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Beirut blast probe frozen for second time in weeks after top
judge issues warrant to arrest former finance minister
12 Oct, 2021 10:49
The judge leading the probe into last year's explosion in Beirut port has had to pause his investigation, for the second time in weeks, shortly after handing out an arrest warrant for Lebanon's ex-finance minister.
On Tuesday, Judge Tarek Bitar issued a request for the arrest of former finance minister Ali Hassan Khalil, a senior member of the Shiite Amal movement and an ally of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah group, following his absence from the court.
The probe, however, was frozen for the second time in under three weeks, after two politicians filed a new complaint against Bitar, according to a judicial source. A former public-works minister, Ghazi Zeiter, also close to Hezbollah, was due in for questioning on Wednesday.
Lebanese Hezbollah's chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah on Monday called for the investigating judge to be replaced, accusing him of politicizing the inquiry and of being biased, his strongest attack against Bitar since he assumed his role.
"The targeting is clear, you are picking certain officials and certain people. The bias is clear," Nasrallah said, claiming that the truth will never come out if Bitar continues with the investigation.
The judge's inquiry into the port blast, which killed more than 200 people, wounded around 7,500, and caused widespread devastation in the capital on August 4, 2020, was paused at the end of September after an official under investigation filed a complaint against him.
Despite attempts to serve justice, the probe has made little headway in holding senior officials accountable. In August, Bitar slapped ex-caretaker Prime Minister Hassan Diab with a subpoena for failing to turn up to his inquiry, which the secretary general of Lebanon then ruled was an excessive use of power.
Bitar's predecessor, Fadi Sawan, was axed from leading the probe in February after former ministers accused of negligence complained that he was acting out of his jurisdiction.
Being Lebenon, you can expect nothing to be accomplished from this investigation. Hezbollah will make sure of that.
China launches major audit of country’s financial system
to root out corruption
12 Oct, 2021 14:49
Beijing has announced a major inspection of the country’s financial regulators, insurers, bad-debt managers and its biggest state-controlled banks, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a statement.
The two-month scrutiny of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) is reportedly expected to root out corruption in the nation’s $54-trillion financial system. The commission also said that complaint reports from whistleblowers would be accepted until mid-December.
The move reflects Beijing’s focus on financial regulation, according to CBIRC Chairman Guo Shuqing, who said that cooperation with inspectors would be their top priority.
The close audit comes as part of a broader program of inspection that was launched in 2017 and zeroed in on 25 financial organizations. While previous checks had targeted other central and local government agencies along with state-owned corporations, the latest one will reportedly be focused on the People’s Bank of China, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges, the biggest state-owned banks, as well as bad-debt managers including China Huarong Asset Management.
The measure is a reflection of the government’s tough policy towards corruption among corporate executives. Over 1.5 million government officials have been brought to trial during the long-running crackdown.
Earlier this year, a Chinese court sentenced Lai Xiaomin, the former chairman of state-owned financial giant Huarong, to death after finding him guilty of bribery. The former chairman of China Development Bank Hu Huaibang was sentenced to life behind bars for taking $13.2 million in bribes.
The People’s Bank of China, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, sovereign wealth fund China Investment, and Huarong reportedly issued similar statements on Tuesday, announcing the launch of inspections. The inspection team leaders stressed the need to prevent “systematic financial risks,” while the top officials of the audited agencies vowed full cooperation.
What about auditing the country's political system for corruption?
Fall of an Austrian Chancellor
The Stench of Corruption Leads to Kurz's Sudden Resignation
Initially celebrated as a wunderkind, Sebastian Kurz resigned as Austrian chancellor over the weekend amid a far-reaching corruption probe. Documents from that investigation hint at a mafia-like system involving political leaders and the media built up over many years.
By Walter Mayr in Vienna
11.10.2021, 11.41 Uhr
When the political bomb exploded in Vienna, Sebastian Kurz wasn’t even 20 kilometers south of the Austrian border. And he was in surroundings where he feels most comfortable – among Europe’s political leaders, including Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and Mario Draghi. The Western Balkan Summit had brought the EU’s most powerful together, and if Kurz has achieved one thing during his tenure, then it is giving off the impression that he and his country are among the heavyweights in Europe and not one of the smaller member states.
