The result marks one of the largest political upheavals Japan has experienced in 15 years, with the yen falling to a three-month low after the coalition’s loss.

The LDP’s defeat was in large part a reaction to lack of public trust due to a major corruption allegations of misappropriated political donations amounting to nearly $4 million in campaign financing slush funds that involved dozens of LDP party members.

Of those accused, 46 candidates who were involved in the scandal ran in the election. Discontent over economic concerns, particularly rising living costs, also took center stage in the election.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2024/10/28/Japan-Election-LDP/5061730126531/

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Speaker Kevin McCarthy has announced he was ordering House Republicans to launch an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, alleging a “culture of corruption” involving him and his family.

McCarthy had signaled the impeachment inquiry for weeks, but his announcement Tuesday comes at a time when he is facing mounting pressure from GOP hard-liners, who threaten to oust him if he doesn’t follow through on a Biden impeachment.

While Democrats claim the effort is “extremist,” McCarthy claims the move is not political but aimed instead at getting “answers” the American people deserve.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/house-gops-impeachment-inquiry-biden/story?id=103130979

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Volodymyr Zelenskiy has announced the dismissal of all the heads of Ukraine’s regional military recruitment centres in the latest drive to root out corruption after officials were accused of taking bribes from those seeking to avoid the frontlines.

At a time when the country’s army is in need of new recruits, Ukraine’s president described the taking of cash from people who wanted to avoid conscription while others suffered as a form of treachery.

“This system should be run by people who know exactly what war is and why cynicism and bribery during war is treason,” he said in a video statement. “Instead, soldiers who have experienced the front or who cannot be in the trenches because they have lost their health, lost their limbs, but have preserved their dignity and do not have cynicism, are the ones who can be entrusted with this system of recruitment.”

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/aug/11/zelenskiy-sacks-all-military-recruitment-heads-over-frontline-bribes-scandal-ukraine

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House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) revealed that “thousands of pages of financial records” obtained during the investigation show that the Biden family and their associates created a “complicated network of companies” in an attempt to conceal millions of dollars of payments from foreign businesses.

“The Bidens’ foreign entanglements are breathtaking and raise serious questions about why foreign actors targeted the Biden family, what they expected in return, and whether our national security is threatened. We will continue to pursue additional bank records to follow the money trail and inform legislative solutions to prevent this type of corruption. Americans deserve answers, transparency, and accountability,” Comer said.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.theblaze.com/news/biden-family-received-millions-incremental-payments-foreign-nationals-created-companies-conceal-source-funds-says-house-oversight-committee

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The post Ukraine billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky targeted in new anti-corruption swoop first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Reports of foul play in Ukraine’s high offices broke over the weekend, surrounding illicit payments to deputy ministers and over-inflated military contracts.

Deputy Defence Minister Vyacheslav Shapovalov, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Kyrylo Tymoshenko and Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksiy Simonenko are among the officials who have quit.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said personnel changes were being carried out at senior and lower levels.

However, the scandal could dampen Western enthusiasm for the Kyiv government, which has a long history of shaky governance, especially at a time when it is seeking more military support.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.euronews.com/2023/01/24/ukraine-corruption-scandal-string-of-officials-resign-in-kyiv

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Also overdue are the structural reforms necessary for Argentina to fix its economic mess. Just as in the case of soccer, Argentina’s own history can offer its leaders and citizens valuable lessons when it comes to economic success. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Argentina had a per-capita income surpassing that of nations such as Italy, Japan, and France. In 1895, it even achieved the highest per-capita income worldwide, according to some estimates. Moreover, Argentina’s six percent GDP growth per annum for the 43 years preceding World War I is the fastest in recorded history.

Argentina’s impressive economic performance was not only based on the export of raw materials. Between 1900 and 1914, industrial production tripled, reaching a level of industrial growth similar to that of Germany and Japan. All of this was accompanied by an unprecedented degree of social progress in the country. In 1869, between 12 and 15 percent of the economically active population belonged to the middle class; by 1914, this number had reached 40 percent. In the same time, the level of illiteracy was reduced to less than half.

