UK

Opinion
The Rwanda plan is failing – so watch as our cowardly government blames the civil service


Dave Penman

THE GUARDIAN
Sun, 10 December 2023 

Photograph: Guy Bell/Shutterstock

It was not always inevitable that a policy going badly wrong would lead to blame falling on the civil service. Unfortunately, it is increasingly becoming so. The more desperate the political situation, the more likely it is that the government will find an individual or department to blame. All the better because they can’t answer back.

The Rwanda scheme fits neatly into this scenario. It is by any measure a controversial policy; even its cheerleaders would admit that. There are, of course, moral arguments about the policy – but there are also practical questions. Is it workable? Is it legal? Will it give value for money? The job of the civil service is to work through these quandaries with ministers.

When the Home Office permanent secretary, Matthew Rycroft, appeared before the home affairs select committee at the end of last month, he came close to confirming that the legal advice the government had received was that at least one of the various legal challenges to the scheme was likely to succeed. Ministers would have been told about those challenges. It is cowardly to then start blaming those who have advised them when their political choices lead to failure, as was the case last week, when we once again saw senior government figures briefing the press to suggest that officials are throwing up objections because they “just don’t like” the policy. Of course, supporters of the scheme were quick to seize on this narrative, with the Conservative MP Neil O’Brien apparently believing that the advice from the government’s legal department is “guff”. Since then, Rycroft has been summoned to appear before the public accounts committee on Monday to explain how the costs of the scheme have risen from £140m to £290m.

The Rwanda debacle, rather than proving that the civil service is trying to inhibit the will of the government, has ably demonstrated that the civil service has actually been doing its job. I suspect that civil servants told ministers this is exactly where we’d be, which is what the civil service is there to do.

Civil servants are just like everybody else – they have their own political and moral views. But where they do differ from most of us is that they know to leave them at the door when they come to work. Those working in the Home Office are fully aware that they will have to deal with controversial policies, regardless of the party in government. But there will be genuine doubt as to whether the Rwanda scheme will deliver what it’s supposed to: deterring those who arrive in the UK in small boats. When it was introduced, the permanent secretary required a ministerial direction – a mechanism in which ministers give their department a formal instruction to proceed with a spending proposal. This was needed because there was no evidence to suggest that the outcome envisaged – reducing the number of people seeking asylum – would be delivered. The permanent secretary could not say it was a good use of taxpayers’ money as there was insufficient evidence to demonstrate that. Ministers are entitled to ignore that lack of evidence, but it is the job of a civil servant to point it out.

There will undoubtedly be frustration within the Home Office about the amount of resources poured into a policy that was always likely to fail, especially when there are other projects of equal public concern that suffer because of the distraction. The job of a civil servant is to pose that conundrum to ministers. Are there alternatives to this policy that could deliver the same objectives? Are there other priorities of government that are being overlooked? To govern is to choose, and in the current fiscal environment, ministers are choosing to spend a thus far unspecified amount of money on a scheme that is yet to deliver anything but headlines. Inevitably this will be at the cost of other areas of policy or delivery. Again, this is entirely a political decision. To blame civil servants for the outcomes of their own poor political choices shows a weakness not only in the policy, but in the ministers themselves.

Dave Penman is general secretary of the FDA union

 

UK Government accused of ‘choosing to ignore’ legal advice over Rwanda plan

11 Dec 2023 NATION CYMRU

The Hope Hostel accommodation in Kigali, Rwanda had been earmarked as accommodation for migrants from the UK. Photo Victoria Jones/PA Wire

The UK Government has been accused of “choosing to ignore” advice from senior lawyers over its stalled Rwanda plan.

Described as a rare move in a bid to win over critics, the Government published a summary of its legal position in support of the scheme on Monday.

The document concludes that there is a “clear lawful basis on which a responsible government may proceed” with a “novel and contentious policy”.

But a leading Tory rebel said: “The Government is choosing to ignore advice from senior lawyers that there are good legal arguments for blocking off individual claims and all Strasbourg Rule 39 injunctions.

“Migrants can still make individual claims but these would continue in Rwanda. The Government should ensure that only those who are under 18 or medically unfit to fly are exempt from removal.

“It’s open to Parliament to block or restrict individual legal challenges and the courts will uphold this.”

Summary

The summary of the Government’s legal position said: “The treaty, Bill and evidence together demonstrate Rwanda is safe for relocated individuals, that the Government’s approach is tough but fair and lawful, that it has a justification in the UK’s constitution and domestic law, and it seeks to uphold our international obligations.

