From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe: sexual abuse allegations in football around the world


Over the past few years, allegations of abuse have been reported from a number of countries and there is a sense that this is just the beginning

 

Photograph: leolintang/Getty Images/iStockphoto


Ed Aarons, Romain Molina and Suzanne Wrack
Sat 5 Mar 2022 

Below is a list of countries where allegations of sexual abuse have been reported in the past few years. Not all of the accusations have been tested through investigations.

Afghanistan

Allegations: Afghanistan football federation president Keramuudin Karim was accused of physically and sexually abusing several young female players from the national team.

Status: Banned for life from all football-related activity and fined one million Swiss francs by Fifa in June 2019.

Argentina

Allegations: In May 2021, a number of high-profile female footballers in Argentina claimed they had been bullied and sexual harassed by a youth-team coach working for the country’s Football Association to Fifa.

Status: The result of a Fifa investigation is pending.

Australia

Lisa De Vanna. Photograph: Molly Darlington/AMA/Getty Images

Allegations: The former Matildas captain Lisa De Vanna said in early October 2021 that she had been the victim of sexual assault, harassment and bullying throughout her career with Rhali Dobson, another former W-League player, also stating that she had suffered abuse.

Status: On 22 October Sport Integrity Australia and Football Australia launched “an independent complaints and reports handling, investigation, and disciplinary framework”. They received submissions until the end of January, 2022, but have not yet published the findings.

Barbados

Allegations: Former technical director Ahmed Mohamed was accused of misconduct towards a senior female player in February 2021. A group of 27 senior players wrote to the BFA’s president demanding he was removed. Mohamed did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian.

Status: Mohamed left his post for “family reasons” and is now director of football in St Kitts. Fifa has said it will request more details about the appointment, while the Concacaf confederation has expressed its “extreme surprise and concern” that the St Kitts and Nevis Football Association claimed it consulted Concacaf over his appointment.

Canada

Allegations: Multiple allegations of sexual assault and harrassment were made in October 2019 against the former Vancouver Whitecaps and Canada Women Under-20 coach Bob Birarda and he was arrested in 2020, charged with six counts of sexual exploitation, two counts of sexual assault, and one count of child luring over a 20-year period between 1988 and 2008.

Status: Last month, Birarda pleaded guilty to four charges of sexual offence, including three counts of sexual assault and one count of sexual touching while in a position of authority. He will be sentenced later this year.

Colombia

Allegations: In June 2020, Carolina Rosa – the former physio for the Colombia Under-17 women’s team – claimed she was sexually abused at the hands of the coach Didier Luna.

Status: Luna agreed a plea deal with the prosecutor’s office in June 2020 that meant he avoided prison by agreeing to a reduced charge of ‘injuria’, essentially an admission of occasional, one-off harassment.

Comoros

Allegations: Accusations of past sexual abuse by the coach Youssouf Ahamada Bachirou, from several players, including from the former Comoros international Khaled Simba, who spoke to Norwegian magazine Josimar and posted a video of his alleged experienced in January 2022. Bachirou has denied the allegations.

Status: The alleged offences were reported to local police, who opened an investigation in January.

Ecuador

Allegations: In 2019 Luis Pescarolo, the coach of Ecuador’s senior women’s team, was accused of sending a player “provocative messages”, including a request to engage in sexual activity. Pescarolo said the accusations “were false” and “insults towards the coaching staff”.

Status: Pescarolo was sacked in April 2019.

Gabon

Serge Mombo

Allegations: Patrick Assoumou Eyi – known as “Capello” – has been accused of abusing boys in his previous role as the head coach of Gabon’s under-17 team. Serge Mombo, a leading football official in the country, has also been accused of sexually abusing young players and demanding sex as a condition of them securing places in national teams. Both deny the allegations.

Status: Eyi and two other coaches facing charges including attempted rape on minors and endangering the life of another. Serge Mombo was arrested over the allegations on his return from the Africa Cup of Nations in January 2022.

Haiti

Allegations: In 2020, there were accusations of systematic abuse of minors at the National Football centre by the president, Yves Jean-Bart, and other officials including head of referees, Rosnick Grant.

Status: Jean-Bart (2020) and Grant (2021) were banned from all football-related activities for life by Fifa.

Malawi

Allegations: In August 2021, the international footballer Tabitha Chawinga called on Malawi’s football authorities to introduce safeguards to protect women from abuse at all levels of the game. She claimed she had been forced to strip in public in 2009 and in 2010 to prove she was female and was regularly trolled on social media about her looks.