The article you are reading originally appeared in German in issue 41/2021 (October 8th, 2021) of DER SPIEGEL.
SPIEGEL International
It was shortly after 10 a.m. on a Wednesday and the European heads of state and government were sitting in a plenary meeting when the news began spreading in Vienna and in Brdo, where the summit was being held: In the early morning hours, the authorities had searched the Austrian Chancellery, the headquarters of Kurz’s Austrian People’s Party (ÖVP), the Finance Ministry and one of the country’s most important publishing houses. The search warrant, which DER SPIEGEL and the Austrian daily Der Standard have seen, granted the authorities permission to confiscate "electronic data and data storage devices, servers, laptops, mobile phones and thumb drives.”
It is nothing short of a political earthquake which has shaken the Austrian capital. And over the weekend, it looked as though it could ultimately mark the ignominious end of the meteoric political career of 35-year-old Kurz. "My country is more important to me than my person,” he said on Saturday in his resignation statement, handing over the reigns to erstwhile Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg.
An anti-Kurz protest in Vienna late last week Foto: Lisa Leutner / AP
Given the loyalty of the ÖVP party to Kurz, it is presumed that much of the power will remain in his hands. Still, it is a blow to the executive branch the likes of which hasn’t been seen in postwar Austria. On that Wednesday morning, information quickly spread that the Kurz and nine other suspects were under investigation. The focus of the probe: Suspicions of infidelity and abetment of corruption, while two media executives are under suspicion of infidelity and bribery. In addition, the media group Österreich is under suspicion as is the federal organization of the ÖVP.
Austria, in short, is facing an affair of state. At stake is whether the dazzling success story of Sebastian Kurz must be rewritten and whether his climb to the top of his party and to the pinnacle of state power was actually rooted in a corrupt system involving those surrounding him, his party and the most powerful media moguls in the country. That, at least, is the clear message of the search warrant obtained by state prosecutors from the office in charge of investigating white collar crime and corruption, WKStA for short.
Austria spent 222 million euros in taxpayer money for
advertising in 2020. That is 44 million euros more than
in 2019 and 43 million euros more than in 2016.
Source: Wienerzeitung
Chance discoveries on mobile telephones that had been confiscated in a different case led investigators to conclude that they had sufficient evidence to go after the Kurz and his inner circle. At the heart of the investigation are suspicions that Kurz – earlier as foreign minister and then as chancellor – prompted his close confidant Thomas Schmid, general secretary in the Finance Ministry, to buy favorable coverage in outlets belonging to the media group Österreich. The publishing house is under the control of the brothers Wolfgang and Helmuth Fellner. The two brothers are thought to have been compensated in the form of 1.33 million euros worth of ads purchased by the Finance Ministry over the course of two years.
All of those under suspicion have denied the accusations leveled against them. But WKStA investigators seem rather sure of themselves. They say that with the help of "manipulated and thus falsified” public opinion polls, and with opinion polls that had allegedly been pre-formulated by Kurz’s team and which mostly appeared in the free newspaper Österreich, an attempt was made to improve the electorate’s opinion of an up-and-coming Sebastian Kurz. With the help of "faked invoices” for the sum of 144,000 euros, the costs for the image campaign on Kurz’s behalf was paid for using Finance Ministry funds. Taxpayer money.
There is much more to this story on Spiegel International.
Test pilot takes fall for Boeing's 737 MAX
Former Boeing test pilot charged for ‘deceiving regulators’ about 737 MAX safety,
to ‘save money’ & not become fall guy
15 Oct, 2021 04:52 /
in Moses Lake, Washington, US, November 17, 2020 © Reuters / Lindsey Wasson
Boeing’s former chief test pilot has been indicted for fraud, accused of lying to regulators about a safety problem with the 737 MAX that ultimately caused two fatal crashes, in what DOJ officials said was a bid to “save money.”
Mark Forkner, 49, a chief technical pilot for the aerospace giant between 2014 and 2018, was charged on Thursday by a federal grand jury, according to the Department of Justice, which claimed he “deceived” the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Aircraft Evaluation Group about a particular system on the MAX, later determined to have led to a pair of crashes that took hundreds of lives.
