Новини

Russia’s leading telecoms firm said Thursday it had agreed to pay $850 million to settle a U.S. corruption case over huge bribes paid to the family of Uzbekistan’s former president.

The case shed light on massive corruption in Uzbekistan under former president Islam Karimov, who ruled the ex-Soviet republic from 1990 until his death in 2016.

MTS, based in Moscow and listed on the New York Stock Exchange, said the settlement had been agreed with the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The deals “mark the closure of the investigations into the company’s acquisition and operation of its former subsidiary in Uzbekistan,” MTS said in a statement.

MTS complies 

In agreeing to the fine “MTS affirmed its commitment” to complying with anti-corruption legislation, it said.

MTS was in a long-running dispute with the Uzbek authorities, which seized the company’s local subsidiary in 2012 after cancelling its operating licenses for alleged tax evasion.

The Uzbek subsidiary, which had 9.5 million subscribers by the end of 2011, filed for bankruptcy in 2013.

The SEC said that MTS had “bribed an Uzbek official” related to Karimov to obtain and retain business operations in Uzbekistan, a Central Asian nation of more than 32 million people.

“The company engaged in egregious misconduct for nearly a decade, secretly funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to a corrupt official,” the SEC said in a statement. 

‘$1 billion worth of payments’

An investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project previously said that the subsidiary, which was known as Uzdunrobita before it was acquired by MTS, had paid hundreds of millions of dollars to companies owned by Karimov’s daughter Gulnara.

The OCCRP, an NGO that works with investigative reporters mainly in Eastern Europe, alleged that MTS made payments in 2004 and 2007 to purchase stakes in the company. 

MTS was not the only telecoms company involved. “Karimova squeezed more than $1 billion worth of payments… out of international telecom-related companies,” OCCRP said.

Some commentators in Russia expressed dismay that the U.S. was fining Russian companies for operations in third countries.

“What concern does the U.S. have about the faraway Uzbekistan and Russian operators?” said a journalist on BFM business radio, pointing out that “the money will go to the American budget, not the Uzbek one.”

End to economic isolation

Uzbekistan is led by Karimov’s former prime minister Shavkat Mirziyoyev, who has moved to end the country’s economic isolation and removed visa restrictions for travelers from European Union countries and the United States.

Gulnara Karimova, once a high-profile diplomat and pop singer, was being held under house arrest after being convicted on fraud and money laundering charges in 2017 and sentenced to five years.

Uzbek authorities this week said she had violated the terms of her house arrest and had been sent to prison where she would remain until the end of her sentence.
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A French court convicted the Roman Catholic archbishop of Lyon on Thursday of failing to act on historic allegations of sexual abuse of boy scouts in his diocese, handing Cardinal Philippe Barbarin a six-month suspended jail sentence.

Barbarin is the highest-profile cleric to be caught up in the child sex abuse scandal inside the Catholic Church in France. He was found guilty of failing to report allegations of sexual abuse in the 1980s and early 1990s by a priest who is due to go on trial later this year.

Barbarin has 10 days to appeal.

Barbarin’s trial put Europe’s senior clergy in the spotlight at a time when Pope Francis is under fire for the church’s response a sexual abuse crisis that has engulfed the church, deeply damaging its standing around the globe.

The pontiff last month ended a conference on the sexual abuse of children by clergy by calling for an “all-out battle” against a crime that should be “erased from the face of the earth.”

Victims and their advocates expressed deep disappointment, saying Francis had merely repeated old promises and offered few new concrete proposals.
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British police said a suspicious package destroyed by bomb-disposal experts at the University of Glasgow on Wednesday contained an explosive device and was linked to three letter bombs sent to two London airports and a railway station.  

The Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command said the item sent to the Scottish university had “similarities in the package, its markings and the type of device” to the three small improvised bombs received by the London transportation hubs on Tuesday.  

The mailing envelope sent to London’s Heathrow Airport with one of the bombs inside partly caught fire when someone opened it, but no one was injured.  

The force said it had not identified the sender and urged transportation operators, mail sorting companies and schools “to be vigilant” about watching for suspicious packages. 

Precautionary evacuation

The University of Glasgow said several buildings on its campus, including the mailroom, were evacuated “as a precautionary measure” after the package was found in the mailroom on Wednesday morning. 

Assistant Chief Constable Steve Johnson of Police Scotland said “the package was not opened and no one was injured.” 