Continue reading HERE

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/argentina-wins-another-world-cup-now-they-have-chance-fix-their-economy-opinion-1768234

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We can hardly watch news from the border.  The third world is flooding into Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California.  The administration has other priorities.  It can’t be bothered with questions about the invasion that’s taking place.  We’re being warned that the human flood that we can’t even watch is about to get a whole lot worse.  What’s going on?  I think I heard it somewhere, “If you don’t have a border, you don’t have a country.”  We’ve seen the seizures of deadly drugs.  The statistics are mind-numbing.  The news shows us that the “migrants” are wearing wristbands showing that they’ve paid the cartels for organizing this disaster.  It looks like we’re cooperating with the cartels.  Can this ever be turned around?

No, the war in Ukraine is much more important.  If the pretender can make out the words on the teleprompter, we’ll all be put in our place and realize that the war in Ukraine is the most important thing going on.  And it might be.  We’ve long-since lost track of the money that’s been sent, and not just from the U. S.  They’ve been begging all the Western nations, warning of dire consequences should Ukraine once again become a Russian possession.  You hear of the “domino effect,” and wonder whether we’re headed for world war.  

Never mind the domino effect.  We’re told that the missile systems we’re providing require American operators.  Yesterday the big headline on the Drudge Report was that Putin was readying his nuclear arsenal for attacks on Western nations.  You have to consider the source.  But it looks as though most of the concern is way off in Eastern Europe.

Every bad actor on earth knows it’s the time to move.  We certainly hope the pretender is not the one making decisions.  He’s shepherded around by people who tell him what to say, and he tries to put a little of that pretender spin on it.  You think he would dare balk at anything he’s told to say or do?  He’s in deep trouble as it is, and will need all the cooperation he can get in the months ahead.  It’s going to be gut-wrenching if the Ukrainian and Chinese dealings are ever taken up by the mainstream media.  

Elon Musk used to be a darling of the left. Then he bought Twitter. Now Mr. Musk is their whipping boy. The mainstream media is just beside themselves that free speech, wrong or right, would be allowed in the public square. It’s an outrage to the tech world and the government agencies that they can’t control information anymore. At least they control the TV networks, the newspapers and most social media concerns. They’d love to ban Musk himself. It turns out that some of these reporters were tracking his private jet and his personal calendar. He pulled the plug on their accounts. Now they’re screaming from the rooftops that he’s silencing reporters from big papers. He says they’re trying to get him assassinated.  

He keeps dropping secret Twitter information revealing that the social media company was meeting with the heads of government agencies with requests for the banishment of “disinformation.” They couldn’t allow free speech on the subject of Covid 19! They couldn’t allow mandated closures to be discussed by regular people!  

I hate to be the one to break it, but it looks like the wall has cracked and there will be enough embarrassment to go around once the inner workings are exposed.  You’ve heard it, “They’re a private company and they can do whatever they want.”  It gets a little dicey when they’re fulfilling the requests of government agencies, with regulatory power.  And they call us “fascists.”  

It won’t be any fun hearing about the corruption.  It’s just so embarrassing for the country.  It’s liable to be ruinous to the pretender. The broad outlines are available, but you wonder what this administration will do to make sure we don’t understand the full extent of it. 

Mark

The post Weekly Update by Mark Armstrong – December 16, 2022 first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Alexei Levinson

Alexei Levinson is the director of the Socio-Cultural Research Department of the independent Levada Center pollster.

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Source: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/04/01/corruption-dies-hard-in-russia-a65012

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Avenatti, who briefly considered a bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, also was charged with wire fraud and bank fraud in a separate case out of California. He was taken into custody at a law firm where he had gone to meet with Nike executives. The 48-year-old appeared Monday evening in Manhattan federal court, where a magistrate judge ordered his release on $300,000 bond. He did not enter a plea.

