Corruption Ledger

  A US nuclear-powered Ohio-class submarine is in the Middle East to help prevent the Israel-Hamas war from spiraling into a broader conflict, the Pentagon said Monday.   The US Central Command posted a picture of the submarine the day before on social media platform X that appeared to show it transiting Egypt’s Suez Canal. It is “now in the Fifth Fleet area of operations,” Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder told journalists, referring to an area that includes the…

Thomas Flohr, owner of luxury airline VistaJet, must fight a claim that he defrauded a Guernsey investment partnership two decades ago after London’s High Court refused to dismiss the case.  Flohr, who denies the allegations, had tried to have the case thrown out on technical grounds related to the circumstances of the case, in which a previously dissolved partnership was resurrected in 2021 in order to file the suit.  Frontiers Capital initially sued for breach of contract in 2021 but…

Airbnb is facing the prospect of a tax bill worth hundreds of millions of euros following an Italian court ruling in an evasion case. Prosecutors in Milan say a judge authorised the seizure of €779.5m (£677m) from the short-term property rental platform. They said it related to an alleged failure by the company to comply with laws that require Airbnb to pay Italian tax authorities 21% of landlords’ rental income in the country. The requirement dates back to an EU…

The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has sanctioned Russian national Ekaterina Zhdanova for laundering millions in cryptocurrency for various individuals, including ransomware actors. Zhdanova used her expertise in cryptocurrency and blockchain networks to move money through various platforms such as Garantex (sanctioned in April 2022 for aiding the Hydra Market) to evade “Anti-Money Laundering/Combating the Financing of Terrorism” (AML/CFT) controls. A report from blockchain analysis firm Chainalisys provided additional information about Zhdanova’s public businesses, which may or may not be part of her…

WAUKEGAN, Ill. — The father of a man charged in a deadly Fourth of July parade shooting in suburban Chicago will stand trial starting Monday accused of helping his teenage son obtain a gun license even after he had threatened violence. Robert Crimo Jr. is charged with seven counts of reckless conduct — one for each person his son, Robert Crimo III, is accused of killing in Highland Park on Independence Day last year. Each count carries a maximum three-year…

Telecom Italia SpA has agreed to sell its land-line network to KKR & Co. in a government-backed deal valued at around €22 billion ($23.6 billion), according to people familiar with the matter. The phone carrier’s board of directors, after a marathon meeting that started on Friday, approved the grid sale to the US private equity giant on Sunday without making it conditional on a vote by shareholders, the people said, asking not to be identified as the decision isn’t yet public. The approval…

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was convicted of fraud and money laundering by a New York jury in a landmark criminal verdict that is likely to condemn the former crypto tycoon to decades in prison […] The decision […] was delivered just after 7.40pm on Thursday, following less than five hours of deliberation by the jury’s nine women and three men over seven charges including wire fraud on FTX customers and conspiracy to commit securities fraud and money laundering. Bankman-Fried was…

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s thinly veiled call to “go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and donkey” is being taken literally. ]Netanyahu declaring invasion: “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible” 1 Samuel 15:3 “Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay…

Washington D.C., Nov. 2, 2023 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged John Hughes, president and chief compliance officer of registered investment adviser Prophecy Asset Management LP, for his involvement in a multi-year fraud that concealed losses of hundreds of millions of dollars from investors. Prophecy Asset Management advised multiple hedge funds and reported more than $500 million in assets under management. The SEC’s complaint alleges that Hughes and his associates at Prophecy Asset Management misled the funds’ investors,…

Business intelligence firm MicroStrategy has notched a paper gain of $900 million on its stack of 158,400 Bitcoin, spurred by optimism over the potential approval of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

The Michael Saylor-founded firm added 6,067 Bitcoin (BTC) since the third quarter, including another 155 in October, according to MicroStrategy’s Nov. 1 results filing.

In a recent development, PayPal has been registered by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) to offer crypto asset activities in Britain. This move comes as PayPal establishes a post-Brexit base in the UK, reflecting its commitment to serving the British market. According to a Reuters report, the crypto market in the UK awaits its first set of regulations; companies seeking to offer crypto assets must demonstrate to the FCA that they have robust safeguards to prevent money laundering and financing…

Jordan, a key US ally, said Wednesday it has recalled its ambassador from Israel and told Israel’s ambassador to remain out of the country in protest over the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. Jordan’s deputy PM said the return of the ambassadors is linked to Israel “stopping its war on Gaza … and the humanitarian catastrophe it is causing.” Jordan signed a peace deal with Israel in 1994. Meanwhile, Bolivia said on Tuesday it had broken diplomatic ties with Israel because…

In a devastating cyberattack that unfolded over three days in May 2023, numerous victims fell prey to a large-scale intrusion. The attackers exploited a vulnerability in MOVEit, a managed file transfer software, sending shockwaves across various sectors. Government agencies, airlines, educational institutions, financial organizations, and healthcare providers found themselves in the crosshairs of this breach. The attackers absconded with sensitive data, including credit card information, personally identifiable information (PII), and social security numbers (SSNs). In a startling revelation, Bloomberg reported…

DUBAI: The only cancer treatment hospital in the Gaza Strip has gone out of service after it ran out of fuel, health officials said on Wednesday. The director of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship hospital told a press conference aired by Al-Jazeera TV that the hospital, which mainly treats cancer patients, had used up its fuel and was now out of service. “We tell the world don’t leave cancer patients to a certain death due to the hospital being out of service,”…

The Trump era was very, very good to the country’s giant telecom monopolies. Trump officials doled out billions in tax breaks (AT&T nabbed $42 billion alone) and billions more in poorly tracked subsidies. It also approved anticompetitive mergers without even reading the details, and handed out all manner of regulator favors like the dismantling of net neutrality or the elimination of media consolidation rules. In absolutely every instance telecoms like AT&T and Comcast claimed these efforts would boost broadband deployment…

More than 40 Chinese warplanes were detected around Taiwan in a day, the self-ruled island’s defence ministry said on Wednesday. Beijing claims democratic Taiwan as its own territory to be seized one day, by force if necessary, and has ratcheted up military and diplomatic pressures on the island this year. Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence said in a daily statement that 43 Chinese aircraft and 7 naval vessels were detected around the island in a 24-hour period leading up to 6:00…