Free Republic

DAKAR, Oct 25 (AFP) - Senegal said it would restore diplomatic ties with China, becoming the latest west African country to ditch relations with Taiwan in favor of mighty Beijing. A government statement, released after a Beijing trip by Foreign Minister Cheikh Tidiane Gadio, hailed the "important decision to renew diplomatic relations with China" and said both countries would soon exchange ambassadors. A joint statement published in the Chinese capital and reported by the state news agency Xinhua said the re-establishment of ties after the hiatus "conformed to the interests and aspirations of the two countries." China had severed its...

Swiss diplomat Sylvie Brunner was found dead this week after falling from her 17th-floor apartment balcony in Tehran. She was the first secretary of the Swiss delegation and worked in the US Interests Section. Neighbors heard a loud explosion late at night before her death. Her body was found in the garden the next morning. According to reports, Sylvie Brunner was called to Iran to testify about her knowledge of the details of the American accounts who pocketed billions of dollars due to the bribes to lift sanctions against Iran. ...... Snip...... Dan J @DanTCH_ Swiss diplomat who was preparing...

Elf Aquitaine, until its privatisation in 1994, was much more than a oil company - according to prosecutors at the trial of Elf's top managers. They claim the state-owned firm worked as an unofficial arm of France's murkiest diplomacy. The close relationship between Elf and French officials is well-documented, and goes back to the presidency of General Charles de Gaulle. As the company expanded into Africa in the 1960s and 1970s, Elf paid secret "commissions" to African officials with the blessing of French governments. By the 1980s Elf had operations in Gabon, Congo Brazzaville, Cameroon, Angola and Nigeria - which,...

Federal prosecutors are investigating a New York City Council member and an aide to Gov. Kathy Hochul in connection to charges against leaders of a homeless shelter nonprofit accused of stealing more than $1 million. The councilmember and the aide are sisters. Feds probing Farah and Debbie Louis City Council member Farah Louis and her sister, Debbie Louis, who serves as the governor's assistant secretary of New York City governmental affairs, have not been charged, but prosecutors are also looking into whether they accepted bribes related to the alleged scheme. Sources told CBS News New York political reporter Marcia Kramer...

A federal judge Thursday ordered the detention of former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani and eight others in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish cultural center that killed 85 people, the judge's office said. A special prosecutor sought the order, alleging that the worst terrorist attack on Argentine soil was orchestrated by leaders of the Iranian government and entrusted to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah. Iran's leading diplomatic envoy in Buenos Aires, Mohsen Baharvand, told The Associated Press that his government would oppose any efforts to detain Rafsanjani or other Iranian nationals. Baharvand, Iran's charge d'affaires, said the case...

If anything, this article under-reports the threat of Iran's influence in the US. It does not really delve into the lobby system created here, and funded by shell corporations that have successfully evaded the sanctions. Also, the article seems to imply that the influence system is limited to Shiite network. But the rulers of Iran, flush with cash, have built a network of mosques, Islamic centers, cultural centers and schools throughout the US. And they are not limiting their reach and message to Shiite Islam. Wherever necessary, they are happy to reach Sunnis, including Arabs, Pakis, and Africans. By and...

Strong intelligence has begun to emerge that US President Jimmy Carter attempted to demand financial favors for his political friends from the Shah of Iran. The rejection of this demand by the Shah could well have led to Pres. Carter’s resolve to remove the Iranian Emperor from office. 1 GIS. The linkage between the destruction of the Shah’s Government — directly attributable to Carter’s actions — and the Iran-Iraq war which cost millions of dead and injured on both sides, and to the subsequent rise of radical Islamist terrorism makes the new information of considerable significance. Pres. Carter’s anti-Shah feelings...

The founder of an infamous Minnesota-based nonprofit convicted of hatching a $250 million welfare fraud scheme was ordered by a judge last week to forfeit her Porsche, designer handbags and millions of dollars in ill-gotten gains. Aimee Bock, the 44-year-old mastermind behind the Feeding our Future scandal, was found guilty in March on federal charges of wire fraud, bribery and conspiracy in connection to the nation’s largest COVID-19 fraud scheme. Bock, who along with dozens of predominantly Somali co-conspirators pilfered pandemic relief funds from a federal program meant to feed hungry children in need, is awaiting sentencing for her lead...

A juror was dismissed Monday after reporting that a woman dropped a bag of $120,000 in cash at her home and offered her more money if she would vote to acquit seven people charged with stealing more than $40 million from a program meant to feed children during the pandemic. These seven are the first of 70 defendants expected to go to trial in a conspiracy that cost taxpayers $250 million. Eighteen others have pleaded guilty, and authorities said they recovered about $50 million in one of the nation’s largest pandemic-related fraud cases. Prosecutors say just a fraction of the...

Years before Minnesota welfare fraud captured the nation’s attention, a Somali-American leader of one massive scheme expanded his assets beyond the North Star State, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). Abdiaziz Shafii Farah, a Somali-born naturalized U.S. citizen, used some of his ill-gotten gains to buy property throughout the Twin Cities and Kentucky before the DOJ prosecuted him for using the nonprofit Feeding Our Future to defraud the government of $300 million in COVID-19 relief meant for hungry children, leading to a 28-year prison sentence in August. There are at least 1,687 people of Somali descent living in Kentucky....