Status: One of her clubs, DD Sunshine, said they lodged a complaint at the time with the Football Association of Malawi but did not get a response. Alfred Gunda, general secretary of the Football Association of Malawi who was not at the organisation when the complaint was made by Chawinga’s club, said in August 2021: “What happened is not right and we cannot condone it and that’s why we encourage that officials … that any incidents that happen are reported and the right measures are taken so that we protect our girls.”

Mongolia

Allegations: The youth coach Uchralsaikhan Buuveibaatar was accused of sexually harassing and physically assaulting young players from girls’ Under-15 team during the East Asian Football Festival in South Korea in 2019. He denies committing “sexual crimes”.

Status: Buuveibaatar was first suspended from all football-related activities in August 2019 by the Mongolian Football Federation’s disciplinary body, which reported the matter three months later to the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). The AFC told the Guardian that Buuveibaatar’s “sanction was extended worldwide by Fifa in August 2021” but football’s world governing body failed to announce it publicly.

Netherlands

Allegations: In 2021, a youth coach was accused of forcing his underage players to have sex with women he exploited. Separately, the former Vitesse Arnhem youth player Renald Majoor said he was sexually abused by a coach at the club when he was a youth player at the club (1996).


The world’s game, a global scandal: the struggle to be heard in football’s sexual abuse crisis

Status: The youth coach forcing his players into having sex with the women he exploited was sentenced to three years in prison in December 2021 for human trafficking, possessing and making child pornography, and exploiting young, vulnerable women. The coach at Vitesse, who died in 2011, was suspended by the club, according to Dutch newspaper Volskrant.

Sierra Leone

Allegations: In October 2021 the head coach of Sierra Leone’s women’s football team Abdulai Bah was suspended with immediate effect over allegations of “professional misconduct”. The decision came a few days after the SLFA said it would investigate allegations of sexual harassment and intimidation of players in its women’s national teams. Bah has dismissed the allegations against him as “completely untrue and unfounded”.

Status: Bah has stepped aside pending investigations. The SLFA opened an investigation but there have been no recent updates.

United Kingdom

Allegations: Former players from Crewe and Manchester City accused former coach Barry Bennell of multiple counts of sexual abuse. Several more youth players from the 1970s and 1980s came forward to allege similar abuse at other clubs.

Status: In 2021, the Football Association, Premier League and leading clubs issued formal apologies after a landmark inquiry said that generations of young footballers suffered horrific sexual abuse because of the wholesale absence of child protection policies, ignorance and naivety. Bennell is serving a 34-year jail term after being convicted on five separate occasions of child sexual abuse offences against 22 boys.

United States

Sinead Farrelly. Photograph: Rich Barnes/Getty Images

Allegations: In 2021, the North Carolina Courage coach Paul Riley was accused of alleged sexual harassment of the players Sinead Farrelly and Meleana Shim. Riley has denied the allegations.

Status: Riley was sacked by the club and Fifa and US Soccer opened investigations.

Venezuela

Allegations: Twenty-four Venezuela internationals signed a letter in October 2021 accusing their former coach Kenneth Zseremeta of psychological and sexual abuse, and harassment over sexual orientation. He has denied the accusations.

Status: The Venezuelan football federation said it has asked Fifa, Conmebol and Concacaf to investigate and the country’s public prosecutor has opened an investigation.

Zimbabwe

Allegations: Two female referees accused Zifa’s referees committee secretary general, Obert Zhoya and its chairman, Bryton Malandule of sexual harassment in September 2020. Malandule told the Guardian: “I am sure that you appreciate that when issues are before judicial bodies, one cannot comment as per the sub judice rule.” while Zhoya did not respond to the Guardian’s request to comment.

Status: The allegations are being investigated by the police in Zimbabwe. Both men remain in their positions while neither referee has officiated since making the allegations.

OPINION
Of race and war: What the crisis in Ukraine tells us about ourselves

Let’s extend the empathy we have for Ukrainians to the victims of other conflicts.

Families make their way from the main train terminal in Lviv 

| Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

BY YUSAF H. AKBAR AND MACIEJ KISILOWSKI

POLITICO
March 5, 2022
Yusaf H. Akbar is an associate professor in international strategy 

Maciej Kisilowski is an associate professor of law and strategy, both at Central European University.

VIENNA — Earlier this week, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution demanding Russia’s withdrawal from Ukraine. Apart from Russia and its closest allies, virtually all of the 52 countries that did not support the resolution are from the Global South.

A lot has already been said about the commercial and military considerations surrounding the lukewarm support for Ukraine from India and Africa through to South America. But our very understanding of the war in Ukraine — “the largest war in Europe since World War II” — and the urgent nature of the policy response to it, also have deeply racialized underpinnings.

