Ukraine's Zelensky fires military recruitment officials
over corruption allegations
By Patrick Hilsman
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Friday that he has fired officials responsible for military recruitment
amidst corruption allegations in recruitment practices. File Photo by Ukrainian President Press Office/UPI
Aug. 11 (UPI) -- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced Friday that military officials in charge of recruitment would be replaced with wounded war veterans after allegations of corruption in recruitment.
On Friday, the National Security and Defense Council met to assess the results of an investigation into corruption allegations. The council said that combat officers would have to be checked by the SBU, Ukraine's intelligence service, to take positions on military commissions.
"The Prosecutor General's Office, together with the NACP and the SBI [State Bureau of Investigation], is still recommended to take additional measures to counteract the commission of corruption offenses," the Presidential Office said of the meeting.
Last week Zelensky denounced corruption after a military official charged with recruitment in the Odessa administrative region, Yevhen Borisov, was found to have a $5 million in assets in Spain.
Borisov's mother allegedly registered a residence worth at least $3 million and a Mercedes worth about $100,000, along with other properties.
"Corruption in military recruiting will be eliminated. The heads of all regional recruitment centers will be fired and replaced by brave warriors who have lost their health on the frontlines but maintained their dignity. The decision was approved at today's NSDC [National Security and Defense Council] meeting," Zelensky tweeted Friday.
"In total, there are already 112 criminal proceedings against officials of the territorial recruitment centers, 33 suspects. Regional, city and district "military commissars," employees of the military medical commissions, other official's abuses in different regions: Donetsk, Poltava, Vinnytsia, Odessa, Kyiv, Lviv. Some took cash, some took cryptocurrency -- that's the only difference," Zelensky said in a short clip posted along with his tweet.
"The cynicism is the same everywhere. Illegal enrichment, legalization of illegally obtained funds, illegal benefit, illegal transportation of personas liable for military service across the border," Zelensky continued.
Separately, an investigation by the Ukrainian website ZN.ua found that the Ministry of Defense had significantly overpaid for military clothing, including summer camouflage and winter coats, in one case paying $421,000 for jackets that should have cost about $142,000.
Someone's dyslexic, I guess!
"Our decisions are the following. We are dismissing all regional 'military commissars.' This system should be run by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery during war is treason," Zelensky said.
"Instead, soldiers who have experienced the front or who cannot be in the trenches because they have lost their health, lost their limbs, but have preserved their dignity and do not have cynicism, are the ones who can be entrusted with this system of recruitment," Zelensky said.
That sounds like a great idea, but I think the original commissars are the ones who really know that war is about making money whatever the cost to the military or country.
Colombian nationals arrested after Ecuadorian presidential candidate
assassinated
By Darryl Coote
Ecuador's presidential candidate and former legislator Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead while he exited a campaign event in a central sector of Quito. Minister of the Interior Juan Zapata confirmed the crime and claimed that the attack was perpetrated by hitmen who also injured other people. Photo by Jose Jacome/EPA-EFE
Aug. 9 (UPI) -- Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot and killed Wednesday afternoon during a political rally in the country's capital of Quito just days before the election.
Late Thursday, Ecuador's interior minister, Juan Zapata, announced that six suspects had been arrested in connection to the killing, saying all were Colombian nationals, according to the New York Times.
The six were arrested in Quito soon after Villavicencio's assassination, authorities said.
The assassination was confirmed by Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso, who called a Security Cabinet Meeting in response.
Video of the shooting posted online shows the 59-year-old former journalist being escorted outside a high school into a white pickup truck. As he enters the vehicle, around a dozen gun shots are heard in footage that has not been verified by UPI.
Carlos Figueroa, a close friend of Villavicencio and present during the shooting, said in a video posted online that was reported on by local TV network Ecuavisa that Villavicencio was shot in the head three times.
"Outraged and shocked by the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio," Lasso said in a statement. "For his memory and for his fight, I assure you that this crime will not go unpunished."
The president seemingly placed blame for the shooting on "organized crime," stating "the full weight of the law is going to fall on them."
A suspect badly injured during a shootout with police was apprehended, but died from his injuries, the attorney general's office said in a statement published to X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
"An ambulance from the fire department confirmed his death," the statement said. "Police proceeds with the removal of the cadaver."
At least nine people have been reported injured in the attack, including a National Assembly candidate and two police officers, the attorney general's office said, adding the shooting was under investigation.
Villavicencio, president of the center-right Movimiento Construye party, was assassinated less than two weeks before the general election scheduled for Aug. 20.
His death also comes amid a swath of political violence that has rocked the country.