“This is a novel and contentious policy and the UK and Rwanda are the first countries in the world to enact it together.

“There are risks inherent in such an innovative approach but there is a clear lawful basis on which a responsible government may proceed.

“For the reasons set out in this paper, a Bill that sought to oust all individual claims would not provide such a basis.”

It said “evidence” will be published on Tuesday which demonstrates Rwanda is a safe country, as MPs prepare to vote on the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill.

Asylum accommodation

The Government estimates the cost of asylum accommodation alone could rise to £32 million per day by 2026, equivalent to £11 billion per year, if “illegal migration goes unaddressed”, the document said, as it argued the case for needing to use “all the powers at its disposal to prevent and deter unlawful migration”.

According to the summary, illegal migration via Channel crossings is a “matter of significant public concern” and this places “substantial additional burdens on to public services”.

It said the Bill is “predicated on both Rwanda and the UK’s compliance with international law in the form of the treaty, which itself reflects the international legal obligations of the UK and Rwanda”, while warning that the country’s government has “also been clear that it would withdraw from involvement in the scheme if the UK were to breach its international obligations, therefore rendering the Bill unable to work in achieving the policy intention of deterrence – as there would be no safe country for the purposes of removal”.

“No-one will be sent into a position where they would face a real risk of harm”, it adds.

The Bill would be the first time in British legal history where the country’s courts would be precluded from considering claims under certain sections of human rights laws.

Legal challenges

But it still allows an “exceptionally narrow route” for migrants to bring legal challenges against their deportation.

There would be a “very high barrier” set for legal challenges, the summary said.

The summary said: “It is not, however, possible for Parliament reasonably to conclude that Rwanda will always be safe for every potential individual liable to removal at any point in the future, irrespective of their specific personal circumstances.

“For that reason, the Bill does allow for an exceptionally narrow route to individual challenge to ensure that the courts will interpret the relevant provisions in accordance with the will of Parliament.

“Not to do so would mean ministers accepting that those unfit to fly, for example those in the late stages of pregnancy, or sufferers of very rare medical conditions that could not be cared for in Rwanda, could be removed with no right to judicial scrutiny.

“In any case, completely blocking any court challenges would be a breach of international law and alien to the UK’s constitutional tradition of liberty and justice, where even in wartime the UK has maintained access to the courts in order that individuals can uphold their rights and freedoms.

“The Bill limits unnecessary challenges whilst maintaining the principle of access to the courts where an individual may be at a real risk of serious and irreversible harm.

“Taken as a whole, the limited availability of domestic remedies maintains the constitutional balance between Parliament being able to legislate as it sees necessary, and the powers of our courts to hold the Government to account.”

'It's Never Going To Work': Kay Burley Clashes With Grant Shapps Over Tory Rwanda Plan

Kevin Schofield
Mon, 11 December 2023 

Kay Burley and Grant Shapps

Kay Burley told Grant Shapps that the government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda is “never going to work” during a tense interview this morning.

The pair clashed as rival factions of Tory MPs prepare to meet later today to decide whether or not to vote for emergency legislation aimed at finally getting flights to the African country off the ground.


Right-wing MPs believe the bill does not go far enough, while their moderate colleagues are uncomfortable that it would give ministers rather than the courts the power to declare Rwanda a safe country.

On Sky News this morning, Shapps insisted that the government’s plans to tackle illegal immigration had already seen the number of small boats crossing the Channel reduce by a third.

But Burley told him there was no evidence that the Rwanda plan would deter asylum seekers from trying to make the perilous crossing.

She said: “Why don’t you guys just accept that this is not going to work, cut your losses and forget about it and look at other ways to make this work?”

Shapps replied: “I think that would be incredibly defeatist. The point of this is that so far, as I’ve mentioned, we’ve slashed crossing this year by a third.”

As Burley interrupted to point out that was “nothing to do with Rwanda”, Shapps went on: “Every single measure that we’ve introduced has been opposed by the Labour Party.”

But the exasperated presenter said: “We’re not talking about Labour, minister, we’re talking about you guys.

“It’s symbolism, it’s never going to work, the planes are never going to take off and it’s about time you cut your losses.”

Shapps hit back: “I just don’t agree and that sort of defeatism might suit others. We won’t stop doing it just because it’s difficult to get through.”

Later in the interview, Burley asked him when the first flight carrying asylum seekers to Rwanda will take off.

The minister replied: “It’s impossible to know exactly because parliament needs to pass it first of all. That can be sped through if Labour finally want to get behind a plan to stop people trafficking.”