Outside the courthouse, Avenatti thanked federal agents for their “professionalism and courtesy” before predicting that he would be cleared of the charges.

“As all of you know,” Avenatti told reporters, “for the entirety of my career, I have fought against the powerful; powerful people and powerful corporations. I will never stop fighting that good fight. I am highly confident that when all of the evidence is laid bare in connection with these cases, when it is all known, when due process occurs, that I will be fully exonerated and justice will be done.”

Prosecutors said Avenatti tried to extort Nike “by threatening to use his ability to garner publicity to inflict substantial financial and reputational harm on the company if his demands were not met.”

A suspected co-conspirator working alongside Avenatti was identified Monday afternoon by The Associated Press and The Wall Street Journal as Mark Geragos, who has represented celebrities including Michael Jackson and — more recently — “Empire” star Jussie Smollett. Geragos also was a CNN contributor.

“As alleged, Michael Avenatti approached Nike last week with a list of financial demands in exchange for covering up allegations of misconduct on behalf of the company,” FBI Assistant Director in Charge William Sweeney Jr. said in a statement. “The lofty price tag included a $1.5 million payoff for Avenatti’s client and upwards of tens of millions of dollars for the legal services of his firm – services Nike never requested. This is nothing more than a straightforward case of extortion”

The counts against Avenatti in the New York case are extortion, transmission of interstate communications with intent to extort, conspiracy to transmit interstate communications with intent to extort, and conspiracy to commit extortion..

MICHAEL AVENATTI CUTS TIES WITH STORMY DANIELS

At a news conference Monday, Manhattan U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said Avenatti used illegal tactics and threats in an effort to obtain millions of dollars for himself. He claimed that if Nike did not meet his demands, “the company might die.”

“Our system of justice requires and relies on attorneys, members of the bar, to not simply follow the law, but uphold its finest principles and ideals,” Berman told reporters. “But when lawyers use their law licenses as weapons, as a guise to extort payments for themselves, they are no longer acting as attorneys. They are acting as criminals, and they will be held responsible for their conduct.”

According to the New York complaint against him, Avenatti and the co-conspirator met with attorneys for Nike on March 19 and “threatened to release damaging information” if the company did not agree to make multi-million dollar payments to them, as well as an additional $1.5-million payment to a client Avenatti claimed to represent.

He allegedly told the attorneys that if his demands were not met, he would “go take ten billion dollars off your client’s market cap … I’m not f—ing around.”

The complaint said Avenatti threatened to hold a news conference on the eve of Nike’s quarterly earnings call and the start of the NCAA tournament to announce allegations of misconduct by Nike employees.

“Nike will not be extorted or hide information that is relevant to a government investigation,” the company said in a statement obtained by Fox News. “Nike has been cooperating with the government’s investigation into NCAA basketball for over a year. When Nike became aware of this matter, Nike immediately reported it to federal prosecutors. When Mr. Avenatti attempted to extort Nike over this matter, Nike with the assistance of outside counsel at Boies Schiller Flexner, aided the investigation.

Mark Geragos, left, is seen in this March 2015 photo representing R&B singer Chris Brown at a court hearing in Los Angeles. (Reuters)

“Nike firmly believes in ethical and fair play, both in business and sports, and will continue to assist the prosecutors.”

JUSSIE SMOLLETT IS VICTIM OF ‘MEDIA GANGBANG,’ DEFENSE ATTORNEY MARK GERAGOS SAYS

The law office of Geragos & Geragos told Fox News that “our office has no comment” on the allegations. A spokeswoman for CNN, for whom Mark Geragos had contributed legal analysis, told the Washington Examiner that Mark Geragos was no longer a contributor at the cable network.

Meanwhile, the alleged client was identified as a coach for an amateur athletic union men’s basketball program based in California.

