Venezuela said on Saturday it arrested the former president of its National Securities Commission (CNV), the capital markets regulator, in a widening criminal probe into seven small private banks shuttered by authorities last week.
Antonio Marquez, arrested on Thursday, was charged with financial crimes including complicity in misappropriating funds, the Prosecutor’s Office said.
The seven banks shut down last week accounted for about 8 percent of Venezuela’s deposits. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he acted to stamp out corruption and safeguard depositors.
The government on Friday shut another bank, saying it was unable to cover short-term obligations.
Marquez was removed from his post at the commission on Tuesday, state-owned newspaper El Correo del Orinico reported.
The commission said on Thursday the government had named Tomas Sanchez as the new president. Sanchez was part of a panel overseeing the liquidation of Banco Canarias, shut last week for irregularities in capital increases, it said.
Nine people in addition to Marquez have been arrested and 15 others have been barred from leaving the country in cases related to the seven banks, the Prosecutor’s Office said.
Roughly equivalent to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, the CNV oversees brokerages, investment advisers, firms issuing securities and the stock market.
Separately, the president’s office said on Thursday that Interpol has arrest warrants out for nine people linked to the closed banks.
THE ‘MONSTER’: The Philippines on Saturday sent a vessel to confront a 12,000-tonne Chinese ship that had entered its exclusive economic zone The Philippines yesterday said it deployed a coast guard ship to challenge Chinese patrol boats attempting to “alter the existing status quo” of the disputed South China Sea. Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Commodore Jay Tarriela said Chinese patrol ships had this year come as close as 60 nautical miles (111km) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon. “Their goal is to normalize such deployments, and if these actions go unnoticed and unchallenged, it will enable them to alter the existing status quo,” he said in a statement. He later told reporters that Manila had deployed a coast guard ship to the area
A group of Uyghur men who were detained in Thailand more than one decade ago said that the Thai government is preparing to deport them to China, alarming activists and family members who say the men are at risk of abuse and torture if they are sent back. Forty-three Uyghur men held in Bangkok made a public appeal to halt what they called an imminent threat of deportation. “We could be imprisoned and we might even lose our lives,” the letter said. “We urgently appeal to all international organizations and countries concerned with human rights to intervene immediately to save us from
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
RSS