Corruption

The Prime Minister faces charges of fraud, accepting bribes, and breach of trust stemming from three separate police investigations

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday took the stand for the first time in his trial for alleged corruption, setting off what will be weeks of testimony. Netanyahu said hello to the judges. One judge told him he had the same privileges as other witnesses and could sit or stand as he chose. Netanyahu will answer during his appearances to charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases. He is accused of promoting advantageous regulation for media moguls in exchange for favourable coverage of himself and his family. He is also accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars' worth of cigars and champagne from a billionaire Hollywood producer in exchange for assisting him with personal and business interests. He denies wrongdoing, saying the charges are a witch hunt orchestrated by a hostile media and a biased legal system that is out to topple his lengthy rule. The trial will be an inconvenient legal spectacle for the Israeli leader at a

The case, which has been concluded by the National Supervisory Commission, is being further processed

The Supreme Court on Friday sought the CBI's response on a plea filed by alleged middleman Christian Michel James seeking bail in the purported Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland scam case. A bench of Justices Vikram Nath and P B Varale issued notice to the CBI and directed it to file its reply within four weeks. "Issue notice, returnable four weeks," the bench said. The alleged scam pertains to the purchase of 12 VVIP helicopters from chopper design and manufacturing company AgustaWestland. James moved the apex court challenging the Delhi High Court's September 25 order refusing him bail in the case. James, a British national, was extradited from Dubai in December, 2018, and was subsequently arrested. The high court previously dismissed his bail application, observing there was no significant change in circumstances from the time when his earlier bail pleas were rejected. He is among the three alleged middlemen probed in the case with the other two being Guido Haschke and Carlo ...

South Korea declares martial law: The troubled history of its presidents reveals a legacy of authoritarian regimes, political turmoil, and the transition to democracy

Dong Jun, former PLA Navy chief, has joined a growing list of decorated military officials in China under investigation for corruption

Prosecutors have so far argued against leniency at her hearing in Ho Chi Minh City unless she finds a way to return a significant chunk of the 415.7 trillion dong

The former chairman of the Bank of China, Liu Liange, was on Tuesday sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for corruption and illegal issuance of loans. He was found to have accepted bribes worth over 121 million yuan (USD 16.8 million), a court in Jinan city in China's eastern Shandong Province said in its verdict. Liu was deprived of political rights for life, all of his personal property will be confiscated, and all his illegal gains must be recovered and turned over to the state treasury, the court sentence read, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. The court found that Liu had taken advantage of his various positions at the Export-Import Bank of China and Bank of China, respectively, to assist others in matters such as loan financing, project cooperation and personnel arrangements -- while illegally accepting bribes in return. Moreover, he was found to have knowingly facilitated the issuance of loans totalling more than 3.32 billion yuan to unqualified companies in ...

The chances for the release of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan vanished after he was arrested in a protest case hours after getting bail in a case of alleged corruption, a media report said on Thursday. The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Wednesday granted him bail in the second Toshakhana case related to the purchase of an expensive Bulgari jewellery set at a throwaway price, igniting hopes of his release. However, hours later, Rawalpindi police arrested him late at night in connection with a case registered at New Town Police Station on terrorism and other charges. The police alleged that Khan, while imprisoned in Adiala Jail in Rawalpindi, had called for a protest in Rawalpindi on September 28. Dawn newspaper quoted a police spokesperson as saying that Khan had been detained in the case filed on September 28 and a team has been tasked to probe the charges. The charges include violations of the Anti-Terrorism Act, defying the government ban on public gatherings, obstructin

Around 25 places belonging to officers were raided and records were checked by the Karnataka Lokayukta

The Enforcement Directorate on Thursday conducted fresh searches against Chennai-based 'lottery king' Santiago Martin, the single biggest donor to political parties with over Rs 1,300 crore in electoral bonds, as part of a money laundering investigation, official sources said. The action comes after the Madras High Court recently allowed the ED to proceed against Martin as the Tamil Nadu Police had decided to close the predicate or primary FIR against him and a few others and a lower court accepted this police plea. Sources said multiple premises linked to Martin were being searched on Thursday in Chennai and some other places. The federal agency last year attached assets worth about Rs 457 crore in a case against Martin linked to an alleged loss of over Rs 900 crore to the Sikkim government by fraudulent sale of the state lottery in Kerala. Future Gaming Solutions India Pvt. Ltd. is the master distributor of Sikkim lotteries and the ED has been investigating Martin, known as the .