He added: “Doubtless these things will be tested in court. We believe this legislation is the way to make sure it is legally robust and gets through the courts.”

World economy on brink of ‘cold war two’, IMF official warns


Richard Partington Economics correspondent

THE GUARDIAN
Mon, 11 December 2023 

Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

The world economy is on the brink of a second cold war that could “annihilate” progress made since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a senior International Monetary Fund official has warned.

Gita Gopinath, the IMF’s first deputy managing director, said the accelerating fragmentation of the world economy into regional power blocs – centred around the US and China – risked wiping out trillions of dollars in global output.

“If we descend into cold war two, knowing the costs, we may not see mutually assured economic destruction. But we could see an annihilation of the gains from open trade,” she said.

Warning that the world was at a “turning point” as tensions mounted between the planet’s most powerful nations, Gopinath urged governments to pull back from the brink and work together on shared economic priorities where possible.

Her intervention comes amid a slowdown in international trade since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 inflamed preexisting tensions between the US and European nations in the west and China and Russia in the east.

“While there are no signs of broad-based retreat from globalisation, fault lines are emerging as geoeconomic fragmentation is increasingly a reality. If fragmentation deepens, we could find ourselves in a new cold war,” she said.

Setting out the potential damage from a collapse in trade between the two blocs – divided along the lines of the UN vote on the 2022 Ukraine resolution – Gopinath said the world economy could expect to see losses worth about 2.5% of gross domestic product (GDP), or about $2.5tn (£2tn) if trade was eliminated entirely.

However, depending on economies’ ability to adjust to the new divisions in world trade, losses could reach as much as 7% of world GDP. The fragmentation of foreign direct investment into two blocs centred around the US and China – with some countries remaining non-aligned – could also result in long-term global losses of about 2% of GDP.

International trade and investment flows have stumbled in recent years amid a breakdown in relations between some of the world’s most powerful economies, with a rise in protectionist policymaking since the 2008 financial crisis.

In response, companies have pushed to “de-risk” supply chains after years of previously unchecked globalisation since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Disruption to lengthy supply chains during the Covid pandemic has accelerated the process, amid a wave of “reshoring” and “friendshoring” – firms sourcing key materials from domestic suppliers or those in politically aligned nations.

Governments are also making billions of dollars available to kickstart domestic economic growth and job creation, while nurturing green industries to combat the climate emergency.

While acknowledging that there were benefits for countries from this playbook, Gopinath warned that failure to manage the process could “easily overwhelm these benefits, and potentially reverse nearly three decades of peace, integration, and growth that helped lift billions out of poverty”.

In a speech in Colombia on Monday, she said there could be some benefits for politically non-aligned countries acting as “connecters” between the largest rival economic powers.

Gopinath highlighted how some large electronics manufacturers were relocating production from China to Vietnam because the US had imposed tariffs on Chinese goods. However, Vietnam sources most of its inputs from China.

Latin American countries could also benefit, including South American commodity exporters and Mexico – which eclipsed China as the biggest exporter of goods to the US this year. She said many manufacturers opening plants in Mexico were Chinese firms targeting the US market, with the Mexican association of private industrial parks expecting one in five new businesses in the next two years to be Chinese.

“They can benefit directly from trade and investment diversion in a fractured global economy and cushion the negative effect of fragmentation on trade, therefore reducing its costs,” she said.

However, these countries could also lose out from a worsening breakdown in international trade, Gopinath added. “If fragmentation worsens, even those who benefit from fragmentation in its mild forms could be left with a larger slice of a smaller pie in an extreme scenario. In short, everyone could lose.”

 

Sikh couple in Canada likely killed over ‘mistaken identity’

ByHT Correspondent, Toronto

Dec 12, 2023 

On Nov 20, Jagtar Singh was killed and his wife and daughter were critically injured after armed assailants stormed into their rented residence and opened fire.

A Sikh couple from India killed in a shooting spree at their residence in the Canadian province of Ontario last month were possibly attacked in a case of mistaken identity, provincial police have said.

According to the local police, more than 30 shots were fired by the accused. They are yet to make any arrests and ascertain the motive behind the crime.

On November 20, 57-year-old Jagtar Singh was killed, and his wife and daughter critically injured after armed assailants stormed into their rented residence in Caledon town and opened fire.

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While Singh’s wife, Harbhajan Kaur (55), succumbed to injuries during treatment two weeks later, the couple’s daughter continues to remain critical. The couple’s son was not at home at the time of the incident.

According to the local police, more than 30 shots were fired by the accused. They are yet to make any arrests and ascertain the motive behind the crime.

