2023-11-21 23:39

TOKYO, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Japan's government on Wednesday slashed its view on the economy for November in its first such downgrade in 10 months, as weak demand weighed on capital spending and consumer expenditure. Authorities also cut their view on capital expenditure for the first time since December 2021, saying the pace of recovery was "pausing". The new assessment by the Cabinet Office came after data last week showed the economy shrank in July-September for the first time in three quarters as demand waned. "The economy is recovering moderately, although some areas showed stalemate recently," said the report issued by the Cabinet Office on Wednesday. It was the first time the government has cut its view on the overall economy since January. "While business conditions and firms' earnings continue to improve, the strength of the corporate sector is not necessarily translating into wages and investment," an official at the Cabinet Office said. "Domestic demand such as corporate investment and consumer spending lack strength," he said. Although the government retained its assessment that consumer expenditure was "picking up" in November, inflation squeezed consumer goods spending, while spending on services such as eating out maintained an uptrend. In a bid to soften inflation's hit to the economy, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's government compiled this month a package of measures that will involve spending of more than 17 trillion yen ($113 billion). The government expects the economy to continue to recover moderately but there are risks such as those from global monetary tightening and the Chinese economy. Close attention needs to be paid to rising prices, the Middle East situation as well as financial market fluctuations, the report said. ($1 = 149.6200 yen) https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-cuts-view-economy-first-time-10-months-2023-11-21/

2023-11-21 23:30

LONDON, Nov 21 (Reuters) - The most powerful man in crypto has lost his crown - and could see his freedom curtailed as well. Binance chief Changpeng Zhao on Tuesday stepped down and pleaded guilty to breaking U.S. anti-money laundering laws as part of a $4.3 billion settlement resolving a years-long probe into the world's largest crypto exchange, prosecutors said. The deal with the Justice Department, part of a large settlement between Binance and other U.S. agencies, resolves criminal charges for conducting an unlicensed money transmitter business, conspiracy and breaching sanctions regulations. It also leaves Zhao's future uncertain. "Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance," Zhao tweeted. "Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally. But I know it is the right thing to do. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility." Zhao, known as CZ, will personally pay $50 million and is barred from all involvement with Binance. U.S. sentencing guidelines call for prison time of 10 to 18 months for the charges he faces. Prosecutors are seeking an 18-month prison sentence, the New York Times reported. Zhao and his lawyers did not return calls seeking comment. LOFTY AMBITIONS After launching Binance in Shanghai in 2017, Zhao dreamed big. "We want to take over the entire market!" he told staff in a company chat group that year. The 46-year-old CEO did not waver in his belief as he built up his crypto exchange. Even this year, Zhao felt a major goal was within reach. "The idea that a five-year-old start-up could mature and operate at the same level as a financial institution that has been around for 200 years was once impossible to fathom," Zhao wrote in January in a review of the previous year. "But we are nearly there today." In that review, Binance hailed its progress in complying with regulations across the world. The exchange had strived through the year to strengthen client checks, it said, developing crypto's "best security and compliance team." Zhao's public aim to be a part of all that has been dashed by Tuesday's guilty plea and settlement. "By failing to comply with U.S. law, Binance made it easy for criminals to move their stolen funds and illicit proceeds on its exchanges," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said on Tuesday. "Binance also did more than just fail to comply with federal law. It pretended to comply." 'ZHAO ANSWERS TO NO ONE' Zhao was born in China before moving to Canada in 1989 at age 12, two months after China's Tiananmen Square crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, he wrote in a blog last year. The tycoon crisscrossed the globe in his quest for success, working in Tokyo and New York before moving to Shanghai, where he embraced crypto and founded Binance. Its expansion was dramatic. Binance became the world's biggest crypto exchange within six months. While its market share has slipped this year, it still accounts for about half of global crypto trading volumes, according to research firm CCData. From the company's earliest days, Zhao kept a tight grip on Binance, as a powerful leader committed to secrecy and focused on market domination, a Reuters report last year found. As CEO, he remained in control of minute operational detail, at the same time posting social media selfies with world leaders and city mayors. Zhao installed a tight circle of associates, many of whom had worked or studied in China, into top jobs. Co-founder Yi He now runs Binance's venture capital arm, as well as other key departments. As Binance hired more widely from traditional financial and regulatory worlds, Zhao's tight control over his company was undiminished. The company, which calls itself an "ecosystem," has set up more than 70 entities, most controlled by Zhao personally. "Zhao answers to no one but himself," the Commodity Futures Trading Commission wrote in March after suing Binance for operating what it called a "sham" compliance program. It is unclear whether Zhao will now relinquish control of the firms. In the meantime, one of his appointees will take over running Binance. Richard Teng, a senior Binance executive who joined in 2021, is the new CEO, Zhao posted on social media on Tuesday. Teng "will ensure Binance delivers on our next phase of security, transparency, compliance, and growth," he said. https://www.reuters.com/technology/changpeng-zhao-crypto-king-binance-chief-ousted-us-crimes-2023-11-21/

