Some Canadian provinces have daycare deserts, study finds

Posted May 21 2023 

Affordable child care is an elusive dream for many Canadian parents. The federal government has promised to make it cheaper with a $10-a-day program but there’s another major hurdle – having enough facilities to meet the demand. As Brittney Rosen explains, some parts of Canada are experiencing daycare deserts.

PRISON NATION U$A

The US artist who went from prison cell to Paris show
Story by AFP • Tuesday

Halim Flowers said his generation of jailed children were regarded as 'super predators'

© JOEL SAGET

Aged 16, Halim Flowers was arrested in the United States, tried as an adult then jailed for murder. Now aged 42, he is a prolific artist, poet and writer exhibiting in Paris.

The turnaround has been spectacular.

Flowers was only released in 2019 after a change in US law allowed for under-18s who had been tried as adults to be "re-sentenced".

Then a year later, when Covid-19 pushed much of the world into lockdown, his wife -- also an artist -- suggested he should give painting a go.

"I just took the brush. I had no idea about colour, how mixing red and white made pink. She told me how to do that, how to take care of my brushes," he told AFP.

Visiting AFP's photo studio in Paris, Flowers sketched a graffiti-style drawing on a white background and explained that art was his "only drug".

"I don't smoke drugs, I don't drink alcohol, I don't party. All I do is art," he said.

Colourful and rich in symbolism, his work highlights the experiences of people on the margins -- prisoners, the homeless, those with mental health issues.

The Washington native, who is displaying his paintings until Sunday at the Champop gallery in the French capital, told the United States' National Public Radio in 2021 he had already sold art worth more than $1 million.

His life now is a far cry from that of the skinny teenager who featured in a 1998 documentary for HBO titled "Thug Life in DC".

A disconsolate Flowers told the documentary he had no hope, and that his mother would probably be dead by the time he was freed.

- Kardashian collaboration -

Flowers was raised in a poor neighbourhood of the US capital and grew up during the crack "epidemic".

Related video: WATCH: From prison to artistic rebirth: Halim Ali Flowers, an American in Paris (Euronews)

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Dailymotion   WATCH: From prison to artistic rebirth: Halim Ali Flowers, an American in Paris

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He fell into drug dealing and eventually got caught up in a robbery that resulted in someone being shot dead.

Despite not being the shooter, he was tried and convicted of murder under the principle of "aiding and abetting".

He said his generation of jailed children were regarded as "super predators" but he knew he was innocent and had enough faith in himself to struggle to show his humanity.

"Those who are considered as beasts and super predators today can become those who visit the museums tomorrow," he said.

After years of campaigning, he was finally freed in early 2019 -- his mother greeting him with open arms.

Already with a track record as an author and poet, he worked with reality TV star Kim Kardashian on a documentary called "The Justice Project", which helped to secure the release of one of his childhood friends.

He met both Kardashian and her then husband, musician Kanye West, although he credits West's fellow rapper Jay-Z with sparking his interest in visual art.

- 'Lack of love' -

"I was introduced to visual art through listening to Jay-Z rap about Jean-Michel Basquiat," he said, referring to the US artist who shot to fame in the 1980s before dying of a heroin overdose at 27 in 1988.

For Flowers, seeing that a black person had been "received and revered in the art world" was a revelation and inspired him to begin studying the arts while in jail.

The similarity between his work and that of Basquiat has led to accusations he is copying his forebear but Flowers flatly denies the charge.

"To show my reverence to my ancestors through my work is an honour," he said.

"Anything that I do that resembles them is because we share the same spirit."

Now he wants to use his art to change perceptions, particularly about notions of justice.

"I think people are surprised that I came home from prison and I wasn't being bitter or angry," he said.

There's nothing that necessarily links being in jail to being angry and bitter, he stressed.

He sees the issue as a wider one -- society in general, he said, has been infected by a "pandemic of lack of love".

His mission is to create a "new visual language" that will vaccinate against this pandemic and transform our image of justice.

ls/jxb/gil

Self-defence classes focus on safety, confidence, community for Toronto sex workers

Story by Sarah MacMillan • CBC

Tuesday, May 16, 2023

At a small Toronto boxing gym, people punch, jump, duck, and laugh. Working up a sweat is just one goal for those who are there.

All the participants in this class are sex workers — and they're there to learn self-defence.

"As part of my work, obviously safety is always a concern," said a sex worker who uses the name Selene.

"Hopefully I won't have to use it, but it's better to be prepared."

CBC Toronto has agreed to use the working names of sex workers interviewed for this story.

