Saturday, February 13, 2021

Secret Documents Show How Terrorist Supporters Use Bitcoin — And How The Government Is Scrambling To Stop Them

After a decade of concerns, the US government is pushing for stronger regulation.



FINCEN FILES Posted on February 8, 2021

Ben Kothe / BuzzFeed News; Getty Images (3)

The propagandist who called himself Azym Abdullah didn’t need much money to set up a website for ISIS that would broadcast gruesome beheading videos. What he needed was secrecy, so in 2014 he reportedly turned to cryptocurrency.

He paid a little more than 1 bitcoin, approximately $400 at the time, to register the domain name in Iceland and host it on servers around the globe. His site asked visitors for donations to help pay for the upkeep. Those, too, were in bitcoin.

Sending donations that way allowed his donors to shield their identities behind a string of letters and numbers — a favored technique that is making it harder for banks, law enforcement authorities, and the US Treasury Department to track and slow the flow of money supporting terrorism.

Abdullah’s reliance on bitcoin is documented in a 2017 Treasury Department intelligence assessment, which was received by BuzzFeed News as part of a cache of documents that includes internal emails and reports about cryptocurrency. The intelligence assessment also reveals evidence of nine other incidents where terrorist supporters used cryptocurrency to fund their activities, from purchasing airline tickets to defacing a political website to arranging travel to Syria.

The vast majority of crypto transactions are used for legitimate purchases. But the documents provide insight into the US government's ongoing, sometimes lagging, battle to counteract the use of crypto technology to foster terrorism and crime, as well as the variety of ways that crypto — with its presumed anonymity and ease of transfer around the globe — can be used for nefarious purposes.

In 2016, for instance, analysts at the US Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, raised alarms about so-called mixers — companies that break up crypto transactions into smaller pieces to further shield the identity of the owner. When those companies operate in the US, they are supposed to register with FinCEN and provide information about suspicious clients and transactions. But the report, which is among the documents received by BuzzFeed News, found that “of the 30 largest mixing services, none have registered … or shown any evidence of a compliance program.”

It wasn’t until nearly four years later that the government took action. Last year, FinCEN fined one of the mixers $60 million for failing “to collect and verify customer names, addresses, and other identifiers on over 1.2 million transactions.” Those transactions, the government found, aided criminals involved with illegal narcotics, fraud, counterfeiting, and child exploitation as well as neo-Nazi and other white supremacist groups. FinCEN said it tracked transactions worth more than $2,000 from the mixer to a website called Welcome to Video that hosted child sexual abuse materials.

The documents examined by BuzzFeed News trace the Treasury Department’s concerns about crypto technology back at least 10 years. FinCEN is now trying to change its rules so that any company dealing with cryptocurrency will have to get clearer information about their customers and their transactions.

FinCEN and the Department of Justice did not respond to messages seeking comment.


Alex Fradkin for BuzzFeed News
The office of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, part of the US Treasury Department, in Vienna, Virginia


Yaya Fanusie, a former CIA analyst and an expert on the national security implications associated with cryptocurrencies, said he believes that US officials are ahead of their European counterparts in addressing the issue. But, like other experts contacted by BuzzFeed News, he said he sees a need for a new class of financial investigators to stop cryptocurrency from being misused by terrorists, narcotraffickers, and other criminals.

“For people on the ground, crypto is harder to understand when compared with more traditional means of money laundering,” said Fanusie, now a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. “Only recently are the skills and resources getting deployed at the field level."

As regulators and the industry slowly adjust, the allure of crypto remains strong, with terrorists finding they can use it to solicit donations to fund operations. Last August the Department of Justice announced that an investigation conducted in cooperation with the Treasury Department had seized millions of dollars as part of the "largest ever seizure of terrorist organizations' cryptocurrency accounts."

One of the indictments described how al-Qaeda and affiliated groups ran a money laundering operation that solicited donations in crypto over social media accounts. They then used that network for donations “to further their terrorist goals." One of the al-Qaeda associated networks tracked by the government received more than 15 bitcoins, worth thousands of dollars, in 187 transactions between Feb. 5, 2019, and Feb. 25, 2020.

