ORDER01 USAF E-4B Nightwatch nw from Seymour Johnson AFB Goldsboro, NC
Mexican Billionaire Loses to Central Bank in Battle Over Cash
A battle between one of Mexico’s richest men and one of its most respected institutions appears to have ended in a victory for the central bank.
President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador came out on Wednesday against a bill that would have forced the monetary authority to buy greenbacks that lenders can’t otherwise sell, effectively killing its chances of passing the Senate in its current form. Critics said the measure would have exposed the central bank to money laundering allegations by compelling it to buy dollars of dubious origin. Its most prominent proponent was billionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, the owner of Banco Azteca and an ally of the president.
The development no doubt comes as a relief to global lenders including Citigroup Inc. and Banco Santander SA, who had spoken out against the measure during debates last month, warning of profound implications for Mexican financial institutions and the country’s reputation as a safe place to do business. Investors have been paying attention as well. The debate weighed on the peso last month until the currency rallied when the lower house delayed its vote.
Lopez Obrador, speaking at his morning press conference Wednesday, said lawmakers needed to find a different solution that wouldn’t risk conflict with international financial organizations.
“Lopez Obrador had to choose between maintaining the autonomy and the soundness of the central bank against solving a very specific problem of a certain group,” said Marco Oviedo, the chief economist for Latin America at Barclays Plc. “Fortunately he chose to keep macro-stability versus special interest.”
The root of the problem for independent Mexican banks are U.S. concerns about illegal drug profits making their way into the financial system. After HSBC Holdings Plc admitted to shipping billions to the U.S. under lax oversight and laundering $881 million from traffickers last decade, authorities on both sides of the border cracked down.
The fallout reduced the number of U.S. banks willing to accept bulk cash shipments from Mexican lenders, leaving those that aren’t part of a global bank stuck with piles of dollars they can’t turn into pesos.
Lawmakers from Lopez Obrador’s Morena party said their bill was designed to help migrants who bring home U.S. banknotes to aid their friends and family. The inability of banks to offload the cash was forcing migrants to turn to small-time money changers with abusive rates, the lawmakers said.
Legislators could still find another mechanism to help banks unload dollars, such as compelling one of the country’s development banks to be a buyer of last resort. But it seems the bill in its current form is dead, according to Carlos Serrano, the chief economist at BBVA Mexico.
“There is a very significant problem of lack of access to the financial system for families of migrants, but there’s no problem with cash,” he said.
Less than 1% of Mexico’s $40 billion in annual remittances comes via cash, BBVA Mexico said in a Dec. 15 report. Out of $4.7 billion in U.S. cash taken in by Mexican banks in the first nine months of 2020, only 2% couldn’t be sold to other clients or shipped to the U.S., according to a letter the central bank sent to senators.
Central bank Governor Alejandro Diaz de Leon spoke publicly against the bill, saying the problem of excess dollars was really one bank’s issue and not systemic. Other opponents, including an independent senator and a deputy central bank governor, said the bill appeared to be designed mostly for the benefit of Salinas Pliego and Banco Azteca. Lawmakers in favor of the measure have denied that claim.
A spokesman for Banco Azteca said the bank played no role in writing the legislation, and declined to comment on Lopez Obrador’s remarks Wednesday.
But last month, Salinas Pliego published a blog post in support of the proposal, making him the only major banker in the country to publicly back the bill. Salinas wrote that Mexican banks are required to comply with “one of the strictest” sets of anti-money laundering regulations in the world. The rules mean that “the dollars that enter the Mexican banking system, by definition, have a legal origin,” so there is no risk for the central bank to take them, he said.
Salinas Pliego also controls the country’s No. 2 television network, TV Azteca, as well as cable TV, energy and security companies. With a fortune of around $13.9 billion, he is the country’s third-richest man, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/mexican-billionaire-loses-to-central-bank-in-battle-over-cash-1.1551736
RAF RRR7303 Sentinel R1 out of RAF Waddington south and just passing to the east of Warsaw
The Sentinel R.Mk 1 provides long-range, wide-area battlefield surveillance, delivering critical intelligence and target tracking information to British and coalition forces. The aircraft has been operationally deployed in support of operations in Afghanistan, Libya and Mali, and is currently deployed in support of British and Coalition operations in Iraq and Syria. Using its powerful multi-mode radar, the Sentinel’s mission crew identifies, tracks and images numerous targets over great ranges, passing the information in near real time to friendly forces. A team of intelligence imagery analysts from 1 Intelligence, Surveillance, Reconnaissance (ISR) Wing backs up the Sentinel crews, conducting in-depth forensic analysis of collected data, and using it to generate intelligence products for time-critical dissemination to commanders and decision makers, enabling them to execute current operations and plan future strategies.