2023-11-21 23:13

Nov 21 (Reuters) - At least three people have been killed, and three others are believed to be missing, in a landslide on the principal highway serving an island community in Southeast Alaska, state officials said on Tuesday. A steep, heavily wooded mountain slope gave way on Monday night along a coastal stretch of the Zimovia Highway in Wrangell, Alaska, a fishing and logging town of about 2,000 residents 155 miles (250 km) south of Juneau, the state capital, officials said. One person was also injured. The collapse of the mountainside followed a storm that swept Southeast Alaska with heavy rain and high winds in recent days, saturating soil and heightening landslide hazards across the region, according to Shannon McCarthy, a spokesperson for the state Transportation Department. The downhill cascade of mud and tree debris struck three homes and buried a 500-foot(152-meter)-wide section of the roadway, according to officials who briefed reporters on a video conference call on Tuesday. Emergency personnel found the body of a female juvenile in an initial search for survivors on Monday night, and an adult woman was rescued from the debris on Tuesday morning. She was later listed in good condition, said Austin McDaniel a spokesperson for the state Public Safety Department. Later on Tuesday, two more bodies were found in the area, McDaniel said in a statement. Three more people - two juveniles and one adult - were believed missing after the search ended for Tuesday, he said. Ground-level rescue operations were suspended overnight while geologists assessed the risk of additional landslide activity in the area, but on Tuesday portions of the slide zone was deemed stable enough to resume the search. Aircraft and drones were also deployed in the search. An estimated 20 to 30 residents in the vicinity of the slide were evacuated, said Mason Villarma, acting borough manager. The settlement of Wrangell, founded in the 19th century by Russians in a region inhabited for centuries by the Native Tlingit people and their ancestors, occupies the northern tip of Wrangell Island in the Alaska Panhandle region. It has no connection with the Wrangell Mountains or Wrangell-St. Elias National Park farther inland and well to the northwest. Wrangell is linked to other towns in Southeast Alaska by ferry and airplane. Its principal road is the Zimovia Highway, which runs along the west side of the island for 14 miles. The landslide struck at mile 11, prompting a 5-mile closure of the highway, officials said. McCarthy said several more slides struck Prince of Wales Island, south of Wrangell, but no casualties were reported there. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/one-dead-multiple-others-believed-missing-alaska-landslide-2023-11-21/

2023-11-21 22:57

Nov 21 (Reuters) - Binance chief Changpeng Zhao stepped down and pleaded guilty to breaking criminal U.S. anti-money laundering laws as part of a $4.3 billion settlement resolving a years-long probe into the world's largest crypto exchange, prosecutors said on Tuesday. The agreement will resolve criminal charges that Binance conducted an unlicensed money transmitter business, conspiracy and breaching sanctions regulations, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Some of the charges, which are both criminal and civil, relate to practices that Reuters reported first in a series of articles in 2022. Here are the key allegations against Binance, its founder Zhao and other executives. UNLICENSED MONEY SERVICE BUSINESS The U.S. said that Binance, Zhao and other executives "knowingly and willfully conspired" to operate as an unlicensed money services business (MSB) from August 2017 until October 2022. The exchange failed to register with the U.S. Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) as an MSB partly to prevent U.S. regulators discovering it facilitated crypto trades for its clients without proper checks on its users, the U.S. said. The move was designed to allow Binance to "gain market share and profit as quickly as possible," the U.S. said, with the exchange attracting a "substantial number of U.S. users" to its main website. Binance "chose not to comply" with U.S. rules as it "determined that doing so would limit its ability to attract and maintain U.S. users." MONEY LAUNDERING CHECKS The U.S. said that Binance facilitated "billions of dollars" of crypto transactions for its customers, including in the United States, without implementing so-called "know your customer" checks. Binance's compliance personnel, including its compliance officer, recognised that the exchange's anti-money laundering controls "were inadequate and would attract criminals to the platform," the U.S. said. Binance processed transactions by operators of "illicit mixing services" used to obfuscate the provenance of crypto funds, and "laundered proceeds of darknet market transactions, hacks, ransomware, and scams," the U.S. said. Between August 2017 and April 2022, bitcoin worth $106 million was sent between Binance.com wallets and Hydra, a popular Russian darknet marketplace "frequently utilized by criminals that facilitated the sale of illegal goods and services," the U.S. said. SANCTIONS VIOLATIONS The U.S. said that Binance had a "significant customer base" from some sanctioned jurisdictions and was aware that Iran represented "the majority of such customers." Binance knew that it would allow transactions between U.S. users and those subject to U.S. sanctions, "in violation with U.S. law," the U.S. said. From around January 2018 to May 2022, Binance processed 1.1 million crypto transactions worth at least $898.6 million between U.S. customers and those who lived in Iran, the U.S. said. Around 2019, Binance continued to serve "thousands of users" identified as being from sanctioned countries, the U.S. said, including over 12,500 users who provided Iranian phone numbers. 'TERRORIST' FINANCING Binance failed to report suspicious transactions associated with Palestinian militant group Hamas, the authorities said. Crypto wallets at Binance were found to interact with bitcoin wallets associated with groups proscribed as terrorist organisations by the United States and other countries, including Islamic State, the armed wing of Hamas, al Qaeda, and the Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), the U.S. said. https://www.reuters.com/technology/highlights-us-charges-against-crypto-exchange-binance-2023-11-21/

