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The Morning Risk Report: Brazil’s Former Justice Minister Says President Has Abandoned Anticorruption Fight
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Former Justice Minister Sergio Moro says he doesn’t see support from the country’s president for anticorruption reforms. Mr. Moro, above, in Brasilia on May 12. PHOTO: ADRIANO MACHADO/REUTERS
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Good morning. A former judge who became the face of Brazil’s anticorruption campaign said he felt forced to step down as justice minister because President Jair Bolsonaro had abandoned the fight on graft that had helped get him elected.
“I didn’t see support from the president for those reforms,” Sergio Moro said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. “I started to feel as if I were in the government as an anticorruption symbol, but without the government in fact implementing consistent public policies in that area.”
[Continued below...]
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Mr. Moro, who was lauded by Brazilians as the face of the Operation Car Wash investigation that sent prominent politicians and corporate executives to jail, stepped down in April after accusing Mr. Bolsonaro of trying to interfere in federal criminal investigations.
Mr. Moro said at the time he couldn’t remain in the administration after Mr. Bolsonaro fired the head of the Federal Police, Mauricio Valeixo. Mr. Moro said the dismissal was made against his wishes and without his knowledge. “I didn’t choose to leave, I was forced to resign by an act by the president,” he told the Journal.
The president’s office declined to comment on Mr. Moro’s allegations.
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From Risk & Compliance Journal
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Professor Laundered Money for Colombian Tied To Maduro Regime
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A retired University of Miami professor who pleaded guilty Monday to money laundering charges said in court that he did it on behalf of a Colombian businessman who authorities say organized a corrupt scheme to divert funds from Venezuelan state coffers.
Bruce Bagley, a retired University of Miami professor and expert on crime in Latin America, said he laundered money for Colombian businessman Alex Saab, according to a transcript of Mr. Bagley’s plea hearing. U.S. authorities last year accused Mr. Saab of orchestrating a vast scheme to divert hundreds of millions of dollars in Venezuelan state funds using an emergency food program.
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Ericsson Begins Monitorship Under Deferred Prosecution Agreement
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Ericsson said its three-year term of monitorship under its deferred prosecution agreement with U.S. Authorities has started, following the engagement of an independent compliance monitor.
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The telecommunications-equipment company was the subject of a yearslong investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Department of Justice over historical foreign bribery violations in China, Djibouti, Indonesia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam.
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The government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has condemned sanctions as U.S. propaganda and economic warfare. PHOTO: VENEZUELAN PRESIDENCY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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The Trump administration tightened its web of sanctions around the Maduro regime in Venezuela, blacklisting four companies allegedly involved in the country’s oil sector.
By sanctioning the firms and their vessels, which are registered in the Marshall Islands and Greece, the U.S. Treasury Department is attempting to cut off the flow of revenue President Nicolás Maduro needs to preserve his power. Targeting the private sector with financial sanctions also helps the administration avoid a military confrontation, U.S. officials say.
As Russia, one of Maduro’s last allies around the globe, eases its logistical support for Venezuela’s energy sector in the face of a costly U.S. sanctions campaign, Caracas has increasingly relied on relationships with Iran, narco-traffickers and other illicit networks to trade its oil and gold for fuel and cash, current and former U.S. officials say.
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The Trump administration is taking the initial step to prepare tariffs against a range of trading partners unless they back off proposals to impose taxes that would fall heavily on the major American internet companies. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative said it was beginning investigations into tax measures known as digital-services taxes that are being proposed or implemented in the European Union and elsewhere as a way to tax commerce on the internet.
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The Senate confirmed a White House lawyer tapped by President Trump to oversee hundreds of billions of dollars of aid aimed at helping the economy recover from the coronavirus pandemic. Senators voted 51-40 on Tuesday to confirm Brian D. Miller, a special assistant to the president and senior associate counsel in the White House, as special inspector general for pandemic recovery.
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BYD Co., a Chinese electric-car maker-turned-mask producer, said it had secured a second reprieve on a troubled $1 billion deal to sell N95 masks to the state of California after missing a Sunday deadline to win a required federal certification. The company hasn’t received certification from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for the promised N95 masks
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Federal air-accident investigators called on American and European helicopter makers to move toward putting cockpit-video recorders on most models, bypassing U.S. aviation regulators and escalating a debate about privacy in the air.
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Apparel brands like Nike and Adidas have posted anti-racist sentiments across social media. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGES
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During a week of protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, apparel brands took to social media to condemn racism. Companies large and small, though, have faced criticism that their communication is falling short. Nike and Adidas have faced criticism for not backing up statements of support with financial contributions or concrete anti-racism actions.
In decades past, apparel companies often met weighty socio-political moments with silence. Today, though, socially and politically astute Gen-Zers and millennials force brands to take a public position on issues of gender, race and sexuality. Michelle Lynn Childs, professor of retail consumer sciences at the University of Tennessee, said that taking a stand is a “calculated risk” for brands—they might alienate one consumer base, but “build brand loyalty” with another, ideally larger, one.