He said bomb-disposal experts later performed a controlled explosion on the item.  

Another package sparked an evacuation Wednesday at the Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters in Edinburgh. It was found to contain “promotional goods” and deemed no threat to the public, police said. 

The envelopes received in London appeared to carry Irish stamps, and Jarrett said one line of inquiry “is the possibility that the packages have come from Ireland.” 

There has been speculation the devices could be connected to Irish Republican Army dissidents. But Dean Haydon, Britain’s senior national coordinator for counterterrorism policing, said no sender had been identified and no group had claimed responsibility. 

“We are talking to our Irish counterparts but at the moment there’s nothing to indicate motivation of the sender or ideology, so I cannot confirm at the moment if it’s connected to any Ireland-related terrorist groups,” he said.
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Pope Francis has urged Roman Catholic faithful to free themselves from the “clutches of consumerism and the snares of selfishness” as he marked the start of Lent, the period of prayer and fasting before Easter.

Francis led a procession and then celebrated Ash Wednesday Mass at the basilica of Santa Sabina, one of Rome’s most beautiful.

In his homily, Francis said the 40-day period of Lent is a “wakeup call for the soul” to rediscover the direction of life.

He said: “We need to free ourselves from the clutches of consumerism and the snares of selfishness, from always wanting more, from never being satisfied, and from a heart closed to the needs of the poor.”

At the end of Lent, Christians commemorate the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ.
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U.S. officials have warned at an energy conference in Brussels that the Trump administration will take punitive action against European companies that are building the Kremlin-favored Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline, which will deliver energy from Russia to Germany while bypassing Ukraine.

Nord Stream 2 (NS2) will largely replace an older pipeline running through Ukraine and Poland that has the backing of the German government. But it is prompting the alarm of Central European governments, increasingly infuriated with Berlin’s dismissal of their concerns.

They object to Nord Stream 2 — which will run 1,200 kilometers from Vyborg, Russia, to Lubmin, Germany, and snake under the Baltic Sea — not only because they’ll lose lucrative transit fees from the older pipeline, but because they fear the Kremlin wants to develop NS2 largely for political reasons, not commercial ones.

Speaking at the energy conference in the Belgian capital, Nicole Gibson, deputy director of the U.S. State Department’s office for Europe, warned that if European companies resume laying pipe later this year they “risk significant sanctions.”

Declining to go into any details about the threatened sanctions, Gibson said Washington doesn’t accept that Nord Stream 2 is a done deal. “Some people say it is a fait accompli that Nord Stream 2 will be done. We don’t see it that way… We call on European leaders to make sure Nord Stream 2 is not implemented,” she said.

Ukrainian leader Petro Poroshenko has warned that NS2 would allow the Kremlin to switch off gas to Ukraine and Central Europe when it wants to blackmail its nearer neighbors without disrupting supplies to Western Europe, lessening likely push back from the more powerful European countries while it toys with weaker ones.

Her high-profile warning, upping the political stakes, comes two months after Richard Grenell, the U.S. envoy to Germany, sent letters to dozens of European construction and energy companies saying they face sanctions if they resume in the spring the laying of NS2’s concrete-coated steel pipes. Construction work was suspended in December because of winter weather.

Washington’s opposition to Nord Stream 2 has been consistent — the Obama administration also was critical.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s opposition has a harder edge, however, with officials seeing a dark political menace behind the new pipeline. They argue NS2 will undermine European security, deepen Western Europe’s dependence on Russian energy and give the Kremlin a greater opportunity to use natural-gas supplies to exert political influence and blackmail Western European governments.

Nord Stream 2, which will be owned by the Kremlin-directed energy giant Gazprom, would double the capacity of Russian gas delivered to Germany, the European Union’s most powerful economy. NS2 will cost billions of dollars to build. Russia currently supplies more than one-third of the natural gas Europe uses, though with demand increasing, that could reach closer to 50 percent next decade, forecast energy industry experts.

Last July, during his visit to the annual summit of NATO allies in Brussels, President Trump expressed his frustration with German Chancellor Angela Merkel over the Russia-to-Germany undersea pipeline, saying, “We’re supposed to protect you from Russia, but Germany is making pipeline deals with Russia. You tell me if that’s appropriate. Explain that.”

But Merkel has dug in amid pressure from Germany businesses, which say NS2 will slash their energy costs. The German Chancellor also appears to be distancing herself from a promise she made last year to Central European leaders when she acknowledged for the first time allies’ geopolitical concerns, saying NS2 could proceed only if Ukraine’s role as a transit country for Russian gas also was protected.