Take, for example, CBS News’ Charlie d’Agata, who last week contrasted “civilized” Ukrainian refugees with those coming from “places, with all due respect, like Iraq and Afghanistan.” Following an outcry, after similar statements made by other white correspondents also surfaced, d’Agata apologized. “I spoke in a way I regret,” he wrote. Alas, it is not really about the way d’Agata spoke.

The response shown by European countries seems to relay a similar understanding: In 2015, a million refugees from the war-torn Middle East were harassed in countries like Hungary, Denmark and Britain, their numbers deemed “unsustainable.” Today, Europe has opened the door to a similar number of Ukrainian refugees in just one week. Denmark was even eager to announce it would not apply its controversial “jewelry law” — which allows the government to seize valuables from migrants in order to pay for their stay — to Ukrainian refugees.

Every war is an affront to humanity, no matter where it unfolds. But it is nonsensical to argue, as the historian Yuval Noah Harari has, that Russian aggression constitutes some tectonic shift from a supposedly peaceful world in which “being invaded and conquered by the neighbors has become almost inconceivable.”

To begin with, the scale of the Ukrainian tragedy does not, unfortunately, make it unique among recent conflicts. We are obviously still very early on in what can become an astonishingly bloody war and occupation, and civilian casualties have likely reached thousands already — a shocking number. But equally shocking is the more than 377,000 Yemenis who, according to the U.N. Development Programme, perished as a result of a war that has notable similarities to that in Ukraine — a proxy war concerning the regional balance of power.

The United States’ war in Iraq also comes to mind. It resulted in 400,000 to 700,000 “excess deaths,” according to studies. Of course, taking out Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime is in no way morally comparable to attacking the government of Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who secured a landslide victory in a free and fair election. But both tragedies were badly miscalculated wars of choice conducted in violation of the U.N. Charter, and were undertaken by a nuclear power in order to install a friendly government.

Arguments depicting the Russian invasion as unprecedented due to the uniquely developed “pro-Western” nature that distinguishes Ukraine from some “third-world countries” is also flawed. To be sure, since the ousting of their last authoritarian strongman in 2014, Ukrainians made enormous strides to build a less corrupt and more democratic nation. But even before the war, Ukraine was a middle-income developing economy. Its 2020 per capita GDP, adjusted for purchasing power, was lower than that of Botswana or South Africa.

Ukraine’s democracy was, likewise, more fragile than that of many African or South American nations. Since the 2014 revolution, the country has experienced only one peaceful transfer of power. And troublingly, its former president, Petro Poroshenko, who lost his reelection bid to Zelenskyy is facing criminal charges, even if he has been allowed to remain free while the case is investigated.

Finally, seeing this war as unique because of Ukraine’s geographic location does not fully stand up to scrutiny either. Even in Europe, we have recently witnessed large, bloody wars that killed thousands: In 1999, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rise to the presidency was paved by a brutal invasion of Chechnya, involving about 80,000 Russian troops and costing more than 50,000 lives. And let us also remember the three-year Serbian siege of Srebrenica in which more than 9,000 Bosniaks perished. Neither led to talk of a fundamental reorientation of European security.

All in all, it is hard not to see the impassioned tone of the current narrative and the boldness of the West’s response as signs of special — if belated — empathy, afforded by Europeans and North Americans to people who look like (most of) us and live close to us.

But aggressive behavior weakens global rules regardless of the skin color, creed or geographic location of its victims. Russia tested the liberal international order with the Chechen war, followed by the 2008 invasion of Georgia and the bloody Syria intervention – all of which were launched in theaters “peripheral” to a white European perspective. Just as the Iraq war and the parallel torture campaign instituted by the U.S. also deteriorated the global rulebook.

All of this together is what paved the way for the current tragedy.

Our solution is not to care less about Ukraine — rather we should be more attentive to security threats and war in other parts of the world. Indeed, one of the most powerful rebukes of Russian imperialism during last week’s U.N. Security Council session came from Dr. Martin Kimani, Kenya’s permanent representative to the U.N., who compared the plight of Ukrainians with the struggles of other post-colonial nations.


And only if we similarly broaden our consideration to include the peace and security of all nations can we count on broad support and cooperation in times of crisis.

Safe passage and access for humanitarian aid must be a right not a privilege in Ukraine

A part of the city of Mariupol severely damaged by the war. Ukraine, 3 March 2022.

© MSF

Project Update5 March 2022

Following the soul-wrenching reports we received from trapped Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff in Mariupol, Ukraine, we are closely following the ongoing reports about an agreement for safe passage of civilians this weekend.