The classes are organized by the Maggie's Toronto Sex Workers Action Project, in response to an uptick in members reporting incidents of violence and harassment.
Demand for classes

Maggie's executive director Ellie Ade Kur said the ask for self-defence classes came directly from members.

"One of the things we hear a lot from sex workers is the issue around facing direct violence. Often not being able to necessarily defend or report that violence or be taken seriously," Ade Kur said.



The ask for self-defence classes came from sex workers themselves, who are at risk of harassment and violence on the job.© Sarah MacMillan/CBC

The group received a $50,000 grant from Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to fund the classes, and Maggie's partnered with local boxing coach Frederic Montaricout to teach them. All 30 spots were filled within 24 hours, and within a week there were another 50 on the wait list.

"It grew a lot faster than any of us were really expecting it to, the level of demand and excitement for it," Ade Kur said.


The classes began in March, and will run until the end of June. After more than two months, there's clear progress, Montaricout said.

"I think everybody changed like differently … physically and mentally."



Frederic Montaricout teaches the self-defence classes at his small Toronto boxing gym

.© Sarah MacMillan/CBC

'Strength in numbers'

For Alexia Woodroe, the biggest takeaway from the classes has been confidence.

"The confidence in certain moves, the confidence in how I walk, the confidence in that if something were to happen, I have some idea of what to do, if at least just to get out of the situation," Woodroe said.

Fellow sex worker Alexandra Starr knows all too well what it's like to be in an unsafe situation. She said two years ago, she was assaulted by a client. She said an Uber driver saw what happened, and intervened, and also captured video of the assailant.

"I was definitely lucky, but I can only imagine for a girl that's really alone … it's really drastic what can happen, you know," Starr said.

"After that I was like, OK, I need to learn some skills to prevent this from happening in the future."



The classes focus on technical skills, but also bring sex workers together in a social setting.

© Sarah MacMillan/CBC

Starr said she upped her security process and screening of clients, and also began hitting the gym to improve her physical fitness.

When she heard about the classes organized by Maggie's, she jumped at the chance to learn specific self-defence skills — and also the chance to get to know others in the industry.

"Being a sex worker can be lonely sometimes, and you feel like you can't share your struggles with just kind of the everyday person. So having these girls that relate to you, and have been through the same things that you've been through, it definitely gives you that strength in numbers feeling," Starr said.

Ade Kur, with Maggie's, said those social connections are a big part of why she views the program as such a success. While the classes for this cohort are set to wrap up at the end of June, she hopes to be able to offer more classes in the future, if the group is able to secure funding.

"The violence that sex workers face in community because of criminalization and stigma is jarring and absolutely heartbreaking," Ade Kur said.

"But I also think on the flip side … it's important to also focus on the fact that there are people that are working to change that, that are working to build community and directly address that. Even in the absence of policy makers addressing the issue of criminalization."

GOOGLE UNION BUSTER

Google is downsizing its contract workforce that supports YouTube shortly after one contractor team's union victory

Story by tmaxwell@insider.com (Thomas Maxwell,Hugh Langley) • May 15, 2023

A building on the Google campus in Mountain View, California.

Google is reducing its contract workforce that supports YouTube operations.
Workers in Austin recently formed a collective-bargaining group with the Alphabet Workers Union.

Google is appealing an NLRB decision to categorize it as a "joint employer" of Cognizant staff.

Google is ending some business with contracting firms including Cognizant and Accenture, which employ workers who support various YouTube services. Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion.

The workers impacted by these cuts support YouTube TV and YouTube's social-media accounts. Most of the workers who will be cut are based in Austin, according to four people familiar with the matter. Cognizant workers began hearing about the cuts at the start of May, with effective end dates ranging from May 31 to the end of July, according to three workers.

It's unclear exactly how many Cognizant workers were affected. At Accenture, roughly 120 to 150 workers will lose their positions, two sources estimate. Insider was not able to verify an exact number in that case, either, though one Accenture worker said their effective end date is today.

The move comes shortly after a group of Cognizant workers supporting YouTube Music voted 41-0 in favor of unionizing with the Alphabet Workers Union, which is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, a larger trade union. The National Labor Relations Board certified the vote on May 5. The cuts did not impact the YouTube Music team, which helps curate themed playlists and review song metadata.

1 of 28 Photos in Gallery©Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The career rise of Susan Wojcicki, who rented her garage to Google's founders in 1998 and is now stepping down as the CEO of YouTube

Susan Wojcicki provided the garage space where Google was founded in 1998 and later became one of its first employees.

