Category: Corruption

North Korea on Sunday criticized for a second day a U.S. decision to send Abrams tanks to Ukraine, calling it an “unethical crime” aimed at perpetuating an unstable international situation. Washington’s allegations that North Korea has provided arms to Russia are a “groundless rumor” to justify its own military aid to Ukraine, Kwon Chung-keun, director of U.S. affairs at North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a statement carried by state news agency KCNA. “The U.S. is working hard…

Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt told reporters Friday that he is baffled over how $12.7 million of his money has gone missing from a local private investment firm that authorities are investigating as part of a massive fraud that began more than a decade ago. Bolt also said he has fired his business manager, adding that it was not an amicable split. When asked if he was “broke,” the retired star athlete laughed. “I’m not broke, but it’s definitely put a…

Canada’s Supreme Court found one mandatory minimum sentence for a firearm offense unconstitutional and upheld two others in a pair of decisions published on Friday. Two of the three cases at issue used hypothetical scenarios that defense counsel argued could render these mandatory minimums unconstitutional because they would constitute cruel and unusual punishment in certain instances. Mandatory minimum sentences have come under fire in Canada from advocates and lawyers who say they take discretion from judges and disproportionately penalize Indigenous…

China and the United States exchanged sharp criticism at a World Trade Organization meeting on Friday, with Beijing calling Washington a “unilateral bully” and the U.S. accusing its rival of illegal retaliatory measures. China’s ambassador to the WTO Li Chenggang spoke at a meeting on trade disputes shortly after the United States lodged an appeal against a series of WTO rulings involving China, Turkey, Norway and Switzerland which found that U.S. metal tariffs breached global rules. “These troubling behaviors of…

Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office Northern District of California FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Friday, January 27, 2023 After two-week trial, federal jury found Miller and his company both guilty of conspiracies involving racketeering, mail and wire fraud, and money laundering, in addition to substantive mail fraud and conspiracy against the United States. SAN FRANCISCO – A federal jury convicted David Jess Miller and his company, Minnesota Independent Cooperative (“MIC”), of a wide array of charges relating to the unlicensed and…

The Philippine government said Friday it intended to appeal an International Criminal Court decision to reopen an inquiry into Manila’s brutal anti-drug campaign, which left thousands dead. The Hague-based tribunal launched the inquiry in 2019 but suspended it later that year at the request of the government of then Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, who had launched the crackdown in 2016, with Manila saying it would re-examine cases of alleged abuses. Announcing the probe’s resumption on Thursday, the ICC said its…

Turkey’s foreign minister on Thursday accused Sweden of being complicit in a “hate and racist crime” for failing to prevent weekend protests in Stockholm by an anti-Islam and pro-Kurdish groups. Mevlut Cavusoglu also confirmed that a key meeting in Brussels to discuss Sweden and Finland’s NATO membership has been postponed, saying such a meeting would have been “meaningless” in the wake of the protests. Turkey has been infuriated by a Quran-burning protest by anti-Islam activist Rasmus Paludan on Saturday and…

The preservation of plant seeds as a genetic resource is becoming more and more important at a time when many crops are threatened by extinction or lower productive output due to climate change and the destruction of ecosystems through overdevelopment. The shifting of ideal growing zones due to warming across the globe makes the creation of seed banks a cause for international concern, with changing growing conditions driving a need for what is, in effect, an ecological database. The National…

A federal court convicted a Washington state man yesterday for engaging in a child exploitation enterprise. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Christopher William Kuehner, 38, of Bremerton, was a prominent member of the website “Rapey.su,” which was dedicated to, among other things, child sexual exploitation. After becoming a member of the website, Kuehner repeatedly induced and enticed minor girls to produce child sexual abuse material for both him and the other members of the website.

The Justice Department announced today that it has concluded there is reasonable cause to believe that the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (LDOC) routinely confines people in its custody past the dates when they are legally entitled to be released from custody, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. 

More landlords are taking Twitter to court over unpaid rent, this time at the social media company’s headquarters in San Francisco and its British offices — the latest sign that owner Elon Musk’s extreme cost-cutting strategy includes simply not paying the bills. Twitter is facing a lawsuit over allegations it failed to pay rent for its head office, according to California court documents. The owner of its premises in central London, meanwhile, said it’s taking the company to court over…

The Justice Department and eight states filed an antitrust suit against Google on Tuesday, seeking to shatter its alleged monopoly on the entire ecosystem of online advertising as a hurtful burden to advertisers, consumers and even the U.S. government. The government alleges that Google’s plan to assert dominance has been to “neutralize or eliminate” rivals through acquisitions and to force advertisers to use its products by making it difficult to use competitors’ products. The antitrust suit was filed in federal…

A California man was sentenced today to five years in prison for defrauding investors of more than $15 million in connection with a scheme to misappropriate investor funds for his own personal use. Joey Stanton Dodson, 58, formerly of Indio, pleaded guilty in the Northern District of California to one count of wire fraud on June 14, 2022. Dodson fraudulently raised over $15.6 million from more than 50 investors and misappropriated $1.3 million in investor funds, which he used to pay for his personal expenses and to repay earlier investors in unrelated entities known collectively as Duke Equity.

Today, the Justice Department, along with the Attorneys General of California, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Tennessee, and Virginia, filed a civil antitrust suit against Google for monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products in violation of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act. Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, the complaint alleges that Google monopolizes key digital advertising technologies, collectively referred to as the “ad tech stack,” that website publishers…

Defence Minister Anita Anand says she has “no news to share” on whether Canada is willing to send some of its battle tanks to Ukraine — should Germany greenlight the export — following a meeting of 50 allied defence leaders this week. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly issued pleas for tanks, although members of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group failed to come to an agreement on what to send after meetings at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany this…

Home finance companies General Commercial Group Pty Ltd (formerly known as Urban Commercial Group) and Eden Capital (Australia) Pty Ltd (formerly known as Southside Lending) have each been penalised $50,000 by the Federal Court for failing to cooperate with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA). General commercial director Dale Brendan Heremaia and his son, Eden Capital director Benjamin Eden Heremaia, were ordered to pay $30,000 and $20,000 respectively for their roles in the misconduct. The court outcome means for the…