Officers are investigating “all aspects of this homicide, including whether or not the victims of this crime were intended targets or not”, Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) detective inspector Brian McDermott said.

“It is still too early to make any firm determinations on that aspect,” he added.

Police said the couple from India were visiting and living with their two children who are studying in Canada. The children had sponsored their parents’ visit.

In a release last month, the Caledon detachment of OPP said: “It is believed that multiple suspects are involved.”

Police also said they are working to establish whether a vehicle fire in the area on the day of the murder was linked to the incident. In several gang fights in recent years, the culprits often set the vehicles used during the crime ablaze before fleeing the scene, they said.

An online fund-raiser for the family, initiated by their friend Paramvir Singh, said the daughter was “deeply traumatised and severely wounded” and “has not spoken a word since the incident has happened”.

Doctors are “unsure” if she will ever be able to speak again, it said. “Police are saying that this is an act of mistaken identity and killers misidentified the victims for someone else,” it added.

Armenia Keeps Up Contacts With Ukraine

PISSED OFF AT RUSSIA

Beglium - Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba meet in Brussels, December 11, 2023.


Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba met in Brussels on Monday, continuing diplomatic contacts between their counties that were denounced by Russia this fall.

The Armenian Foreign Ministry said the two ministers discussed “bilateral cooperation on issues of mutual interest” and “regional issues” relating to the South Caucasus. Kuleba tweeted, for his part, that they talked about the “advancement of Ukraine-Armenia dialogue.”

That dialogue appears to have begun in early September amid a further worsening of Armenia’s relations with Russia, its longtime ally. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian’s wife visited Kyiv at the time to attend the annual Summit of First Ladies and Gentlemen held there. Anna Hakobian also delivered Armenia’s first humanitarian aid to Ukraine since the start of the Russian invasion.

The Russian Foreign Ministry listed Hakobian’s trip among “a series of unfriendly steps” taken by Yerevan against Moscow when it summoned the Armenian ambassador a few days later. The strong criticism did not stop Pashinian from talking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during an EU summit in Spain on October 5.

Spain - Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy meet in Granada, October 5, 2023.

Three weeks later, the secretary of Armenia’s Security Council, Armen Grigorian, participated in a multilateral peace forum in Malta initiated by Ukraine. Grigorian also met with the powerful chief of’Zelenskiy’s staff, Andriy Yermak, during what Moscow described as a “blatantly anti-Russian event.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, called Grigorian’s trip to Malta a “demonstrative anti-Russian gesture of official Yerevan” and linked it with Pashinian’s conversation with Zelenskiy. She accused Pashinian’s government of “persistently destroying our allied relations.”

The Armenian leaders’ attendance of those events contrasts with their boycott of recent months’ meetings of top officials of ex-Soviet states making up the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization as well as the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Pashinian embarked on the apparent rapprochement with Ukraie despite its stong support for Azerbaijan in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. In particular, Kyiv was quick to condemn the September 9 election by Karabakh lawmakers of the region’s new president, saying that it is “contrary to the rules and principles of international law.” The election came ten days before the Azerbaijani military offensive that forced Karabakh’s practically entire population to flee to Armenia.

“I reiterated Ukraine’s support for Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders,” Kuleba wrote after meeting with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov earlier on Monday.

‘Forged documents’: how Ukrainian grain may be enriching Putin’s circle


Tom Burgis in Kherson and Pjotr Sauer

THE GUARDIAN
Mon, 11 December 2023 

Photograph: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters

Russia’s farmers are achieving record grain harvests – according to official figures. But the numbers published by Vladimir Putin’s government appear to conceal the contribution to this bumper crop made by another set of farmers: those in occupied Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials and agriculture experts have claimed that favourable conditions are not enough to explain the giant harvest. They say instead that Ukrainian grain is being exported disguised as Russian produce.

The occupation authorities are “looting” Ukrainian grain, prosecutors alleged in one case against a suspected collaborator, “not for military operations or to meet the needs of the population but for selfish purposes and for motives of personal illegal profit”.


Farms are brought under occupation control through brutal means, according to prosecutors and a witness, while grain production allegedly flows away to Russian companies, including one with connections to Putin’s circle.

In May, the UK announced “a crackdown on the shady individuals and entities connected to the theft and resale of Ukrainian grain”, placing sanctions on those whom it said were shipping grain out of occupied territory “badged as Russian goods”.

But western powers have avoided imposing blanket restrictions on Russian food exports as they have done with other goods such as oil.