https://www.raf.mod.uk/aircraft/sentinel-r1/
Guilty!!
read them if you habs not
Out from Pax River
SCORE77 US Navy P-8 Poseiden off MD
WARLOCK8 US Navy P-3 Orion
SCORE18 US Navy Advanced Hawkeye
KING01 US Navy King Stallion
'Bad bank' chief was 'enemy within,' China watchdogs say
China's top corruption watchdog has branded a financial big shot sentenced to death for bribery as an "enemy within" for the financial system, using the high-profile case to underscore the resolve of the country's leaders to tighten their grip on bad-debt managers and curb financial risks.
The case of the former chairman of China Huarong Asset Management, one of China's "Big Four" state-owned bad-debt managers, is "shocking" and involved "extremely serious crimes" that caused significant damage to the interests of the country and its people, according to a statement published Monday by the Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) and the National Supervisory Commission (NSC).
Lai Xiaomin was sentenced to death by a court in Tianjin on Jan. 5. after he was found guilty of taking a record 1.79 billion yuan ($280 million) in bribes, colluding with others to embezzle 25.1 million yuan of public funds, and bigamy. Under Lai's leadership, Huarong became a troublemaker that was led astray from its original role as a distressed-asset manager, investing funds in sectors restricted by national policies including real estate, the corruption watchdog said in the statement. Lai's crimes were used by the CCDI and the NSC to highlight the first episode in a 10-part series of posts on their website recounting 10 major corruption cases, the lessons to be learned, and how the problems uncovered should be rectified.
The second episode was released on Wednesday and focused on Wang Xiaoguang, a former vice governor of Guizhou Province, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in April 2019 after being found guilty of bribery, embezzlement and insider trading. His case was linked to another corruption investigation centered around state-owned liquor giant China Kweichow Moutai Wintery Group, the province's biggest company. The graft probe into Lai, which started in 2018, triggered a broader regulatory purge of the four national asset management companies (AMCs) that were set up in 1999 with the original aim of cleaning up nonperforming loans in the banking system. But under a lax regulatory environment they expanded far beyond bad-debt management and built financial empires that included brokerages, trust companies, banks and insurers.
As a result of the massive corruption revealed in the wake of the investigation into Lai, the four AMCs Huarong, China Great Wall, China Orient, and China Cinda are retrenching under the guidance of regulators. They have exited some businesses suffering from weak profitability and poor synergy with their core business, and 56 subsidiaries in total have been merged or dissolved, according to Monday's statement. As a result, the total assets of their nonfinancial subsidiaries have shrunk by 188.4 billion yuan, it said.
In 2019, the four AMCs acquired a combined 571.6 billion yuan of new nonperforming assets (NPAs), increasing the proportion of the NPA business in their total operations by 10.3 percentage points to 65%, according to the statement. For Huarong alone, its revenue from the NPA business increased by 7.8% to 69.8 billion yuan in 2019, accounting for 62% of its total revenue, 1.6 percentage points higher than 2018, the company's 2019 annual report showed.
In addition to ordering the companies to refocus on their core business of bad-debt management, regulators have reshuffled their top management in a bid to prevent corruption fueled by senior executives spending lengthy periods of time at the same company.
In a further attempt to gain more control over the activities of the four AMCs, and improve their management, the government is considering setting up a holding company to oversee them, a source close to one of the companies told Caixin in March. The new entity would be headed by an official with the rank of deputy minister, the source said.
Lai is one of the most senior financial officials to fall under investigation in Beijing's yearslong anti-graft campaign. His case especially shocked the public due to its astonishing details, such as the three tons of cash stashed at his home, the 300 million yuan bank account under his mother's name, and the number of mistresses he kept which allegedly ran to more than 100. Lai was also found to have channeled Huarong funds into privately owned companies and made highly risky investments, Caixin previously reported.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Caixin/Bad-bank-chief-was-enemy-within-China-watchdogs-say
Two-day bitcoin sell-off wipes out $100 billion from the entire crypto market
Bitcoin slumped for a second day Thursday, taking the digital currency’s losses to more than 10% over 48 hours and wiping off billions of dollars from the crypto market.
