Strange bedfellows: Laredo's millionaires, nuns and muralists battle border wall



By Laura Gottesdiener


LAREDO, Texas () - Former U.S. Border Patrol agent Daniel Perales spent hours over the years crouched at the mouth of the Zacata Creek, a tributary of the Rio Grande, listening for the snap of carrizo cane as border crossers from Mexico arrived on the northern banks.



FILE PHOTO: Historical buildings that could be affected by the enforcement zone that must be cleared for the border wall according to preliminary plans are seen in Laredo, Texas, U.S., September 19, 2020. REUTERS/Veronica G. Cardenas

These days, he listens for the whistle of the Morelet’s seedeater, a bird rare in these parts, and frets about the proposed construction of a border wall here.

“It would fragment the habitat of the birds, especially those that live along the river,” said Perales, who spent nearly 30 years with the federal agency and oversaw 400 agents at the Laredo North Station before retiring in 2007.

Perales said he voted for President Donald Trump in 2016 and plans to do so again. But that hasn’t stopped him from joining the ranks of residents in Laredo opposed to building a barrier here as part of Trump’s promised wall spanning the U.S.-Mexico border.

“It’s not necessary. You don’t need a wall here,” said Perales, adding that cameras and patrol roads were sufficient.

Less than a month before the U.S. presidential election, resistance to the wall, a centerpiece of Trump’s 2016 campaign, is flaring across parts of the approximately 2,000-mile border. Near construction sites in Arizona and California in recent weeks, members of Native American tribes have clashed with law enforcement and others over plans for building on lands the tribes consider sacred. Two weeks ago in front of a Laredo courthouse, military veterans against the border project mobilized to thwart a caravan of Trump supporters who had sought to drive over a 30-foot “Defund the Wall” street mural.

Amid an election upended by Trump’s positive coronavirus diagnosis, the future of the wall hangs in the balance. Trump’s Democratic challenger, former vice president Joe Biden, has said he would not build “another foot of wall” if elected.

Meanwhile, opposition to plans for a stretch of wall in the counties of Zapata and Webb, which includes Laredo, has united some strange bedfellows: the street artists, multimillionaire Republicans, Catholic nuns, military and border patrol veterans, conservationists and a local Native American tribe.

In Webb County, CBP has issued contracts worth $1.05 billion to three construction companies to build approximately 69 miles of a 30-foot steel bollard wall, as well as construct roads and adding cameras and other surveillance technology.

Construction is slated to begin as early as January depending on the availability of land.

In an August press release, CBP officials said the Laredo wall is necessary to “impede and deny illegal border crossings and the drug and human smuggling activities of transnational criminal organizations.” In the Laredo sector, traffic has not abated during the coronavirus pandemic as it has in other sectors, government data show.

In statements to Reuters, CBP spokesman Matthew Dyman said the agency is committed to protecting cultural and natural resources, such as wildlife corridors and culturally sensitive Native American artifacts or sites.

The agency is now surveying land for possible purchase. Dyman said it is “always CBP’s preference” to obtain land voluntarily through negotiated offers but if that is not possible, a condemnation action - known as eminent domain - may be required.

The majority of Americans oppose a substantial expansion of the border wall, according to a January 2019 Pew research poll, although the opinions tended to fall along party lines, with 82% of Republicans in favor and 93% of Democrats opposed.

Opposition in Laredo, which is predominantly Democrat but contains a substantial Republican contingent, appears more lopsided. More than two dozen cities, counties, and Native American tribes in the border region have passed resolutions opposing the project, including Laredo in 2017.

DECLARING INDEPENDENCE - AGAIN

A city of 262,000, Laredo sits in a former Spanish colony and Mexican territory, hugging the Rio Grande River. Here, partisan political divisions quickly evaporate when it comes to deciding on boundaries and the fate of the land.

Webb County is 95% Hispanic and many residents have family connections to Mexico. Business owners depend on cross-border trade. Some ranchers trace their property rights back to the 18th century Spanish land grants. The ancestors of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas formed their ties to the territory well before then.

In 1840, Laredo was the seat of the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande, whose independence from Mexico lasted for 10 months before its cavalry was crushed by that country’s Army.