“It’s not enough,” said Vladyslav Vlasyuk, an adviser to the Ukrainian presidency and deputy head of Task Force UA, an inter-agency group tracing and confiscating assets of those under sanctions.

The Russians have a simple “business model” in occupied Ukraine, he said: “They just get all the grain they can,” send it mostly overland to Russia, “make forged documents [saying] that it’s not from occupied territory, that it came from Russia, then they export it.” The Middle East and Africa are major markets.

Mike Lee, a consultant on crop production in the former Soviet Union, calculated that more than a fifth of the 29m tonnes of grain expected from Ukraine’s most recent harvest is missing. As much as 5m tonnes may have been stolen by the Russians, he said, with the rest lost to war.

Secrecy

According to accounts from occupied territory, the Russians and their collaborators have used force to confiscate Ukrainians’ farms.

Andrian Khablenko ran a farm in the occupied southern region of Kherson that he said made annual profits of £80,000 before the war. He said he was taken from his home in September 2022 by occupation secret police known as the GSB to a detention centre.

Khablenko said torturers put a bag over his head and beat him for hours. They performed a mock execution, leaving him convinced he was about to die. Khablenko says that he was forced to sign a blank piece of paper that was to be filled in later authorising the transfer of his farm to members of the occupation regime.

The occupation’s grain operations are conducted in secrecy behind a shield of Russian troops, artillery and minefields, and the details of them – including where output from Khablenko’s old farm now ends up – are hard to trace. But legal filings, company records and analysis by YouControl, a Ukrainian data service, provide some indications.

A Ukrainian criminal filing in October said Khablenko’s extortion took place on the orders of the head of the occupation authorities in the Kherson region, Volodymyr Saldo.

A former Ukrainian MP and longstanding Russian sympathiser, Saldo set up a new company to trade Kherson’s grain output, prosecutors stated in criminal filings. They alleged that a Russian grain-trading company, Kuban-Forward, signed a deal to receive grain from this company and elsewhere in occupied Ukraine.

Before the invasion, only one customer for Kuban-Forward’s grain is listed in a Russian database of official tender and procurement records. The buyer is United Grain, one of Russia’s biggest agricultural conglomerates with annual revenue of more than $1bn.

Denys Dmytrovych Guev, Kuban-Forward’s registered sole owner, was one of the few contacts given on United Grain’s website, where he was listed since at least May 2022 as a representative for “grain trans-shipment services” at its vast Black Sea plant in Novorossiysk. In July, United Grain reported record exports from this plant.

Guev said: “We guarantee compliance with all sanctions laws and can confirm that all products are of Russian origin.”

He did not answer questions about Kuban-Forward’s current relationship with United Grain beyond saying that it was “not a representative” of the company. He said the description of him on United Grain’s website was “outdated”. Shortly after the Guardian contacted him, his name was removed from the site.

Train wagons bearing United Grain’s livery have been seen transporting grain from occupied Ukraine towards Russia, according to a report by international law specialists Global Rights Compliance. United Grain did not respond to a request for comment.

Oligarchs

United Grain’s majority owner is the Russian state. But in 2020 two individuals acquired a quarter of its shares via a holding company.

One, Taimuraz Bolloev, is reportedly a friend of the Russian president, once joining Putin’s old judo teachers and other intimates for a birthday cruise. According to Russian press reports, he worked on Putin’s victorious presidential campaigns in 2000 and 2004, and Putin’s rule has proved profitable for him.

When he branched out into clothing, Bolloev received exclusive contracts to dress the military. He also administered the torrent of public money that was spent with scant oversight on the Sochi Winter Olympics.

More recently he was one of the oligarchs granted control of businesses confiscated from western investors after the invasion of Ukraine.

Alexander Vinokurov, the other oligarch who acquired an interest in United Grain, is the son-in-law of Sergey Lavrov, Putin’s longstanding foreign minister.

A former president of the Russian society at the University of Cambridge, Vinokurov worked at Morgan Stanley and a US private equity fund before taking top jobs in the business empires of leading Russian oligarchs. “I am proud of my relationship with Mr Lavrov,” Vinokurov has said, “and am trying to model myself on him.”

Vinokurov has been placed under sanctions by western states, including the EU. His Marathon Group is reported to have profitably sold at least some of its shares in United Grain in August. Bolloev has been placed under sanctions by Ukraine alone. There have been no reports that he has disposed of his holding in United Grain.

Bolloev’s and Vinokurov’s companies did not respond to requests for comment.