The price of bitcoin slipped 8% on Thursday to as low as $31,007, falling below the $32,000 level for the first time since Jan. 11, according to data from industry website CoinDesk.
The world’s most valuable digital coin has had a wild few weeks, briefly hitting $41,940 earlier this month before sinking sharply the subsequent week. The reason for its latest move wasn’t immediately clear, but investors told CNBC it is likely a natural correction.
“Corrections are a natural part of any market and are especially natural in the bitcoin ecosystem,” Michael Sonnenshein, CEO of Grayscale Investments, told CNBC. “From 2016-2017, we experienced 6 corrections of approximately 30% or more on the way to new highs.”
Ether, the second-biggest crypto token by market value, was down almost 9% in the last 24 hours at a price of $1,182. The coin hit an all-time high of $1,439 on Tuesday, according to Coin Metrics data.
The total market value of all cryptocurrencies shed more than $100 billion in the last 48 hours, falling from about $1.07 trillion to $918 billion as of 11:45 a.m. ET. “I think you’ve got to accept there’s a tremendous amount of volatility in bitcoin, and it’s still very early stages,” Anthony Scaramucci, founder of SkyBridge Capital, told CNBC in a phone interview.
“Imagine Amazon, and Jeff Bezos and a few venture capitalists are still holding most of Amazon, and the company is experiencing explosive growth, exponential activity,” the former White House communications director added.
“If you look at Amazon in the first 3 years, you saw 50% drops in price. Bitcoin’s moves are akin to that because you’ve got close holders of bitcoin that are releasing bitcoin to the marketplace and the buying stability is shoring up. But it’s still not 100% there.”
Bitcoin’s latest price movement comes after the new U.S. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, warned about cryptocurrencies being used “mainly for illicit financing.” The former Federal Reserve chairman said the government would “need to examine ways in which we can curtail their use and make sure that money laundering doesn’t occur through those channel.”
The plunge also comes despite seemingly positive news for bitcoin, which is still up over 150% in the last three months. On Wednesday, asset manager BlackRock — which has $7.8 trillion in assets under management — filed separate prospectuses for two funds that may buy bitcoin futures contracts, in the biggest sign yet that institutional investors are flocking to the virtual currency.
>>46325 pb
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/21/bitcoin-btc-price-falls-wiping-off-100b-from-entire-crypto-market.html
https://www.coindesk.com/price/bitcoin
Former head of Vatican bank guilty of embezzlement, money laundering
A Vatican court on Thursday convicted Angelo Caloia, a former head of the Vatican bank, on charges of embezzlement and money laundering and handed down an eight-year, 11-month jail sentence.
Caloia, 81, was president of the bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR) between 1999 and 2009. He became the highest ranking Vatican official to be convicted of a financial crime.Also convicted were Gabriele Liuzzo, 97, and his son Lamberto Liuzzo, 55, both Italian lawyers who were consultants to the bank.
The three were charged with participating in a scheme in which they embezzled money while managing the sale of Italian real estate owned by the bank between 2001-2008.
They allegedly siphoned off tens of millions of euros by declaring far less than the actual amount of the sale.
Gabeiele Liuzzo was given the same sentence as Caloia while Lamberto Liuzzo was given a sentence of five years and two months. All denied wrongdoing during the trial, which began in 2018.
https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/former-head-of-vatican-bank-guilty-of-embezzlement-money-laundering-656265
SAM460 USAF C-40B departed JBA sw
This AC was used to take the Pences back to Columbus IN yesterday
State Dept. AC
>>45870 pb
SHADO13 US Navy E-6B mercury out form Pax and south at 15k ft.
2 Poseidens off MD and Delaware coast
SCORE77 and SCORE88 ( dubs chek't) US Navy P-8 Poseidens off MD
SCORE18 US Navy E-2 Advanced Hawkeye
@USNavy sailors participate in a visit, board, search and seizure drill in the South China Sea.
https://twitter.com/DeptofDefense/status/1352209333854076928