Anti-government protesters in Serbia on Monday demanded arrests and the resignations of top officials over the deadly collapse of a concrete roof at a railway station that killed 14 people in a northern city this month. The rally in Belgrade blamed the collapse on rampant corruption and sloppy renovation work on the station building in Novi Sad part of a wider deal with Chinese state companies involved in a number of infrastructure projects in the Balkan country. Borislav Novakovic, a former mayor of Novi Sad, accused the ruling populists of filling their bloody pockets while filling cemeteries in Serbia." The state was "responsible for the crime that took 14 lives, he added. The crowd chanted jail in response. The several thousand protesters demanded that Prime Minister Milos Vucevic and his government step down and that those responsible for the collapse be arrested. Authorities have opened an investigation and Serbia's construction minister submitted his resignation last week,

Attacking the Hemant Soren government in Jharkhand, the BJP on Saturday alleged that the JMM-led coalition has failed to properly utilise central funds to the tune of over Rs 4.4 lakh crore over the last decade, with the amount being equivalent to funding 737 Chandrayaan missions or the cost of 4,510 Vande Bharat trains. The saffron party accused the state government of failing to effectively utilise over Rs 2.5 lakh crore allocated by the central government over the past five years due to mismanagement and corruption. "Despite receiving significant support from the Narendra Modi-led government at the Centre which allocated over Rs 4.4 lakh crore since 2014 -- equivalent to funding nearly 737 Chandrayaan missions or the cost of 4,510 Vande Bharat trains -- the Soren government failed to utilise it properly," party leader Gourav Vallabh alleged. Addressing reporters here, Vallabh alleged that the Jharkhand government was neck-deep in corruption and neglected its citizens despite the

Singapore has become much more repressive, and corruption in the Asian financial hub has worsened in the decade since the death of former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, according to his youngest son who fled to Britain to seek asylum from what he described as a campaign of persecution to silence him. Lee Hsien Yang, who has been granted political refugee status in the UK, told The Associated Press that Singaporean authorities have weaponised the country's laws against critics and that he is just the most prominent example of a growing number of Singaporeans fleeing abroad to seek protection from their own government. Lee cited a tightening of laws on security and rights of assembly and a sharp increase in the number of asylum-seekers from the city-state over the past decade under the rule of his estranged brother, Lee Hsien Loong, who was prime minister until he stepped down earlier this year. Singapore has this veneer that purports to be a sort of affluent, democratic, free country.

Malaysia's High Court on Wednesday ordered imprisoned former Prime Minister Najib Razak to enter a defense in his second corruption trial over the multibillion-dollar looting of the 1MDB state investment fund. Najib set up the 1Malaysia Development Berhad state fund shortly after taking power in 2009 to promote economic development, but the fund amassed billions in debt. Investigators allege more than USD 4.5 billion was stolen from the fund and laundered by his associates to finance Hollywood films and extravagant purchases. The prosecution established its case on four charges of abuse of power to obtain over USD 700 million from the fund that went into Najib's bank accounts between 2011 and 2014, and 21 counts of money laundering involving the same amount, trial judge Collin Lawrence Sequerah said Wednesday. He said evidence showed Najib had a vested interest in 1MDB, and his pivotal role in all relevant transactions that eventually plunged the fund into debt. Testimony by witness

1MDB, a sovereign wealth fund co-founded by Najib in 2009 while he was premier, has faced corruption probes over the alleged misappropriation of over $4.5 billion by high-level officials

Peru's former President Alejandro Toledo on Monday was sentenced to 20 years and six months in prison in a case involving Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, which became synonymous with corruption across Latin America, where it paid millions of dollars in bribes to government officials and others. Authorities accused Toledo of accepting $35 million in bribes from Odebrecht in exchange for allowing a highway to be built in the South American country. The National Superior Court of Specialized Criminal Justice in the capital, Lima, imposed the sentence after years of legal wrangling, including a dispute over whether Toledo, who governed Peru from 2001 to 2006, could be extradited from the United States. Odebrecht, which built some of Latin America's most crucial infrastructure projects, admitted to US authorities in 2016 to having bought government contracts throughout the region with generous bribes. The investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice spun probes in several ...

The CBI has filed a charge sheet against Congress MP Karti Chidambaram and others in connection with alleged bribery in facilitating visas of Chinese nationals for a power company in 2011 when his father P Chidambaram was the Union home minister, officials said on Thursday. In its charge sheet submitted before a special court here, the CBI has named Karti Chidambaram, the Lok Sabha MP from Sivaganga, his alleged close associate S Bhaskararaman, company Talawandi Sabo Power Ltd (TSPL), a subsidiary of Vedanta and Mumbai-based Bell Tools, through which bribes were allegedly routed, they said. The agency has invoked charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating, and forgery under the Indian Penal Code and provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act, they said. Other charge-sheeted accused include Viral Mehta, Anup Agarwal, Mansoor Siddiqui and Chetan Shrivastava, they said. The CBI has filed the charge sheet after two years of probe into its FIR registered in 2022 where it had alleged t

S Iswaran has was accused of accepting gift worth $306,000 from Malaysian billionaire Ong Beng Seng and businessman David Lum

Former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal quipped that one engine of the BJP's double-engine government failed after the Lok Sabha elections, while the other is failing during assembly elections