LAGOS: Nigeria’s economic crimes commission said it recovered nearly $500 million in proceeds of crime last year and secured more than 4,000 criminal convictions, its highest since the agency’s inception more than two decades ago.
Africa’s biggest energy producer, Nigeria has struggled for decades with endemic corruption, which many Nigerians say contributes to widespread poverty in the country.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), which investigates and prosecutes corruption in Nigeria, said in a report on Monday that some of the recovered money was reinvested in government projects.
Nigeria is ranked 140 out of 180 on Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perception Index.
Besides cash, the EFCC said it also seized 931,052 metric tons of petroleum products, 975 real estate properties and company shares.
Nigeria’s anti-graft agency recovers nearly $500 million in one year
https://arab.news/wuhf4
Nigeria’s anti-graft agency recovers nearly $500 million in one year
- Nigeria is ranked 140 out of 180 on Transparency International’s latest Corruption Perception Index
Russia says no response from Ukraine on Istanbul talks
“We need to wait for a response from the Ukrainian side,” Peskov said
MOSCOW: Russia on Thursday said it was still waiting for Ukraine to say whether it would attend peace talks in Istanbul on Monday, after Kyiv demanded Moscow send its peace terms before agreeing to the meeting.
Diplomatic efforts to end the three-year conflict have gained pace in recent months, but Moscow has shown no signs of easing its bombardment of Ukraine while rebuffing calls for an immediate ceasefire.
Moscow has offered to hold a second round of direct talks with Ukraine in Istanbul on June 2, where it wants to present a so-called “memorandum” outlining its conditions for a long-term peace settlement.
But Ukraine said the meeting would not yield results unless it saw a copy of the memorandum in advance, a proposal that the Kremlin dismissed.
“As far as I know, no response has been received yet... we need to wait for a response from the Ukrainian side,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, calling Kyiv’s demand that Russia provide peace conditions up front as “non-constructive.”
Ukraine said it had already submitted its peace terms to Russia and demanded Moscow do the same.
Turkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Russia and Ukraine not to “shut the door” on dialogue ahead of the anticipated meeting in Istanbul.
The warring sides previously met in Istanbul on May 16, their first direct talks in over three years.
Those talks failed to yield a breakthrough, but the two sides did agree to trade 1,000 prisoners each — their biggest POW swap since the beginning of the conflict.
Erdogan’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, who met Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday, was expected to travel to Kyiv on Thursday to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
US President Donald Trump, who has been pushing for a peace deal, has become increasingly frustrated with Moscow’s apparent stalling and warned Wednesday he would determine within “about two weeks” whether Putin was serious about ending the fighting.
Moscow’s offensive, launched in February 2022, has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and the destruction of large parts of eastern and southern Ukraine.
Ukraine on Thursday criticized Russia’s refusal to provide the memorandum.
“The Russians’ fear of sending their memorandum to Ukraine suggests that it is likely filled with unrealistic ultimatums,” foreign ministry spokesman Georgiy Tykhy said.
The Kremlin has been grinding forward on the battlefield for over a year while pushing its demands for peace, which include Ukraine abandoning its NATO ambitions and ceding territory it already controls.
Local authorities in Ukraine said Thursday that Russia had fired 90 drones overnight, killing at
least five people across the country.
In southern Ukraine, a drone strike killed two civilians in the Kherson region, while a ballistic missile attack claimed the life of a farm worker in the Mykolaiv region.
In the eastern Donetsk region, shelling killed one civilian, according to a 24-hour tally from the National Police.
A 68-year-old man was killed by a drone strike on his home in the northeastern Sumy region, which borders Russia.
In his comments on Wednesday, Trump told reporters he was “very disappointed” at Russia’s deadly bombardment during the negotiating process, but rebuffed calls to impose more sanctions on Moscow.
Kyiv has accused Russia of deliberately stalling the peace process to pursue its offensive.
Zelensky said Russia was “amassing” more than 50,000 troops on the front line around Sumy, where Moscow’s army has captured a number of settlements as it seeks to establish what Putin has called a “buffer zone” inside Ukrainian territory.
On Thursday, the Russian army said it captured three villages in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions and had repelled 48 Ukrainian drones, including three over the Moscow region.
A retired Russian commander who led air strikes on the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol died in a blast early Thursday in Stavropol in southern Russia, authorities said, adding that they did not rule out Ukrainian involvement.
US signals it may use administrative process against Harvard
- Harvard has 30 days to respond
- The notice came ahead of a scheduled court hearing
NEW YORK: The Trump administration signaled on Thursday it might back off plans to immediately revoke Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students because of several concerns, including its alleged failure to police antisemitism on campus, and would instead employ a lengthier administrative process.
According to a court filing, the US Department of Homeland Security sent Harvard a notice of intent on Wednesday to withdraw the university’s certification under the federal Student and Exchange Visitor Program. Harvard has 30 days to respond.
The notice came ahead of a scheduled court hearing on whether to extend a temporary ban on the revocation announced by US President Donald Trump’s administration last week.
Pope Leo XIV visits Vatican’s hilltop summer residence that Francis turned into museum
- The center is located in the gardens of the Vatican’s Castel Gandolfo property on Lake Alban
- Pope Urban VIII built the palace on the northern end of town in 1624
ROME: Pope Leo XIV visited the papal summer palace south of Rome on Thursday as questions swirled whether he will use it himself to escape the heat or follow in Pope Francis’ footsteps and keep the hilltop estate as a museum and environmental center.
