Alberta's COVID death toll up by 55 since last data release, with 295 more hospitalizations


CBC
Fri, January 5, 2024 



New COVID-19 severe outcomes in the most recent Alberta Health report vs. the previous report from two weeks earlier. (Data via Alberta Health, table by Robson Fletcher/CBC - image credit)

Another 55 Albertans have died from COVID, according to the latest data released by the province, which comes two weeks after the previous release.

(The data is usually reported weekly but there was no report during the week of Christmas.)

That brings the death toll for the current season to 378.

The latest data also shows an additional 295 people were hospitalized for COVID, including 20 admitted to intensive care units (ICU).

In total, there have now been 3,137 hospitalizations this season, including 193 admissions to ICU.

Admissions do not include patients with "incidental" cases of COVID-19 admitted to hospital/ICU for other reasons.

Alberta Health says the deaths include those "resulting from a clinically compatible illness in a lab-confirmed COVID-19 case, unless there is a clear alternative cause of death identified (e.g. trauma, poisoning, drug overdose, etc.)"

These numbers represent the difference between hospitalizations and deaths in the province's most recent weekly report compared to the report from the week before, for the 2023-24 respiratory virus tracking season.

The season runs from Aug. 27, 2023, to Aug. 24, 2024.

Age breakdown and data notes

Older people tend to be the most vulnerable to severe outcomes from COVID, but younger people can be affected, too.

The table below breaks down the total number of hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths in the current respiratory-virus season, by age range.

You'll also find the population-adjusted rate (per 100,000 people) for each age range.

This data all comes from the provincial government's respiratory virus dashboard, which is updated weekly.

There are often delays in reporting, however, meaning not all deaths and hospitalizations that actually happened during the latest weekly reporting period are included.

Each weekly report typically includes severe outcomes that occurred in prior weeks but were only just added to the data.

For more on why, see this story:

WE HAD A BROWN XMAS

Canada could face more record-breaking heat this year. How can we prepare for wildfires?

Low snowpack and higher temperatures forecast for El Niño year already raising wildfire concerns

CBC
Fri, January 5, 2024 

The Eagle Bluff Wildfire crosses the border from Washington State on July 30, prompting evacuation orders in Osoyoos, B.C. (Jesse Winter/Reuters)


The first week of January isn't usually wildfire season. But as 2024 began, more than 100 "zombie fires" were actively burning in British Columbia — holdovers from last summer that typically go dormant over winter.

"That is mind boggling to me. Just unheard of," said Lori Daniels, a professor with the University of British Columbia's department of forest and conservation sciences.

The warm, dry weather that capped off what is expected to be declared the planet's hottest year on record — and Canada's most destructive wildfire season by a longshot, with more than 6,500 fires burning close to 19 million hectares — is not over.

With the global El Niño weather system continuing through this spring, forecasts suggest 2024 could be even hotter — prompting wildfire and public policy experts to call for more wildfire prevention efforts now.

"The whole concept of business as usual is out the window," said John Robinson, a professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto, adding governments, NGOs and social support organizations have to learn to be more adaptive.

"Unfortunately, response to disaster isn't a time where you get a lot of creative policy," he said. "We need proactive or pre-emptive response."

Why 2024 is already worrying

Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is projecting above-normal temperatures across the country at least through fall, and about 70 per cent above normal in April through June.

"There's really no indication of below normal or, until we get maybe to the late fall, even near normal," said Bill Merryfield, a research scientist with ECCC's Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis.

ECCC is also projecting below-normal snowpack across all provinces through spring, leading to drier conditions come summer. In December, snowpack was less than a quarter of what's normal across much of southern Canada, Merryfield said.

Where's winter? So far, it's been an 'unnatural' grey and foggy season


Warm, dry winter has increased the wildfire risk in Alberta

NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will release their official 2023 temperature numbers on Jan. 12, but all data so far indicates 2023 was the hottest on record globally.

Tom Di Liberto, climate scientist and public affairs specialist with NOAA, said when El Niño events straddle two years, it is typically the second year that ends up being hotter, indicating a strong possibility that temperatures could increase again in 2024. A recent example was 2016, the previous hottest year on record following El Niño.

"When you have back-to-back years of such extreme temperatures, it's kind of allowing the possibility to be a bit more severe," Di Liberto said.

