>money laundering that was threatening the integrity and the fabric of the Canadian financial system
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-cameron-ortis-sentencing/
Former RCMP intelligence director Cameron Ortis sentenced to 14 years for breaching secrets law
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altaf_Khanani
Altaf Khanani is a Pakistani money launderer who was involved in moving money for terrorist groups and criminal gang groups. After serving three years in prison he was released in July 2020.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-trudeau-foundation-probe-cant-rule-out-possibility-chinese-donations/
Trudeau Foundation probe can’t rule out possibility Chinese donations part of ‘influence scheme’ targeting Ottawa
A special committee hired by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation to investigate donations tied to two wealthy Chinese businessmen said it couldn’t rule out the possibility cash sent to the Montreal charity may have been part of an “influence scheme” targeting the Trudeau government.
The probe concluded the foundation’s handling of tax receipts related to the Chinese donations was “non-compliant” with the Income Tax Act, and that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s brother, Alexandre, had not been authorized by the foundation’s board to sign the $200,000 donation pledge for the organization.
The Canada Revenue Agency said in a statement late Wednesday that it had not sanctioned the Trudeau Foundation over the taxation issue.
“Since the CRA has neither imposed a sanction upon the charity referenced nor revoked its registered status as the result of an audit, the confidentiality provisions of the Act prevent the CRA from releasing any information regarding if or when they were last audited,” CRA spokesman Charles Drouin said.
In its findings, the special committee said it did not believe the motivation for the 2016 donation was intended to influence the foundation’s activities, but said it could have been targeting the recently elected Trudeau government.
“We could not exclude the possibility that the donations in question may have been part of a wider influence scheme,” said the Feb. 5 report posted on the Trudeau Foundation website. “It is important to emphasize the fact that this potential scheme, if any, would have intended to target the Canadian government rather than the foundation itself.”
Nevertheless, the report concluded: “We did not find any evidence that could suggest that the donations in question were linked to any interference scheme.”
The report added it found no evidence the two Chinese billionaires – Zhang Bin and Niu Gensheng – or the Prime Minister “were involved in any illegal activities in connection with the donation itself.”
The foundation, which offers scholarships, fellowships and leadership programs, commemorates former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. It operates with a $125-million endowment from the Canadian government provided in 2002 when former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien was in power.
In February, 2023, The Globe reported, citing a national-security source, that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service had intercepted a 2014 conversation between Mr. Zhang and an unnamed commercial attaché at one of China’s consulates in Canada. They discussed the federal election that was expected to take place in 2015, and the possibility that the Liberals would defeat Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and form the next government.
The diplomat told Mr. Zhang that Beijing would reimburse him for the entire amount of the donation to the Trudeau Foundation, according to the source. The Globe has not named the source because they risk prosecution under the Security of Information Act. The special committee report said it found no evidence of this reimbursement.
In 2016, nine months after Justin Trudeau won a majority government, the Trudeau Foundation and the University of Montreal publicly identified Mr. Zhang and Mr. Niu as the donors behind a $1-million gift. The men pledged $200,000 to the foundation. They also pledged $750,000 to the law school where Pierre Trudeau studied and taught, and $50,000 for a statue of the former prime minister that was never built. The school and the foundation ultimately received most, but not all, of the promised amounts.
After The Globe’s report, the foundation returned $140,000 to the Chinese donors, who had delivered 70 per cent of the pledged money. The executive director and eight board members also resigned in April.
Foundation policy in 2016 required acceptances of gifts under $1-million to be signed by the organization’s president and chief executive, who at the time was Morris Rosenberg, a former senior civil servant. Gifts over $1-million needed to be signed by the board.
Instead, Alexandre Trudeau and a foundation board member at the time signed the agreement with the two Chinese businessmen.
“Alexandre Trudeau was not specifically allowed to sign the donation pledge unless authorized to do so,” the report said. “We did not identify any records or evidence that the Foundation’s board of directors authorized Mr. Alexandre Trudeau to do so. This being said, in our view, the donation pledge is valid.”
The special committee was composed of two lawyers who had no connection to the Trudeau foundation: Peter MacKinnon and Stuart H. (Kip) Cobbett. It retained the services of lawyers at Norton Rose Fulbright to help the probe.
The committee report said “a number of individuals, including a few key witnesses, declined or ignored our requests to meet” during its investigation.
Their report confirmed previous stories by The Globe that said the China Cultural Industry Association – a state-backed group in Beijing that aims to build “the soft power of Chinese culture” globally – contacted the Trudeau Foundation at the outset to dictate what name and address should be put on the tax receipt for the gift. The special committee’s report, however, could not find a receipt to reflect this request.
As The Globe reported in 2023, the association asked the Trudeau Foundation to refrain from using the names of Mr. Zhang and Mr. Niu. Instead, the officials asked the foundation to attribute the donation to the Canadian subsidiary of Millennium Golden Eagle International, a firm run by Mr. Zhang. They asked that the tax receipt be linked to an address in Hong Kong rather than the company’s Canadian address – which is a large house, with a pool and basketball court, in the Montreal suburb of Dorval.
The special committee report found a receipt for the second instalment of the donation from the Chinese businessmen was contrary to both internal foundation rules and the Income Tax Act because the money was not coming from the two men but from Millennium’s Canadian subsidiary.