Crypto technology is pressing the same weak spots in the financial system first explored by the FinCEN Files, a global project by BuzzFeed News and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in late 2020. The news organizations found that major Western financial institutions allowed dirty money to course across the globe in plain view of US authorities. As with traditional currencies, bitcoin and other crypto can test the ability of financial institutions to track their transactions, and the ability of US authorities to thwart crime.

At her nomination hearing before the Senate Finance Committee, incoming Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that cryptocurrency has the potential “to improve the efficiency of the financial system.”

“At the same time,” she said, “it can be used to finance terrorism, facilitate money laundering, and support malign activities that threaten US national security interests and the integrity of the US and international financial systems.”


Pool / Getty Images
Janet Yellen during a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Jan. 19


Cryptocurrency is much easier to move than other financial instruments, allowing criminals to quickly shift assets to different parts of the globe — an advantage when trying to avoid scrutiny by US law enforcement or when detection seems imminent.

“You can run away to jurisdiction or entities that don't care," said Pawel Kuskowski, the CEO of Coinfirm, a cryptocurrency analytics and compliance firm. "It's a designed mechanism to protect themselves knowing that they're going to receive illicit funds."

There are currently thousands of different virtual currencies being traded in a still-evolving market marked by secrecy. Typically, cryptocurrency owners acquire these funds on an exchange and store them in virtual wallets with addresses that are designated only by unique arrangements of letters and numbers — another layer of anonymity that obscures who truly owns the funds.

Just as banks are responsible for monitoring the transactions of their customers, the crypto exchanges have legal obligations to meet. They even send the government suspicious activity reports, or SARs, the same forms banks use when they encounter a transaction that suggests criminal activity.

But some exchanges are pushing back against FinCEN’s proposal for tighter regulations, describing the requirements as more onerous than what the banking industry faces. Square, the payments company founded by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, and investment firms such as Andreessen Horowitz have also said the new rules would be burdensome and might violate the privacy rights of clients.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a public comment letter earlier this year that it thought FinCEN’s proposed regulations would “undermine the civil liberties of cryptocurrency users” and “give the government access to troves of sensitive financial data.” ●


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    Contact John Templon at john.templon@buzzfeed.com.


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    Anthony Cormier is an investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York. While working for the Tampa Bay Times, Cormier won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting.

    Contact Anthony Cormier at anthony.cormier@buzzfeed.com.

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    Jason Leopold is a senior investigative reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles. He is a 2018 Pulitzer finalist for international reporting, recipient of the IRE 2016 FOI award and a 2016 Newseum Institute National Freedom of Information Hall of Fame inductee.

    Contact Jason Leopold at jason.leopold@buzzfeed.com.

A group of top environmental scientists have urged Boris Johnson to have the courage to bring forward the UK's carbon net zero target to 2030.

In 2019, the government pledged the UK would cut greenhouse gas emissions to almost zero by 2050.
The UK has pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions to almost zero by 2050. File pic

However, in an open letter Scientists Warning Europe (SWE) has urged the prime minister to show much stronger leadership ahead of it hosting COP26.

The letter is supported by 20 eminent scientists and academics including the government's ex science adviser Sir David King and leading Dutch climate scientist Pier Vellinga.

Ed Gemmell, SWE managing director, said: "We know from the scientific community that we need the earliest target possible for the UK and the world to get to net zero to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Many feel this should be 2030.

"Our current politicians are the last ones with the chance to take the necessary actions required by the British public, 81% of whom believe there is a real climate emergency according to the UNDP.

"We believe Boris Johnson has the courage to bring forward the net zero target and then initiate the emergency action needed to reach it."

Prof Vellinga, added: "In limiting climate change the world is finally taking action, but we are late; Boris Johnson can lead the world by catching up.



How does the UK's new green drive compare to the rest of the world?


"All generations after him will be grateful when he does in the lead to Glasgow COP26."