Two people are pictured waiting for a boat ride across Shuswap lake to Celista from Sorrento, B.C., while evacuating from wildfires on Aug. 19. (Ben Nelms/CBC)

Kevin Hanna, director of the University of British Columbia's Centre for Environmental Assessment Research and a former wildfire fighter, says the increasingly extreme heat and drought conditions have led people in disaster-prone regions to develop a "fear of summer and what it will bring."

"Is this the summer where my farm or ranch gets hit? Is this the summer when my town has to evacuate? You see it on people's face, you hear it in their voice," " Hanna said. "I know ranchers who have lost property— terrible flood damage, terrible wildfire damage."

Protecting infrastructure

Daniels said it is time for governments to increase investment in programs to help people make their homes more fire resistant, and to ensure all new builds in fire-prone areas follow FireSmart principles like those laid out by Natural Resources Canada.

She said Canadians in fire-prone areas can implement these principles themselves by tidying up yards, making sure there is no burnable debris in the gutters or under decks, and reconfiguring gardens so rocks are closer to buildings and flammable vegetation is pulled further away.

She said communities across Canada should start making emergency plans of action before spring, and accepting that it's not a matter of "if, but when" fire is coming to their communities.

The Eagle Bluff Wildfire crosses the border from Washington State on July 30, prompting evacuation orders in Osoyoos, B.C. (Jesse Winter/Reuters)

Hanna said Canada needs to have a bigger conversation about prevention and managing risk by reducing the vulnerability of infrastructure, and suggests wildfire vulnerability assessments and considerations become "part of everything we do in the permitting and review process" for major infrastructure projects like pipelines, power lines, highways and railways.

A likely unpopular suggestion heading into a dry and drought-prone year is that we might have to rethink some routine summer activities Canadians take for granted, Hanna says, including potentially limiting access to certain parts of the backcountry.

"If we want to keep areas safe, we might have to say people aren't allowed to go there. Because some people do things they shouldn't do," Hanna said.

"One spark from an ATV or a hot muffler on a dirt bike or something is going to potentially cause a huge amount of trouble."

Michael Norton, director general of the Canadian Forest Service with Natural Resources Canada, said the federal government is working on preventative measures through programs like the Wildfire Resilient Futures Initiative, which is investing $285 million over five years with a focus on prevention and mitigation, including reinforcing the FireSmart Canada program.

Fighting fire with fire

Counterintuitively, more fire could help prevent the most destructive blazes this summer.

"[Fire] is maybe the only natural disaster, where on one hand, it's extremely destructive, and on the other hand, is part of the solution," Daniels said, adding that Canada's forest management has focused primarily on maximizing economic benefit, which has increased the landscape's fire vulnerability.

"We've just left too much woody debris down on the ground, and that's fueling these new fires. And it's killing regenerating young forests that are 20 and 30 years old," she said.

A firefighter watches a prescribed burn proceed near Lytton in 2014. (B.C. Wildfire Management Branch)

Norton, said prescribed burns, forest thinning and Indigenous cultural burning practices are an important piece of fire mitigation that fire managers are deploying more often.

"Prescribed fire is not is not putting something artificial onto the landscape. It's using something that is in fact part of nature, in a controlled way to reduce risks," he said.

"Part of the challenge that we've had in this country over many decades of fire management is a disproportionate emphasis on only fire suppression activities," Norton said.

"All the provinces and territories are increasingly trying to shift focus towards a greater emphasis on preventing human-caused wildfires in the first place, and proactively mitigating risks from fires before they occur."
Collaboration and local expertise

Hanna says it is important to identify institutional barriers that are preventing controlled burns from being done sooner, such as multiple levels of decision making spread across different agencies.

He said that applies to Canada's model of firefighting as well, which has become "very centralized" and "elitist," run by provincial bodies that do not always work as closely as they could with locals.

"I think we have to rediscover the value of local people, their expertise and knowledge. Particularly in parts of rural communities in Canada, remote communities in Canada, where there's a lot of folks who know the land, know how to run machinery, who can work in a collaborative way with forest wildfire services to to be proactive, as well as reactive," he said.

The burned remains of the Scotch Creek & Lee Creek Fire Department and community hall are seen in Scotch Creek, B.C. in September. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)

Those people also have a vested interest in protecting their homes and communities, but getting them on board can sometimes be a last-minute scramble.

"How can you deploy those resources quickly without going through a two-day procurement process or form-filling process? That's very important," Hanna said.

Norton said the federal government has recognized this and is committing more than $800 million to invest and train additional firefighters with a particular focus on Indigenous people, and working to bolster firefighting equipment on reserves.