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Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg defended his decision to preserve posts by President Trump, despite mounting outrage from insiders and civil rights activists that one of his messages last week violated company rules.
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Mr. Zuckerberg’s comments came a day after some employees participated in a “virtual walkout” opposing the policy decision. Two software engineers publicly said on Monday they quit the company, in part due to Facebook’s failure to enforce its own rules when it comes to Mr. Trump.
Meanwhile, a group that promotes online rights filed a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s executive order targeting social-media companies, contending it violates First Amendment rights of the firms and their users.
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A homeless woman and her child in Kolkata, India, last month. World Bank researchers caution that the pandemic could leave lasting economic scars. PHOTO: INDRANIL ADITYA/NURPHOTO/ZUMA PRESS
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The world’s low-income and emerging market economies will likely remain deeply damaged even five years after the coronavirus pandemic and associated lockdowns began, according to a new study from the World Bank. The virus has already plunged the world into a severe recession, the World Bank said, and its research casts doubt on scenarios in which emerging markets bounce back quickly after the health crisis has eased.
“The pandemic could alter the very structures upon which the growth of recent decades was built, since it could cause prolonged damage to global supply chains, global trade and financial flows, and global collaboration,” the World Bank said in a study released Tuesday.
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In the U.S., President Trump is planning to meet with senior advisers as soon as this week to discuss policy options for the next coronavirus relief package as the administration prepares for negotiations with Capitol Hill, according to a senior administration official.
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China’s central bank has allocated 400 billion yuan ($56.1 billion) to buy slices of unsecured loans made by regional lenders to small and micro enterprises, dabbling with Western-style unconventional monetary policy as it seeks to shore up small businesses and the labor market without fueling market bubbles.
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Iran is rolling back coronavirus restrictions as it attempts to revive its battered economy, despite a surge in new infections that has driven daily cases back toward the country’s peak in late March.
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Victoria, one of Australia’s biggest states, is pushing ahead on an infrastructure deal with China as ties between Beijing and the federal government are at a new low, raising concerns that Chinese money may end up funding projects that are a national-security risk. The deal is driving a wedge between the southeastern state and the government in Canberra, where views toward Beijing are hardening as the two countries spar over China’s handling of its coronavirus outbreak.
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Japanese regulators have warned the nation’s banks for the first time about the risk of investing in overseas securitized corporate loans, which have run into trouble from a wave of U.S. bankruptcies.
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Ericsson shareholders at the company's annual meeting in March, where attendance was limited to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. PHOTO: FREDRIK SANDBERG/SHUTTERSTOCK
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The Trump administration’s increasingly aggressive effort to cripple China’s Huawei Technologies has presented Ericsson the opportunity to lead the rollout of 5G technology around the world.
The Swedish company is emerging as the steadiest player in the $80-billion-a-year cellular-equipment industry, telecommunications executives and analysts say, because it makes a technically advanced product that one rival, Nokia, was late to develop and that Huawei may not be able to make in the future because of recent U.S. measures.
Washington is lobbying foreign countries to ban Huawei, saying Beijing could direct the company to spy on or sabotage communications. Both Huawei and Beijing say that wouldn’t happen.
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New legislation aims to stop China and others from stealing U.S. taxpayer-funded research at universities by enhancing the authority of federal agencies to monitor and punish the schools and scientists.
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Offices at an Industrious location. The co-working firm has joined with rivals to form the Workplace Operator Readiness Council. PHOTO: INDUSTRIOUS
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More than 20 of the world’s largest co-working firms have formed a new umbrella organization, the Workplace Operator Readiness Council, which is expected to release specific steps members have agreed to take to make workplaces safer, including contact tracing, decontamination and social distancing.
The firms—which include Industrious and Convene in the U.S., JustCo of Singapore, and IWG PLC of the U.K.—liken the coordinated effort to automobile companies sharing technology and data as they attempt to make cars more crash-resistant.
“You can compete on other things,” said Industrious Chief Executive Jamie Hodari, who took the lead role in organizing the council. “But you don’t want to get sharp-elbowed about health and safety."
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Microsoft Inc. Chief Executive Satya Nadella spoke during the company’s annual Build developers conference, held online, last month. PHOTO: KYODO NEWS/GETTY IMAGES
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The coronavirus pandemic has supercharged a battle over the future of business computing, pitting Microsoft against a growing list of rivals. Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, has hailed conferencing and collaboration software Microsoft Teams as critical to the company’s future, serving as a hub for Microsoft’s more famous products such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.
Some rivals say Microsoft has deployed sharp-elbowed business tactics reminiscent of an earlier era, when its Windows operating system dominated the software market—putting pressure on startups by copying product features, seeding doubt about competitors to potential customers and bundling its software to gain an edge.
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