It is vital that such opportunities for civilians to escape from areas of violent warfare are not one-off and time-limited offers. At MSF, we know how dangerous this can be for civilians who are not able or willing to leave, including medical staff that choose to remain to take care of sick and wounded people.

“Every situation is different, but in our decades of experience working in situations of war we know that one-off humanitarian corridors can be helpful, but are not enough,” says Stephen Cornish, General Director of MSF. “Several times we have witnessed civilians encouraged to leave through time-bound civilian evacuation corridors, and then… those who could not or would not flee were met with extraordinary and indiscriminate violence unleashed on everyone and everything left behind.”

“As a result, many people were killed or maimed, including many medical staff and other civilians,” says Cornish.

In our decades of experience working in situations of war we know that one-off humanitarian corridors can be helpful, but are not enough.

STEPHEN CORNISH, GENERAL DIRECTOR OF MSFSHARE

We call for the rules of war to be observed by all the military fighting in this war in Ukraine; to take all precautions to avoid harming civilians and to consider civilians as civilians at all times and in all places in the country. Safe passage for those willing and able to escape should be urgently assured in Mariupol and across war-affected areas inside Ukraine, regardless of the existence of humanitarian corridors or ceasefires that may temporarily be put in be in place.

For those that stay behind, they cannot lose their civilian status; the warring parties must do all in their power to prevent harm to civilians at all times, in all places.

MSF supports any kind of ceasefire initiative that allows safer passage for those wanting to flee and for medical and other humanitarian assistance to enter. But the right to seek safety and access for humanitarian aid should be an obligation and not a privilege everywhere in Ukraine.

Australian Retirement Funds Start Dumping Russian Assets Over Ukraine Invasion

March 05, 2022
Phil Mercer

The sails of the Sydney Opera House are illuminated with the colors of the Ukrainian national flag as members of the Australian Ukrainian community and supporters participate in a rally against Russia's invasion of Ukraine, in Sydney, March 1, 2022.

SYDNEY —

Some Australian finance firms have started to divest Russian assets in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Australian government Thursday urged the country’s $2.5 trillion pension industry to reassess its Russian holdings after the invasion.

In addition, Russia’s Ukraine invasion has prompted several Australian companies to cut ties with Russia by selling assets or stopping operations.

Australia said Thursday it “strongly expected” the nation’s pension funds, known as superannuation, or retirement funds, to review their investment portfolios and to divest any holdings in Russian assets.

Australia's $150 billion sovereign wealth fund, set up in 2006 to benefit future generations, said it planned to reduce its exposure to Russian-listed companies.

Russian assets are a very small proportion of Australia's retirement funds. Nevertheless, Jane Hume, the Treasury’s superannuation minister, told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. that cutting those financial ties to Russia would still be significant.

“Maybe it is small as a percentage but it is a 3.5 trillion [Australian] dollar industry. Even if you only held half of 1%, of your assets in Russia, that could equate to billions of dollars -- over 17 billion [Australian] dollars. That is a significant amount of capital that is invested in Russia,” Hume said.

Australia has also imposed sanctions on Russian oligarchs and politicians, including more than 300 members of the Russian parliament.

Australia has also imposed technology penalties on Russia, including export bans on goods used in weapons production and oil and gas exploration.

On Tuesday, Australia said it would spend $50 million to buy missiles and ammunition to support Ukraine.

Chile creates national park to save glaciers

By AFP
Published March 5, 2022

Chile's new National Glacier Park will cover 75,000 hectares of Andes mountain land about 60 km (40 miles) from the capital Santiago - Copyright AFP Sameer Al-DOUMY

Chile said Saturday it is creating a vast national park to protect hundreds of glaciers that are melting due to climate change.

The new National Glacier Park will cover 75,000 hectares of Andes mountain land about 60 kilometers (40 miles) from the capital Santiago, President Sebastian Pinera said at a ceremony announcing its creation.

“We are managing to protect 368 glaciers,” the president said.

These masses of permanent ice hold 32 times more water than a reservoir that serves the capital city’s seven million people, the president added.

A recent study by the University of Chile said glaciers in the central part of the country, which includes the new park, are shrinking due to global warming.

Pinera said establishing the park is “a fundamental step that our country is taking to combat the destruction of nature.”

It will also help preserve flora native to mountain terrain and animals likes pumas and foxes.

Chile is among the world’s top 10 countries as measured by glacier surface area, the government says. Others include Canada, the United States, China and Russia.