"Our training funding is targeting a fairly local level," he said.

Five charts to help understand Canada's record-breaking wildfire season
Building on last year's lessons

Daniels said Canada's wildfire response has been strong, as evidenced by a lack of civilian deaths last year despite the massive destruction of property. She worries, however, that our past successes may be "one of our barriers to future adaptation."

The dangers to human life are also becoming evident, with eight firefighters losing their lives fighting wildfires across Canada in 2023.

"The firefighter deaths rocked the wildfire community across the country," Norton said.

Wildfire fighter in B.C. dies on front lines of largest fire in province's history


25-year-old from Ontario identified as wildfire fighter killed in B.C.

Apart from the sheer number and size of fires in 2023, firefighters are dealing with increasingly severe fire behaviour like the proliferation of pyrocumulonimbus clouds, thunderstorms created and driven by the heat of extreme fires that can sometimes create new fires.

But among the challenges, Norton points to some major federal successes. He said Canada brought in more than 5,600 firefighters from 12 other countries to help fight fires in 2023 and signed new agreements to ensure support from other countries moving forward.

The Canadian Forest Service also delivered new wildfire intelligence tactical mapping products to provinces and territories, and in 2023 the U.S. Department of Defense deployed FireGuard, a new high-tech fire detection system, to help Canada battle wildfires using real-time data from drones and satellites to help detect new flareups in remote areas for the first time.

"We had, under incredible pressure, had some quite striking successes that we are working very hard to learn from to be able to reproduce as and when necessary in the future," Norton said.

Flawed snow crab price-setting system needs overhaul soon, FFAW says

CBC
Fri, January 5, 2024 

Fish, Food & Allied Workers president Greg Pretty says his union's members can't afford to fish crab for just $2.20 a pound. 

(Patrick Butler/Radio-Canada - image credit)

Fish, Food & Allied Workers president Greg Pretty says a formula-based pricing system needs to be in place before prices are set for the 2024 season. A report released in November recommended a formula be in place by the end of January. (Patrick Butler/Radio-Canada)

The president of the Fish, Food & Allied Workers union says time is ticking on getting a new formula-based seafood pricing system in place ahead of the 2024 season.

A November report from the province's three-person fish price-setting team submitted to the provincial government said the current seafood price-setting process is flawed and changes need to be made to avoid another tie-up that halted the snow crab industry for six weeks last season.

The report offered nine recommendations, including that a formula-based pricing system be implemented by the end of January.

FFAW president Greg Pretty said that process is underway.

"We have that report now, and both parties are working toward a formula, market-priced formula for 2024," he told CBC News on Thursday.

The price of snow crab sat at $2.60 per pound at the end of last season, up from $2.20 per pound at the beginning of the season.

Pretty said snow crab dropped by about 30 cents per pound in December but has since stabilized. The volatility shows why a formula-based is so necessary, he said.

"When the market is low like it is now, it's extremely important that the shares of the market price are fair and equitable," he said.

"Hopefully that price starts to rise a little bit. But it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination — but again, what we're talking about here in this formula is shared risk. If we can establish that and move forward, that's the key for us."

The processing line has been activated and snow crab is once again being produced at the Quilan Bros. Limited seafood plant in Bay de Verde. Snow crab was at the centre of controversy last season and played a large role in calls for a formula-based pricing model. (Terry Roberts/CBC)

The Association of Seafood Producers, who were at odds with the FFAW during the tie-up last season, is also part of formula negotiations.

As negotiations on collective bargaining and the pricing formula continue, Pretty said, he hopes all parties will move forward smoothly — but added that working with the ASP is "the nature of the beast."

"The formula works, no question about that. So the biggest challenge here is that we're dealing with ASP," he said.

"They're not great at sharing, I understand that, but there's been so much emphasis put on this fishery and rural Newfoundland because of 2023. You know, all parties including the provincial government are hopeful here that we can set on a new path."

Requests by CBC News for an interview with the Association of Seafood Producers were declined.

Meanwhile, Pretty says there are other issues that need to be addressed ahead of the season, like improving employment insurance. Some workers failed to qualify for EI because of the six-week holdout.

"We were promised that something would happen here positively for our members, whether it be harvesters or plant workers, on the EI situation. We were promised that, and all they could come up with was the four weeks [extension]. Well, that's not good enough," he said.

Pretty also said the FFAW will have a leadership election in 2024 but wouldn't say whether he will run for re-election.