Saldo, the governor of occupied Kherson, did not respond to questions either. He recently visited Moscow to give Putin an update on his new province. According to a Kremlin transcript, Putin congratulated him on a strong grain harvest.

The Great Grain Grab: Ukrainian companies are facing takeover attempts by US Hedge funds 'for their own long term gain'

ON DECEMBER 8, 2023
By EU Reporter Correspondent

Image credit: octave @depositphotos

“War has always been a racket, and it is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, and, surely, the most vicious,” said Smedley Butler, once the most decorated US Marine in history before becoming an author and anti-war advocate. Before dying in 1940, Butler said that during his 33-year military career, he was primarily “a high-class muscle man for Big Business, Wall Street, and the bankers".

The war in Ukraine seems to be taking a similar path. War profiteers have already made billions of dollars from death and misery in the country. A report reveals oil companies made nearly $220 billion in profits in 2022, “a windfall of Russia`s invasion of Ukraine”, as President Joe Biden recently critiqued.

When the war ends, rebuilding Ukraine will represent a trillion-dollar opportunity for US and European construction companies, who are already planning how to get their hands on those profits.

Opportunist hedge funds have also emerged as significant war profiteers. According to The Guardian, they raked in nearly $2bn in Q1 2022 alone, but worse yet, their corporate greed has hampered the Black Sea Grain Corridor talks, putting profit before global food security.

In July, Russia refused to renew its participation in the Grain Corridor, ending safety guarantees for Ukrainian ships and thereby essentially cutting the ability of Ukrainian companies to export grain via the Black Sea, although some shipping activity has reportedly continued despite the risks.

The so-called grain corridor was crucial to safely move produce outside of Ukraine, particularly as global food prices have increased. The Black Sea grain deal represents a lifeline for “79 counties and 349 million people on the front line of food insecurity,” the International Rescue Committee said.


Ukraine set up its own trade route in August to move food exports out of its Black Sea ports near Odessa, defying Russian threats. (United Nations/Lisa Kukharska)

Shortly after the start of the war, Ukrainian companies began facing demands from Western creditors for loan repayments and subsequent hostile takeover attempts, once the creditors realized it was more lucrative to try to take over the assets themselves than to agree to debt repayment schedules. Unlike Western governments that have provided unequivocal support to the Ukrainian government, these American creditors have shown limited flexibility in the wake of the war that made businesses unable to operate.
Hostile takeover tactics

Argentem Creek Partners (ACP), an American distressed asset fund, was legally prevented from taking over a grain terminal owned by GNT Group (GNT) in the Odessa Commercial Sea Port. GNT’s shareholders sought and succeeded in getting a Nicosia District Court order against ACP because of its aggressive takeover actions.

Yet, ACP and another US hedge fund, Innovatus Capital Partners (Innovatus), have waged a legal, media, and political battle against GNT in a bid to take over the company after it failed to repay its debt to the hedge fund immediately after ACP abruptly issued a demand.

ACP began pursuing GNT legally in Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Cyprus, and elsewhere and is now seeking to take control of the grain terminal, accusing the Ukrainian owners of the terminal of corporate mismanagement and fraud. ACP has keptpushing to force GNT into bankruptcy in Ukraine, just in November succeeding in getting the Ukrainian Supreme Court to uphold its bankruptcy efforts in Ukraine.

ACP’s extensive legal and lobbying efforts, however, raise questions about its tactics. In Ukraine, ACP is represented by Hillmont Partners, a law firm known for its closeness to the presidential administration of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. At least three Hillmont Partners lawyers were on the list of proposed members of parliament nominated by Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party after his election in 2019. Denys Monastyrskyi, Zelenskyy’s Minister of Interior until his untimely death in a helicopter accident earlier this year, previously served as a lawyer with Hillmont Partners. In the United States, ACP has spent over a million dollars on lobbying fees related to Ukraine since beginning its enforcement efforts against GNT at the end of last year, using the high-powered American law and lobbyist firm Akin Gump. Based on prior reports, ACP has actively pressured the American Embassy in Kyiv to assist its efforts to take over GNT’s Odessa terminal.

Profiting from the war

“Despite Innovatus’ and ACP’s continued support for GNT, including the offer to postpone loan payments following Russia’s invasion, investigations revealed that the company liquidated all grain pledged to Innovatus without notice or consent,” the hedge fund group stated the time.

John Patton, ACP’s Head of EMEA & Asia, accused GNT of stealing or pilfering $130 million of inventory. “So, we decided to enforce, which was not an easy decision because obviously, we recognize there’s a war on, at the same time, they’ve had 22 attempts at injunctions.”