2023-11-21 22:36

BOGOTA, Nov 21 (Reuters) - Colombia's majority state-owned oil company Ecopetrol (ECO.CN) is exploring an offer from Venezuela's PDVSA to supply the Andean country with gas from December 2024, it said on Tuesday. Colombia's President Gustavo Petro said during a visit to Venezuela over the weekend it was "very likely" that Ecopetrol and Venezuela's state-owned oil company would start working on projects together. "Ecopetrol is analyzing the alternatives presented by PDVSA during the Colombian government's recent visit to the neighboring country," the statement said. Options being considered include bilateral projects to supply Colombia with gas via the transnational Antonio Ricaurte pipeline, it added. Petro met with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Caracas over the weekend, but though he floated the idea of joint projects, he provided no details of the potential cooperation. The advantage of importing gas from Venezuela is the cheaper cost, Colombia's Minister of Mines and Energy Andres Camacho told Reuters at a press conference. "Today we're bringing in gas at $15 per million cubic feet and with the neighboring country, which has large reserves, we could potentially get $5 per million cubic feet," Camacho said. "It's very attractive and it will have a positive impact on electricity costs," he added. Washington eased some oil sanctions on Venezuela last month after an electoral deal between Maduro's government and the political opposition but has said it will reinstate them if Maduro does not take steps toward lifting public office bans on opposition figures and freeing political prisoners and Americans Washington says are "wrongfully detained." Ecopetrol, which is listed on the New York stock exchange, said in the statement that a gas contract signed in 2007 with PDVSA, but which is currently inactive, was included in the sanctions lifted by the U.S. in October. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/colombias-ecopetrol-examining-gas-imports-venezuela-statement-2023-11-21/

2023-11-21 22:20

UNITED NATIONS, Nov 21 (Reuters) - The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned on Tuesday that Ukraine's wheat production may be unable to meet domestic and export demand in the years to come if Black Sea export routes remain blocked and attacks on food infrastructure continue. WFP's Ukraine director, Matthew Hollingworth, said a forthcoming report by the U.N. Human Rights Office (OHCHR) would show that since mid-July there have been 31 documented attacks on Ukraine's grain production and export facilities. He told the U.N. Security Council that "28 of these attacks were in Odesa oblast alone, which is home of the vital Black Sea and Danube River terminals essential for global trade." "If attacks on food infrastructure and the blockage of sea export routes continue, it will dramatically impact the agricultural production outlook over years to come, and may, in a worst-case scenario, lead to wheat production being unable to meet domestic and export demand," Hollingworth said. Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council on Tuesday that Moscow targets military infrastructure, not civilian infrastructure. The United Nations has blamed Russia's February 2022 invasion of Ukraine for worsening a global food crisis. Ukraine and Russia are both major grain exporters. Russia also is a big supplier of fertilizer to the world. Russia's agriculture minister said last week that Moscow had begun free grain shipments totaling up to 200,000 tonnes to six African states, as promised by President Vladimir Putin in July. Hollingworth said that before the war Ukraine made up 9% of global wheat exports, 15% of maize and 44% of sunflower oil. U.N. officials are trying to revive the Black Sea grain deal, which Russia quit in July - a year after it was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey - complaining that its own food and fertilizer exports faced obstacles and that not enough Ukrainian grain was going to countries in need. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Reuters earlier this month that it will be difficult to revive the Black Sea deal, under which nearly 33 million metric tons of Ukraine grain were exported. Ukraine launched what it calls a temporary export corridor in August to allow agricultural exports as an alternative arrangement. More than 700,000 metric tons of grain have left Ukrainian ports via the new route. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-could-fail-meet-future-wheat-demand-if-attacks-continue-un-agency-warns-2023-11-21/