“We’ve declared independence before — and we could do it again,” said Margarita Araiza, executive director of the Webb County Heritage Foundation who traces her family’s roots in Laredo back twelve generations to that 19th-century rebellion.

She worried the wall’s construction could destroy or destabilize the city’s 250-year-old historic sandstone buildings and sever its cozy relationship to the Rio Grande, where residents often fish, picnic, and stroll.

“This is the reason this city was created, because of access to the river,” said Araiza.

CBP spokesman Dyman said that no historic buildings would be directly affected by border wall construction based on current plans.

Araiza is one of the founding members of the Laredo No Border Wall Coalition, a loosely organized group that seeks to halt the project.

Working with a coalition of concerned landowners is the Laredo-based IBC Bank, whose chief executive officer, Dennis Nixon, was a top Trump donor in 2016. The proposed barrier could cut through the bank’s 75 acres of waterfront property.

“At a time when (America’s) number one trading partner is Mexico, what is the message we are sending to our friends in Mexico?” said Gerardo Schwebel, executive vice president of the bank’s corporate international division.

Not everyone in the city is opposed to the barrier. Supporters say the Mexican town of Nuevo Laredo, just across the river, is a hub for drug trafficking and human smuggling.

“No one wants to build a wall around their homes if they don’t have to, but there’s a need for that security,” said Hector Garza, president of the National Border Patrol Council’s local union chapter.

‘A BETTER WAY’?

The proposed border wall in Texas primarily cuts through private land, generating opposition and some alliances among occupants and landowners large and small.

Felipe Antonio Perez, a 92-year-old retired carpenter, said he’d lived in his modest wooden house near the river bank in Laredo’s historic La Azteca neighborhood for over sixty years. Standing beside a “No Border Wall” sign on his fence, he told Reuters he’d thrown away a government inquiry about surveying his land.

The oil-rich Fasken family, one of the top-fifty largest landowners in the United States with 85,000 acres in Webb County alone, co-founded the Rio Grande Landowners’ Coalition to stop the wall project.

“We feel there is a better way to secure the border and that putting up a 30-foot high wall to make a political statement is not the best use of taxpayers’ money,” said Bill Skeen, the family’s real estate manager.

Also opposed are the sisters of the century-old Sacred Heart Children’s Home for orphans, which overlooks the river.

“Put yourself in the place of an individual who has been orphaned - abandoned, abused, or whose parents have died -- the land and its natural beauty and its view becomes your refuge,” said Beto Cardenas, the attorney representing the sisters in their negotiations with the government.

The ancestral territory of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas extends on both sides of the river, said Chairman Juan Mancias as he surveyed riverside willow trees that the tribe uses to build sweat lodges on ranch land outside Laredo. Native burial grounds lie along the river, he said.

“The wall is a racial attack on our identity as people of the land,” he said.

He said the tribe does not own riverfront land - it “owns us.” But his people are committed to protecting it.

“My great grandchildren would be denied this,” he said, looking across the landscape dotted with mesquite trees and purple sage. “They would be denied who they are.”


Laura Gottesdiener reported from Laredo, Texas. Editing by Frank Jack Daniel and Julie Marquis

E-commerce firm Shopee in Thai twitter storm for banning anti-government store


By Chayut Setboonsarng, Panarat Thepgumpanat

BANGKOK (Reuters) - E-commerce firm Shopee has reversed a ban on a store linked to a dissolved opposition party in Thailand, a spokeswoman said, after online criticism of its perceived pro-government stance.



FILE PHOTO: The Shopee logo is seen at an office building in Singapore January 17, 2018. REUTERS/Thomas White/File Photo

#BanShopee became the third highest trending hashtag with over 57,000 uses on Saturday and many Twitter users saying they’ve deleted the app.

“Double standards @ShopeeTH,” wrote Twitter user @chanson_2013. “You need to explain why you banned the stores of those advancing democracy but allow businesses who are pro government to sell on your platform.”

Shopee, a unit of Tencent-backed Sea Ltd, is the latest business in Thailand to be targeted by pro-democracy campaigners for appearing to support the government of Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha.