Professor Mark Baldwin, of the University of Exeter, said countries must "stop the tax breaks, incentives, and subsidies for fossil fuels".

"Redirect that support to the green energy industry - wind, solar, and the infrastructure needed for electric transport - to accelerate the transition to net zero," he said.

COP26 is the annual climate change forum attended by world leaders being held in Glasgow later this year, after it was postponed last year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

It will bring together representatives from nearly 200 countries to agree new climate ambitions.



Britain's biggest polluters


Its success is critical if the objectives set out five years ago in the Paris Agreement are to be met to reduce global emissions.

Scientists Warning Europe aims to drive science-led action on the climate and biodiversity crisis.
Manchester University students urge vice-chancellor to quit


Students’ union calls vote of no confidence in Nancy Rothwell over handling of Covid crisis

Nancy Rothwell. The students’ union wants a replacement vice-chancellor to be democratically elected by staff and students. 
Photograph: Joel Goodman/Lnp/Rex/Shutterstock


Rachel Hall
THE GUARDIAN
Thu 11 Feb 2021 

Students at Manchester University have launched a revolt against their vice-chancellor over the university’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and have demanded she step down over her “complete failure of management”.

The Manchester students’ union will hold a vote of no-confidence in the vice-chancellor, Nancy Rothwell, the first time in its nearly 200-year history such a motion has been triggered. If the vote in March is successful, it will be reported to the university’s board of governors, which will decide whether to take further action.

The vote’s organisers said it was in response to a series of high-profile disasters on campus, including fences erected around halls of residence during lockdown, an alleged racial profiling incident and reports of heavy-handed policing.

Ben McGowan, one of the student organisers of the Nancy Out campaign, said: “The frequency and volume of mistakes and complete disregard for students make clear it’s not a one-off thing, it’s a complete failure of management.”


McGowan described a “tense atmosphere” on campus with groups of police officers arriving almost daily. Students believe the university is granting the police an unusually high level of access, which may breach their tenancy rights. “They’ve been conducting random flat searches without having a reason,” he said.

McGowan said students had to obtain 400 signatures to launch the referendum, which was reached within hours. If more than 50% of students vote in favour of Rothwell’s removal, the vote will move to the board of governors.

The Nancy Out campaign wants Rothwell’s replacement to be elected by staff and students, after the vice-chancellor received a vote of no-confidence from staff who are members of the University and College Union in December.

A University of Manchester spokesperson said: “We have all worked very hard to provide all our students with the best possible learning and student experience in these unprecedented and challenging circumstances. We have not got everything right, but we are committed to working closely with student representatives to address concerns and meet student needs.

“Since the start of the academic year, Greater Manchester police have been operating an initiative across the city, which has targeted reports of large gatherings both on and off university campuses. This has included responding to such reports in our Fallowfield halls of residence – many made by students – as well as in private accommodation.”

Separately, students in Cardiff University halls of residence have complained of being told there should not be more than four people at a time in communal areas including kitchens. The university said its policy was in line with Welsh government guidance, which recommends “the use of rotas” in student flatshares.


Former Tory MP in row over appointment as head of Office for Students

A university email said students had a collective responsibility for their flatmates’ behaviour, and warned: “If you fail to report a breach of the rules you will be deemed collectively responsible with those who host parties.” It further requested that students on campus obtain Covid-19 tests on a weekly basis.

Gurpal Sahota, a student in Talybont North halls, said the policy meant he and his five flatmates could not all be in the kitchen at the same time, a situation shared by lots of other students.

He said: “It just wouldn’t be fair and if one of us gets Covid we all have to isolate regardless. The university can’t expect us to police our flatmates’ behaviour.”

Another student, Tom Doe, reported “constant patrols” of private security guards throughout the day, with guards manning gates in the evening.

At Bangor University, one student complained about students arriving in halls from abroad, which he worried could result in the spread of new coronavirus variants. An email from the university’s head warden recommended that he “avoid contact with them and minimise the time you spend in shared spaces”.