She rose up the company's ranks, becoming YouTube's CEO in 2014. On Thursday, she announced she's stepping down.

Here's a glimpse at the life of 54-year-old Susan Wojcicki, who has an estimated net worth of $765 million.

Most landlords only hope their renters pay on time, keep a tidy space, and don't disturb the neighbors.

But Susan Wojcicki's renters — Google cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin — ended up offering up a bit more: the chance to become employee No. 16 in 1998 at a young search engine startup called Google.

Of course, it's taken more than this incredible circumstance for Wojcicki to rise in the ranks at Google. From expanding the company's ad business to persuading its founders to purchase an up-and-coming video-sharing service called YouTube, Wojcicki has played a vital role in Google's becoming one of the world's most valuable companies.

She went on to serve as CEO of YouTube for nearly a decade before announcing Thursday that she's stepping down.

As Wojcicki vacates the role, here's a glimpse at her life and rise at Google from employee No. 16 to YouTube's chief:See More

The Cognizant team supporting YouTube TV had been in early talks to form their own union following the group at YouTube Music, according to three workers there.

In a statement, Google confirmed the changes to its contract workforce and denied it is related to union efforts.

"As we've said, we are managing our spend with our suppliers and vendors more effectively to create durable savings where possible," a spokesperson said. "This work has been happening for well over a year across Alphabet and spans dozens of our major suppliers in the U.S. and abroad. Any suggestion that these changes are due to reasons beyond increasing our efficiency and cost savings is untrue."

Cognizant also confirmed in an email that its contract supporting YouTube TV is ending.

"As a professional services company, ramp-downs and ramp-ups of projects are a normal part of Cognizant's work with clients," a spokesperson said in a statement. "We do have a ramp down in our YouTube TV project; although this specific project has come to an end, those affected by this change remain Cognizant employees."

Workers affected by Google's decision to end business with Cognizant will be placed on a "bench" policy, giving them five weeks of paid time to receive training and find a new job internally before they are let go, the spokesperson added.

An Accenture spokesperson wrote in a statement, "From time to time, we adjust our workforce on ongoing projects to meet the needs of our clients. We are fully committed to supporting our people through this transition."

Google and Cognizant have been appealing an NLRB ruling that deemed the search giant as a "joint employer" of Cognizant's workers who support YouTube. Cognizant HR representatives previously told workers that even if the ruling was upheld, Google would only have minimal involvement in union negotiations.

Cognizant contractors for YouTube Music in Austin first announced their intentions to unionize last year to seek a guaranteed remote-work policy, as well as other changes. Contract workers for Google at other agencies have also been organizing to demand better treatment from the search giant.

Many workers at Appen, who are referred to as "raters" because they rate the quality and relevance of search results, recently visited the Google headquarters to demand better wages, among other changes to their working conditions. Google started layoffs of 12,000 full-time employees in January, citing changing economic conditions.

Other companies like Apple, Starbucks, and Wells Fargo have been pushing back against a rise in union efforts. Even though interest in unions is near all-time highs, only about 10% of US workers are union members.

GOOD

Developer of Alaska's Pebble mine raises going concern doubts

Story by Reuters • May 15, 2023

(Reuters) -Canada's Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd on Monday raised doubts about its ability to continue as a going concern if the company is unable to raise the necessary capital for the Pebble copper and gold mining project in Alaska.

Northern added that it is in process of exploring and evaluating the Pebble project and has not yet determined whether the project contains mineral reserves that are economically recoverable.

The project has been through a roller coaster of regulations for the past 15 years. Former U.S. President Barack Obama opposed the project, and his successor Donald Trump ultimately did, too, after deciding it was too risky.

President Joe Biden has also long opposed the project and took steps upon taking office in 2021 to permanently protect Alaska's Bristol Bay.

To continue operations, Northern is entirely dependent upon the existence of these economically recoverable mineral reserves and its ability to obtain financing to complete the exploration and development of the project.

As of March 31, Northern and its units had C$9.4 million ($7 million) in cash and cash equivalents for its operating requirements and working capital of C$8.1 million.

The company would require additional financing in order to progress any material expenditures at the Pebble project and for working capital requirements.

In January the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it plans to take steps to block the proposed project by preventing Northern Dynasty from storing mine waste in the state's vast watershed.

