Category: government corruption

Canada must become the “best of friends” with South Korea, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told lawmakers in Seoul on Wednesday, as the two countries seek to counter China’s growing regional influence. Trudeau is on his first official visit to South Korea, where he will meet President Yoon Suk Yeol. “I’m here to tell you that it’s no longer enough to be friends. We need to be the best of friends,” Trudeau said during a speech to Seoul’s National Assembly. He…

The roughly 30-page report detailed what lawmakers say are various companies and financial records tied to family members of Mr Biden, including his son, Hunter Biden, and daughter-in-law, Hallie Biden.

It contains records of bank transactions, obtained through subpoena, that Republican lawmakers say are linked to Romania and China.

The bank records show the receipt of money from a foreign company connected to Gabriel Popoviciu, who was prosecuted for corruption in Romania, reports the New York Times.

“We believe that the president has been involved in this from the very beginning. Obviously, we’re going to continue to look,” Mr Comer told reporters Wednesday.

The Kentucky lawmaker also acknowledged there had been “a pattern for a long time” of questionable financial dealings by relatives of presidents from both parties.

In October, reports indicated that the FBI believed it had enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with tax crimes. The Justice Department reportedly ordered the team’s removal, according to the New York Post. An IRS criminal supervisory special agent came forward to Congress in April seeking whistleblower protection to share with lawmakers information that allegedly showed the investigation into potential tax crimes by the younger Biden was being mishandled. Now, the whistleblower’s attorneys claim the team’s removal from the investigation…

SAN FRANCISCO – Wells Fargo & Co agreed to pay US$1 billion (S$1.3 billion) to settle a shareholder lawsuit that accused it of making misleading statements about its compliance with United States consent orders, following the 2016 scandal involving the opening of unauthorised customer accounts. The settlement is one of the top six largest securities class-action settlements of the past decade, according to lawyers for the investors, who filed a request on Monday for a Manhattan judge to approve the…

WASHINGTON – The FBI lacked “actual evidence” to investigate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and relied too heavily on tips provided by Trump’s political opponents to fuel the probe, US Special Counsel John Durham concluded in a report released on Monday.

The report marks the end of a four-year probe launched in May 2019 when then-Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham, a veteran prosecutor, to probe potential missteps by the FBI when it launched its early stage “Crossfire Hurricane” inquiry into potential contacts between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia.

That Crossfire Hurricane investigation would later be handed over to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who in March 2019 concluded there was no evidence of a criminal conspiracy between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia.

In his new 306-page report, Durham concluded that US intelligence and law enforcement did not possess any “actual evidence” of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia prior to launching Crossfire Hurricane.

He also accused the bureau of treating the 2016 Trump probe differently from other politically sensitive investigations, including several involving Trump’s Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

A state investigation released last week found that elected and appointed officials actively worked to benefit a prominent Bergen County developer, confirming claims made by another developer in a lawsuit years ago.

The New Jersey State Commission of Investigation report outlined how many Edgewater officials had connections to Fred Daibes, a local developer with property along the Hudson River, and that some of the ties included business contracts and, in one case, discounted rent for a luxury apartment.

Accusations, lawsuits and the most recent investigation have tied up the borough and its officials for years.

BERLIN – The German security authorities believe that China is still conducting police activities on German soil even though Beijing assured Berlin in February that it had ceased to do so, the German foreign and interior ministries said on Monday.

“The security authorities continue to assume that there are two so-called overseas police stations in Germany,” a spokesman for the Interior Ministry said at a regular press conference.

Berlin called on Beijing in November to shut down extraterritorial police stations in the country.

There may be more “Chinese police stations” operating in Canada, the Public Safety Minister told a Canadian TV station on Sunday, months after police said they were investigating whether two community centers in Montreal were being used to intimidate or harass Canadians of Chinese origin.

“I am confident that the [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] have taken concrete action to disrupt any foreign interference in relationship to those so-called police stations, and that if new police stations are popping up and so on, that they will continue to take decisive action going forward,” Marco Mendicino told CTV’s Question Period in an interview.

WASHINGTON (AP) — California Sen. Dianne Feinstein returned to the Senate on Wednesday after a two-and-a-half-month absence due to illness, giving majority Democrats a much-needed final vote as they seek to confirm President Joe Biden’s nominees and raise the nation’s debt ceiling in the coming weeks. Looking noticeably thinner and frail, Feinstein is using a wheelchair to get around the Capitol as she continues to recover from a case of shingles. She missed the Senate’s first votes on Wednesday morning…

Construction workers build along State Road 836 in 2018 in Miami. HB 1191 would compel the Florida Transportation Department to study using phosphogypsum in paving projects. Roads in Florida could soon include phosphogypsum — a radioactive waste material from the fertilizer industry — under a bill lawmakers have sent to Gov. Ron DeSantis. Conservation groups are urging DeSantis to veto the bill, saying phosphogypsum would hurt water quality and put road construction crews at a higher risk of cancer. Here’s…

Mr Karimi was among the first celebrities who vehemently criticised the deadly crackdown on the protests which erupted in September. The footballer, known as the Maradona of Asia, lived in the UAE at the time.

The protests were sparked by the death in custody of a Kurdish Iranian woman. Mahsa Amini, 22, died after allegedly being beaten by morality police who arrested her for what they said was her failure to wear her headscarf properly.

The protests spread nationwide, but have been violently suppressed. Human rights groups say security forces have killed at least 530 protesters – including around 70 children – since the protests began.

One of the documents seen by BBC Persian says Mr Karimi “was invited [to Iran] by our agent nine times and has received serious warnings”.

UN chief Antonio Guterres addresses envoys during talks on Afghanistan in Qatar on May 2, 2023 The UN reaffirmed its “commitment to stay” in Afghanistan on Friday, in a review assessing its operations in the country in light of the Taliban banning women from working for the world body. The United Nations announced on April 4 that the Taliban had barred Afghan women from employment in UN offices countrywide, a prohibition that had previously only affected NGOs but spared the…

BEIRUT (AP) — A European judicial team questioned Lebanon’s caretaker finance minister on Friday in an investigation related to corruption probes of the country’s Central Bank governor, officials said. The questioning is part of a probe by a delegation from France, Germany, and Luxembourg, now on its third visit to Lebanon to interrogate suspects and witnesses in the case. Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh is being investigated abroad over several financial crimes and the laundering of some $330 million. During…

WASHINGTON (AP) — China was the biggest global jailer of journalists last year with more than 100 behind bars, according to a press freedom group, as President Xi Jinping’s government tightened control over society. Xi’s government also was one of the biggest exporters of propaganda content, according to Reporters without Boarders. China ranked second to last on the group’s annual index of press freedom, behind only neighbor North Korea. The ruling Communist Party has tightened already strict controls on media…

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is dispatching one his top advisers to Saudi Arabia to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of the oil-rich kingdom, later this week. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Thursday he will travel to Saudi Arabia on Saturday for talks with Saudi officials and will also meet with his counterparts from the United Arab Emirates and India during his visit. Sullivan said he would “discuss new areas…