Late last month, Agustin Intriago, the mayor of Ecuador's central coast port city of Manta, was shot and killed in an attack that Lasso has also blamed on organized crime. Ariana Chancay was also killed, seemingly as a collateral victim.
In February, Omar Menendez, a candidate for the mayor of Puerto Lopez, was also assassinated.
Following Intriago's assassination, Movimiento Construye said there was discussion on whether to suspend Villavicencio's campaign for a few days or beef up security, but the party said their president was adamant to keep going.
"Fernando Villavicencio courageously confronted the mafias and his voice did not tremble to denounce his connections with politics," the party said in a statement. "We demand responses from the state, from justice, so that Fernando's murder does not go unpunished."
Villavicencio was one of eight candidates running for president. Following his death, at least three candidates -- Yaku Perez Guartambel, Bolivar Armijos and Jan Topic -- announced the suspensions of their campaign activities.
"This is an attack against the country, democracy and peace of all Ecuadorians," presidential candidate Daniel Noboa Azin said in a statement on X.
U.S. judge revokes Sam Bankman-Fried's bail, saying
FTX founder tampered with witnesses
Prosecutors allege he shared ex-girlfriend's writings with the New York Times
The Associated Press · Posted: Aug 11, 2023 12:40 PM PDT | Last Updated: August 11
Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, arrives at a courthouse in New York City on Friday. (Eduardo Munoz/Reuters)
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried left a federal courtroom in handcuffs Friday after a judge revoked his bail after concluding that the fallen cryptocurrency wiz had repeatedly tried to influence witnesses against him.
Bankman-Fried looked down at his hands as judge Lewis A. Kaplan explained at length why he believed the California man had repeatedly pushed the boundaries of his $250 million US bail package to a point that Kaplan could no longer ensure the protection of the community, including prosecutors' witnesses, unless the 31-year-old was behind bars.
At the conclusion of the hearing, Bankman-Fried took off his suit jacket and tie and turned his watch and other personal belongings over to his lawyers. The clanging of handcuffs could be heard as his hands were cuffed in front of him. He was then led out of the courtroom by U.S. marshals.
It was a spectacular fall for a man once viewed by many as a savvy crypto visionary who had testified before Congress and hired celebrities including Larry David, Tom Brady and Stephen Curry to promote his businesses.
Kaplan said there was probable cause to believe Bankman-Fried had tried to "tamper with witnesses at least twice" since his December arrest, most recently by showing a journalist the private writings of a former girlfriend and key witness against him and in January when he reached out to FTX's general counsel with an encrypted communication.
Bankman-Fried was arrested on charges that he defrauded investors in his businesses and illegally diverted
millions of dollars' worth of cryptocurrency from customers using his FTX exchange. (Leon Neal/Getty Images)
The judge said he concluded there was a probability that Bankman-Fried had tried to influence both anticipated trial witnesses "and quite likely others whose names we don't even know" to get them to "back off, to have them hedge their cooperation with the government."
Bankman-Fried's lawyers insisted that their client's motives were innocent and he shouldn't be jailed for trying to protect his reputation against a barrage of unfavourable news stories.
Attorney Mark Cohen asked the judge to suspend his incarceration order for an immediate appeal, but Kaplan rejected the request. Within an hour, defence lawyers had filed a notice of appeal.
Correspondence with New York Times
Bankman-Fried has been under house arrest at his parents' home in Palo Alto, Calif., since his December extradition from the Bahamas on charges that he defrauded investors in his businesses and illegally diverted millions of dollars' worth of cryptocurrency from customers using his FTX exchange.
His bail package severely restricts his internet and phone usage.
The judge noted that the strict rules did not stop him from reaching out in January to a top FTX lawyer, saying he "would really love to reconnect and see if there's a way for us to have a constructive relationship, use each other as resources when possible, or at least vet things with each other."
At a February hearing, Kaplan said the communication "suggests to me that maybe he has committed or attempted to commit a federal felony while on release."
U.S. district Judge Lewis Kaplan, left, and Bankman-Fried are seen during a hearing in New York City on Friday
in this courtroom sketch. (Jane Rosenberg/Reuters)
On Friday, Kaplan said he was rejecting defence claims that the communication was benign.
Instead, he said, it seems to be an invitation for the FTX general counsel "to get together with Bankman-Fried" so that their recollections "are on the same page."
Two weeks ago, prosecutors surprised Bankman-Fried's lawyers by demanding his incarceration, saying he violated those rules by giving the New York Times the private writings of Caroline Ellison, his former girlfriend and the ex-CEO of Alameda Research, a cryptocurrency trading hedge fund that was one of his businesses.
