Corruption Ledger

Without approval from Washington, the best that Ukrainian airmen can hope for are lessons on technical language and tactical training on the ground, the outlet said on Wednesday. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has been pressing his Western backers for fourth generation F-16 warplanes for months, arguing they are crucial for defending the country’s airspace amid a massive Russian missile campaign targeting military facilities and energy infrastructure. The Ukrainian leader appeared to achieve limited progress during a recent European tour, with…

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has been kicked off a major Australian payments service and banned by big four bank Westpac, with customers suddenly unable to deposit or withdraw funds from the platform. Binance Australia – the local arm of the $6.7 billion crypto exchange Binance – told customers on Thursday afternoon they would no longer be able to deposit funds onto the exchange via PayID, a popular instant payment method. Withdrawal of Australian dollars to bank accounts has also…

Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu accused the US of using the western media to manipulate the outcome of the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkiye. “The plan by the US intensifies actively. The reason of [the] Western media’s interference is the realization of the US’s plan,” Soylu told reporters. In the months leading up to the14 May elections, several US and European media outlets published stories describing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a “dictator and tyrant.” On 3 May,…

As Cyprus braces for an almost inevitable new wave of sanctions to hit soon, the government conceded on Wednesday the effect on Cyprus’ services sector has been detrimental. The impact goes beyond just the service sectors. Scores of people have lost their jobs, and companies shut down, but more controversially – clients of sanctioned entities have also seen their bank accounts frozen. Spokeswoman for the bar association Georgia Constantinou Panayiotou, told the Cyprus Mail what was happening was in fact…

PARIS – A French appeals court on Wed nesday upheld a prison sentence of three years, including two suspended, against former president Nicolas Sarkozy for corruption and influence peddling. The court ruled he should serve one year in detention at home with an electronic bracelet and banned him from public office for three years. He had been found guilty over his attempts to secure favours from a judge in return for the promise of a plum retirement job in a case…

  WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Defense asked Congress to authorize the transfer of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia as part of the trilateral AUKUS agreement with the U.K. Three legislative proposals, submitted on May 2 and first posted online Tuesday, would greenlight the sale of two Virginia-class submarines to Australia, permit the training of Australian nationals for submarine work and allow Canberra to invest in the U.S. submarine industrial base. Rep. Joe Courtney of Connecticut, the top Democrat on…

SAN FRANCISCO – Fallen US biotech star Elizabeth Holmes must begin serving prison time after a judge denied her latest request to remain free while appealing her fraud conviction. Holmes was sentenced to just over 11 years in prison for defrauding investors with her Silicon Valley start-up Theranos. She was scheduled to begin serving prison time on April 27, but her lawyers lodged a last-minute appeal on procedural issues after an earlier attempt was denied. US Judge Edward Davila on…

  EU member countries are preparing to help their companies to exit Russia, amid a growing risk they will be taxed to fund Russian president Vladimir Putin’s war. Source: This is stated in the proposals for the 11th package of sanctions against the Russian Federation, referenced by EUobserver, as reported by European Pravda Details: The proposals include new special permits for financial transactions and legal services designed to help European companies exit Russia. But under the new proposal, EU countries…

Iran Press TV Tuesday, 16 May 2023 11:13 AM Russia’s oil exports have hit its highest level since the start of the Ukraine war, increasing its revenues by $1.7 billion despite Western sanctions, the International Energy Agency says. In a monthly oil report on Tuesday, the Paris-based organization said Russian crude exports increased by 50,000 barrels per day to 8.3 million bpd in April. That reflects Russia’s success in finding new buyers for its crude since the West imposed sanctions…

Natalia Arno, the U.S.-based chief of the Free Russia Foundation, says there are suspicions she may have been poisoned, “possibly by some nerve agent,” after falling ill during a recent trip to Europe, amid a report that at least two other Kremlin critics have experienced similar episodes since 2020. Arno, who previously kept silent about what she experienced during a trip to Prague in early May, wrote about the ordeal on Facebook on May 16 after the website Agentsvo published…

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.

A humanitarian aid worker who used an anonymous Twitter account to mock Saudi Arabia about its economy has filed a federal racketeering lawsuit against the social media platform, the kingdom and a number of individuals alleging an attempt to silence critics overseas. Abdulrahman al-Sadhan, was working for the Red Crescent in Riyadh in 2018 when plain-clothed security forces entered the office of the Red Crescent offices in Riyadh. He was taken away without any explanation. How the Saudi government linked…

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…

  One of the largest pharmacy service providers in the United States has confirmed that hackers accessed the personal data of almost six million patients. PharMerica operates over 2,500 facilities across the U.S. and offers more than 3,100 pharmacy and healthcare programs. In a data breach notification filed with Maine’s attorney general, PharMerica said it learned of suspicious activity on its computer network on March 14. An internal investigation revealed that an “unknown third party” accessed its systems days earlier…

The platform’s Global Government Affairs account issued a statement on Monday outlining its recent decisions in light of the Turkish court orders, saying it was forced to take action against four accounts and 409 individual tweets.  “We received what we believed to be a final threat to throttle the service – after several such warnings,” it said, adding that it deleted the accounts and posts “in order to keep Twitter available over the election weekend.”