($1 = 1.3372 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Arunima Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Eileen Soreng and Varun H K)

Canada considers 'forever chemicals' ban of cancer-causing agents

1 day ago

GLOBAL NEWS

We can’t see it but there’s a silent killer lurking in our homes. An invisible danger that is found in things we use every day – forever chemicals. As the name implies, the cancer-causing agents are doing lasting damage to our health and the environment. Ottawa is now looking at limiting or banning these chemicals and as Brittney Rosen reports, experts say it can’t come soon enough.
 

Toxic 'forever chemicals' are turning up in Canadians' blood samples

CBC News

1 day ago

Health Canada and Environment Canada released a report on the science on PFAS, chemicals found in various consumer products — cosmetics, diapers, menstrual products, food packaging, carpets, furniture and clothing. Both departments propose listing the human-made chemicals as toxic under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA).

 

Sustainable packaging contains harmful chemicals: study

CBC News: The National

Mar 31, 2023  #news #chemicals #sustainablepackaging

New research has found that some packaging that's touted as environmentally friendly contains high-levels of PFAS chemicals that can be damaging to the environment and human health. PFAS are hard to break down and have been linked to multiple different types of cancer.

Federal environment committee to make Imperial Oil's Kearl tailings leak documents public

Story by The Canadian Press • May 15, 2023

The public will soon be able to read a lengthy document Imperial Oil submitted to a parliamentary committee studying the recent tailings leaks at its Kearl oilsands mine in northern Alberta.

A motion by Bloc Québécois MP Monique Pauzé to publicly post witness submissions received by the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development was passed after some debate on Thursday evening.

To date, only one brief submitted by the Athabasca Chipewyan Métis Association is available on the committee’s webpage for the Kearl study.

The environment committee generally publishes all the briefs it receives. But it is not standard practice to upload other documents and additional information MPs often request from witnesses. Pauzé’s motion created a one-time exception to this standard procedure.

“We didn't receive a ton of documents but there are tables and numbers, and I think it could be interesting for everyone to have access to these documents,” Pauzé said in her motion on May 11. It is not clear exactly how many documents were submitted to the committee, but there is at least one 1,250-page submission from Imperial — which includes technical information, charts, an executive summary and recommendations — that would be made publicly available.

Conservative MP Mike Lake urged the committee to give witnesses who submitted information a courtesy notice that it will be made public and give them the opportunity to request a meeting or speak up if the documents contain some commercially sensitive information. Committee chair Francis Scarpaleggia said Imperial Oil will be notified.

“It’s a good idea to be as transparent as we can,” said Liberal MP Lloyd Longfield in agreement with Pauzé’s proposition.

“During the witness testimony, we heard transparency over and over was an issue here, so I think whatever we have that we can share with the public would be worthwhile,” said Longfield.

There was, however, some debate over the difficulties of translating the 1,250-page technical document submitted by Imperial Oil, in particular the technical tables, into French. It would take a translator a year to translate the entirety of the document, said Scarpaleggia. In response to translation concerns, Pauzé suggested that just the executive summary and recommendations could be translated, not the technical tables, a proposal that was accepted by the committee.

Conservative MP and environment critic Gérard Deltell wondered aloud whether the people who sent in documents understood at the time that they could become public.

“I'm not well placed to understand whether this is confidential information,” Deltell said in French, adding that he’d like to do a file-by-file check to ensure that no personal information will be inadvertently published. Conservative MP Damien Kurek echoed Deltell’s point.

“I do share the concern, just about the integrity of our committee process here in the House, that I don't know what the expectations were for those who are coming on commercially sensitive information and that sort of thing,” said Kurek.

Scarpaleggia said witnesses should expect documentation supporting their public testimony to also be public. When there is a sensitive issue, the committee can decide to see a witness in-camera, a.k.a., a meeting closed to the public, he said.

“It's a public study. These are public documents. If it were confidential, we would have said so,” said Pauzé in response to the concerns raised by her Conservative colleagues. “The people from Imperial don't expect the document that has 1,250 pages to not be made public.”

The Alberta Energy Regulator has not yet sent in any information to the committee because its internal investigation is ongoing, parliamentarians noted. The deadline to submit additional information for the committee’s study has already passed.

Natasha Bulowski, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer

Alien-like comb jellies have a nervous system like nothing ever seen before

Comb jellies appear to have fused nervous systems, raising questions about their evolution.

© Andrey Nekrasov/Getty Images

Story by Stephanie Pappas • May 15, 2023

Ctenophores, or comb jellies, are strange jelly-like animals that ghost through the sea propelled by tiny hairs called cilia. They're an enigmatic bunch, with origins that stretch back approximately 540 million years, and no one is sure exactly when they diverged from the rest of the tree of life.