In Scotland, students at the University of St Andrews have been told that face-to-face teaching will not resume for the rest of the academic year, apart from for a small number of exempt courses. As face-to-face teaching has been suspended for most students since the end of the autumn term, most will receive less than three months of on-campus learning this academic year.

Sally Mapstone, the principal of St Andrews, said: “I know that this will be a big disappointment to many students, and staff. We are acting now, however, to provide you with as much certainty as early as we can, having listened carefully to student leaders and our staff, and considered all the evidence available to us on the predicted course of the pandemic.”

Universities in Scotland typically end their term earlier than other UK institutions, meaning that others may follow St Andrews’ example. Edinburgh University said teaching would remain online until the Easter holidays, and its vice-chancellor told undergraduates there would be little or no face-to-face teaching for the rest of the year.
WE NEED SOCIALIZED PRODUCTION
Why Covid-19 should finally end the UK’s outsourcing mania

The success of the vaccine roll-out and the failure of Test and Trace is proof that politicians have put too much faith in private companies.


BYJONN ELLEDGE 
 
New Statesman
5 FEBRUARY 2021

MARK KERRISON/IN PICTURES VIA GETTY IMAGES
A walk-in testing centre run by Serco on 4 October 2020 in Slough.


Correlation is not causation, but all these things are nonetheless true: Dido Harding has a degree from Oxford University in politics, philosophy and economics; Dido Harding is a Tory peer, married to a Tory MP; under Dido Harding's leadership, test and trace has been an utter disaster. One might argue that most of Dido Harding's attempts to explain this failure have also been an utter disaster – earlier this week she managed to give the impression, surely wrong, that she had no idea viruses did anything so wacky as mutate. But that latter view is more subjective, and only tenuously connected to today's topic, so I’ll leave it as a piece of parenthetical snark and move on.

There are many things that could plausibly explain why the government did not spend the first lockdown building a test and trace system that worked well enough to prevent the need for a second lockdown. The reluctance to close the borders. Rishi Sunak’s insistence on subsidising evenings out, and his reputation-wrecking failure to adequately fund people to self-isolate. (Harding also, bafflingly, seemed to suggest that giving people money to self-isolate could have consequences worse than not doing so and letting them wander off into the community, coughing all the while.) Then again, perhaps, it was just pure, unadulterated incompetence.

But a big reason for the government’s failure is surely the people it hired to implement the programme. Harding’s Harvard MBA was followed by stints with the management consultancy McKinsey, the holiday firm Thomas Cook, the professional services company Manpower and a number of retailers. She later became CEO of TalkTalk in 2010 where, on her watch, a cyber-attack cost the company £60m and 95,000 customers. Her sterling leadership through this crisis earned her the magnificent headline “TalkTalk boss Dido Harding's utter ignorance is a lesson to us all” in Campaign magazine.

How well she performed in those roles, however, is not the issue. The point is there was nothing on her CV suggesting an interest or expertise in healthcare until October 2017, when the government appointed her chair of NHS Improvement, which oversees NHS trusts and other health service providers in England. Her skills and experience are in business and administration. She’s a generalist.

In this, she mirrors some of the companies to which NHS Test and Trace outsourced its work. Bits of the programme were performed by Public Health England, Randox Laboratories, the pharmacist Boots, and companies with specific expertise in logistics. But many went to a litany of more generalised services companies, whose names will be familiar to anyone who has watched the British state try to outsource itself over the past 20 years: Serco, Mitie, G4S, Deloitte. Sodexo, one of the companies tasked with running community testing centres, started out life as a French catering firm.

These companies have taken on hundreds of government functions over the years and, if only through the law of large numbers, have performed quite well in some of them. But the reason they have thrived is less because of the quality of their services than because of their world-class abilities in negotiating profitable contracts. They too are generalists, whose success stems less from their sectoral expertise than from their general business and administrative skills.

But the ability to successfully manage a contract, and the ability to deliver the services the public actually want, are not always the same thing. In normal times, this lack of alignment is annoying. These are not normal times.