Brace for More Russian Plot Twists, Geopolitical Strategist Says

Vildana Hajric and Michael P. Regan, Bloomberg 

(Bloomberg) -- When assessing what a political leader is going to do, Marko Papic doesn’t give much weight to the person’s desires. Rather, he looks at what he calls “material constraints.” In other words, what factors will limit the leader’s ability to get what he or she wants.

To Papic, chief strategist at hedge-fund seeding firm Clocktower Group, Russia’s Vladimir Putin is ignoring material constraints in his assault on Ukraine. And ultimately, he says, that could lead to the leader’s downfall. 

Papic, the author of “Geopolitical Alpha: An Investment Framework for Predicting the Future,” joined the “What Goes Up” podcast to discuss these topics and more. 

As far as the war’s effects on the economy and markets, Papic says the U.S. is in a better position to weather higher energy costs than Europe. While uncertain about how central banks, bonds and stocks will react, he adds: “I just know that I like commodities in that world.”

Below are condensed and lightly edited highlights of the conversation. Click here to listen to the full show and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen.

Q: You -- and many others -- had assigned a low probability of a full-blown invasion. What did everyone get wrong? 

A: My framework is based on material constraints to policy makers, and I call it a framework on purpose. It’s not a theory, it’s not a method -- it’s a framework that allows investors to have some sort of a set of probabilities. And in this particular case, what’s interesting is that the set of constraints that I elucidated in my research is absolutely acting itself out. It’s manifesting in reality as we speak. And it’s manifesting itself in a couple of ways. Ukrainians are fighting really, really hard. The second is that the Russian military has not had any experience fighting real wars. And third is that Ukraine a very logistically difficult place to invade. 

So those constraints are manifesting themselves. What I’m saying is it’s still very, very valuable to be focused on the material reality because if a policy maker you’re trying to predict ignores the constraints you laid out, then you were right in how you laid it out. Then you can chart a path forward once they have surprised you with their decision-making. 

Now, why did we all get it wrong? What we misunderstood is two things: one, Putin’s ROI on geopolitical events has been very high. He’s been very, very cautious empirically. I can prove this with his previous actions. And the second is that it’s not clear that we did get it wrong. And what I mean by that is that there is still an off-ramp where this becomes a Georgia 2008 scenario, where in that initial stage of the attack it looks like a wide occupation in an attack against the entire country. But it’s actually going to end up being much more limited, where he withdraws from a lot of the areas and focuses on what he wants. And so that’s something that I would just add -- let’s see how this plays out, especially as pain continues to be exerted on the Russian military, Russian economy and politics.

Q: Can you lay out some theories for why the invasion happened in the first place?

A: To me, the fundamental issue here is that Russian policy over hundreds of years has been colored by deep paranoia of vulnerability. And it’s really born out of history, which is bloody -- many, many, many people and leaders have tried to conquer Russia and knock it out. And the second is a really vulnerable geographical position. This is imprinted on Russian psyche -- especially if you come to rule Russia, you come to learn the lessons of its history, which is that leaders who took geographical insecurity of Russia lightly are not remembered with glory. And so those that take it seriously, they try to secure Russia. 

And the biggest problem right now for Russia is that when you look at its Western borders, the fact of the matter is that it’s vulnerable, it’s exposed. And so Putin has tried to explain this to the West for a very long time. I do think the West didn’t really listen to it seriously. And what you saw over the last 12 months, especially, is a ramping up in rhetoric -- not so much from Paris and Berlin, but specifically from Washington D.C., on Ukrainian membership in NATO. Now listen, I’m not here to tell you that this is America’s fault -- Putin is crossing an international border. He didn’t have to do that. But the rhetoric out of the U.S. has been much more stringent. The U.S. sent lethal weapons to Ukraine. And there were things the U.S. has said that were really interesting -- for example, territorial disputes between Ukraine and Russia do not preclude Ukraine’s membership to NATO. That’s something the White House said recently. And the truth is of course it does.

The point is that the U.S. was just kind of writing checks it doesn’t have any intention of cashing. And I think Putin called America’s bluff. And what I think he’s doing, though, is I don’t think that the Kremlin is trying to annex Ukraine. We can talk about how ludicrous that would be. And this is where my point of material constraints really hits in. I think what he’s trying to signal to Kyiv in stark terms is how alone they really are and how no one’s coming to save them. And that’s something that President Zelenskiy said at the very onset of the war...I’m paraphrasing, but he basically said, look, no one’s coming to save us. There is no NATO membership on offer. We do need to offer Russian neutrality. I think that’s an off-ramp that Putin could take to actually declare victory, raise the mission-accomplished banner and move on.