Ukrainian companies have described ACP’s efforts as war profiteering, while ACP and other Western creditors insist that they merely continue their business and accuse those companies of corruption.

GNT states the US fund is opportunistically profiting from the war by trying to take over the company at a massive discount. The Ukrainian company, according to sources, is still open to settling and repaying its debt while the dispute is disrupting the operations of the grain terminal to the detriment of global food security.

Crucially, the grain terminal in Odessa was one of the few key players involved in the now-suspended grain corridor initiative between Ukraine and Russia.

Media bias?

On the legal side of this takeover attempt, the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) is the main dispute venue. The LCIA is hearing a case about GNT, the critical Ukrainian operator at the Odessa Port Terminal, which has been consistently bombed by Russia.

GNT is also a key player in the widely covered, and for now suspended, Black Sea Grain Corridor, and while the US plaintiff, ACP, has been successful in getting massive coverage of its dubious allegations, no serious Western journalists have covered the position of the Ukrainian parties.

ACP obtained a Worldwide Freezing Order in the UK’s High Court in January 2023, which the hedge fund continues to tout in an apparently complicit Western media.

Meanwhile, even RT, the Russian-state owned news network that has served as a mouthpiece for official Russian state positions globally, has used the dispute for its own purposes, making comparisons between ACP’s allegations against GNT and unfounded claims that Western weaponry supplied to Ukraine has ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels, undoubtedly contributing to Russia’s justification of its refusal to renew its participation in the grain corridor.

Unanswered emails

As exclusively revealed to this news organisation, two prominent Ukrainian companies, Brooklyn-Kyiv and Kadorr Group, have tabled offers to buy out the loans. Curiously, despite constantly and repeatedly looking for a response, the US hedge funds do not reply.

ACP and Innovatus received separate and independent offers from the Kadorr Group, owned by Syrian-Ukrainian businessman Adnan Kivan, with interests from grain to construction to media, and then from Brooklyn-Kyiv, a major stevedoring company in Odessa owned by Yuriy Gubankov.

The offers were made back in August of this year, but ACP and Innovatus have not followed up and ignored further enquiries and calls.
Why is this?

Gubankov of Brooklyn-Kyiv, which has more than the $70m in reserves needed to buy out ACP’s claim to the GNT Group to ensure it remains in Ukrainian interests, has a theory:

“I have called, emailed, sent numerous SMS’s to John Patton and he always promises to call me back, but he never does. It seems to me that they don’t want to sell, as this terminal can make them more money in the long term,” he says on a phone call. “It is a very complicated and complex situation,” Gubankov continues. “Nobody really knows what state the terminal is in. There is a war going on and access is limited. But it is a great pity that nothing is operational now because of this stand-off.

Kadorr Group has also revealed documents exclusively to this news organisation intending to offer the US Hedge funds 85 percent of GNT’’s current market value.

“It is no surprise that these requests have gone unanswered,” concluded Gubankov. “The US Hedge funds are doing all they can to ensure they can liquidate GNT for their own long-term gain.”

Representatives of ACP and Innovatus were approached for comment but did not respond.

Ana Firmato, Managing Director at Innovatus, has previously stated: “ACP and Innovatus remain committed to their mission of promoting private investment activism as a means to combat corruption in Ukraine and will continue to invest in projects that align with these objectives.”

REPUBLIC OF SENEGAL
Sinegal is the next African country in Russia's crosshairs

ON DECEMBER 11, 2023
By Louis Auge


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Opposition politician Sonko does not hide his ties and sympathies for Russia.

Worrying news for Senegal: the Russians are sending their private armed groups into the country, as they did in Mali and Burkina Faso, in anticipation of the presidential elections.

Yevgeny Prigozhin

The next presidential elections in Senegal, scheduled for February 24, 2024, risk taking place in a scenario reminiscent of the coups in Burkina Faso and Mali. This hypothesis stems from frank allusions made by pro-Russian influencers. In particular, Kemi Seba declared on his YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za5KB4OvZvE:

“You saw that things have changed in Mali, we have greatly contributed to it.” And he continues: “Soon Alassane Ouattara…” Or even that of Senegal: “soon Macky Sall. I'm going to Russia in a few days. »

Today, Senegal is one of five West African countries not to have experienced a coup d'état since its independence from France in 1960 and is generally considered a relatively stable democracy. It is worth taking a close look at what exactly Russian private armies are bringing to African countries at the end of their bayonets. Since the Soviet era, Moscow has actively encouraged anti-colonial sentiment in Africa, taking advantage of real problems arising in relations with the former metropolises. Indeed, these relationships are often difficult and painful. But can Russia offer Africans better relations? Is it seeking anything other than access to natural resources, cheap labour and the expansion of its influence through the puppet regimes it controls?