Calgary group floods streets with bike traffic once a month


CBC
Fri, January 5, 2024 

Cyclists in Calgary are meeting up on the last Friday of each month for Critical Mass, a group bike ride that's held in cities around the world. (Julie Debeljak/CBC - image credit)

Calgarians are taking to the streets, once a month, in a pack of bikes.

This summer, cyclists got together to ride in a "Critical Mass," a group bicycle movement that's said to have started in San Francisco, but has since been adopted in hundreds of cities around the world.

For some, it's a form of protest, a statement, others just want to get out and celebrate biking as a community.

Alyssa Quinney, one of the organizers, said the turnout in Calgary blew her away. She expected a few of her friends to join in, but more than 100 people rolled up to the meeting point in Sunnyside. The group rolled down 10th Street N.W. and crossed into downtown as cars followed behind.

Riding with the group, compared to riding on her own around the city, is a night and day experience, she said. Despite Calgary's cycle tracks and pathways, Quinney describes commuting around the city, or even taking a leisurely trip, as hostile — with a feeling that she always has to be on guard.

"There's tons of missing links in this city," Quinney said. "It can be a very frustrating time."

Compare that to the last Friday of every month, when Critical Mass participants dress for a leisurely cruise. She says all are welcome, and there are no prerequisites.

It's attracted hundreds of people with their kids and pets. Quinney said even people who typically avoid biking on the road can feel at ease — it levels the playing field.

"We're all there to look out for each other. We go slow enough so that we can chat," Quinney said.

Ringing their bells and waving, the group is a spectacle that's hard to miss, especially for cars trailing behind the mass of bikes. And that's kind of the point Quinney and others are making with the ride. Taking up space, she says, is a reminder that the road isn't just for cars.

City staff are watching what Critical Mass riders have to say.

Investments over the years have moved from the downtown cycle track to a focus on retrofitting roads all over the city to be more inclusive. Jen Malzer, the city's public spaces project development leader, said there's lots of work to do.

"We have a story that Calgary is a car-culture city, but I see a lot more than that," Malzer said.

Cycle track Calgary river path peace bridge May 24, 2018

Calgary has an extensive network of recreational pathways for strolling and biking. (Julie Debeljak/CBC)

Calgary has a huge network of recreational pathways, she points out, and it also has a quality of life that many other major cities would envy.

Over the next four years, she said, the city is investing in new bike and pedestrian corridors, looking at missing links, and improving sketchy crossings.

What that looks like takes many forms, but Malzer said engaged citizens, like those participating in Critical Mass, can help the city zero in on where to invest.

"Community and transportation planners and engineers — a lot of the data that we collect and a lot of the lessons about what's safe and what isn't safe … we learn from the people living there," she said.

Calgary is working toward a safer transportation network, to reduce the number of major injury and fatality collisions by 25 per cent in the next four years.

"We recognize that collisions are going to happen," said Tony Churchill, the city's mobility safety coordinator. "We just want to make sure that nobody's hurt, and cyclists and pedestrians and motorcyclists are all at greater risk of injury."

The City of Calgary wants to create adaptive sidewalks on extra-wide roadways, like this one along 26 Avenue S.W.

The City of Calgary wants to create adaptive sidewalks on extra-wide roadways, like this one along 26th Avenue S.W. (The City of Calgary)

Churchill said that means looking at near-miss and collision data, retrofitting roads, and even changing up signage and traffic signals.

During one of the Critical Mass rides in September, Mayor Jyoti Gondek pedaled along. That's something Quinney hopes to see more of.

"I think it's important for people who make the big decisions in the city to kind of come down to our level and see what it's like to get around," Quinney said.

NOTHING TO SEE HERE

Ontario megachurch's former victim's advocate concerned after role goes to person with ties to denomination

UNAPOLEGETIC MEGA CHRISTIAN CAPITALI$M 

CBC
Fri, January 5, 2024 

The former victim's advocate at The Meeting House, a megachurch in Oakville, Ont., said she left her position after feeling new leadership wasn't as committed to listening to survivors. (Google Maps - image credit)

Warning: This story contains references to sexual assault.

A former victim's advocate who was hired to support the The Meeting House congregation says she feels the Ontario megachurch's current leaders don't have the "same commitment" to survivors as it once did, two years after its primary teaching pastor was charged with sexual assault.

Melodie Bissell started working with the church as an independent contractor in March 2022, after allegations about Bruxy Cavey came forward. Cavey was charged by Hamilton police in June 2022.