The campaign also comes a week ahead of the crucial online shopping event, 10.10.


“Our platform is neutral, and everything is up to company policy,” a Shopee Thailand spokeswoman told Reuters, adding that its policies were applied equally to all sellers.

Companies in Thailand are finding it increasingly difficult to navigate political division. In August, after calls for a boycott, Burger King and others pulled advertisement off the Nation television, which activists branded as pro-government.

Shopee says Democstore had violated its terms several times before the ban for posting “politically sensitive” material.

Democstore is run by the Progressive Movement, a group founded by banned politicians from upstart opposition Future Forward party, which was dissolved in February.


“We were selling urban camping equipment for the protesters and we were banned,” Progressive Movement spokeswoman Pannika Wanich told Reuters.

In September, ten thousand protesters joined an overnight demonstration calling for amendments to the constitution and reform of the monarchy.

DemocStore said it would continue selling t-shirts and mugs with the group’s logo on the chat app, Line.

Anti-government memorabilia are fast becoming hot items online.

Column: Central banks' eye on inequality makes QE uncomfortable



By Mike Dolan


LONDON (Reuters) - Central banks may not be out of ammunition just yet but parts of their strategic policy rethinks related to inequality and fairness raise questions about the extent they should use it.


Small toy figures are seen in front of an Economy and stock graph logo in this illustration taken, September 9, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

Ever since the last financial crisis 12 years ago, investors have fretted about a moment when central banks - having floored borrowing rates to zero or below and ballooned their balance sheets - would simply run out of ways to support increasingly indebted economies and panic-prone markets.

The massive monetary response to this year’s pandemic shock to date showed there’s plenty still in the armoury. Policymakers insist they have more firepower if needed and both the Federal Reserve and European Central Bank are now loosening long-term inflation or employment goals as additional policy guidance.

But with borrowing rates already so low, and with a reluctance to go deeply negative for fear of undermining banking systems, ever-more purchases of government bonds and other assets is the only practical tool left to meet the rising list of increasingly more vague goals in any fresh downturn.

While that’s still useful to cap interest bills on exploding government debt or to support credit markets, it also risks exaggerating wealth inequality - something economists partly blame for putting central banks in this cul-de-sac to start off with.

The emphasis last month in the Fed’s strategic policy review on monitoring inequality in its pursuit of an enhanced full employment goal is getting more attention as a result.


Bastien Drut, strategist at Amundi-owned CPR Asset Management, argues that working to reduce inequality aims to give the Fed more policy room over time by helping re-establish better relationships between employment, wages and inflation.

“One of the problems posed by rising inequalities is that it contributes to the fall in the real natural (interest) rate,” he wrote. “As the natural rate has already fallen sharply in recent years, the rise in inequalities is tending to erode the Fed’s leeway.”

One of the macroeconomic puzzles of the past decade has been the inexorable decline in the “natural” rate of interest - the theoretical rate that keeps economies at full employment with stable inflation, or a rate above or below which policy rates are either a drag or spur for activity and prices.

As wage growth for large swathes of workers in developed countries has stalled over the past 10-15 years despite the lowest jobless rates in a generation, inflation and expectations of it also went missing in action. The presumed natural interest rate slumped - by many estimates to less than zero, even through 2019.

As a result, the only way central banks could get policy rates to stimulate growth and inflation was to either get rates to unprecedented sub-zero levels below that natural rate - something most seem unwilling to do - or ramp up bond-buying and asset purchases to loosen financial conditions another way.


The leftfield shock from COVID-19 provided that test, and central banks responded mostly with asset purchases once any remaining positive policy rates were removed - action that helped reverse a plunge in stock and bond markets despite unemployment rates that are still more than double pre-pandemic levels.

COVID GAPS

But the net result is both the pandemic, and perhaps the central bank response to it too, likely exaggerated inequality - and central banks may reasonably wonder if they can keep it up.

Fed data out this week showed U.S. income inequality narrowed slightly in the three years before the pandemic, but it said wealth inequality was unchanged in that period, with the richest 25% of families holding more than 90% of the nation’s wealth, and the bottom 25% having less than 1% of it.