“The donation receipt bears the correct address for Millennium Canada, but is addressed to Mr. Zhang and Mr. Niu in addition to Millennium Canada. The names of these two individuals should not have appeared as donors on the donation receipt since they were not the payors of said donation, the whole in accordance with the Income Tax Act” as well as with the foundation’s own internal policies, the report said.
A Globe reporter last year visited the address in Hong Kong, which now appears to be occupied by a different company. An employee who answered the door had never heard of Millennium Golden Eagle. The company does not appear to ever have been registered in Hong Kong.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-some-asylum-seekers-from-mexico-are-backed-by-organized-crime-trudeau/
Some asylum seekers from Mexico smuggled here by organized crime, Trudeau says
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says organized crime is playing a role in bringing some asylum seekers from Mexico to this country, but he did not comment on whether Ottawa plans to impose visa restrictions on Mexican travellers.
Mr. Trudeau, who made his remarks during a visit to Winnipeg Friday, said Canada is in talks with Mexico to stem the flood of asylum seekers. Ottawa has previously said it’s weighing imposing a visa requirement on Mexican visitors.
“We’re in conversations with Mexico about making sure the number of asylum seekers, some of them supported by organized crime in Mexico … are reduced,” he said during a conversation at a Winnipeg Chamber of Commerce event.
The Immigration and Refugee Board has reported a surge in refugee claims by Mexicans arriving in Canada, rising to 17,490 claims in 2023 from 250 in 2016. IRB statistics show only a fraction of these claims have been accepted.
Last week, the RCMP told the House of Commons immigration committee it was probing the role of criminal gangs in the smuggling of people to Canada.
“We can say that in Canada from our investigations across the country that there is Mexican organized crime involved in this,” said Richard Burchill, the RCMP’s acting assistant commissioner of federal policing criminal operations.
In the same committee meeting, Immigration Minister Marc Miller suggested Ottawa would take steps to address Mexican asylum seekers but added, “I’m not going to tell you in advance when it will occur.”
Mexico’s government said last month it recognizes Canada’s concerns about the throngs of Mexican asylum seekers.
Canada is considering immigration measures on visiting Mexicans after Quebec Premier François Legault in January urged Ottawa to slow the influx of refugees that he said are straining the province’s resources.
“Mexican nationals represent a growing proportion of the asylum seekers arriving in Quebec, the possibility of entering Canada from Mexico without a visa certainly explains part of the flow of asylum seekers,” Mr. Legault said in a January letter. Nearly 60,000 asylum seekers – including Mexicans – were registered in Quebec in the first 11 months of last year, he wrote.
In a statement Jan. 24, Mexico’s foreign affairs secretariat said it met with Canadian officials in December to address Ottawa’s concerns about the flow of refugee claimants. The secretariat said the two countries agreed on measures to address the matter and noted asylum applications from Mexicans in Canada dropped in December.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told CBC News in January that Ottawa is considering measures including visas to “ensure that people who arrived from Mexico arrived for the appropriate reasons and that this doesn’t become sort of a side door to get access to Canada.” No decision has been made.
Mexican refugee claims in Canada have jumped since 2016 when the federal government scrapped a requirement for Mexican visitors to obtain visas before travelling here.
Official Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre has called on Ottawa to reimpose visa requirements on Mexicans.
“In 2016, the Trudeau government lifted visa requirements on Mexico that the previous Conservative government introduced, leading to increasing fraud and abuse in the asylum system, straining Canada’s ability to provide services and creating long processing delays for legitimate asylum seekers before the Immigration and Refugee Board,” Mr. Poilievre said in a statement.
“Moreover, there are serious concerns about the involvement of organized crime using the system to engage in human trafficking,” Mr. Poilievre added.
Mexico’s foreign affairs secretariat said in its January statement it wants to identify solutions to address what it called legitimate concerns from Canada and provinces without interfering in the orderly movement of people between the two countries.
Ursula von der Leyen is seeking a second term as European Commission President
For the past three years, the UK has run paid ad campaigns on social media to deter illegal immigration in Albania, France and Belgium, urging people there not to cross the Channel in small boats.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrepresented_Nations_and_Peoples_Organization
Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization
The territory of Crimea, previously controlled by the Crimean Khanate, was annexed by the Russian Empire in 1783.
The annexation resulted in the end of the Crimean slave trade, which had been one of the major slave trades from Europe for centuries.
early indicators of potential hazards
Two hours before sunset, the arrival of the Habsburg army, after a ten-hour forced march, shocked the Ottoman forces as they were still in the process of crossing the river and did not think that the Christian army could get there so quickly.
After fourteen years of war, the battle at Zenta proved to be the catalyst for peace.
>17 units
what if we fucked up and are already in hell
"The enemy had come this time prepared with hand grenades to throw into our works from the outside. When these novel missiles commenced falling among the Arkansas troops they did not know what to make of them, and the first few which they caught not having burst, they threw them back upon the enemy in the ditch. This time many of them exploded and their character was at once revealed to our men. Always equal to any emergency, they quickly devised a scheme…Spreading blankets behind the parapet, the grenades fell harmlessly into them, whereupon our boys would pick them up and hurling them with much greater force down the moat they would almost invariably explode."
>Alexei Navalny's widow will meet European foreign ministers in Brussels
praise and exalt him above all forever
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate#Historical_production
It was called "Chinese salt" by the Persians.
The Arabs called it "Chinese snow".