Bissell, who is no longer working with the church, said she's worried recent changes to the internal complaint process means those who want or need to come forward are less likely to do so.

Her comments were made after CBC Hamilton reported Cavey was facing two more sexual assault charges in late December 2023.

None of the charges have been tested in court. Cavey's lawyer has said he maintains his innocence and will vigorously defend the charges in court.

The Meeting House is based in Oakville, Ont., with locations and streamed sermons throughout the province.

Church changed 1st point of contact

Bissell said that in 2022, there was initially a "very strong commitment to working alongside the victims."

At least 38 complaints about sexual misconduct against a group of four former pastors, including Cavey, came to Bissell while she was working with the church, between March 2022 and March 2023.

But she told CBC Hamilton she resigned after seeing how new leadership in the church had "different priorities."

For instance, they decided Bissell shouldn't be the first point of contact for survivors, she said. Instead, that person would end up being someone connected to the church's denomination — Be In Christ Church of Canada — and would refer complaints to Bissell as they saw fit.

"I raised the concern that I felt it wasn't independent and they were vetting the referrals," Bissell told CBC Hamilton.

No complaints received since April 2023: church

The Meeting House declined an interview with CBC Hamilton, and interim senior director Matt Miles said in an email the church has "no additional information about the recent charges or criminal proceedings related to Bruxy Cavey, are not involved in the matter and are not in a position to provide any comment."

Miles pointed to the church's website for information about people needing support.

The church's website no longer features a victim advocacy page, as Bissell said it once had, but it does have a page for people toreport sexual misconduct.

It states the church is committed to ensuring congregations are safe and healthy communities without harassment or abuse.

"We are committed to the prevention of sexual misconduct through regular training and appropriate measures of accountability for all staff, leaders and volunteers," the site reads, adding its policy on sexual misconduct and harassment has a prevention and response framework.

"Complaints of sexual misconduct will be treated with integrity fairness, and concern for the well-being of the complainants and those accused."

The page directs people to submit complaints and get in touch with Linda Lambert, described as the "independent complaint intake partner."

Lambert is listed as a pastoral counsellor at the Be In Christ Church in Wainfleet, Ont. When CBC reached Lambert, she declined to comment.

Be In Christ executive director Charles Mashinter previously told CBC Hamilton it takes "matters of clergy sexual misconduct very seriously" and has "no tolerance for pastoral sexual misconduct."

Miles said the church hasn't received any referrals or submissions since switching from having a victim's advocate to the complaint intake partner in April 2023.

In 2022, the church said it "substantiated" three allegations against Cavey and reported at least one allegation, involving a minor, to police.

At the time, Hamilton police said its investigation into Cavey concluded and Halton police wouldn't comment on it if there was an investigation into the allegations. Cavey's lawyer told CBC Hamilton the new charges laid in December were unrelated to his first charge.

Bissell said while there were fewer complaints compared to when she started, she was receiving complaints up until the end of her time in the victim's advocate role.

Canada needs national reporting agency: advocate

Irene Deschênes, president of Outrage Canada, which describes itself as a "a national non-religious" advocacy group seeking to hold churches accountable for sexual abuse by the clergy, said all churches should offer counselling to survivors.

Deschênes, who survived sexual abuse by a Roman Catholic priest in her childhood, noted her group is pushing for a national, independent reporting agency to track and investigate allegations related to churches while also supporting survivors.

"We're not saying people should go to the very institution that harmed them because, potentially, they'll be re-victimized," she told CBC Hamilton.

Irene Deschênes, who survived childhood sexual abuse by a local priest, is president of Outrage Canada. Deschênes says all churches should offer counselling to survivors. (Rebecca Zandbergen/CBC News)

Deschênes, speaking in general terms, said if a church handpicks a victim's advocate, people are right to question if the advocate is acting in a survivor's best interest.

"I think a lot of people in that [victim's advocate] position are and want to be [acting in their best interest] in the beginning … but my experience is in working with different religious institutions, inevitably, that's not what happens."

Bissell said she hopes patrons of The Meeting House will have their voices heard and said all churches should have strong whistleblower policies in place.

"We need to expose sexual harassment, clergy misconduct and abuse."

Support is available for anyone who has been sexually assaulted. You can access crisis lines and local support services through the Ending Violence Association of Canada database. If you're in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911.

