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by Carlos MANDUJANO / Luis Jaime CISNEROS Agence France-Presse LIMA, Peru (AFP) — Peru’s former president Pedro Castillo was placed in provisional detention on Thursday, a day after he was ousted by lawmakers and arrested, accused of attempting a coup. Prosecutors carried out a dawn raid on the presidency and some ministerial offices in search of evidence against Castillo, who is being investigated for “rebellion and conspiracy.” Looking visibly nervous and disheveled, the toppled leftist […]
Seoul, South Korea | AFP | by Kang Jin-kyu The once-disgraced heir to the sprawling Samsung empire was on Thursday named top executive of its most important business, two months after South Korea’s president pardoned him for embezzlement and corruption convictions. The board of Samsung Electronics, one of the world’s biggest smartphone and chipmakers, confirmed Lee Jae-yong’s formal ascent — though he had already been de facto leader since his father’s heart attack in […]
PANAMA CITY, Panama (AFP) — Panamanian prosecutors have charged former presidents Ricardo Martinelli and Juan Carlos Varela with laundering money from construction giant Odebrecht, after the company admitted paying bribes in the country. The two men, who collectively led Panama between 2009 and 2019, were not present at a court hearing on Friday. Prosecutors accused the pair of using front companies and foreign bank accounts to receive funds from Odebrecht between 2008 and 2014. […]
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AFP) — Rosmah Mansor, the wife of Malaysia’s ex-premier Najib Razak, was found guilty of graft Thursday, just over a week after her husband began serving a 12-year jail term. “The accused is found guilty of all three charges,” High Court Judge Mohamed Zaini Mazlan said as Rosmah sat quietly in the dock. The judge added that her defence was “bare denial and unsubstantiated”. The Kuala Lumpur court began mitigation on […]
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (AFP) Malaysia’s jailed former prime minister Najib Razak returned to court Thursday to face more charges linked to a multi-billion-dollar financial scandal at state fund 1MDB, two days after he began serving a 12-year prison term. Najib, 69, was sent to prison Tuesday after the Federal Court, Malaysia’s highest tribunal, upheld his sentence in the initial batch of charges linked to the scandal that brought down his government in 2018. Najib was […]
London, United Kingdom | AFP | The number of people crossing the Channel to the UK from northern France in small boats has hit a new high, the government in London said on Tuesday. Some 1,295 people were detected on Monday, beating the previous single-day record of 1,185 on November 11, 2021, the Ministry of Defence said. So far this year there have been some 22,670 crossings. At the same point in 2021, nearly 12,500 […]
PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AFP) — Malaysia’s highest court Tuesday upheld former prime minister Najib Razak’s 12-year jail sentence for corruption in the 1MDB financial scandal. “We find the appeal devoid of any merits. We find the conviction and sentence to be safe,” Chief Justice Maimun Tuan Mat said on behalf of a five-judge panel. “Based on the foregoing, it is our unanimous view that the evidence led during the trial points overwhelmingly to guilt on […]
Indonesian police have arrested a fugitive accused of masterminding a lucrative scheme in his native Japan to defraud a government fund offering Covid-19 relief subsidies, officials said Wednesday. Mitsuhiro Taniguchi, 47, was arrested in Lampung province in the south of Sumatra island late Tuesday and flown to the capital Jakarta, national police spokesman Dedi Prasetyo told journalists. The Japanese national and several associates are accused of submitting false applications to claim 960 million yen ($7.2 […]
QUITO, Ecuador (AFP) — Authorities in Ecuador on Friday arrested and re-imprisoned former vice-president Jorge Glas, after a court ordered he must serve out the rest of a corruption sentence. Glas, 52, “was admitted” to prison in the central province of Cotopaxi, “but for security reasons and in accordance with the regulations in force, he will be transferred to prison 4” in Quito, the country’s interior ministry said in a tweet. Earlier, police arrested […]
CONAKRY, Guinea (AFP) — A former Guinean prime minister and three ex-ministers were detained on embezzlement charges Wednesday, one of their lawyers said, in the latest probe targeting prominent figures since last year’s military coup. Guinea’s military junta, led by Colonel Mamady Doumbouya, deposed elected president Alpha Conde at age 83 amid fierce protests over his successful bid for a third term. After seizing power last year, the junta promised to combat endemic corruption in […]
by Nathalie OLOF-ORS Agence France Presse ZURICH, Switzerland (AFP) — The “Suisse Secrets” data leak claiming to reveal how Credit Suisse handled billions of dollars in dirty money has renewed pressure on Switzerland’s financial sector, which has spent years trying to clean up its image. Switzerland’s second largest bank was rocked Sunday by a vast investigation by dozens of media organisations into leaked data they said showed Credit Suisse held more than $8 billion […]
by Claire LEE Agence France Presse SEOUL, South Korea (AFP) — South Korea’s ex-president Park Geun-hye has received a pardon, cutting short a jail term of more than 20 years for corruption, the justice minister announced Friday, saying the reprieve was in the interests of national unity. Park became South Korea’s first woman president in 2013, casting herself in the role of the daughter of the nation, incorruptible and beholden to none. Less than […]
