Day: January 8, 2019

Peru Attorney General Pedro Chavarry resigned on Tuesday after a public outcry over his handling of the high-profile corruption investigation involving Brazilian builder Odebrecht.

His departure from the public prosecutors office marks a fresh victory for President Martin Vizcarra and supporters of his measures to uproot entrenched corruption in one of Latin America’s fastest-growing economies.

Chavarry prompted widespread scorn and days of street protests after he announced on New Year’s Eve that he was removing two lead prosecutors from the Odebrecht inquiry, which has targeted former presidents and presidential candidates.

Vizcarra responded by sending Congress legislation to suspend Chavarry and overhaul the prosecutor’s office.

Resignation protects prosecutor?

Chavarry denied he was trying to meddle in the investigation and said he was stepping down to protect the independence of the prosecutor’s office, which he portrayed in his resignation letter as under attack by Vizcarra’s government.

Vizcarra had repeatedly called for Chavarry to step down since he was appointed by a panel of prosecutors in July despite his ties to an alleged criminal group of judges, lawmakers and businessmen. Chavarry was later named by a prosecutor in his office as a suspect in the probe. He denies wrongdoing.

A former vice president, Vizcarra has made fighting corruption a focus of his government since taking office last year to replace Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, who stepped down in one of several graft scandals to grip Peru in recent years.

Vizcarra, however, lacked the authority to dismiss Chavarry. Under Peru’s constitution, only Congress, where Chavarry enjoyed support with the opposition majority, can oust the attorney general.

Avalos is acting attorney general

Supreme Prosecutor Zoraida Avalos, one of several prominent prosecutors to call for Chavarry to resign in the past week, was named as acting attorney general on Tuesday.

The prosecutors whom Chavarry had dismissed last week — Rafael Vela and Jose Domingo Perez — were reinstated amid the outcry.

The two are seen as pivotal figures in the Odebrecht investigation and recently drew up a plea deal that commits the company to providing evidence on about $30 million in bribes it acknowledges it paid to local politicians.

‘Car Wash’ probe

Odebrecht is at the center of the “Car Wash” investigation in Brazil, which has rippled across Latin America and which U.S. prosecutors have said is the biggest political graft scheme ever uncovered.

In late 2016, Odebrecht acknowledged it had paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in a dozen countries to secure public works contracts dating back over a decade. The company has committed to paying billions of dollars in fines.
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Labor rights campaigners warned against complacency as the European Union on Tuesday withdrew its threat to ban Thai fishing imports into the bloc, saying that the country has made progress in tackling illegal and unregulated fishing.

The EU’s so-called “yellow card” on Thai fishing exports has been in place since April 2015 as a warning that the country was not sufficiently addressing the issues.

“Illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing damages global fish stocks, but it also hurts the people living from the sea, especially those already vulnerable to poverty,” Karmenu Vella, European Commissioner for environment and fisheries said.

“Today’s decision reverses the first step of a process that could have led to a complete import ban of marine fisheries products into the EU,” he said in a statement.

Thailand has amended its fisheries legal framework in line with international law, and improved its monitoring and surveillance systems, including remote monitoring of fishing activities and more robust inspections at port, the EU said.

The country’s multibillion-dollar seafood industry has also come under scrutiny for slavery, trafficking and violence on fishing boats and at onshore processing facilities.

After the EU threatened to ban fish exports, and the U.S. State Department said it was failing to tackle human trafficking, the Southeast Asian country toughened up its laws and increased fines for violations.

Thailand has introduced modern technologies — from satellites to optical scanning and electronic payment services — to crack down on abuses.

But the International Labor Organization said in March that fishermen remained at risk of forced labor, and the wages of some continued to be withheld.

The EU on Tuesday said it recognized efforts by Thailand to tackle human trafficking and to improve labor conditions in the fishing sector.

Thailand voted in December to ratify ILO convention 188 — which sets standards of decent work in the fishing industry — becoming the first Asian country to do so.

