Corruption Ledger

A Russian court has determined that Evan Gershkovich will remain in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison until August 30. The decision comes after the journalist appealed against the extention of a pre-trial detention. Gershkovich appeared in the courtroom in a transparent box. The Wall Street Journal reported that media outlets were only allowed in the courtroom for a short time. On May 23, a district court in Russia upheld a request from the Federal Security Service (FSB) to have the journalist’s detention…

WASHINGTON — Senior U.S. officials said Wednesday that they were caught off guard when President Joe Biden described Chinese President Xi Jinping as a “dictator” — just 24 hours after Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Beijing and appeared to reach a breakthrough in tense relations between the countries. Officials privately sought to clarify Wednesday with the Chinese that Biden’s description of Xi does not reflect a new talking point or official policy shift by the administration. Officials said they…

NEW YORK – Former Goldman Sachs banker Brijesh Goel’s trial on insider trading charges drew to a close on Tuesday, with his attorney saying he was framed by his friend and a prosecutor saying Goel had lied to a New York jury. Goel, a former Goldman Sachs vice-president, faces securities fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice charges for allegedly tipping his friend Akshay Niranjan to deals the bank was considering funding in 2017 and 2018. Prosecutors say Goel gleaned the…

NEW YORK – Gannett, the largest US newspaper chain and publisher of USA Today, on Tuesday sued Google for trying to corner the market for online advertising by monopolising ad technology. In a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court, Gannett, which has more than 200 daily newspapers, said Google’s control over tools for buying and selling online ads forces publishers to sell more cheap ad space to the Alphabet unit. Gannett said this leaves Google with “exorbitant monopoly profits”, and…

NEW YORK – Leaders in the submersible craft industry were so worried about what they called the “experimental” approach of OceanGate, the company whose craft has gone missing, that they wrote a letter in 2018 warning of possible “catastrophic” problems with the submersible’s development and its planned mission to tour the Titanic wreckage. The letter, obtained by The New York Times, was sent to OceanGate’s CEO, Stockton Rush, by the Manned Underwater Vehicles committee of the Marine Technology Society, a…

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon said it will be able to spend US$6 billion (S$8 billion) more than originally expected on arms for Ukraine thanks to what it called accounting errors. The Defense Department overstated the value of weapons sent from its stockpiles by US$2.6 billion in fiscal 2022 and US$3.6 billion in fiscal 2023, for a total of US$6.2 billion, deputy spokesman Sabrina Singh told reporters on Tuesday at the Pentagon.  “It’s just going to go back into the pot…

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden has agreed to plead guilty to two charges of willfully failing to pay income taxes. He will enter into an agreement that could enable him to avoid a conviction on a gun-related charge, according to a court filing on Tuesday. The federal charges against Hunter Biden resulted from an investigation by David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in the Democratic president’s home state of Delaware, who was appointed by Republican then-President Donald…

The Russian government says it will be forced to take retaliatory measures if Western-made F-16 fighter jets appear in the skies over Ukraine. The threat was aired by Moscow’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during an interview with the RT television channel late last week. According to Lavrov, Russia has issued a “very serious demarche” with regard to the possibility of F-16 aircraft being transferred to Kyiv. He also claimed that the fighter jets would be used by the Ukrainian Armed…

A new report has revealed details surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to JPMorgan Chase, one of the largest banking institutions in the world, and specifically highlighted the financier’s ties to former JPMorgan executive Jes Staley. Epstein was arrested in 2019 on federal sex-trafficking charges, and died that same year in jail before he was tried in court over sex trafficking charges. The 20-plus internal report was reportedly prepared after news broke of Epstein’s arrest in 2019. According to reports based on…

The State of Louisiana has experienced an extensive data breach, with six million public records being exposed. The breach was a part of a global attack on the third-party file transfer application, MOVEit. The breach is likely to raise further concerns as the state recently introduced a new law that is increasing the uptake of digital ID – a law that forces adult websites to check the age of all users, with many wanting it rolled out to all social media platforms. The personal details of every…

Most of us just want to live our lives in peace without excessive governmental interference, but unfortunately the control freaks that are running things just can’t help themselves.  Ultimately, they aren’t going to be happy until they are able to watch, track, monitor and control virtually everything that we write, say and do.  This is one of the big reasons why they are gearing up to introduce “central bank digital currencies” all over the western world.  Such digital currencies will…

Earlier in the day, the Democracy Watch watchdog group said the RCMP had confirmed in a letter that it is investigating Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and some Cabinet officials over their alleged obstruction of the SNC-Lavalin probe. In 2021 and 2022, Democracy Watch said it made requests under the Access to Information Act (AITA) to access records on the proceedings regarding investigations into Trudeau’s and several ministers’ involvement in pressing then-Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould to stop the prosecution of SNC-Lavalin….

UNITED NATIONS, June 19 (Reuters) – U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday urged Israel to halt and reverse what he described as troubling and alarming decisions on settlement activity in the occupied West Bank, a U.N. spokesperson said. “The Secretary-General reiterates that settlements are a flagrant violation of international law. They are a major obstacle to the realization of a viable two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace,” deputy U.N. spokesperson Farhan Haq said in a statement. “The…

BEIRUT (AP) — A Lebanese judge on Monday questioned auto tycoon Carlos Ghosn in Beirut over possible links to a former French Cabinet minister charged two years ago with “passive corruption” for work she did for him, officials familiar with the case said. The Lebanese officials said Ghosn denied any dealings with France’s former Justice Minister Rachida Dati who is accused of having done consulting work for Ghosn for two years starting in 2010 when she was a member of…

Emails from the Biden laptop shed light on Burisma’s opening of a Maltese bank account for Hunter Biden in the spring of 2016. This newly discovered development coincides with the allegations made by an FBI source, suggesting that Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma Holdings, allegedly paid a $5 million bribe each to then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter Biden. In 2014, Ukraine initiated criminal cases against Zlochevsky and Burisma, the company where Hunter Biden held a board…

My latest Deeper Dive dug into China’s failing commercial real-estate market, as well as other global commercial real-estate markets that are collapsing, laying out the corporate zombie apocalypse that is building particularly in office real estate, but also still deepening in retail real estate. It’s happening all over the world: Unprofitable companies that survived only because of cheap credit (zombies) — and even some profitable ones — are toppling as credit costs rise. The headlines supporting my summary analysis this weekend can…