Russia itself is a cruel and bloodthirsty empire that despises colonized peoples, condemning them to poverty, humiliation and loss of identity. Can Russia do anything other than colonize neighbouring lands, kill those who disagree, and exploit its colonies? As the war in Ukraine clearly shows, Russian imperialism is no better than Western imperialism, and perhaps even worse, because it brings a lot of blood, destruction and savagery.

And in Africa, what have Russian weapons brought to the Central African Republic and Mali? Did the populations, thanks to the intervention of Wagner's troops, live more prosperously, in peace and tranquillity? Has the change of government in these countries, orchestrated by the Russians, brought an improvement? Nothing is less sure. The African continent has seen an obvious increase in the number of coups d'état over the last three years, accompanied by armed raids in Gabon, Niger, Burkina Faso, Sudan, Guinea, Chad and Mali. In each case, the rebellions were not without the involvement of Russian mercenaries. According to Kemi Seba, Nathalie Yamb, Franklin Niamsy and other pro-Russian influencers, the Kremlin is preparing to indirectly intervene also in the elections in Senegal, to facilitate a change of power in the republic.

The regime of the current president of Senegal, Macky Sall, is not ideal. The fact that one of the main opposition leaders, Ousmane Sonko, is being held behind bars on the eve of the elections is a clear indication of the absence of democratic standards. This is what both the Senegalese opposition and Western human rights defenders emphasize. But today it is very important to look further. The mobilization of the opposition for the release of Sonko could provoke mass unrest and plunge the country into chaos and a wave of violence that goes in the direction of the interests of Russian private armies. What is this interest? It is imposing on those in power people who are compatible with Russia's appetites. Let us recall what happened in Mali, Burkina Faso and the Central African Republic. Russian flags on armoured personnel carriers brought these countries not freedom, but blood and disaster.

Is Ousmane Sonko the man the Russians need today? There is no certainty on this subject, but the words he said

52-foot-long dead fin whale washes up on San Diego beach; cause of death unclear

A 52-foot-long dead fin whale washed up on a San Diego beach over the weekend and officials said there was no obvious sign of the cause of death

The Associated Press

December 11, 2023, 

A 52-foot-long female fin whale died and washed onto Mission Beach Sunday, Dec. 10, 2023, in San Diego. Officials said there were no obvious signs leading to a cause of death. Researchers from NOAA Southwest Fishe...

The Associated Press

SAN DIEGO -- A 52-foot-long (16-meter-long) dead fin whale washed up on a San Diego beach over the weekend and officials said there was no obvious sign of the cause of death.

The young female whale was found Sunday in Mission Beach and was later towed out to sea, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

Fin whales are the second largest whales in the world after blue whales. They can grow to 70 to 80 feet (21 to 24 meters) long and weigh about 50 tons, or 100,000 pounds (45,000 kilograms). They are endangered and thought to number around 8,000 off the West Coast, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“It’s probably in the first couple years of its life,” Michael Milstein, a spokesperson for NOAA Fisheries West Coast region, told the newspaper. “It didn’t appear to have been dead very long because there wasn’t much evidence of scavenging or decomposition. But there was also no obvious sign of the cause of death.”

In cases where whales have been killed by ship strikes, there often is evidence of propeller marks, and observers didn’t notice anything like that, Milstein said. He said researchers collected tissue samples and will analyze them to try to determine a cause of death.

A bulldozer, Jet Ski and boat worked together to roll and move the whale down the sand toward the water as about 100 people looked on.

After several rope breaks, the whale was finally moved off the beach. Lifeguards towed it about a mile and a half offshore where “it suddenly sunk to the bottom,” lifeguard Lt. Jacob Magness said in a text message.

Milstein said it is not common to see fin whales stranding along the West Coast. The species tends to stay in deeper water compared with gray whales, which travel from 10,000 to 14,000 miles (16,000 to 22,500 kilometers) round trip up and down the coast in annual migrations.

 

China sees success in Mexican auto industry

Alasdair Baverstock

@alibaverstock

China sees success in Mexican auto industry

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Published December 11, 2023 at 2:05 PM

China is the world’s largest market for autos in terms of sales and output, so it’s not surprising to see Chinese auto brands increasingly outside of Asia.

For the country’s leading brands, they’re finding success in international markets including Mexico.