The New York times building is seen in February 2018. (Mark Lennihan/Associated Press)
Prosecutors maintained he was trying to sully her reputation and influence prospective jurors who might be summoned for his October trial by sharing deep thoughts about her job and the romantic relationship she had with Bankman-Fried.
The judge said Friday that the excerpts of Ellison's communications that Bankman-Fried had shared with a reporter were the kinds of things that somebody who'd been in a relationship with somebody "would be very unlikely to share with anybody, lest The New York Times, except to hurt, discredit, and frighten the subject of the material."
Ellison pleaded guilty in December to criminal charges carrying a potential penalty of 110 years in prison. She has agreed to testify against Bankman-Fried as part of a deal that could lead to a more lenient sentence.
Bankman-Fried's lawyers argued he probably failed in a quest to defend his reputation because the article cast Ellison in a sympathetic light and that prosecutors exaggerated the role Bankman-Fried had in the article.
They also said prosecutors were trying to get their client locked up by offering evidence consisting of "innuendo, speculation and scant facts."
David McCraw, a lawyer for the Times, had written to the judge, noting the First Amendment implications of any blanket gag order, as well as public interest in Ellison and her cryptocurrency trading firm.
Ellison confessed to a central role in a scheme defrauding investors of billions of dollars that went undetected, McCraw said.
"It is not surprising that the public wants to know more about who she is and what she did and that news organizations would seek to provide to the public timely, pertinent and fairly reported information about her, as the Times did in its story," McCraw said.
China corruption watchdog nabs 160 hospital bosses in healthcare blitz
‘More heads to roll’ as investigations continue into sector given over US$15.2 billion
in public funds during Covid-19
Health spending is among the ‘three burdens’ on China’s ageing population and
one of the largest sources of public grievance
William Zheng, SCMP
Published: 2:00pm, 12 Aug, 2023
More than 160 hospital bosses and secretaries across China have been netted in an anti-corruption drive,
with more heads expected to roll. Photo: Shutterstock
Chinese anti-corruption investigators have netted more than 160 hospital bosses this year, as Beijing targets the lucrative medical sector, which received public funding worth billions of US dollars under Covid-19.
Sources and observers expect more heads to roll in the sector, which has been one of the largest sources of public grievances over high costs and rampant corruption.
State media reports said more than 150 hospital bosses and secretaries have been identified in the targeted campaign that began earlier this year, but tallies by the South China Morning Post suggest the total may have reached 168 this week.
It was also reported last month that at least two senior pharmaceutical company executives – Winning Health Technology Group chairman Zhou Wei and Fan Zhihe, chairman of Shanghai Serum Bio-Technology – were under investigation for alleged corruption.
Corruption in Big Pharma - say it ain't so! Pfft!
The sector-specific anti-corruption campaign kicked off just months after China emerged from its three-year zero-Covid strategy, but stepped up a gear as a July 30 deadline neared for people to hand themselves over in exchange for leniency.
Data released in March by the National Health Commission showed health facilities across the country have received more than 110 billion yuan (US$15.2 billion) since 2020.
A source – who asked for anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity – said the campaign to rid the sector of systemic corruption will continue into 2024.
“The campaign will continue for another 10 months and the investigators will report to the leadership next June. New rules and regulations will be introduced based on the results of the investigation,” the source said.
“So, more heads of health commissions, hospitals and medical suppliers will roll in the coming months.”
The urgency of the anti-corruption campaign was reflected in a notice issued last month by the Guangdong Health Commission, which gave major hospitals and medical bodies in the southern province two days to review an audit report of their finances.
“You must provide feedback officially even if you have no objections,” the notice said.
A Guangdong health official, who asked not to be identified because he is not authorised to speak publicly, said authorities had promised leniency for hospital bosses and officials who surrendered before August.
Cross-agency collaboration in the campaign underlines the clear mandate from the country’s leadership for the anti-corruption drive.
On July 15, the finance ministry issued a joint notice with the National Medical Insurance Administration ordering spot checks of local medical funds and a “thorough investigation” of any violations.
About a week later, the National Health Commission announced a year-long “rectification campaign” for the medical sector in a video conference held jointly with the education and public security ministries, as well as the General Audit Office.
Further political momentum was injected into the campaign on July 28, when China’s top anti-corruption agency – the party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) – held a video conference calling on inspectors and supervisors to double their efforts.
The crackdown was “essential in promoting the healthy China strategy by Xi Jinping”, the watchdog said.
Nearly 300 billion yuan evaporated from the medical sector’s market value in the six trading days after the CCDI meeting, according to Wind, a financial data provider in China.