Both income and wealth measures likely worsened this year. Washington think-tank the Institute for Policy Studies, for example, estimated U.S. billionaires increased their worth by over $800 billion or almost 30% in the six months to September.

And the COVID shock is widely expected to have hit low-income workers hardest - part-time staff, younger cohorts, those unable to work remotely and those in retail, transport or hospitality jobs.

HSBC economists this week said a disproportionate hit to young workers in particular could hit wage growth significantly, citing studies showing ageing workforces over the past decade may have been one aspect suppressing wage inflation as older workers may have higher earnings but weaker bargaining power.

“They (young workers) are also less likely to have benefited from the distributional consequences of central bank quantitative easing given they are less likely to own equities, other financial assets.”

And so when Fed chair Jerome Powell now talks of a “maximum employment” goal as not a single number but as a qualitative judgement mindful of disparities between ages, genders, races and communities, he’s partly responding to criticism that the Fed tightened policy too early in 2017/18, before all groups had experienced similar levels of low unemployment.


But it’s hard to see how central bank asset purchases don’t just aggravate the problem as much as help it.

Underwriting the debt of governments who do have the means to address these gaps - even if not always the willingness - is one key route. But ensuring their political masters use the fiscal space is a harder task in the messier world of advocacy and politics, and will make parsing the course ahead trickier.

Graphic: Central bank assets: reut.rs/3aDxo8U

Graphic: Median family net worth by race: tmsnrt.rs/3kRPecY

The author is editor-at-large for finance and markets at Reuters News. Any views expressed here are his own.


by Mike Dolan, Twitter: @reutersMikeD; Editing by Prav

Turkey's EU membership bid evaporating, Commission says

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The European Union’s executive said on Tuesday that Turkey’s government was undermining its economy, eroding democracy and destroying independent courts, leaving its bid to join the EU further away than ever.

The criticism drew an angry retort from Ankara.

Blaming “excessively” centralised presidential power for deteriorating conditions in freedom of speech, prisons and the central bank, the European Commission said the government was also exposing Turkey to “rapid changes in investors’ sentiment”.

“The EU’s serious concerns on continued negative developments in the rule of law, fundamental rights and the judiciary have not been credibly addressed by Turkey,” the Commission said in its annual report on the country.

“Turkey’s (EU) accession negotiations have effectively come to a standstill,” it said.

A NATO ally, Turkey has been negotiating EU membership since 2005 after economic and political reforms that made it an important emerging market economy and trade partner.

Although never easy because of disputed Turkish claims over Cyprus, talks rapidly unravelled after a failed coup in Turkey in 2016 and President Tayyip Erdogan’s ensuing crackdown on perceived opponents.

“In Turkey, the serious backsliding observed since the 2016 coup attempt continued,” the Commission said.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry dismissed the report as “biased, far from constructive” and rejected criticism of its economy, democracy and courts.

“Just as it (Turkey) is not straying from the EU, it remains committed to the EU membership process despite attempts by some circles to push it away,” the ministry said. “Turkey is acting within the framework of universal norms, in line with fundamental rights, democracy and the principle of rule of law.”

Turkey has faced several years of harsh Commission reports, and the EU executive once again intensified its criticism, citing monetary policy, public administration and widespread corruption as failures of the Turkish government.

While the EU, Turkey’s biggest foreign investor, relies on the country to house some 4 million Syrians fleeing civil war rather than let them proceed to Europe, Brussels also reiterated its threat to impose economic sanctions on Ankara over an energy dispute in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Reporting by Robin Emmott; Additional reporting by Tuvan Gumrukcu in Ankara; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Giles Elgood

Russia warns that Nagorno-Karabakh could become Islamist militant stronghold

By Nvard Hovhannisyan, Nailia Bagirova

YEREVAN/BAKU (Reuters) - The Kremlin issued a new appeal for an end to hostilities in and around Nagorno-Karabakh on Tuesday after Moscow’s foreign intelligence chief said the mountain enclave could become a launch pad for Islamist militants to enter Russia.