Germany, along with NS2 transit countries Finland, Sweden and Denmark, counter-argue the pipeline will increase Europe’s energy security by avoiding potential cutoffs from the more politically volatile Ukrainian route. Washington believes the pipeline also is a Russian bid to hurt Ukraine economically by stripping it of gas transit fees.

Ukrainian officials estimate their losses from Nord Stream 2 will be high, running at about $2.5 billion a year.

“When Nord Stream 2 is finished this year, there will be no need to use the Ukrainian gas transit system,” Yuriy Vitrenko, managing director of Ukraine’s Naftogaz, a state-owned oil and gas company, told the Brussels conference. “Ukraine will lose approximately 4 percent of GDP,” he added.

Kremlin officials say Washington wants to stop NS2 because U.S. energy giants are hoping to export surplus shale gas to Europe as liquified natural gas (LNG). U.S. officials have made no secret of their hopes that American energy firms will be able to profit from a halt to NS2, but say that isn’t the major reason for their objections to the pipeline.

U.S. officials’ alarm about NS2 is echoed by European security officials. NATO’s former head, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, has described Nord Stream 2 as a “geopolitical mistake” for the EU, saying it would make a mockery of EU sanctions on Russia for its 2014 annexation of Crimea.
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The Venezuelan government has ordered the expulsion of Germany’s ambassador, citing his alleged support of opposition leader Juan Guaido, who is engaged in a political battle with President Nicolas Maduro.

The government said in a statement that ambassador Martin Kriener had 48 hours to leave for what it said was Kriener’s meddling in Venezuela’s internal affairs. The order came after Kriener met with Guaido at Caracas airport Monday upon Guaido’s return to the country.   

Guaido, recognized by the U.S. and about 50 other nations as Venezuela’s interim leader, returned on a commercial flight following a tour of Latin American countries in defiance of a court-imposed travel ban. Guaido called for Maduro’s ouster at a rally shortly after his return.

Venezuela is in the midst of a political and humanitarian crisis that is expected to worsen as U.S. oil sanctions against the country take their toll.

Guaido supporters contend last year’s re-election of Maduro, who is supported by Russia, was invalid.

 
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U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet is warning that growing social, economic, and political inequalities are increasing alienation and instability in countries throughout the world. The high commissioner presented a sweeping view of major human rights situations around the world in a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Bachelet said inequalities in income, opportunity, justice and the enjoyment of human rights exist in all countries — rich and poor alike. Tackling these inequalities, she says, is critical in overcoming the grievances and unrest that fuel hatred, violence and threats to peace.

She cited many examples of countries where the denial of rights has led to protests and violent crackdowns by security forces. She mentioned Sudan, where people protesting harsh economic conditions and bad governance have been violently dispersed by security forces.

She noted similar scenarios are playing out in many other places, including Zimbabwe, Haiti, France, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

Bachelet said she is shocked by the number of killings of human rights defenders around the world. She expressed alarm at the increasingly widespread attacks on journalists and media freedoms.

The human rights chief said she is very concerned about government reprisals against victims, human rights defenders and non-governmental organizations who cooperate with the United Nations.

“Today, allow me to voice my concern at the apparently arbitrary arrest and detention, and alleged ill-treatment or torture, of several women human rights defenders in Saudi Arabia,” she said. “The persecution of peaceful activists would clearly contradict the spirit of the country’s proclaimed new reforms. So, we urge that these women be released.”

Bachelet condemned the detention of members of the Uighur Muslim minority in what China calls re-education centers in its Xinjiang province. Activists say about 1 million Uighurs are kept in what they call detention centers.

Bachelet also did not shy away from criticizing the United States’ migration policy. Thousands of migrant children have been separated from their families during border crossings into the U.S.

Separately, she called on Australia to implement more humane policies toward hundreds of migrants detained on Manus Island and Nauru.

She said inequalities undermine social progress, and economic and political stability; whereas human rights build hope.

The high commissioner urged nations to do away with the divisive, destructive forces of repression in favor of principled and more effective policies grounded in human rights.
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The leader of the main center-right party in the European Parliament said on Tuesday that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban must apologize for his criticism of the EU or his ruling Fidesz party could be suspended from the grouping.