Leo paid a visit to the Borgo Laudato Si, an educational sustainability project that grew out of Francis’ 2015 environmental encyclical “Praised Be,” the Vatican said. The center is located in the gardens of the Vatican’s Castel Gandolfo property on Lake Alban in the hills south of Rome.
Pope Urban VIII built the palace on the northern end of town in 1624, to give popes an escape from the sweltering Roman summers. It was enlarged over succeeding pontificates to its present size of 55 hectares (136 acres), which is actually bigger than Vatican City itself.
Popes past used it regularly in summer, and Pope Benedict XVI famously closed out his papacy in the estate on Feb. 28, 2013. But Francis, a homebody who never took a proper vacation during his 12-year pontificate, decided to remain in Rome in summer.
In 2014 he decided to open Castel Gandolfo’s gardens to the public, and later turned part of the palazzo itself into a museum, in part to help offset the economic downturn the town experienced with no popes holding weekly Sunday prayers there in summer.
Leo, a former missionary priest who spent the bulk of his priesthood in Peru, hasn’t said where he will live full-time in Rome, much less whether he will use the palace as a summer getaway.
The sustainability project, which is open to the public, has taken over operations of the working farm in the gardens of the estate, which includes 20 hectares (50 acres) of agricultural and farming land, greenhouses and service buildings.
The farm, which provides dairy and fresh produce to the Vatican, aims to create a “circular economy” in keeping with the call of Francis’ encyclical to better care for God’s creation.
Jailed ex-aide to Georgia kingpin claims he was snatched abroad
- The case has intensified scrutiny of the role of Ivanishvili in Georgian politics
- Speaking at a court hearing Thursday, Bachiashvii said he had been blindfolded and held incommunicado for two days
TBILISI: An ex-aide to Georgia’s powerful tycoon Bidzina Ivanishvili said on Thursday that he had been snatched while abroad, forcibly flown back to Georgia, and arrested on his former boss’s orders.
Giorgi Bachiashvili, the former head of Ivanishvili’s Co-Investment Fund, fled Georgia in March amid mounting legal troubles following a falling out with the country’s most powerful man.
The case has intensified scrutiny of the role of Ivanishvili — who wields enormous influence behind the scenes — in Georgian politics.
Georgia’s state security service said Tuesday it had arrested Bachiashvili, a dual Georgian-Russian national, inside Georgia, near the border with Azerbaijan, following an anonymous tip.
But speaking at a court hearing Thursday, Bachiashvii said he had been blindfolded and held incommunicado for two days in an undisclosed country before being forced onto a plane and flown back to Georgia “in complete violation of the law.”
“Acting on Bidzina Ivanishvili’s orders, Georgian officials resorted to banditry and brought me back to Georgia through abduction,” he said.
While abroad Bachiashvili, had been sentenced in absentia to 11 years in prison for alleged embezzlement and money laundering.
“I consider myself absolutely innocent of all charges. Today it became clear that I am a personal prisoner of Ivanishvili,” he told the court.
His lawyer Robert Amsterdam has denounced the case as politically motivated and accused the Georgian authorities of abusing international legal tools to persecute dissenters.
Widely seen as Georgia’s key power broker, billionaire Ivanishvili is the founder and honorary chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party.
He holds enormous sway over the party and the government, including the formal power to nominate its choice of prime minister.
Georgian Dream, in power for more than a decade, has been accused by critics of steering the country away from the West and toward Russia — a claim it denies.
Georgia was gripped by mass protests for weeks last year following a disputed parliamentary election in October and the government’s subsequent decision to freeze its EU membership bid.
Tens of thousands demonstrate in Nepal seeking restoration of ousted monarchy
- Massive street protests in 2006 forced Gyanendra to give up his authoritarian rule, and two years later the parliament voted to abolish the monarchy
KATHMANDU: Tens of thousands of protesters demanding the abolished monarchy be restored and the former king be made the head of state of the Himalayan nation demonstrated in Nepal Thursday.
The protesters, waving flags and chanting slogans, demanded the return of the king and the restoration of Hinduism as a state religion as they marched through the main circle in the capital, Kathmandu.
Just a few hundred meters (feet) from the pro-monarchy protesters, their opponents, who are supporters of the Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli, had gathered at the exhibition grounds to celebrate Republic Day.
There was fear that these two groups could likely clash and create trouble in the city. Hundreds of riot police kept the two groups apart and authorities had given them permission on different times to take out their rallies.
Nepal abolished the monarchy and turned the nation into a republic in 2008, bringing in a president as the head of the state.
“Bring king back to the throne and save the country. We love our king more than our lives,” the estimated 20,000 protesters chanted with a few playing traditional drums and musical instruments.
“We are going to continue our protests until the centuries-old monarchy is brought back and the country turned in to a Hindu stage for the interest of the country,” said Dil Nath Giri, a supporter of the former king at the rally.
The pro-monarchy supporters had announced they were restarting their protests from Thursday.
In their last big protest on March 28, two people including a television cameraman, were killed when protesters attacked buildings and set them on fire while police fired bullets and tear gas on the protesters. Several protesters arrested on that day are still in jail.
There has been growing demand in recent months for Gyanendra Shah to be reinstated as king and Hinduism to be brought back as a state religion. Royalist groups accuse the country’s major political parties of corruption and failed governance and say people are frustrated with politicians.
Massive street protests in 2006 forced Gyanendra to give up his authoritarian rule, and two years later the parliament voted to abolish the monarchy.
Gyanendra, who left the Royal Palace to live as commoner, has not commented on the calls for the return of monarchy. Despite growing support, the former king has little chance of immediately returning to power.