Moscow expressed alarm after the deadliest fighting in more than 25 years between ethnic Armenian and Azeri forces entered a 10th day, though the French news agency AFP later said Armenia had offered concessions only if Azerbaijan was ready to do so.

AFP gave no details of the offer it said had been made by Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Azerbaijan has said it will stop fighting only if Armenia sets a timetable to withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh, which under international law belongs to Azerbaijan but is populated and governed by ethnic Armenians.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called for fighting to stop and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov voiced “serious concern about the unprecedented escalation” in a phone call with Iran’s foreign minister,

Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s SVR Foreign Intelligence Service, said the conflict was attracting people he described as mercenaries and terrorists from the Middle East.

“We are talking about hundreds and already even thousands of radicals hoping to earn money in a new Karabakh war,” Naryshkin said in a statement.

He warned that the South Caucasus region could become “a new launch pad for international terrorist organisations” from where militants could enter states including Russia.

His comments were released after Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, whose country is a close ally of Azerbaijan, urged Moscow to be more active in peacemaking

Russia, Iran concerned about risk of foreign fighters in Nagorno-Karabakh - ministry

NEW FIGHTING

Mediation efforts led by Russia, France and the United States have failed to prevent intermittent flare-ups of fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh despite a ceasefire which ended a 1991-94 war that killed about 30,000.

Renewed fighting since Sept. 27 has increased concern that Turkey and Russia, which has a defence pact with Armenia, could be sucked into the South Caucasus conflict.

Iran, which borders Azerbaijan and Armenia, is also worried about the conflict and President Hassan Rouhani underlined the importance of peace in the region in a phone call with Azeri leader Ilham Aliyev on Tuesday.

In the latest fighting, Armenia said Azerbaijan launched an attack with tanks and artillery on a southern part of the contact line that divides ethnic Armenian and Azeri forces.

Nagorno-Karabakh said four cluster bombs had exploded in the centre of Stepanakert, its main administrative centre.

Azerbaijan says Azeri cities outside the conflict zone have been struck, taking the fighting closer to territory from which pipelines carry Azeri gas and oil to Europe.

Both sides say the other has hit civilian areas. Each denies targeting civilians.

Nagorno-Karabakh said 244 of its servicemen and 19 civilians had been killed since Sept. 27 and many more wounded.

The Azeri prosecutor’s office said 27 Azeri civilians had been killed in the renewed fighting. Azerbaijan has not disclosed information about its military casualties.

In an interview with Russian news agency RIA, Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad said Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan was “the main instigator and the initiator of the recent conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh between Azerbaijan and Armenia”.

Reiterating accusations first levelled by French President Emmanuel Macron that Turkey has sent Syrian jihadists to fight in the conflict, Assad said: “Damascus can confirm this.”

Assad offered no evidence for his allegation against Turkey, which backs rebels trying to oust him in Syria’s civil war.

Ankara did not immediately respond but has described similar accusations as part of attempts by Armenia to create “dark propaganda” about Turkey.

Additional reporting by Margarita Antidze in Tbilisi, Tuvan Gumrukcu and Jonathan Spicer in Ankara, and Alexander Marrow, and Andrew Osborn and Maxim Rodionov in Moscow; Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Giles Elgood and Gareth Jones/Mark Heinrich

Facebook bans all QAnon groups as dangerous amid surging misinformation


SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc FB.O on Tuesday classified the QAnon conspiracy theory movement as dangerous and began removing Facebook groups and pages as well as Instagram accounts that hold themselves out as representatives.

The step escalates an August policy that banned a third of QAnon groups here for promoting violence while allowing most to stay, albeit with content appearing less often in news feeds. Instead of relying on user reports, Facebook staff now will treat QAnon like other militarized bodies, seeking out and deleting groups and pages, the company said in a blog post here.

Since the August restrictions, some QAnon groups have added members, and others used coded language to evade detection, for example referring to “cue” instead of Q. Meanwhile, adherents have worked to integrate themselves in other groups, such as those concerned with child safety and those critical of restrictions on gatherings due to the coronavirus, according to researchers at Facebook and elsewhere.


“While we’ve removed QAnon content that celebrates and supports violence, we’ve seen other QAnon content tied to different forms of real world harm, including recent claims that the west coast wildfires were started by certain groups,” Facebook wrote.