Judge apologizes to Saint John men acquitted 40 years after murder conviction

CANADA ABOLISHED THE DEATH PENALTY IN 1963

CBC
Fri, January 5, 2024 

Robert Mailman, left, and Walter Gillespie were acquitted this week of second-degree murder charges that resulted in convictions in 1984. (Graham Thompson/CBC - image credit)

A New Brunswick chief justice has apologized to two Saint John men who spent 40 years wrongly convicted of a murder they didn't commit.

In a written decision issued Friday, Tracey DeWare of the Court of King's Bench said she's been left to believe that "serious mistakes were made" and that a miscarriage of justice occurred in the case of Robert Mailman and Walter Gillespie.

Those mistakes harmed not only Mailman and Gillespie but were also an injustice to the family and friends of George Leeman, who were deprived of answers surrounding the circumstances of his homicide, said DeWare, who had acquitted the men of the murder charges on Thursday.

"The justice system in this case failed Mr. Mailman, Mr. Gillespie and Mr. Leeman," she wrote. "For that, as Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench of New Brunswick, I offer my sincere apology."

Court of Queen's Bench Chief Justice Tracey DeWare is pictured here at her swearing-in ceremony with New Brunswick Court of Appeal Chief Justice Marc Richard.

Court of King's Bench Chief Justice Tracey DeWare apologized to Mailman and Gillespie for the miscarriage of justice they suffered. (Submitted by Tracey DeWare)

Mailman and Gillespie were convicted of second-degree murder in May 1984 for the November 1983 homicide of Leeman.

The two were sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 18 years, and maintained their innocence all throughout.

Following unsuccessful appeals and efforts to get their case reviewed, federal Justice Minister Arif Virani announced last month he was overturning the convictions and granting Mailman and Gillespie new trials. Virani said new information led him to believe "a miscarriage of justice likely occurred."

On Thursday, the two men made their first court appearance since their convictions were overturned.

Crown prosecutor Karen Lee told the court she had no evidence to present against the two men, prompting DeWare to find them not guilty of the charges they first faced 40 years ago.

Jerome Kennedy, lawyer for Mailman and Gillespie, said it's important that DeWare apologized for what the justice system got wrong.

Jerome Kennedy, lawyer for Mailman and Gillespie, says it's important that DeWare apologized for what the justice system got wrong. (Graham Thompson/CBC)

Jerome Kennedy, a lawyer who represented Mailman and Gillespie, said he was pleased to see an apology from DeWare as part of her written decision.

"[DeWare's apology] is very important not only to Mr. Mailman and Mr. Gillespie, but to the administration of justice," said Kennedy, a lawyer with Innocence Canada.

"Anytime we have an eminent jurist like the chief justice saying that, ' apologize,' or 'we apologize on behalf of the system,' that's very important."

Kennedy said that last July, the acquittal of Brian Anderson and Allan Woodhouse of murder in Manitoba prompted an apology from that province's superior court chief justice, as well as the province's attorney general and head of public prosecutions.

It's unclear if the same is planned in New Brunswick.

CBC News has asked the provincial Department of Justice whether Attorney General Ted Flemming plans to apologize for the men's wrongful convictions but has not yet received a response.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M  CARWASH
Ex-Vitol Oil Trader Ran Bribery Scheme From Houston, Prosecutors Say

Patricia Hurtado
Fri, January 5, 2024 



(Bloomberg) -- The first defendant to face trial in a sweeping crackdown on bribery in the commodities-trading industry “orchestrated a money-laundering scheme right here in the US,” prosecutors told a jury in their opening argument against a former Vitol Group manager.

Javier Aguilar is accused of bribing Ecuadorian and Mexican government officials to win more than $500 million in business for Vitol, the world’s largest independent oil-trading firm, from state-owned Petroecuador and Petroleos Mexicanos. US prosecutors allege that he made $870,000 in payments to the officials to get the business.

This is the first major trial of a commodity trader in more than a decade. While the industry has a had a reputation for backhanders and brown envelopes since the days of Marc Rich, few individual commodity traders have been convicted of corruption and even fewer have stood trial. A slew of anti-corruption investigations in the US, the UK, Brazil and Switzerland has yielded at least half a dozen guilty pleas, but Aguilar is the first to stand trial.

The trial promises to turn up new details about what US prosecutors have described as widespread corruption in the oil sector in Ecuador that involved at least six commodity trading houses as well as several state-owned companies in the Middle East and Asia.

Aguilar, who was based in Houston, is charged with three counts of conspiring to violate US laws against bribery and money laundering and could face at least a decade in prison if convicted.