Q: Could the sanctions so far be enough to influence Putin’s behavior or even topple him?

A: I give Putin 12 months and I’m taking the under. When policy makers make extraordinarily bad decisions that ignore their material constraints, they get punished. I’ve been following this kind of stuff since I was 16 years old. I’m just a guy sitting on Santa Monica beach, doing my research for investors, and I called the material constraints to Russia perfectly. So how the heck did Vladimir Putin not do the same? 

That is an egregious, egregious mistake by a policy maker. And I mean that objectively -- I’m not even mentioning the civilian deaths and the pariah status for Russia. Leave that aside. The 40-mile convoy -- that’s not a sign of Russian power. That’s a sign of Russian weakness. They can’t move that thing. If you are a country with a modicum of look-down capability for your air force, if you have fighter jets that can shoot down, which is rare, but if you have them, right now the message you’re getting from this conflict is you can defeat 250,000 Russians in a war. Belgium can defeat Russia in a war right now. And so that’s why I’m so adamant that this mistake will be punished -- not by a coup, not by something, but it will be punished by the material reality. 

Don’t confuse madness, temporary madness with permanent lunacy. And so I do think that the constraints are going to act over the next couple of weeks, and at some point I think there is an off-ramp. Now, am I sanguine on the markets because of that? No. I do think that this conflict could be different than others. And I do think there’s still considerable downside risk. 

Q: Is Russia uninvestable for the rest of the world for the rest of our lifetimes?

A: If you have some sort of a change in tact in your relationship with the West, of course I do think that there will be a potential to invest in Russia. The problem is that from here to there, we could have appropriation. So should you buy Russian equities now given this kind of hope that there is some sort of a change in leadership or Putin’s retirement? I don’t think so. This is a very volatile situation. 

I would actually propose a different view. I actually think that what’s happening in Ukraine is extremely, obviously, terrifying, but also heartening. We are watching something we haven’t seen in a long time -- we’re watching the birth of a new national identity. Ukraine’s biggest challenge has been that post the Soviet Union collapse, its leaders have been corrupt. They’ve been incompetent and not just pro-Russian ones. The point is that what we’re seeing now in Ukraine, though, is a birth of a truly self-aware nation. And I think that that might be actually a very interesting investment opportunity over the next decade, provided that they fight off this attack and have some independence going forward. It’s a large country, it is in Europe, and a lot of potential exists in that country.

Q: How does the war impact growth prospects in the U.S. and Europe?

A: That’s the number one question with the folks that I talk to on a daily basis, whether they’re institutional investors like large pension funds or hedge funds. My view is that I worry about the Yom Kippur scenario -- that’s a nightmare scenario. Think about why this is so difficult. If the Fed just says, look, we’re going to deal with inflation, we get a recession. OK. If the Fed says eh, it’s caused by Putin, so we’re going to step back. OK, what does that do to asset prices? Well, I’m not sure that’s positive for asset prices either. Inflation is basically un-anchored and central banks lose credibility. 

The European Central Bank really has only one mandate, and they’re now backing off from that mandate. What does that do to the bond market? What does that do to equities? I don’t know. I just know that I like commodities in that world. But in terms of the actual impact, there are differentiated impacts. Obviously Europe is going to be far more affected by what’s going on in Ukraine than the U.S. The U.S. has a couple of things going for it. Net worth in the U.S. is so high right now because of the stimulus checks. If you plot oil prices relative to net worth, they’re like the lowest they’ve ever been. So Americans do have the ability to incur higher costs. 

And then on top of that, you have something else that’s interesting. We just went through two years of working from home. Our ways of life and work have altered. And it’s not clear to me that an increase in oil prices would necessarily impact the American economy as it has in the past. So the whole idea that a 10% increase in oil prices impacts the GDP at a certain percent -- we should throw all of that out the window. We don’t know. In the U.S., the impact will be much, much lower, which also explains the geopolitical position of the U.S. The impact to Europe is much higher. The U.S. can be much more Machiavellian, much meaner to Russia and supportive of Ukraine because the macroeconomic implications are lower.

This was just the highlights. Click here to listen to the entire podcast.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

How a Malaysian Utility Is Trying to Stop Illegal Bitcoin Mining

Yantoultra Ngui, Bloomberg News

A novelty Bitcoin arranged in Sydney, Australia, on Friday, March 4, 2022. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rose earlier in the week on the expectation that they might gain traction during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The advance was then stymied by concern about the effect of international sanctions against Russia. Photographer: Brent Lewin/Bloomberg , Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Power theft in Malaysia for cryptocurrency mining is a problem that’s growing quickly. But the national utility has a few ideas of how to tamp down the practice.