Orban, an outspoken nationalist, wants to remain in the EPP, Fidesz said on Tuesday, despite growing pressure within the European Parliament’s biggest grouping to suspend or expel it, a scenario backed by European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker.

The Hungarian leader has long been at loggerheads with Brussels over his hardline stance on immigration and accusations — which he denies — that he is undermining the rule of law. The feud is escalating ahead of European Parliament elections in May.

“Viktor Orban must immediately and permanently end his government’s anti-Brussels campaigns,” Manfred Weber, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) candidate to be EU Commission President, told Bild newspaper.

On Monday, the EPP said it had received motions from 12 member parties in nine EU countries and would discuss suspending or excluding Fidesz on March 20.

Juncker, who in 2014 was the EPP’s candidate for the top EU executive position he now holds, accused Orban of coming “within a hair’s breadth” of peddling falsehoods and said he would support the exclusion.

Asked about Orban, Juncker told German broadcaster ZDF: “Whoever lies in European affairs for domestic political reasons has to ask himself whether he still wants to belong to the EPP club. I think, they are not one of them any more.”

“I already said months ago that the EPP’s biggest problem in the European elections has a name, and that is Orban. I will support this exclusion,” Juncker added.

Speaking to journalists in the Germany town of Rottersdorf, Weber said that in recent weeks “Viktor Orban and the Fidesz have crossed red lines again” and added that all options were on the table, “especially the option of expulsion and going away, going our future way without Fidesz.”

Orban’s party said in a statement: “Fidesz does not want to leave the (European) People’s Party, our goal is for anti-immigration forces to gain strength within the EPP.”

‘Constructive dialogue’

Orban has launched a media and billboard campaign that frames the May elections as a choice between forces backing and opposing mass immigration and that attacks Juncker.

However, on Tuesday he said he welcomed an initiative by French President Emmanuel Macron for reforming the EU. 

“In the details, of course, we have differences of views, but far more important than these differing opinions is that this initiative be a good start to a serious and constructive dialogue on the future of Europe,” Orban said in a statement to Reuters.

Weber told Bild newspaper he expected an apology to EPP member parties, an immediate and permanent end to Orban’s anti-EU campaigns and renewed government support for Central European University to stay in Budapest.

CEU was forced out of Hungary and plans to relocate to Vienna from September as Orban wages a bitter campaign against its founder, U.S. billionaire George Soros, accusing him of supporting immigration to undermine Europe’s way of life.

Hungarian-born Soros, 87, denies that.

The EPP has 217 lawmakers in the 750-strong EU legislature, 12 of them from Fidesz. It is expected to remain the biggest parliamentary group in the May elections, although likely weakened, opinion polls show.

Far-right, populist parties are expected to perform well.
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A call by French President Emmanuel Macron for reforms of the European Union to pave the way to a “European renaissance” won mainly just polite support on Tuesday from other EU leaders.

Some officials portrayed Macron’s reform plan as part of a bid to become the new leader of Europe as Angela Merkel prepares her exit as German chancellor, and suggested it was at least partly intended to boost his waning popularity in France.

His proposals, unveiled in an open letter to citizens of Europe that was published in newspapers across the EU, are to protect and defend Europe’s citizens while giving the 28-nation bloc new impetus in the face of global competition.

Britain is preparing to leave the EU, and elections to the European Parliament take place in May. The EU also faces a more assertive China and challenges from Russia, and has differences with the United States, especially over President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies.

“The German government supports engaged discussions about the direction of the European Union,” said a spokesman for the government in Germany, the EU’s biggest member state. He declined to give further details.

The importance of Berlin’s backing for any change in the EU, or lack of it, has become clear since Macron’s vision of deeper integration among the 19 countries that use the euro currency failed to materialize after 18 months of EU talks.

European Council President Donald Tusk, who chairs EU leaders’ summits, focused on only one aspect of Macron’s reform drive — the creation of a European Agency for the Protection of Democracies to protect EU countries from outside cyber-attacks and meddling in elections.

“I agree with Emmanuel Macron. Do not allow external anti-European forces to influence our elections and decide on key priorities and new leadership of EU,” Tusk said.

Start of a serious debate?

The European Commission, the EU executive, saluted Macron’s call as a contribution to the debate about Europe but said most of the ideas had already been implemented or were under way.

However, Macron’s proposals failed to impress Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, who described them as “totally divorced from reality,” according to Czech news website www.parlamentnilisty.cz.