But important gaps remain, said Steve Trent, executive director at advocacy group Environmental Justice Foundation.

“We still have concerns about the workers. We need to see that the reforms are durable,” he said.

Thailand is yet to ratify two other ILO conventions on the right to organize and the right to collective bargaining, both of which are essential to protect workers, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

This is particularly important in the fishing and seafood processing industries, as most of their estimated 600,000 workers are migrant workers.

“There is a risk that with the lifting of the yellow card, complacency will set in. We need to see a culture of compliance, and more being done to protect vulnerable workers in the industry,” Trent said.
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Forest fires caused by climate change are costing insurers more than ever, with the deadly fire that ravaged northern California the single most expensive natural disaster in 2018, Munich Re said in its catastrophe report Tuesday.

The California wildfire that devastated the small town of Paradise in November caused losses of $16.5 billion, of which $12.5 billion were insured.

Worldwide natural disasters caused $160 billion in economic damage in 2018. That was down from $350 billion the previous year, but a number of devastating hurricanes had contributed to the high losses in 2017.

Insurers and reinsurers paid out $80 billion for natural disaster claims last year, down from $140 billion a year earlier but almost double the 30-year average of $41 billion, the reinsurer said.

Munich Re board member Torsten Jeworrek said that 2018 was marked by several severe natural disasters with high insured losses.

“These include the unusual coincidence of severe cyclones in the U.S. and Japan, and devastating forest fires in California,” he said, adding that climate change appears to be making such large fires more common.

Insurers spent $18 billion on two huge fires in the United States in 2018 — equivalent to one in every four dollars they paid out as a result of natural disasters.

Ernst Rauch, the reinsurer’s chief climatologist, told Reuters that forest fires were entering a whole new dimension, costing tens of billions of dollars.

“Higher and higher temperatures are leading to ever greater droughts, and high humidity in the winter means that shrubbery grows quickly, creating an easily flammable material in dry summers,” he said.

Rauch said it was questionable whether areas at high risk could continue to be populated without taking additional measures, such as building houses farther from forests and with better safety standards.

Reinsurers act as a financial backstop to insurance companies, paying a chunk of the big claims for storms or earthquakes in exchange for part of the policy premiums.

The review gave no claims figures for Munich Re itself. The reinsurer is due to report fourth-quarter results on Feb. 6.
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Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Tuesday a military-assisted crackdown had dramatically reduced fuel theft and uncovered a secret pipe that was used to siphon gasoline out of one of the country’s refineries.

Such fuel theft has dropped from 787 truck loads per day to 177 since thousands of soldiers were sent to state-oil company Pemex’s installations last month, Lopez Obrador said at a daily news conference.

The crackdown on years of mounting fuel theft is the leftist government’s first major move against corruption and violence after taking office on December 1, but risks angering consumers and hurting the economy.

By closing off pipelines and refineries while it traced leakages, the government has triggered shortfalls and long lines at gas stations in at least six states, including Guanajuato, a major car-manufacturing hub in central Mexico.

Criminal groups and others who have tapped pipelines have long been blamed for billions of dollars of losses to public coffers over the past few years, but Lopez Obrador said last month that far more fuel was being stolen directly from Pemex installations by an internal network of corrupt officials.

Lopez Obrador said the military had discovered a 3-kilometer (1.9 mile)-long “hose” that was funneling fuel out of storage tanks at the Salamanca refinery in the central state of Guanajuato into a secret storage area.

He admitted there were complaints about the shortages, but said they were not widespread, and urged an end to “panic” buying and said shortages were an issue of distribution, not supply.

“This is not in vain,” Lopez Obrador said. “We are going to end corruption.”

Local media showed images of tanker trucks, escorted by federal police, heading from oil-rich costal states to the country’s interior.

It was not immediately clear what impact the crackdown will have on imports of fuel. Mexico is the top export destination for U.S. energy products, importing about 1.4 million barrels every day, or nearly a quarter of all U.S. overseas sales.
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Hospitals in Zimbabwe are turning away patients as a strike by doctors enters its sixth week. There is no end in sight to the strike, as President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government says it cannot meet the doctors’ demands.

The Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, Zimbabwe’s largest treatment center, is largely empty as a doctors’ strike that began December 1 drags on.

Sixty-nine-year-old Kasirina Zibveka had a lung infection in September, according to her medical records. After numerous tests were done, it was confirmed that her right lung had gone bad and needed to be removed.

But by then, doctors were on strike. She was discharged December 13 and was told to return Monday for the ailing lung to be removed. But with the strike unresolved, that did not happen.

Her daughter, Margret Chikoti, says the family has paid for her treatment, but only nurses are attending to her mother.

“We have no idea what is really happening to her since December 13,” she said. “All we see is her discharging some blood stained stinking fluids [through a hole pierced by nurses under her right breast]. What is happening inside her body? Is it getting worse? We just give her painkillers and use ointment to clean her wound. We hope that their negotiations [doctors and government] bear fruit and they return to work.”

Doctors held a meeting Monday and resolved to remain on strike until their demands are met. The doctors want the government to equip hospitals with modern technology, sufficient medicine and protective clothing for doctors.

They also want to be paid in U.S. dollars instead of Zimbabwe’s depreciating currency, known as bondnotes.

“We will not accept the money that they are refusing. We want the money that buys,” Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association Vice President Marambire Sinaravo Jongwe said this to his members. “We are very understanding people, we are very lenient to our government. They are just trying to ignore us, they are very insincere to doctors. But yet we are saving the public, the general of Zimbabwe. For our patients we care, the government does not care.”

The doctors also say they do not want to prescribe drugs that are not in stock, a practice that forces patients to seek out black market drugs.

The Medicines Control Authority of Zimbabwe has warned about such drugs being fake, expired and unsafe to use.

The government, meanwhile, said last week it is not in a position to pay doctors or any civil servants in U.S. dollars.

Officials say they have imported medicines and are now stocking hospitals. But with doctors still on strike, that news might not be enough to help patients like Kasirina Zibveka.
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U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said there is “a very good chance” that the United States and China will reach a trade agreement. 

Ross told CNBC he is hopeful such a deal would address “all the key issues.”

Working-level trade talks between the United States and China began Monday in Beijing with negotiators for the world’s two biggest economies trying to resolve tariff disputes that have roiled world markets in recent weeks.

In a sign the meeting was off to a good start, China’s economic czar, Vice Premier Liu He, dropped by the talks on Monday to encourage the negotiators.

While Chinese officials expressed optimism at the start of the two-day talks, Beijing at the same time complained about the sighting of the U.S.S. McCampbell, a warship, in what it said were Chinese waters near disputed islands in the South China Sea.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China had made “stern complaints” with the United States about the sighting of the destroyer, but the trade talks went ahead as scheduled.

There was no immediate U.S. response to the Chinese complaint.

Few details have emerged from the trade talks, which are scheduled to run through Tuesday.

​The trade talks are the result of an agreement last month between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to stop the tit-for-tat tariff conflict between the two countries for 90 days starting on New Year’s Day. 

Trump said last week, “I think we’ll have a deal with China.” 

Lu said the two countries have agreed to hold “positive and constructive” discussions.

“From the beginning we have believed that China U.S. trade friction is not a positive situation for either country or the world economy,” Lu said. “China has the good faith, on the basis of mutual respect and equality, to resolve the bilateral trade frictions.”

​The talks are occurring as Chinese growth — 6.5 percent in the July-to-September period — fell to its lowest point in a decade. There are concerns that U.S. growth, 3.4 percent in the third quarter, is also slowing even as the country’s unemployment rate remains nearly at a five-decade low.

Even so, Lu said, “China’s development has ample tenacity and huge potential. We have firm confidence in the strong long-term fundamentals of the Chinese economy.”

The United States has long complained about access to the vast Chinese market and Beijing’s demands U.S. companies reveal their technology advances.
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