There is another way. The vaccination research programme has been led by the Jenner Institute at Oxford University, a partnership between government, academia and the private sector. The roll-out has been led by medics and NHS managers. These are bodies that understand the sector they’re working in and measure their success through metrics other than contractual goals or shareholder value.

Again, correlation is not causation, but it’s nonetheless striking that this programme has been one of the most successful in the world. It’s certainly gone a whole lot better than Test and Trace.

For decades now there’s been a consensus, on parts of the left as well as the right, that a smaller government is a better one: that, whenever something can be outsourced, it should be. But that has often meant favouring private-sector generalists – who answer first and foremost to their shareholders – over publicly employed specialists, who have other, more publicly minded, motivations.

The events of the last year are a reminder that a contractual relationship is often a poor substitute for real expertise. Smaller is not always better. We have not had enough of experts.
Pakistan's Ali Sadpara: The climber who never came back from K2

By M Ilyas Khan
BBC News, Islamabad

IMAGE COPYRIGHTHAMID HUSSEIN


Mohammad Ali Sadpara will be remembered as a versatile climber by the international community of mountaineers, and a hero in his native Pakistan.

He is the only Pakistani to have climbed eight of the world's 14 highest mountains, and he made the first ever winter ascent of the world's ninth highest peak, Nanga Parbat.


On Friday 5 February he went missing along with two others - Iceland's John Snorri and Chile's Juan Pablo Mohr - while trying to climb K2, the world's second highest peak at 8,611m (28,251 ft) and also reputedly the deadliest.


His son Sajid was also a member of the team and the idea was for the father-and-son duo to summit K2 without oxygen, a feat never done before in winter. But Sajid had to turn back from a spot called the Bottleneck - also known as the "death zone", some 300 metres from the top - after he felt sick.

He has since helped military-led rescue teams scour the mountain for signs of his father and the other two men - but there has been no trace of any of them. The military want to resume the search, weather permitting, using a high-altitude C-130 aircraft and infrared technology to spot possible shelters on the peak.

But Sajid doesn't hold out much hope.

"I'm thankful to everyone organising a search, but it's unlikely that they are alive by now. So the search should be to recover their bodies," he said earlier in the week.

Who is Mohammad Ali Sadpara?

Mohammad Ali Sadpara was born in 1976 in Sadpara, a village in one of the river valleys of the Himalayan Baltistan region in Pakistan's extreme north.

Livestock farming is the main source of livelihood in the region, and the area's youth also work as porters with Western mountaineers and adventure tourists who frequent the region each year.

IMAGE COPYRIGHTHAMID HUSSEIN
Ali Sadpara playing drums on a jerry can with a Dutch
 group during a K2 trek in 2012

Sadpara finished middle school in the village and his father, a low-grade government employee, later moved the family to Skardu town, where Sadpara studied up to higher secondary school before moving onto climbing.

Nisar Abbas, a local journalist and relative and friend of Sadpara from their village days, describes him as being extraordinary right from his childhood.

"He had the physique and the habits of an athlete, and was also good in studies. He never failed a class. Since his elder brother never did well in school, his father was keen to get him a good education and that's why he moved him to Skardu."

Given the family's financial constraints, he moved to climbing in around 2003 or 2004.

"He was an instant success with tour operators because the expeditions he led were mostly successful. He earned worldwide fame in 2016 when a three-man team he was a member of became the first to summit Nanga Parbat in winter.

Hamid Hussain, a Karachi-based tour operator from Skardu who has known Sadpara since 2012, has similar memories.

Left out to freeze on K2
K2 climber aborts solo winter ascent
Irish climbers conquer peak within 24 hours of each other

"He was brave, and pleasant and very friendly," he says. "And he was so physically fit. We trekked together on many occasions, and while there were times when we would run out of breath and collapse, he would still jog up the steep slopes and then shout back at us, asking us to be quick."

On one occasion in the winter of 2016, during a trek from Sadpara valley to the Alpine planes of Deosai, when freezing winds caught them in a snow-filled gorge and sent shivers down their spines, they saw him climb smoothly up the slope and start dancing over the ridge.