Now, researchers have discovered that these alien-like creatures are even weirder than we thought: Their nervous system is like nothing ever seen before. Instead of relying on gaps between nerve cells called synapses for communication, at least part of the ctenophore nervous system is fused.

"We haven't actually seen this in any other animal before," study co-author Maike Kittelmann, a cell and developmental biologist at Oxford Brookes University in the U.K., told Live Science. "It means that there are other ways that neurons can connect to each other."
Nervous system evolution

The discovery raises questions about how all nervous systems evolved and adds fuel to a long-standing debate about how comb jellies are related to the rest of the animal kingdom. Many scientists thought that the nervous system in animals evolved only once, at some point after sponges broke off from the rest of the animal kingdom, as sponges do not have a nervous system. But some scientists think ctenophores diverged from other animals early and evolved their own nervous system separately.

Related: What's the weirdest sea creature ever discovered?

Comb jellies don't have brains, but have a weblike system of neurons known as the nerve net. It's within this nerve net that researchers found the fused neurons. The strange fused arrangement could hint that these systems evolved independently, Kittlemann said. But it's still an open question.

"We don’t really know for sure," she said.

The new research, published April 20 in the journal Science, looks at ctenophores in an early developmental stage, when they're just a few days old. At this stage, ctenophores can move around freely and even reproduce, but they're not full adults. (Depending on species, ctenophores have life spans between about a month and several years.)

The vast majority of nerve cells in animals communicate via synapses, which are gaps between cells. To "talk," neurons release chemicals called neurotransmitters across these gaps. But the new study found that within the ctenophore nerve net, the cells are fused and their membranes connected so that the path from cell body to cell body is continuous. This structure is called a syncytium.

"There are some other animals which show fused neurons but not to that extreme, where you have a whole nerve net," study co-author Pawel Burkhardt, who studies the evolutionary origin of neurons and synapses at Norway's University of Bergen, told Live Science.

Fused neural networks

The discovery raises a whole bevy of new questions, Burkhardt said, from how this fused network develops to how it functions. The same cells that are fused together also make connections to other nerve cells via synapses, and other parts of the ctenophore nervous system use synapses, too. It's not clear, Burkhardt said, why comb jellies use two different methods of communication between their nerve cells.

One possibility is that the fused nervous system has some advantage for tissue repair and healing, Leslie Babonis, an evolutionary biologist at Cornell University who was not involved in the new study, told Live Science. Ctenophores are capable of regenerating an entirely new animal from a small chunk of flesh.

"Maybe this is one of the secrets to their incredible ability for regeneration," Babonis said.

The research team only looked at one species of ctenophore — Mnemiopsis leidyi — in one developmental stage, so they now plan to find out whether other species have fused neural networks and whether this fusion persists through the animal's whole lifespan.

This could help answer questions about the evolution of the nervous system and whether it arose once, twice or more times. If many ctenophores have unique fused nervous systems, this could lend credence to the hypothesis that ctenophores evolved their nervous system separately from other animals. But it's also possible that all animal nervous systems still share a common origin, and ctenophores evolved the fusion later, the researchers said.

Only a handful of lineages in the animal kingdom have had their nervous systems closely studied, Leonid Moroz, a biologist at the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Biosciences at the University of Florida, told Live Science. Moroz was not involved in the current study but led a 2014 study of ctenophores, which found that the genetic and chemical basis of the ctenophore neural system is quite different from that seen in other animals.

If the nervous system is a poem, Moroz said, ctenophores use a different alphabet from the rest of the animal kingdom to write theirs. He argues that these jellies evolved their nervous system independently, and that other understudied animals may have done the same. Unraveling this diversity could lead to a deeper understanding of how neurological disorders arise.

"We need to understand syntax, we need to understand grammar," Moroz said. "But we cannot do it with only one or few species."

Microsoft wins EU antitrust approval for Activision deal vetoed by UK

Story by By Foo Yun Chee • May 15, 2023

 Illustration of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard game characters

© Thomson Reuters

BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Microsoft Corp won EU antitrust approval for its $69 billion acquisition of Activision on Monday, in a significant boost that could prompt Chinese and South Korean regulators to follow suit despite a British veto of the deal.

The U.S. software giant still faces a battle to clinch the world's biggest gaming industry takeover, however. It has until May 24 to appeal a decision by Britain's Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) to block it. A final decision may take months.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission's case against the deal is also pending at the agency, though Japan approved it in March.

