Corruption Ledger

The former comptroller general of Ecuador was sentenced today to 10 years in prison for his role in a multimillion-dollar international bribery and money laundering scheme in which he received over $10 million in bribes and laundered those bribes payments in South Florida. According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, between 2010 to 2015, Carlos Ramon Polit Faggioni, 73, solicited and received over $10 million in bribe payments from Odebrecht S.A., the Brazil-based construction conglomerate. Polit, in his position…

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Former cryptocurrency executive Caroline Ellison is set to be sentenced on Tuesday for her role in her imprisoned former boyfriend Sam Bankman-Fried’s theft of about $8 billion in customer funds from the now-bankrupt FTX exchange he founded. Ellison has pleaded guilty to seven felony counts of fraud and conspiracy, and testified as a prosecution witness in the trial of Bankman-Fried, who was convicted of fraud and other charges last year and is serving a 25-year prison…

The U.S. is sending additional troops to the Middle East in response to a sharp spike in violence between Israel and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon that has raised the risk of a greater regional war, the Pentagon said Monday. Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder would provide no details on how many additional forces or what they would be tasked to do. The U.S. currently has about 40,000 troops in the region. On Monday, the aircraft carrier Truman, two…

FAA vows to hold Boeing accountable, revamp agency safety program WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of the Federal Aviation Administration will tell Congress on Tuesday the agency will hold Boeing accountable to ensure the planemaker is building safe airplanes and will revamp its own safety management program. “As a result of systemic production quality issues, Boeing must make significant changes to transform its quality system and ensure the right layers of safety are in place,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker will…

On Friday, December 15, Al Jazeera journalists Samer Abudaqa and Wael Dahdouh were reporting at the Farhana school in Khan Younis when Israel struck from the air. Dahdouh took shrapnel to his upper arm but was able to apply pressure to the wound and escape to a nearby hospital for help. But Abudaqa was unable to move. Rescue teams tried to reach him, but couldn’t due to Israeli bombardment. For more than five agonising hours, as he lay bleeding, campaigns were…

Defence Minister Minoru Kihara calls on the Russian government to prevent a recurrence. Japan has protested to the Kremlin after a Russian patrol plane entered its airspace three times, Defence Minister Minoru Kihara says. “We confirmed today that a Russian Il-38 patrol aircraft has violated our airspace over our territorial waters north of Rebun Island, Hokkaido, on three occasions,” Kihara told reporters of Monday’s incidents. Japanese F-15 and F-35 fighter jets warned the Russian military over the radio before firing…

In August 2024, a former employee who left the FCA some years ago made an allegation publicly that, in the course of whistleblowing, their identity was not kept confidential by the chair of the FCA, Ashley Alder. Following the first public allegation, a second former employee of the FCA, who also left some years ago, came forward with a similar allegation as to the handling of their whistleblowing communication to the chair. In line with the corporate governance of the…

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysian police said Monday they have rescued 187 more children and raided locations nationwide linked to an Islamic business group that is being investigated for alleged sexual assault of children. National police chief Razarudin Husain said the children and young people, including 59 under age 5, were rescued from welfare homes linked to Global Ikhwan Services and Business, or GISB Holdings. They included a boy who was seen being caned and another child who was…

MANSFIELD — The full state Supreme Judicial Court will hear arguments in November on whether to dismiss two of the three charges against Karen Read, including second-degree murder, for the January 2022 death of her police officer boyfriend. Lawyers for Read, 44, of Mansfield, filed a petition to the state’s highest court on Sept. 11 asking it to overturn a superior court ruling denying their motion to dismiss the murder charge and one of leaving the scene of an accident…

Israeli soldiers have raided the Al Jazeera office in the occupied West Bank and ordered the bureau to shut down amid a widening campaign targeting the Doha-based broadcaster. Al Jazeera aired footage of Israeli troops storming its bureau in Ramallah on Sunday and ordering the office to be shut for 45 days. This follows an order issued in May that saw Israeli police raid Al Jazeera’s premises in occupied East Jerusalem, seizing equipment, preventing its broadcasts in Israel and blocking…

French President Emmanuel Macron has named a new government, hoping to put an end 11 weeks of political uncertainty after an inconclusive parliamentary election delivered a hung parliament. Conservative Prime Minister Michel Barnier on Saturday put together the government whose first major task will be to submit a 2025 budget plan addressing France’s financial situation, which the prime minister this week called “very serious”. The 38-member Cabinet includes ministers from Macron’s centrist alliance and the conservative Republicans (LR) party. The difficult…

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia and China started naval exercises in the Sea of Japan on Saturday, Russian news agencies cited Russia’s Pacific Fleet as saying. “A joint detachment of warships of the Pacific Fleet and Chinese Navy set out from Vladivostok to conduct the joint Russian-Chinese “Beibu/Interaction – 2024″ naval exercise,” the RIA news agency quoted the Pacific Fleet as saying. The exercises will include anti-aircraft and anti-submarine weapons, RIA reported. Russia and China practised missile and artillery firing this…

WASHINGTON – A US Secret Service probe found communication gaps and a lack of diligence ahead of the July attempted assassination of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump at a Butler, Pennsylvania rally. “There was complacency on the part of” some agents “that led to a breach of security protocols,” acting Secret Service director Ronald Rowe told reporters on Sept 20, adding that agency employees will be held accountable. The assassination attempt against Trump at the July 13 rally led to…

NEW YORK (AP) — Federal prosecutors have subpoenaed the director overseeing New York City’s office for asylum seekers, the latest [in an] investigation into the administration of Mayor Eric Adams. Molly Schaeffer, who leads the city’s Office of Asylum Seeker Operations, received the information sharing request from federal authorities Friday morning, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the subpoena. It…

Dozens of people were killed and thousands more injured after two consecutive days of explosions across Lebanon this week that the Shia militant group Hezbollah has blamed on Israel. Pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously on Tuesday afternoon, leaving at least 12 people dead, including two children. On Wednesday, another wave of coordinated explosions affecting handheld radios killed at least 25 people. Almost 3,000 people were wounded in the attacks, Lebanon’s health ministry said. Israel has not commented on…

TEL AVIV, September 20. /TASS/. Israel has challenged International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan’s request for arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, as well as ICC’s jurisdiction over this case, Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Oren Marmotstein said. According to the spokesperson, Israel has presented “two separate legal documents.” One states that the ICC has no jurisdiction over this case, and the other one “gives a detailed description of the ICC prosecutor’s breaching…