Tenaga Nasional Bhd. has proposed a special tariff for Bitcoin mining operators in a move to fight electricity theft, its top executive said on Thursday. It has also proposed that the Energy Commission encourage Bitcoin mining operators to apply for legal electricity supply.

Tenaga, which counts Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund Khazanah Nasional Bhd. as its largest shareholder, is seeing an increasing number of cases where electricity is used to mine the cryptocurrency illegally -- and expects the tally to continue to grow, President and Chief Executive Officer Baharin Din said in an interview.

Crypto mining, an often energy-intensive computing process via which Bitcoin and other tokens are created, has grown rampantly across the globe as digital assets increased exponentially in value. While there are some efforts to make the process greener, it’s regarded in many situations as environmentally unfriendly.

In Malaysia, crypto mining itself isn’t illegal. But some miners steal electricity, for instance by tampering with meter installation or bypassing the meter and gaining an illegal connection. Cases of electricity theft involving illegal Bitcoin mining operators surged to 7,209 in 2021 from 610 in 2018, according to Tenaga.

“The irresponsible perpetrators are doing it at the expense of the security and reliability of supply for the public at large,” Baharin said. Unauthorized electricity connections can also be fire hazards, he added.

Finding Partners

Tenaga has been working with the Malaysia’s anti-graft agency, the police, the Energy Commission and the local councils to nab power thieves, especially among Bitcoin miners. A total of 18 individuals have been arrested with an estimated electricity theft valued at 2.3 billion ringgit ($550 million) from 2018 to 2021, according to Baharin.

Technology can help too, Paul Lim Pay Chuan, managing director and group chief executive officer of Malaysian electrical power technology company Pestech International Bhd., told Bloomberg.

“Implementation of the likes of smart metering, meter data management systems, analytic software and digital power quality products will greatly enhance the availability of critical power demand and supply information,” he said. “That may give the utility such up-to-date data for greater monitoring, planning, and control over the entire eco-system -- which includes prevention of power theft.”

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

War in Ukraine Overshadows Energy Transition as Oil CEOs Gather

Paul Takahashi, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- Oil executives will be pressed on what they can do about crude’s war-driven rally to almost $120 a barrel when they gather in Houston next week for one of the world’s most-influential energy conferences.

After the pandemic derailed in-person plans for CERAWeek by S&P Global two years in a row, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will be top of mind for CEOs, oil ministers and academics who thought they’d mostly be discussing the transition away from fossil fuels and emerging alternatives such as hydrogen. As international giants like BP Plc and Exxon Mobil Corp. extricate themselves from Russian investments and wide-reaching sanctions begin to bite, the growing isolation of one of the world’s biggest oil producers has thrown global markets into disarray.

Oil already has climbed to levels not seen in almost a decade and JPMorgan Chase & Co. is warning it may surge even higher — to $185 — because refiners and other buyers are refusing to purchase Russia’s prodigious output. That’s creating an artificial shortage and prompting calls from some quarters for American drillers to step up output and help plug some of the gap. At least one shale powerhouse, Pioneer Natural Resources Co.,  said it’s open to a “coordinated effort” with peers to ease the supply crunch.

“Oil companies are kind of saying, ‘See, you really do need us,’” said Ed Hirs, an energy professor at the University of Houston. "To be fair, they’ve been put on the defensive since the Nixon era when they were being wrongly blamed for the long gasoline lines.”

CERAWeek’s organizers abruptly amended the agenda in response to Russia’s invasion; four days after President Vladimir Putin ordered troops across the border, a panel titled “Sanctions, Cyber & the Ukraine Crisis” was added, along with two related sessions. That said, the schedule is dominated by sessions on carbon capture, hydrogen extraction, climate change and electric vehicles — a reflection of the fact that organizers began planning the conference in mid 2021, when crude was around $70 and the future of fossil fuels was in question. Now, the conflagration in Europe is aggravating supply-chain disruptions and the most punishing inflation in 40 years.

“There was already a brewing energy crisis in Europe before Ukraine,” CERAWeek founder and S&P Global Vice Chairman Daniel Yergin said during an interview. “Prices over the next several weeks are going to be volatile. This is one of the historic moments for world energy, and it makes it very timely for CERAWeek to be in the middle of history.”

The conference that gets underway Monday will feature more than 300 sessions. When it began in 1981, CERAWeek was almost solely focused on oil and natural gas but has been expanded over the years to include solar, wind, geothermal energy and biofuels.