“QAnon messaging changes very quickly and we see networks of supporters build an audience with one message and then quickly pivot to another.”

Recent QAnon posts have spread false information about voting and about COVID-19, researchers said, even claiming that President Donald Trump faked his diagnosis of COVID-19 in order to orchestrate secret arrests.

Classed as a potential source of domestic terrorism by the FBI, QAnon is driven by an anonymous internet poster nicknamed Q who claims to be a Trump administration insider. The core, nonsensical claim is that Trump is secretly leading a crackdown against an enormous pedophile ring that includes prominent Democrats and the Hollywood elite.

There has been no surge in arrests, and the fictitious Satanic rituals that the group cites echo longstanding legends used to anger people for political reasons, often against minorities.

Trump has praised the group as patriotic, and more than a dozen Republican congressional candidates have promoted it.


Reporting by Joseph Menn in San Francisco; Editing by David Gregorio and

Kyrgyz opposition groups make rival power grabs after toppling government


By Olga Dzyubenko


BISHKEK (Reuters) - The Central Asian nation of Kyrgyzstan slid deeper into chaos as rival opposition factions made grabs for power on Wednesday, a day after they stormed government buildings, forcing the prime minister to quit and a parliamentary election to be annulled

Left isolated by the resignation of Prime Minister Kubatbek Boronov’s government late on Tuesday, President Sooronbai Jeenbekov called for all party talks in a statement on Wednesday, reiterating his willingness to mediate.

Two presidents have been overthrown in Kyrgyzstan in the past 15 years, and longtime ally Russia expressed concern as protests spread across the country in the wake of Sunday’s vote.

Kyrgyzstan borders China and hosts both a Russian military airbase and a large Canadian-owned gold mining operation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday Moscow was in touch with all the sides in the conflict and hoped that democratic process would be restored soon. China’s foreign ministry said it was highly concerned about the situation.

A total of 16 parties took part in Sunday’s election and 11 refused to accept the results, which had handed victory two establishment groups. As protests grew, the election commission annulled the vote.

At least three distinct groups have now attempted to claim leadership. The first was the Coordination Council set up on Tuesday and largely made up of established political parties opposing Jeenbekov.

Kyrgyz opposition faction claims state power in rift with allies

Crowd attacks office of biggest Kyrgyz gold miner - media

Another group which called itself People’s Coordination Council emerged on Wednesday and united five lesser-known opposition parties whose leaders have not held any senior government positions.

Finally, the Ata Zhurt political party has attempted to outmanoeuvre competitors by getting parliament to nominate its candidate Sadyr Zhaparov - freed from prison by protesters just hours earlier - for prime minister on Tuesday night.

However, an angry mob then broke into the hotel where parliament convened, forcing Zhaparov to flee through a back door, according to Kyrgyz media. It was not clear when parliament might convene again to confirm him as premier.

Making a late night appearance on television, Zhaparov said he would propose a constitutional reform before holding presidential and parliamentary elections in two to three months.

While opposition parties have made rival claims to power, the establishment parties that claimed initial victory in the election have largely kept quiet, accepting the decision to annul the vote. Jeenbekov has told his supporters not to confront the protesters to avoid escalation.

But the split among opposition parties and power grabs by competing factions have plunged the nation of 6.5 million people into uncertainty. Kyrgyz security forces appeared to avoid siding with any of the factions although their support could eventually help decide the winner.

Residents in the capital, Bishkek, quickly formed vigilante neighbourhood watch units to reinforce police, having suffered during violent revolts followed by looting in 2005 and 2010.

There were scuffles overnight between vigilantes and protesters who tried to force their way into government buildings or attacked businesses such as shops and restaurants, according to a report by local news website 24.kg.

Reporting by Olga Dzyubenko; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore and Peter Graff

Breakingviews - Review: London is global corruption’s top offender


By Aimee Donnellan

LONDON (Reuters Breakingviews) - In May 2016, David Cameron raised an uncomfortable topic. At an anti-corruption summit in London, the former British prime minister sat alongside Nigeria’s president and other dignitaries and declared that money laundering was “the cancer at the heart of so many problems we need to tackle in our world”. The setting was telling, as the British capital had become the location of choice for oligarchs and corporate crooks to sanitise their ill-gotten gains.