“In an attempt to save Boeing money, Forkner allegedly withheld critical information from regulators,” Acting US Attorney Chad Meacham said in a statement, adding that the DOJ “will not tolerate fraud – especially in industries where the stakes are so high.”
[Forkner’s] callous choice to mislead the FAA hampered the agency’s ability to protect the flying public
and left pilots in the lurch, lacking information about certain 737 MAX flight controls.
The department went on to say that the test pilot “abused his position of trust” with the government and provided the FAA with “materially false, inaccurate, and incomplete information” about the 737 MAX’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS).
In a 16-page charging document, the government accused Forkner of deliberately misleading the FAA in order to influence a change to the agency’s pilot training requirements, saying he believed this could help Boeing to save money in negotiations with airlines.
Negotiating contracts was obviously not his job. It seems there may have been inordinate pressure from those who do the contracting and who are in charge. I'll bet someone put great pressure on him.
It first emerged that Forkner was on the FAA’s radar after documents leaked to Reuters showed the agency possessed text messages between himself and another pilot in 2019, in which he appeared to admit that he “basically lied to the regulators” about potential issues with the MCAS, though maintained he did so “unknowingly.” At the time, the FAA said the exchange was “concerning” and that it was determining the next steps, though the DOJ waited nearly two years before pressing charges on Thursday.
The department invoked other private communications in its indictment, citing an email in which Forkner complained that if the FAA changed its training requirements it would be “thrown squarely on my shoulders,” adding, in the third-person:
It was Mark, yes Mark! Who cost Boeing tens of millions of dollars!
The MCAS was an anti-stall mechanism designed to automatically push the MAX’s nose downward under certain conditions, but a malfunction with the system and Boeing’s failure to inform pilots of its specifics was blamed for causing the crashes of two MAX jets between 2018 and 2019 – one operated by Lion Air and another by Ethiopian Airlines – which claimed a total of 346 lives. All 737 MAX planes were later grounded and put out of service worldwide, pending investigations by US regulators.
An internal probe conducted by the FAA in 2019, however, found that the regulator was far too lax in how it handled testing for the aircraft, and effectively allowed Boeing to perform its own inspections with limited oversight. While the agency claimed that Boeing had failed to notify the government about the MCAS issues, it concluded that greater scrutiny of the multi-billion-dollar corporation may have identified the problem.
Boeing was later charged for criminal conspiracy to defraud the government, though was allowed to settle for $2.5 billion – what amounts to a slap on the wrist for the massive company. It paid $243.6 million in criminal penalties and shelled out another $1.77 billion to airlines that purchased the faulty plane, while just $500 million of the settlement was devoted to a fund to help the families of crash victims. Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg was also pushed out of the company at the height of the scandal, and while he was denied a major severance package, nonetheless walked away with a cool $60 million in pension benefits and stock.
Cyprus strips 45 passports obtained by investors and their families
under cash-for-citizenship scheme
15 Oct, 2021 16:04
The Cypriot government announced on Friday that it has decided to formally strip passports from 39 people who obtained citizenship under a disgraced investment scheme, as well as six of their dependents.
The Council of Ministers has decided to remove “Cypriot citizenship for 39 investors and 6 members of their families,” government spokesman Marios Pelekanos said, although he didn’t specify the names of the individuals impacted.
The government is also investigating a further six cases, and has put another 47 “under continuous monitoring... on the basis of the procedures provided.”
Cyprus agreed in October last year to end its Golden Visa scheme on November 1, 2020, which had allowed foreigners to secure residence and citizenship rights in return for investing millions into the country. To qualify, individuals would have to, at least, invest €2 million ($2.43 million) in Cypriot properties on top of a donation to the government research fund.
"Research fund", right!
The scheme, dubbed cash-for-citizenship, is thought to have raised €7 billion ($8.12 billion) before the government accepted it had been open to “abusive exploitation.”
Around 7,000 people are thought to have secured citizenship under the scheme before it was shut down, with a government appointed commission subsequently finding that more than 53% of those who received passports through this method did so unlawfully.
Once an individual has received a Cypriot passport, they would be able to travel, work, and reside in any of the other European Union member states. Previously, the European Commission criticized Cyprus for granting these passports, claiming that “European values are not for sale,” and accusing the scheme of “trading European citizenship for financial gains.”
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