“I have noticed that when France says ‘more of Europe’, she in fact means more of France. But that is not the way. We are all equals in Europe,” he was quoted as saying.

Other EU officials, when speaking on condition of anonymity, were also less diplomatic, ascribing the timing of the proposals to Macron’s desire to boost his popularity ratings in France before the European Parliament elections in May.

“People are seeing it as a bit ridiculous that he keeps reinventing the wheel,” one official said.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel offered selective support for Macron’s ideas.

“Support for Emmanuel Macron’s proposals for a new impetus for the European project. Minimum wage, climate investments, Security and Defense Council, multi-speed Europe,” Michel said on Twitter.

More surprising was support from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, usually a strong critic of the EU.

“This could mark the beginning of a serious European debate,” Orban said in a statement sent to Reuters by email.

“In the details, of course, we have differences of views, but far more important than these differing opinions is that this initiative be a good start to a serious and constructive dialogue on the future of Europe,” he said.
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The United States needs more firepower and focus to push back against ever-increasing Russian aggression across Europe and beyond, according to the top U.S. commander in Europe.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday, European Command’s Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti called Russia the primary threat to stability in Europe and recommended the U.S. boost the number of troops it deploys to the continent on both a permanent and rotational basis.

Scaparrotti said he was particularly concerned about insufficient intelligence and surveillance capabilities, as well as a shrinking advantage on the high seas.

“I’ve asked for two more [naval] destroyers,” Scaparrotti told lawmakers, saying the need for additional ships was critical “if we want to remain dominant in the maritime domain.”

“We do need greater capacity, particularly given the modernization and the growth of the Russian fleets in Europe,” he said, noting growing concern about the presence of Russian submarines in European and international waters.

Countering Russian Influence

Scaparrotti, who also serves as the supreme allied commander for NATO, is not the first high ranking U.S. military official to raise concerns about what many in the U.S. see as Russia’s increasingly aggressive posture.

Last month, a report by the U.S. military’s Defense Intelligence Agency warned of the threat posed by Russia’s action is space, while the commander of U.S. forces in Africa cautioned Moscow was playing on perceived U.S. weakness to gain influence there.

In his prepared testimony Tuesday, Scaparrotti said Europe, however, was still the lynchpin to Moscow’s overall approach.

“Moscow seeks to assert its influence over nations along its periphery, undermine NATO solidarity, and fracture the rules-based international order,” he wrote, adding from there, Russia is looking to “increase its influence and expand its presence in Afghanistan, Syria, and Asia.”

Scaparrotti told lawmakers that the U.S. military has been working closely with European allies, including Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the Baltic nations to develop the right capabilities to counter Russian aggression.

US support for Ukraine

He also said strong consideration is being given to find more ways to support Ukraine.

Since 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea, the U.S. has given Kyiv more than $1 billion worth of military assistance, though the vast majority of it has been non-lethal.

To date, the lone exception has been shipments of javelin missiles which started last April (2018), following authorizations by U.S. President Donald Trump and Congress.

Scaparrotti said the additional lethal aid could include sniper systems, ammunition and even naval warfare systems, citing Russia’s seizure of Ukrainian naval vessels last November, as part of an effort to block off Ukrainian access to the Kerch Strait.

Disinformation, cyberattacks and arms race

But like top U.S. intelligence officials, the commander of U.S. forces in Europe cautioned that while Russia is strengthening its military might, the biggest threat comes from the Kremlin’s devotion to information warfare. And he raised concerns Washington’s response in that arena is lacking.

“We need to probably get greater focus and energy into a strategy, a multifaceted strategy to counter Russia,” Scaparrotti said, “specifically within information operations, challenging their disinformation in cyber.”

U.S. lawmakers Tuesday also raised concerns about a possible nuclear arms race with Russia, with both President trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin announcing last month they are withdrawing from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

The U.S. and its European allies accuse Moscow of violating the terms of the treaty, which prohibited ballistic and ground-launched cruise missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers, since at least 2014.

“We simply cannot tolerate this kind of abuse of arms control and expect for arms control to continue to be viable,” a senior U.S. administration official said at the time. “Let’s be clear: If there’s an arms race, it is Russia that is starting it.”

Pressed on how the U.S. would proceed in a post-treaty environment, Scaparrotti said planning was underway.

“I don’t know that we have a plan today,” he said. “We’re still in a 6-month period here where we are looking at what our options are.”
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