In the last three years, Ali Sadpara had been travelling to France and Spain to train college and university students in mountaineering.

Why summit K2 without oxygen?

One theory is that he was working as a high-altitude porter for John Snorri and had to comply with the agreement he had signed with him.

But that was just a ruse, Nisar Abbas says. Weeks earlier, Sadpara had openly expressed his keenness to make the attempt after a 10-member Nepalese team led by the famous Sherpa Nirmal Purja became the first-ever to summit K2 in winter.

And in order to set a new record, Sadpara wanted to do it too - but without oxygen. And he also wanted his son to be there when it happened.

Sajid, his son, told the media that they had started out with some 25 to 30 climbers, local and foreign, but all of them turned back before hitting the 8,000-metre point.

Sajid's own condition worsened when they hit the Bottleneck.




"We had carried an oxygen cylinder in our emergency gear. My father told me to take it out and use some. It will make me feel better."

But while Sajid was setting up the cylinder, its mask regulator sprang a leak.

Meanwhile, his father and the two foreigners continued to scale the Bottleneck. His father then looked back and shouted to Sajid to keep climbing.

"I shouted that the cylinder had leaked. He said, 'don't worry, keep climbing, you'll feel better'. But I couldn't gather the strength to do it, and decided to turn back. It was around noon on Friday. That was the last I saw of them."

When asked why Sadpara insisted that he keep going, Sajid said: "The Nepalese had done it weeks earlier, and he wanted to do it too, because K2 is our mountain."

What could have happened?

Sajid says he saw the three men climb over the bottleneck at the top, which means that they probably did make it to the summit.

 
IMAGE COPYRIGHT NISAR ABBAS
Left to right: Ali Sadpara, Jon Snorri and Sajjid Sadpara

Experts say most accidents happen while descending, as even a slight loss of balance can send one crashing down into an abyss.

Those who knew Sadpara doubt he would have made such an error.

People in his village still recall more than one occasion when a goat Sadpara was tending in the mountains got injured, and instead of slitting its throat, as others would, he'd haul it over his shoulders and walk all the way down to take it to the village vet.

They suspect that he probably failed to make it back because one or both of his partners met with an accident and he stayed on trying to find a way to save them.

We will probably never know.

People in the area have been awaiting a miracle.

But as his son says, given the hostile environment, low oxygen and winter temperatures dipping to as low as -80C, there's little chance the men could have survived a week at over 8,000m.

"This hasn't happened in climbing history, so we can only hope for a miracle," Sajid Sadpara told the BBC.

Friday, February 12, 2021

 

Coronavirus: Bat scientists find new evidence

By Helen Briggs
BBC Environment correspondent

Published
2 days ago
BatIMAGE COPYRIGHimage captio

Scientists say coronaviruses related to Sars-CoV-2 may be circulating in bats across many parts of Asia.

They have discovered a virus that is a close match to the virus that causes Covid-19 in bats at a wildlife sanctuary in eastern Thailand.

And they predict that similar coronaviruses may be present in bats across many Asian nations and regions.

The discovery extends the area in which related viruses have been found to a distance of 4,800km (2,983 miles).

And it gives clues to how Covid-19 might have emerged.

The researchers said sampling was limited, but they were confident that coronaviruses "with a high degree of genetic relatedness to Sars-CoV-2 are widely present in bats across many nations and regions in Asia".

The area includes Japan, China and Thailand, the researchers said in a report published in Nature Communications.

Past studies have suggested that Sars-CoV-2 emerged in an animal, most likely a bat, before spreading to humans.

The precise origins of the virus are unknown and have been investigated by a team commissioned by the World Health Organization (WHO).

In the latest research, a team lead by Lin-Fa Wang of Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore detected a close relative of Sars-CoV-2 in horseshoe bats kept in an artificial cave at a wildlife sanctuary in Thailand.

The virus, named RacCS203, is a close match to the genetic code of Sars-CoV-2 (with 91.5% similarity in their genomes).

