Author: The Nation

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has been hit with a fresh money laundering charge yesterday, bringing the total charges he is facing to seven.

Muhyiddin was alleged to have received 5 million ringgit (1.11 million U.S. dollars) from illegal proceeds from an investment company into his party’s account, prosecutors said.

The 75-year-old pleaded not guilty to all charges.

Sessions Court judge, Rozilah Salleh allowed the previous 2-million-ringgit bail, which Muhyiddin had paid for his previous charges in Kuala Lumpur to be used as bail for the latest charge.

Earlier on March 10, Muhyiddin claimed trial to six charges in the Sessions Court in Kuala Lumpur, namely four corruption charges and two money laundering charges involving several hundred million ringgit.

Muhyiddin, who served as Malaysia’s prime minister for 17 months between March 2020 and August 2021, is chairman of the Perikatan Nasional (PN) coalition.

President Joe Biden yesterday sought to reassure jittery Americans that they can have confidence that the United States (U.S.) banking system is “safe” and vowed stricter bank regulation after a string of bank failures raised concerns about the nation’s financial stability.

The president’s early morning comments came after U.S. bank regulators spent the weekend working on a plan to shore up the public’s confidence in the soundness of the financial system and limit spillover effects following the closing of the Silicon Valley Bank last week.

“Americans can rest assured that our banking system is safe. Your deposits are safe,” Biden said from the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

Taxpayers will not bear any losses from the move, which will be funded by fees regulators charge to banks, he said. The banks’ leaders will be fired, he added.

Biden, in his address, allayed fears, directly explaining what he has instructed his administration to do to protect small businesses and workers in the wake of regulator shutdowns of both Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank over the last few days. The California-based Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), the 16th largest bank in the United States, was closed on Friday by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, which later appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as its receiver.

It was the largest failure of a U.S. bank since the financial crisis in 2008.

It came after SVB was scrambling to raise money to plug a loss from the sale of assets affected by higher interest rates. Word of the troubles led customers to race to withdraw funds leading to a cash crisis.

Authorities on Sunday also said they had taken over Signature Bank of New York, which was seen as the institution most vulnerable to a similar bank run after SVB.

“Every American should feel confident that their deposits will be there if and when they need them,” President Biden said. “Let me also assure you. We will not stop at this. We’ll do whatever is needed.” Investors in the banks, however, will not be protected, the president said, and management will be fired.

“They knowingly took a risk, and when the risk didn’t pay off, investors lost their money. That’s how capitalism works,” Biden said.

Customers will “have access to their money as of today. That includes small businesses across the country that bank there and need to make payroll, pay their bills and stay open for business,” Biden said, adding that no losses will be suffered by the taxpayers.

“Instead, the money will come from the fees that banks pay into the deposit insurance fund,” he explained.

The FDIC’s Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) is used to help pay for operating costs as well as to resolve failed banks. It’s funded by quarterly fees collected from FDIC-insured banks as well as interest earned from its investments in Treasury securities.

As of December 31, 2022, the DIF’s fund balance was USD 128.2 billion, according to the FDIC. Under requirements put in place by the Dodd-Frank Act, the FDIC has to have enough in the DIF coffers to cover 1.35 per cent of insured deposits, CNN reported.

The president also said there must be a “full accounting” of how this situation happened and steps must be taken to ensure this “never happens again.” “In my administration … no one is above the law,” Biden said, before calling on Congress to restore banking regulations rolled back during the Trump administration.

Biden administration officials announced Sunday that depositors with accounts at Silicon Valley Bank will have access to all of their money beginning yesterday, and “no losses associated with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank will be borne by the taxpayer.” The emergency action “fully protects” all depositors, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Federal Reserve Board Chair Jerome Powell and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chairman Martin Gruenberg said.

Biden on Sunday too assured the American people and businesses that a resolution of the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank will not put taxpayer’s money at risk.

He said that at his direction the Treasury Secretary and National Economic Council Director worked diligently with the banking regulators to address problems at SVB and Signature Bank.

Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gentleman Douglas Emhoff will leave the United States in late March to visit Accra, Ghana; Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; and Lusaka, Zambia.

The recent U.S.-Africa Leaders Forum, which President Joe Biden convened in Washington in December 2022, will serve as a foundation for the vice president’s visit, ending on April 2.

“The trip will strengthen the United States’ partnerships throughout Africa and advance our shared efforts on security and economic prosperity,” according to The White House’s announcement.

During the course of the trip, the vice president will work in collaboration with African governments and the private sector to advance efforts to “expand access to the digital economy, support climate adaptation and resilience, and strengthen business ties and investment, including through innovation, entrepreneurship, and the economic empowerment of women,” according to the White House.