Washington reporters have been given the green light to go after Joe Biden. Joe Biden on Tuesday afternoon walked by a group of reporters after delivering remarks at the Chiefs of Mission reception in the East Room. A reporter ambushed Joe Biden and asked him about the Ukraine bribery scheme alleging he received a $5 million bribe from Mykola Zlochevsky, the Ukrainian oligarch who runs Burisma Holdings. ..... Snip..... New York Post reporter Steven Nelson surprised Joe Biden when he asked about the Ukraine-bribery scheme and audio recordings of him and his son Hunter. “Are there tapes that you accepted...

As we’ve reported, federal prosecutors have uncovered massive fraud in Minnesota’s federally funded food child nutrition programs, where scammers – many of them of Somalian descent – allegedly ripped off over a billion dollars from taxpayers. Some are predicting the end of Gov. Tim Walz’s political career, as this went down under his watch, and it’s been revealed that Rep. Ilhan Omar (MN-05) held her campaign victory party in 2018 at a restaurant owned by a man who was convicted in March on 21 counts related to the scandal, including wire fraud, federal programs bribery and money laundering. Not a...

The Communist Party of China confirmed on Tuesday that it had executed Bai Tianhui, who once held several high-ranking positions at the embattled finance giant Huarong, after several appeals in the Tianjin court system failed. Bai was convicted on multiple appeals of bribery while holding several positions in various arms of Huarong, including Huarong (Hong Kong) International Holdings Co., Ltd., and China Huarong International Holdings Co., Ltd. He is the second executive associated with Huarong — whose central entity is China Huarong Asset Management — that the Chinese government has executed in recent memory. Huarong has been the subject of...

Smartmatic — the company involved in a defamation lawsuit against Fox News over the latter’s reporting on the 2020 election — was indicted by a federal grand jury in Miami on Thursday for allegedly bribing a Philippine official in relation to the 2016 Philippine national elections.The indictment added the parent company of Smartmatic, SGO Corporation Ltd., as a defendant in the case already underway against three Smartmatic executives. The indictment charges that between 2015 and 2018, Smartmatic executives Roger Alejandro Piñate Martinez, Jorge Miguel Vasquez, and others “caused at least $1 million in bribes to be paid” to the former...

Rest assured that Gov. JB Pritzker’s $1.4 million gambling win last year didn’t snatch away state tax revenue from any Illinois casino. The billionaire Democrat’s surprise windfall came from Las Vegas blackjack tables, Pritzker said Thursday, a day after his hot streak was revealed in 2024 income tax returns released by his political campaign. “I was incredibly lucky,” a smiling Pritzker said while being quizzed by reporters on his jackpot during an otherwise somber Loop press conference about the potential deployment of troops in Chicago. “You have to be to end up ahead, frankly, going to a casino anywhere.” Fortune...

Tom Homan was investigated for accepting $50,000 from undercover FBI agents. Trump's DOJ shut it down. In the summer of 2024 – as the Presidential election was nearing – the FBI, along with the DOJ’s Public Integrity section and the US Attorney’s office for the Western District of Texas, launched a federal investigation into Tom Homan “based on evidence of payment from FBI undercover agents in exchange for facilitating future contracts relating to border enforcement.” It is alleged that on September 20, 2024, hidden cameras captured Homan accepting $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives to...

A disgraced FBI official tipped off a Chinese company about a criminal investigation while Hunter Biden was pursuing lucrative deals with the CCP-linked business. The since-convicted FBI official who led counterintelligence efforts in New York leaked information to an affiliate of a Chinese company which was linked to Hunter Biden’s business efforts, according to a DOJ watchdog who concluded the leak tipped the Chinese conglomerate off about the bureau’s criminal investigation.Charles McGonigal, the former special-agent-in-charge of the FBI Counterintelligence Division in New York, leaked information to “Person B” – an unnamed businessman who worked for the Chinese energy conglomerate...

Sentencing is scheduled for next month. Her husband, former New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, reported to prison in June to begin an 11-year sentence. He stepped down from his Senate post after his 2024 conviction.Nadine Menendez faces sentencing on Sept. 11 later this year. Here are the details. After a three-month trial, in which attorneys for former New Jersey Senator, Bob Menendez, said it was his wife Nadine who was to blame for the cash and gold found in their Englewood Cliffs home, Menendez appears to be having a change of heart. In a letter addressed to Judge Sidney Stein...

Jeffrey Bednarek, a former employee at the California Department of Motor Vehicles office in El Cajon, California, was sentenced today by U.S. District Court Judge Cathy A. Bencivengo to three years in prison for his leadership role in a conspiracy to commit bribery, identification document fraud and witness tampering. In addition to the prison sentence imposed, the court also ordered Bednarek to pay a fine of $25,000. In handing down the sentence, Judge Bencivengo told the defendant that as a DMV employee and a former corrections officer, he should have known better. “You were in fact violating the public trust…You...

Anxious FBI chiefs are trawling through 'numerous' top-level investigations spanning 22 years for fear they were compromised by convicted bureau spook Charles McGonigal, DailyMail.com can reveal. The forensic clean-up operation ranges over the entire time the philandering former head of counterintelligence in New York worked for the agency. McGonigal, 55, has already been sentenced to four years and two months in prison for taking money and conspiring with a sanctioned Russian oligarch who is a crony of despot President Vladimir Putin. But the full possible repercussions of his treachery are outlined in a sentencing memorandum by the US government for...