‘Access, Influence or Greed’

“Whether for access, influence or greed, it’s a federal crime to bribe foreign officials for business,” prosecutor Clayton Solomon told the jurors in Brooklyn, New York, on Friday.

Aguilar and alleged co-conspirators used aliases such as Perez Marcos 007 to send emails to intermediaries to pay the bribes and used code words like zapatos, or shoes, to refer to the illegal payments, Solomon told the panel. He said some of the bribes were even made in the parking lot of a Houston-based Pemex business. Aguilar was secretly recorded discussing the scheme, he said.

Solomon told the jurors they would hear from former senior Petroecuador manager Nilsen Arias and consultants Antonio and Enrique Pere. They have pleaded guilty in the fraud and will testify for the government against Aguilar in hopes of leniency at their sentencing.

Aguilar’s lawyer, William Price, told the jury in his own opening that his client was framed by his former Vitol superior, Marc Ducrest, who pinned the blame for the fraud on an innocent Aguilar.

Ducrest, who hasn’t been charged with wrongdoing, couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Aguilar a Scapegoat

“They decided to point the finger at Mr. Aguilar and say he was responsible for it,” Price told the jury. “But Mr. Aguilar had nothing to do with it.”

Price argued it’s a common practice to hire consultants in Latin America and said Aguilar believed they were legitimately facilitating contracts.

“Mr. Pere and his brother had a self-contained criminal enterprise,” Price said. “They basically bribed government officials so they could get results, so they could get the business.”

Prosecutors allege that Aguilar wired money to domestic and offshore bank accounts through a network of shell companies controlled by the co-conspirators. The payments, many of them processed through US-based banks, helped Vitol retain business related to Petroecuador and Mexico’s state oil giant, Pemex, according to the US. Aguilar also faces federal charges in Texas related to Pemex.

Aguilar was indicted in 2020. His trial was delayed by the pandemic, which shut down US courts.

As part of a deferred-prosecution agreement with the US, Vitol admitted that between 2005 and 2014 it and co-conspirators paid more than $8 million in bribes to four officials of Brazilian energy company Petrobras to get confidential pricing information. Separately, it said it tried to manipulate benchmarks for fuel oil prices, according to the agreement.

Vitol’s Americas division has also been a focus of the Brazilian “Carwash” corruption and money-laundering investigation that toppled some of that country’s leading business executives and political leaders. A former Petrobras oil trader who went by the code name Phil Collins told a Brazilian judge in 2019 that he received bribes from the trading house to favor the firm in contracts from 2003 to 2005.

The case is US v. Aguilar, 20-cr-390, US District Court, Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn).

--With assistance from Archie Hunter, Jack Farchy and Stephan Kueffner.

(Updates with historical context in third paragraph)

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

Yellen Declares US Economy Has Achieved Soft Landing




Christopher Condon
Fri, January 5, 2024 

(Bloomberg) -- Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen declared Friday the US economy had achieved a long-sought soft landing, a historically unusual event in which high inflation is tamed without significantly damaging the labor market.

“What we’re seeing now I think we can describe as a soft landing, and my hope is that it will continue,” Yellen said Friday in an interview with CNN.

Government figures out earlier Friday showed job gains and wage increases in December both exceeded expectations, with payrolls climbing 216,000. The report, which suggested continued upside risk for inflation, prompted investors to trim bets that the Federal Reserve would begin cutting rates in March.

Yellen zeroed in on the latest wage data, which showed average hourly earnings rose 4.1% in the year through December. Given consumer inflation for the year is projected by economists to come in at 3.2%, that would mean wages exceeded price growth in 2023.

“Wage increases are running over price increases now,” she said. “American workers are getting ahead and the progress for the middle-income families is very noticeable.”

Yellen declined to comment on how she thought the Fed should proceed but said the central bank had handled monetary policy well.

“The path the labor market and economy and inflation have followed suggests they’ve made a set of good decisions,” Yellen said.

For two years the Treasury chief consistently rejected the gloomiest predictions for the US economy even as the central bank pursued an aggressive rate-hiking campaign through much of 2022 and 2023. While never ruling out a recession altogether, she repeatedly said she saw a “path” to a so-called soft landing.

In recent weeks Yellen has been on something like a victory lap. In December she said economists who predicted recession were now “eating their words,” and she repeated her critique Friday.

“There has been a lot of pessimism about the economy that’s really proven unwarranted,” she said. “A year ago, most forecasters believe we would fall into a recession. Obviously, that hasn’t happened.”