These goals will be pursued in an effort to expand economic opportunity across Africa.

The vice president will meet with President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana, President Samia Hassan of Tanzania, and President Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia to discuss regional and global priorities.

Some of the topics that will be brought up during these meetings include the nations’ shared commitment to democracy, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, food security, and the effects of Russia’s war with Ukraine, amongst other things.

The vice president will work to enhance people-to-people relations and interact with civil society, especially young business leaders, members of the African Diaspora, and corporate representatives and entrepreneurs.

During his Dec. 14 speech at the United States of Africa Business Conference in Washington, Biden detailed a series of initiatives that would be taken to improve the United States relations with the continent that will likely cost billions of dollars, as The Epoch Times previously reported.

The three-day summit in the U.S. Capitol began on Dec. 13. It was the first time a gathering of this kind has taken place in America since 2014 when it was held during the administration of former President Barack Obama.

“The United States is all in on Africa’s future,” Biden said during his speech. “And the work we’ve done over the past two years—building on decades of vital investments made under previous American presidents—has helped make possible the critical steps that I’m about to announce.”

Delegates from 49 countries and the African Union attended the summit, as well as 45 national leaders from various African nations.

Senior United Nations officials hosted Russian envoys in Geneva yesterday in a bid to extend an export agreement amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and prevent a potential new spike in world food prices.

The United Nations and Turkey brokered a deal between the two warring countries in July that allows Ukraine — one of the world’s key breadbaskets — to ship food and fertiliser from three of its Black Sea ports.

The 120-day agreement, which helped take some of the sting out of rising global food prices, was renewed last November. That extension expires on Saturday.

Moscow has been frustrated that a parallel deal to allow exports of Russian food and fertiliser, which is used across the globe, has only resulted in a trickle of Russian fertiliser getting out and no Russian grain at all.

As part of the arrangement, Moscow wants Russian ammonia to be fed through a pipeline across Ukraine to reach Black Sea ports for possible export. Russian officials also say banking restrictions and high insurance costs have hurt their hopes of exporting fertiliser.

Rebeca Grynspan, secretary-general of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, and Martin Griffiths, the head of the UN humanitarian agency, were hosting a team led by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin at UN offices in Geneva.

None of the officials involved spoke to reporters as they arrived for the talks.

A lot is at stake: Ukraine and Russia are key global suppliers of wheat, barley, sunflower oil and other food to countries in Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia, where millions of people don’t have enough to eat. Russia was also the world’s top exporter of fertiliser before the war.

The loss of those supplies, after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, drove global food prices higher and fueled concerns of a hunger crisis in poorer countries.

The so-called Black Sea Grain Initiative involves seaborne checks of cargo by UN, Russian, Ukrainian and Turkish officials to ensure that only foodstuffs — not weapons — are being transported.

The amount of grain leaving Ukraine has dropped even as the deal works to keep food flowing. Inspections of ships under the grain initiative have fallen sharply since they got rolling in earnest in September, and vessels have been backed up.

Western critics accuse Russia of dragging its heels on inspections. Moscow denies that.

Though the grain deal helped stabilize global food prices, there are still concerns about the impact on prices of possible trade restrictions and weather, especially heat waves, said Michael Puma, director of Columbia University’s Center for Climate Systems Research whose research focuses on global food security.

“Big picture, we’re pretty fortunate that the weather conditions have allowed … high levels of production across many of the grains,” he said.

On the front lines in Ukraine, the eastern city of Bakhmut remained the site of fierce fighting, with Ukrainian forces denying Russian forces the prize of its capture after six months of attrition.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Russian millionaire with ties to President Vladimir Putin, who owns the Wagner private military company, has repeatedly claimed that only the Wagner fighters, not the regular army, are involved in battles for Bakhmut. His claims could not be independently verified.

“The situation around Bakhmut remains difficult,” said Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Ukrainian Commander of Ground Forces. “Wagner’s assault units are advancing from several directions, trying to break through the defences of our troops and advance to the central districts of the city.”

Ukraine’s presidential office said that at least two civilians were killed and 11 wounded in the country over the previous 24 hours.

The two people were killed in the southern Mykolaiv region yesterday morning, when the Russian forces shelled the village of Kutsurub. Three more people, including a seven-year-old child, were wounded there.

Also in the south, one person was wounded in the city of Kherson after the Russians shelled the city’s residential areas.

Another seven people were wounded in the eastern Donetsk region, including four in the embattled city of Bakhmut, according to Donetsk Gov. Pavlo Kyrylneko.

In the neighbouring Luhansk region, the Russian forces have resumed attacks on Belovorivka and Kreminna, Luhansk Gov. Serhii Haidai said, calling the situation there “extremely difficult”.