“This is one of the historic moments for world energy.” — Daniel Yergin

Hydrogen, in particular, is mentioned in the conference program twice as often as oil or gas. Fossil-fuel companies see hydrogen as a way to survive in a low-carbon future, especially if technological advances in extraction of the atom from natural gas can be perfected. Still, Russia’s assault on its smaller neighbor and the knock-on effects for the global economy will dominate the discussion.

“If there is a significant supply disruption with respect to Russian crude ... that will be very difficult for the market to make up and therefore that will lead to, I think, significantly higher prices,” Exxon Chief Executive Officer Darren Woods told CNBC on Thursday. Woods is scheduled to speak at one of the very first sessions on Monday morning, less than a week after announcing plans to abandon all of the company’s Russian business interests. 

Russian Tycoon Mordashov Transfers $1.4 Billion TUI Stake

Anthony Palazzo, Bloomberg 

TUI Boeing 737 Max 8 jets in Manchester on March 12. , Getty Images via Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Russian oligarch Alexey Mordashov shuffled his $1.4 billion holding in TUI AG, part of a series of transactions in the past week after he was slapped with European Union sanctions.

Mordashov’s Unifirm Ltd., based in Cyprus, transfered a 4% stake in TUI to his Russian investment vehicle Severgroup LLC, according to a statement from Europe’s biggest holiday-tour company.

Holdings in Unifirm, which retains a 30% stake in TUI, were sold to a company based in the British Virgin Islands, Ondero Ltd., according to TUI filings. The stake remains affiliated with Mordashov. A spokeswoman for the Russian billionaire declined to comment.

Mordashov is among a number of wealthy Russians who have had to shelter assets or divest them as real or threatened sanctions zero in on businessmen perceived to be close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Italian authorities Friday said they seized a yacht worth 65 million euros ($71 million) owned by Mordashov. 

The transactions involving the TUI stake occurred on Feb. 28, the day Mordashov was included in a list of Russians targeted by EU sanctions. Those measures bar named people from matters such as voting or receiving dividends.

The steel tycoon stepped down from the supervisory board of TUI, which he rescued in 2020, on March 2. Vladimir Lukin, a former board member of Mordashov’s Severstal steel company, also left TUI’s board. 

Filings in the U.K. this week showed that Mordashov had shifted control of a roughly $1.1 billion stake in mining company Nordgold to his wife.

TUI said in an October filing that Unifirm was 65% owned by KN-Holding LLC, the holding firm of Mordashov’s sons Kirill and Nikita. The rest of Unifirm was held by Severgroup and Mordashov’s Rayglow Ltd. 

KN-Holding and Rayglow have sold their stakes in Unifirm, according to the statement.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Paralympic Body Asks China Why it Censored Anti-War Speech

Bloomberg News, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- The International Paralympic Committee is demanding answers from China’s state broadcaster after an impassioned, anti-war speech by its head appeared to have been censored during the Beijing winter games opening ceremony on Friday evening.

“We are aware of reports and have asked CCTV for an explanation,” an IPC spokesperson said Saturday. CCTV could not be immediately reached for comment outside office hours Saturday.

Paralympics President Andrew Parsons told the audience, which included Chinese President Xi Jinping, that he was “horrified” at what was happening in the world, in an apparent reference to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

China has avoided taking a clear stance against the invasion, while upholding Ukraine’s sovereignty. The IPC was also involved in controversy before the games. It reversed a decision to let Russia and Belarus participate after “multiple” athletes threatened a boycott that could have halted the event.

“The 21st century is a time for dialog and diplomacy, not war and hate,” Parsons said, adding that the Olympic Truce for peace during the Olympic and Paralympic Games is a UN Resolution. “It must be respected and observed, not violated.”

The part where Parsons condemned the war was not translated into Chinese in a live broadcast by CCTV. Instead, a Chinese announcer talked over Parsons and read a later part of his translated statement. When it came to the part about the truce, CCTV appeared to have lowered the volume so that Parsons’ remarks became inaudible. 

Prior to Russia’s military attack on Ukraine, China’s foreign ministry repeatedly touted the Olympic Truce for peace and condemned the U.S. and a few other countries for “pitting themselves against the big Olympic family” by not sponsoring the resolution.

Mark Dreyer, author of “Sporting Superpower: An Insider’s View on China’s Quest to Be the Best,” described the chain of events as a “blatant, pre-planned attempt to control the message.” 

“China’s determination to remain on the fence coupled with a seeming inability to distinguish between being anti-war and anti-Russian is at odds with its desire to be a global leader, whether in the world of sports or in the world as whole,” he said. 

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.