It is also closely related to another coronavirus - called RmYN02 - which is found in bats in Yunnan, China (with 93.6% similarity to the genome of Sars-CoV-2).

"We need to do more surveillance in animals," said Prof Wang. "In order to find the true origin, the surveillance work needs to go beyond the border of China."

One big concern is the ability of coronaviruses to move between different mammals, for example cats, dogs and minks.

By moving between species, the virus can mutate and evolve into a new pathogen, which could explain how Covid-19 emerged.

Dr Thiravat Hemachudha of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, was part of the team of international researchers.

The viruses found in bats in Thailand and China act as "a perfect template that can recombine with others and eventually evolve as new emerging pathogen(s), Covid-19 virus as one", he said.

The researchers also examined antibodies in bats and a trafficked pangolin seized in southern Thailand.

The antibodies were able to neutralise the pandemic virus, which is further evidence that Sars-CoV-2-related coronaviruses are circulating in Southeast Asia, they said.

Commenting, Prof Martin Hibberd of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said the findings highlighted the broad distribution of bats and viruses that may include the originator of the current outbreak.

"Further work is required to understand how Sars-CoV-2 passed from animals to humans, with the recent WHO investigators in Wuhan showing that as of yet, these is no conclusive evidence of how this happened," he said.

Follow Helen on Twitter.


Study: SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses are circulating in Southeast Asian animals

While the World Health Organization (WHO) continues its mission to Wuhan investigating the origin and early transmission of SARS-CoV-2, a new study led by scientists from Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, and Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, shows that SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses (SC2r-CoVs) are circulating in animals as far away as Thailand.

The study, published in Nature Communications today, reported that high levels of neutralizing antibodies against the virus were present in both bats and pangolins found in the Southeast Asian country. The study further indicates that more SC2r-CoVs are likely to be discovered in the region. Southeast Asia with its large and diverse bat populations may be a more likely hotspot for such viruses.

"This is an important discovery in the search for the origin of SARS-CoV-2, which was made possible by rapid application of cutting-edge technology through transparent international collaboration," said Dr. Supaporn Wacharapluesadee, from Thai Red Cross Emerging Infectious Diseases Health Science Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok Thailand.

In the study, the team examined Rhinolophus bats in a Thai cave. SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies were detected in bats of the same colony and in a pangolin at a wildlife checkpoint in Southern Thailand.

"Our study extended the geographic distribution of genetically diverse SARS-CoV-2-related coronaviruses from Japan and China to Thailand over a 4,800-km range. Cross-border surveillance is urgently needed to find the immediate progenitor virus of SARS-CoV-2," said Dr. Chee Wah Tan, Senior Research Fellow with Duke-NUS' Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) program and co-author of this study.

The team conducted serological investigations using the SARS-CoV-2 surrogate virus neutralization test (sVNT) developed at Duke-NUS in early 2020.

"Our study demonstrates that our SARS-CoV-2 surrogate virus neutralization test, developed mainly for determining neutralizing antibodies in humans to monitor vaccine efficacy and detect past infections, can also be critical for tracing the animal origin and animal-human spillover events," said Professor Wang Linfa from Duke-NUS' EID program and corresponding author of this study.

Prof Wang's team invented the sVNT assay, trade named cPass, which has been granted Emergency Use Authorisation by the US FDA to determine SARS-CoV-2-neutralising antibodies in human sera, due to its good performance concordance with live virus-based assays.

Studies like this are crucial in furthering our understanding of the many SARS-CoV-2-related viruses that exist in the wild. This work is also timely as investigations into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 are ongoing and may provide further leads on the origin of this outbreak. Such studies also play a key role in helping us be better prepared against future pandemics as they provide a more detailed map of zoonotic threats."

Patrick Casey, Professor, Senior Vice Dean for Research, Duke-NUS Medical School

Source:
Journal reference:

Wacharapluesadee, S., et al. (2021) Evidence for SARS-CoV-2 related coronaviruses circulating in bats and pangolins in Southeast Asia. Nature Communications. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-21240-1.