Earlier Monday, Avenatti tweeted he would be holding a news conference Tuesday to “disclose a major high school/college basketball scandal perpetrated by @Nike that we have uncovered. This criminal conduct reaches the highest levels of Nike and involves some of the biggest names in college basketball.”

Meanwhile, at a separate news conference in California, federal investigators announced additional criminal charges against the lawyer for a separate matter. In that case, Avenatti was accused of embezzling a client’s settlement money to pay his own expenses and debts — as well as those of his coffee business and law firm.

U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna said Avenatti was charged with wire fraud and tax fraud stemming from a two-year IRS tax investigation after he allegedly obtained $4.1 million in loans for his law firm and coffee business from a Mississippi bank by using phony tax returns stating that he had made $4,562,881 in 2011, $5,423,099 in 2012, and $4,082,803 in 2013. Avenatti also stated that he had paid more than $1 million in estimated taxes to the IRS in 2012 and 2013 when, according to prosecutors, he actually owed the IRS $850,438 plus interest and penalties for the years 2009 and 2010. In addition, authorities say, Avenatti paid no personal income taxes for 2011, 2012 and 2013 and paid no estimated taxes in 2012 and 2013.

“[Avenatti] is a corrupt lawyer who instead fights for his own selfish interest,” Hanna said, adding that the allegations against the attorney “paint an ugly picture of lawlessness and greed.”

Avenatti became famous as the lawyer for Daniels, the adult-film actress who alleged she had an affair with President Trump in 2006 while his wife Melania was pregnant with the couple’s son, Barron. In the last year, Daniels and Avenatti became household names in their fight against Trump, dominating cable news shows for months and taunting the president in interviews.

View image on Twitter

Stormy Daniels@StormyDaniels

My statement regarding my former attorney Mr. Avenatti..

Daniels released a statement Monday saying she was not “shocked” by the charges against Avenatti.

“Knowing what I know now about Michael Avenatti, I am saddened but not shocked by news reports that he has been criminally charged today,” Daniels said. “I made the decision more than a month ago to terminate Michael’s services after discovering that he had dealt with me extremely dishonestly and there will be more announcements to come.”

Charles Harder, who represented President Trump in the Daniels case, told Fox News that Avenatti’s arrest marked “a great day for the American justice system.”

Before Avenatti started representing Daniels in February 2018, he was virtually unknown outside of the California legal community. However, in a matter of months, he had become known as a no-holds-barred lawyer with a media style — and a penchant for tweeting — similar to Trump’s.

On Monday, Berman emphatically denied that politics played any role in the case, noting that investigators “received the call six days ago by the victim saying that three was extortionist threats made against them and that’s how we became involved in this case.

A senior Justice Department official told Fox News that while the California investigation into Avenatti had been going on for “a long time,” the Nike case in New York “came out of nowhere” and progressed “very quickly.”

“We could have arrested him last week,” the official told Fox News, adding that officials wanted the charges in both cases unsealed at the same time and wanted to ensure that Avenatti’s arrest went smoothly.

Both cases against Avenatti were overseen by the office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Justice Department officials tell Fox News that Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Ed O’Callaghan, Rosenstein’s right-hand man, was involved in “significant coordination” on the Avenatti matter over the weekend while also playing a part in Attorney General William Barr’s letter to Congress summarizing the findings of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. The officials added that Barr was also aware of the Avenatti case as it developed.

Avenatti briefly mulled a 2020 presidential run as a Democrat — he even visited Iowa at one point — but ultimately ruled that out. He also was involved in another high-profile case, representing dozens of parents whose children were separated from them at the U.S. border as a result of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. More recently, he’s been representing women who said they were sexually abused by R&B star R. Kelly.

In the California case, Avenatti faces up to 50 years in prison, while in the New York case, the charges carry a potential penalty of 47 years in prison.

Fox News’ Jake Gibson, Lee Ross, Marta Dhanis and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/us/michael-avenatti-accused-of-trying-to-extort-nike-for-up-to-25m-feds-say

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