Cameron’s tough talk did little to eradicate the problem. In “Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World”, Tom Burgis catalogues the shady dollars that have flowed through Swiss banks, Mayfair mansions and even the London Stock Exchange. The stranger-than-fiction tale carries the reader to Zurich, New York, China and Zimbabwe. But the main takeaway is that, without London, global financial crime would not be possible on this scale.

Burgis reckons the city’s relationship with questionable cash traces to the fall of Britain’s empire. In its imperial heyday, London facilitated trade with the colonies. But after global power ebbed, some of the smaller outposts developed other activities. Instead of producing tobacco or tea, islands like the Bahamas provided shelter for banks and tax avoiders. The French economist Gabriel Zucman estimates $7.6 trillion ended up offshore. Once these hubs were up and running, a London location gave bankers close access to the money movers – and to the property market.

Awareness of the scale of the problem picked up after the 2008 financial crisis. The year that Lehman Brothers collapsed, just half of Britain’s commercial properties were registered to a named person. The houses on a North London road known as “Billionaires’ Row” belonged to oligarchs and a front company for former Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Other recent books like Oliver Bullough’s “Moneyland” have catalogued the scale of the kleptocracy. Burgis, an investigative reporter at the Financial Times, adds to the narrative by showing the human toll of stashing money in London property. When Grenfell Tower in west London went up in flames in 2017, killing 71 and leaving 250 people homeless, the local council said it did not have enough housing. Yet the district includes 2,000 homes which are mostly empty.

“Kleptopia” also shows the at-times violent origins of the questionable cash. In 2011, oil workers in Kazakhstan went on strike when they realised their employers were only paying them half what they declared to the country’s treasury. Police used live ammunition on the protesters, while others suffered torture. The international outrage raised uncomfortable questions for Kazakhstan’s then leader, Nazarbayev. To smooth things over before an upcoming trip to Cambridge University, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair offered him tips on how to downplay the incident.

Amid the parade of villains, “Kleptopia” features some do-gooders. Nigel Wilkins, a compliance officer at Swiss bank BSI, makes an entertaining and admirable hero. But principled individuals cannot fix the porous regulatory system that is supposed to police crooked money.

This becomes evident when Wilkins joins Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority. The watchdog is supposed to be a fiercer institution than its predecessor, which was found wanting by the financial crisis. But when Wilkins tries to show its officers how fraud happens using thousands of documents he hoarded from his time at BSI, they dismiss him.

London’s role in facilitating corporate crime could prove the capital’s undoing. The financial centre has benefitted from a robust legal system, stable markets and transparent regulations. But unchecked inflows of corrupt money are undermining the institutions that made London attractive. A parliamentary committee’s report on Russian influence in British politics, released in July, is a timely reminder of how oligarchs have converted questionable cash into political clout.

Burgis is short on practical solutions. Only the very last page of “Kleptopia” offers suggestions for weeding out financial crime. His plea to resist “lies and bullshit” is a start, but seems unlikely to stop warlords and oligarchs from robbing their compatriots and buying mansions in Chelsea.

London has made some progress in deterring money laundering. Authorities can use so-called unexplained wealth orders to confiscate suspect assets. Britain’s crown dependencies must now reveal the ownership of firms registered in their jurisdictions. But “Kleptopia” is an urgent reminder that there is a lot more to do to clean up London.

RIP

Eddie Van Halen dies at 65, guitar virtuoso ruled '70s, '80s rock


LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Eddie Van Halen, the pioneering guitar player whose hard-rocking band emerged from the Sunset Strip music scene in Los Angeles in the early 1970s to stand at the top of rock ‘n’ roll for a decade, died of cancer on Tuesday. He was 65.

Van Halen’s death was announced by his 29-year-old son, Wolfgang, a bass player who joined the band, best known for songs like “Jump” and “Ain’t Talkin ‘Bout Love,” in later years.

