (Letzte Generation) has disrupted traffic in German cities and performed stunts like hurling mashed potato at an art work. Chancellor Olaf Scholz has condemned their campaign as “completely crazy”. Some 170 police took part in…

(Washington, DC) – President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and legislators from his party have effectively paralyzed the country’s independent transparency and data protection agency by blocking nominations to fill vacant seats on its board, Human Rights Watch said today. The Senate should move swiftly to fill the three vacant seats. The National Institute for Transparency, Access to Information, and Data Protection (INAI) is the independent agency charged with enforcing transparency and data protection rules in Mexico. It has played an…

ZURICH – Switzerland’s Federal Administrative Court has received 230 claims against the country’s financial regulator Finma after it wrote off the value of Credit Suisse’s AT1 bonds, the court said on Tuesday. The claims related to 2,500 individual parties, a court spokesman told Reuters. The court in the north-eastern Swiss city of St Gallen, declined to say whether the time limit for filing further claims had expired or the amount of compensation claimed. The bond holders have sued Finma after…

First Citizens BancShares Inc, which acquired Silicon Valley Bank following its collapse, sued HSBC Holdings PLC on Monday, accusing it of poaching more than 40 of the failed bank’s employees in order to launch its own U.S. venture banking business. The lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court says HSBC violated federal law by hiring away the workers so it could gain access to Silicon Valley Bank’s (SVB) trade secrets including information about clients in the tech and healthcare sectors….

Residents across parts of the northwestern United States are under air quality alerts this weekend after smoke from a spate of Canadian wildfires drifted south across the border. Thick plumes of smoke from blazes in the Canadian province of Alberta crossed into multiple states including Montana, Colorado, Idaho and Utah. But a Pacific cold front moving into the area toward the end of the weekend was expected to bring rain and wind that could push the smoke away. Officials in…

Adam Kovacevich is the CEO and founder of a center-left tech industry coalition called Chamber of Progress and has worked at the intersection of tech and politics for 20 years, leading public policy at Google and Lime and serving as a Democratic Hill aide. When the Biden administration proposed new protections earlier this month to prevent law enforcement from demanding reproductive healthcare data from companies, they took a critical first step in protecting our personal data. But there remains a…

  ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Gov. Ron DeSantis is asking that a federal judge be disqualified from the First Amendment lawsuit filed by Disney against the Florida governor and his appointees, claiming the jurist’s prior statements in other cases have raised questions about his impartiality on the state’s efforts to take over Disney World’s governing body. DeSantis ‘ attorney filed a motion in federal court in Tallahassee on Friday seeking to disqualify Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker from overseeing…

French prosecutors have issued an arrest warrant for Lebanon’s Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh, Arab News reported on 16 May. The warrant comes after Salameh failed to attend a court hearing in Paris. Prosecutors intended to press preliminary fraud charges, court documents and two sources said. Salameh has attempted to avoid arrest and has failed to show up for court hearings in his native Lebanon in the past. In March, the Lebanese Ministry of Justice asked the judiciary to arrest…

Leaders of the Group of Seven advanced economies are generally united in voicing concern about China. The question is how to translate that worry into action. Over the past two years, President Joe Biden’s administration has sought to reframe the relationship with Beijing and build support among like-minded nations for a strong response to what officials in Washington and some other Western democracies say is “economic coercion.” But the G7 also needs to cooperate with China on broader global issues…