The European Commission said the transaction was pro-competitive due to Microsoft's agreement to licence popular Activision games such as "Call of Duty" to rival game streaming platforms, confirming a Reuters report in March.

Such licences are "practical and effective", European Union antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager told reporters.

"Actually they significantly improve the condition for cloud game streaming compared to the present situation, which is why we actually consider them pro-competitive," she added, contrasting with the UK position that the deal would hit competition in that part of the market.

In rejecting the deal, the UK watchdog was seen as flexing its muscle on the global regulatory stage since Brexit.

Related video: EU Approves Microsoft's $69 Billion Acquisition of Activision Blizzard with Cloud Gaming Remedies (Benzinga)   Duration 0:40   View on Watch

CNBCMicrosoft CEO Satya Nadella on OpenAI relationship, generative A.I., Microsoft-Activision deal

5:20

WIONEU okays Microsoft takeover of Activision | World Business Watch

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unbranded - NewsworthyEU Approves Microsoft's Activision Acquisition

1:08

Microsoft has in recent months signed licensing deals with Nvidia, Nintendo, Ukraine's Boosteroid and Japan's Ubitus to bring Activision games to their platforms should the deal go through.

"The European Commission has required Microsoft to license popular Activision Blizzard games automatically to competing cloud gaming services. This will apply globally and will empower millions of consumers worldwide to play these games on any device they choose," said Microsoft President Brad Smith.

Activision's shares were up 1.3% at 1650 GMT, while Microsoft's were little changed.

CLOUD GAMING MARKET GROWTH

Vestager said the Commission had a different view from UK regulators of how the game streaming market, which accounted for just 1% of the total market last year, would develop.

"They see this market developing faster than we would think," she said. "There is a bit of a paradox here, because we think that the remedies that we have taken ... will allow for licensing to many, many more in the cloud gaming markets."

Britain's CMA said streaming was the most rapidly growing sector in gaming, while consoles were a mature market. It said Microsoft already accounted for 60-70% of global cloud gaming services and had other trump cards: Xbox, the leading PC operating system Windows and cloud provider Azure.

The CMA said on Monday it stood by its veto. Microsoft has said it will appeal that decision to the Competition Appeal Tribunal, with a ruling expected to take months.

The EU move will give CMA critics ammunition against the agency, said Alex Haffner, a partner at London law firm Fladgate.

"Critics of the CMA's stance, of which there have been many, will inevitably seize on today’s decision as proving the point made that the UK's regulatory regime is too rigid and stifles innovation," he said.

"Microsoft and Activision’s lawyers will also use the decision to provide greater ballast to their appeal of the CMA's decision."

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, additional reporting by Paul Sandle in London; Editing by Alexander Smith and Mark Potter)

KRIMINAL KAPITALI$M; KIEV

Ukrainian security agency says it suspects tycoon Firtash of embezzlement

Story by Reuters • May 15, 2023

Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash arrives at court in Vienna© Thomson Reuters

KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine's state security agency has served businessman Dmytro Firtash and top managers of companies he controls with "notices of suspicion" of embezzlement, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) said in a statement on Monday.


Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash arrives at court in Vienna© Thomson Reuters

The SBU said that, acting with the Economic Security Bureau (BEB), it had uncovered the alleged theft of up to $485 million between 2016 and 2022 as part of a "large-scale scheme" involving Ukraine's gas transit system.

"Effectively we are talking about the embezzlement of money from ordinary Ukrainians who paid their utility bills," the statement said

A statement issued by Firtash's company, Group DF, "firmly and categorically" rejected all the allegations as without legal foundation and "part of an ongoing campaign of corrupt pressure directed at its business operations."

It said the company and its legal advisers "will vigorously defend the interests of its businesses, personnel, and the shareholder in both Ukrainian and international courts."

The statement said Group DF had suffered losses linked to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and "will continue to support the defence effort against the Russian aggression."

While fighting Russia's invasion, Ukraine has also been seeking to reduce the political influence enjoyed by some businessmen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The European Union has also made tackling corruption a priority for Kyiv as it tries to join the wealthy bloc.

Ukraine imposed sanctions on Firtash last June, accusing him of selling titanium products that Kyiv said ended up being used by Russian military enterprises. Firtash denied the allegations.

Firtash, 58, rose to wealth and influence in Ukraine but has been indicted in the United States on bribery and racketeering charges. He denied wrongdoing and has fought extradition from Vienna.

(Reporting by Dan Peleschuk in KyivEditing by Ron Popeski, Timothy Heritage and Matthew Lewis)