Bloomberg Businessweek

Summers Urges CEOs to Reject Trump, Calling Election Most Vital Since WWII

Christopher Anstey
Fri, January 5, 2024

Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers 

(Bloomberg) -- Former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers called on US business leaders to set aside their concerns over the excesses of the Biden administration’s progressive policies and to recognize the historic dangers of another presidential term for Donald Trump.

“This is probably the most consequential presidential election since the Second World War,” Summers said on Bloomberg Television’s Wall Street Week with David Westin. Among things under threat in the case of a Trump win in November are “prospects with respect to basic justice and rights including the ability to make and enforce contracts in the United States,” and the ability of companies, universities and other institutions to “function autonomously,” he said.

While financial markets performed well during Trump’s first term, Summers said history shows things change as the duration of a populist leader’s time in power extends. Markets also responded well during Benito Mussolini’s first few years in office in Italy, as did Argentina’s economy initially under Juan Perón, he said. But both ended with “a great deal crashing down,” he said.

Summers, a Harvard University professor and paid contributor to Bloomberg TV, made a “plea to my friends in the business community” with regard to this year’s election.

“I understand some of your concerns about overly progressive, overly government-interventionist policies of the Biden administration — in many cases, I share some of those concerns,” he said. “But that is a very different thing than undercutting the entire framework within which the United States and its business community have operated for all of our lifetimes.”

Different Tone

The former Treasury chief drew a distinction between the Trump’s 2017-21 term and what the Republican has signaled if he defeats Joe Biden. Advisers last time were “drawn from the mainstream” of the GOP, including former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, he said. But Trump has this time been using “extreme rhetoric” and has surrounded himself with “figures committed to tearing down the establishment.”

Overseas, the likelihood is that US allies and others would view Trump’s first term, and the rejection of legitimate electoral results in the 2020 vote that culminated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol as not an “aberration,” Summers said.

A Trump victory would “represent a loss of the moral authority that the United States has had since it won the Cold War, since it won the Second World War — and that will make for a much less stable world,” he said.

As for Biden, Summers said that there were “costly misjudgments” with regard to fiscal stimulus in 2021, and “there have been excesses on industrial policy,” but overall the administration has pursued “a sound activist approach to economic policy.”

Haley, Christie

With the Republican contest for the presidential nomination only just starting, Summers also said that “I would not be speaking anything at all like this” were Nikki Haley or Chris Christie the GOP front-runner.

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CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M

The CEO of failed crypto firm HyperVerse boasted an extraordinary résumé. He may be completely made-up


Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
Fri, January 5, 2024 

The CEO of Australian crypto outfit HyperVerse is a graduate of Cambridge, an alumnus of Goldman Sachs, and an entrepreneur who sold a company to Adobe. But there's just one problem: He may not be real.

Steven Reece Lewis was introduced during an online global launch for the company in 2021 and appeared in multiple videos published by HyperVerse, according to an investigation by the Guardian. But after scrutinizing further, the outlet found that Cambridge, Goldman, and Adobe had zero evidence of interacting with Lewis.

Lewis apparently doesn't have a LinkedIn account, with his online presence limited to HyperVerse marketing materials and a now inactive X account created one month before he appeared in that 2021 launch video.

The HyperVerse website featured video endorsements of Lewis from celebrities such as actor and martial artist Chuck Norris, Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak, and boy band singer Lance Bass, although the Guardian suggests these endorsements may have been purchased on the personalized video website Cameo. Norris, Wozniak, and Bass likely weren't aware of the company’s intentions when making the videos and are not suspected of any wrongdoing.

HyperVerse collected about $1.3 billion in 2022, the most that year of any alleged crypto scam, according to a report by the blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.

The company was associated with Australian entrepreneur Sam Lee and his business partner Ryan Xu, who previously founded the failed Australian Bitcoin company Blockchain Global. In 2021, Blockchain Global went into voluntary administration (similar to bankruptcy in the U.S.), owing creditors around $58 million.

Lee has said previously that he is not the founder of HyperVerse, although he maintains it was not a scam. Lee and Xu were referred to Australia’s securities and investments regulator for possible breaches of Australian law, but the agency has said it does not intend to take action against them at this time, the Guardian reported.

After doubt was cast on Lewis’s identity, many people took to social media to poke fun at the company and tout the incident as the latest example of dishonesty within the crypto industry.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com