“I can’t believe I’m having to write this but my father, Edward Lodewijk Van Halen, has lost his long and arduous battle with cancer this morning,” Wolfgang Van Halen said on Twitter.

Representatives for Eddie Van Halen did not disclose details of his death. People magazine reported the rocker died at a Los Angeles-area hospital with his wife, Janie, son and other family members at his side.


“Through all your challenging treatments for lung cancer you kept your gorgeous spirit and that impish grin,” his former wife of 26 years, actress Valerie Bertinelli, said on Twitter.

Fans placed flowers and guitar picks on Van Halen’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

“What a long, great trip its been,” the band’s flamboyant frontman during its glory years, David Lee Roth, said in a message on Twitter above a black-and-white photo of the two men clenching hands backstage at a concert.

Eddie Van Halen was born in Amsterdam on Jan. 26, 1955, and studied classical piano after moving to the Los Angeles suburb of Pasadena with his family in the 1960s.

After switching to guitar, he and his older brother, Alex, who took up the drums, formed bands that would eventually become Van Halen in the mid-1970s, with lead singer Roth and bassist Michael Anthony.

The hard-rock band, featuring Eddie Van Halen’s explosive riffs and solos, quickly became a staple of Sunset Strip clubs such as Gazzari’s and the Whisky a Go Go before releasing their eponymous debut album in 1978.

That album shot to No. 19 on the Billboard charts, becoming one of the most successful debuts of the decade and the first in a string of top-selling albums that would make Van Halen one of the biggest rock acts of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Eddie Van Halen, known for his two-handed tapping technique on the strings, earned a place along Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page as one of rock’s most celebrated guitarists. In 2012, readers of Guitar World magazine voted him the greatest of all time.

Roth, who often clashed with the Van Halen brothers, split from the band in the mid-1980s and was replaced for a decade by Sammy Hagar. The original lineup reunited in 2007 for a tour and, four years later, an album.

“My heart is broken. Eddie was not only a Guitar God, but a genuinely beautiful soul,” Gene Simmons, lead singer of Kiss and an early champion of Van Halen with record companies, said on Twitter.

Reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Mimi Dwyer, Lisa Richwine, Steve Gorman and Jill Serjeant; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Gerry Doyle and Peter Cooney

Polish watchdog fines Gazprom $7.6 billion over Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline

By Reuters Staff

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's anti-monopoly watchdog said on Wednesday it had fined Russia's Gazprom GAZP.MM more than 29 billion zlotys ($7.6 billion) for building the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline without its approval.

FILE PHOTO: A logo of Gazprom Transgaz Tomsk is pictured at the Atamanskaya compressor station, facility of Gazprom's Power Of Siberia project outside the far eastern town of Svobodny, in Amur region, Russia November 29, 2019. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov.

The UOKiK watchdog also said it had imposed a 234 million zloty fine on five other firms involved in financing $11 billion project set to double Russia’s gas export capacity via the Baltic Sea.

Nord Stream 2 is led by Gazprom, with half of the funding provided by Germany's Uniper UN01.DE and BASF's BASFn.DE Wintershall unit, Anglo-Dutch company Shell RDSa.L, Austria's OMV OMVV.VI and Engie ENGIE.PA.

Poland sees Nord Stream 2 as a threat to Europe’s energy security as it will increase reliance on Russian energy.


The United States has also imposed sanctions on companies laying pipes for the project.

UOKiK has been examining the project for years. In August it fined Gazprom 213 million zlotys over a lack of cooperation regarding the project.

“The launch of NS2 will threaten the continuity of natural gas supplies to Poland. An increase in the price of the product is also highly likely, with the said increase being borne by Polish consumers,” said Tomasz Chrostny, president of UOKiK.


“Completion of this investment project increases economic dependence on Russian gas - not only in the case of Poland, but also of other European states,” Chrostny said.

Gazprom did not reply to a request for immediate comment.

Construction of the 1,230-kilometre pipeline is nearly finished but for a final stretch of roughly 120 km in Danish waters.

Work was halted in December as pipe-laying company Swiss-Dutch Allseas suspended operations because of the U.S. sanctions targeting companies providing vessels.