Macau's leader Edmund Ho said yesterday that US allegations that a Macau-based bank has been laundering money for North Korea were "serious" and lacked evidence.
Financial authorities in Macau were investigating allegations by the US Treasury Department that Macau's Banco Delta Asia SARL had aided front companies for the North Korean government in distributing counterfeit money and smuggling.
The US Treasury has put the bank on its blacklist of suspected money launderers and proposed that the bank be cut off from the US financial system.
In response, Ho told reporters: "These serious allegations from the US Treasury must ultimately be based on fact."
"We cannot jump to such a hasty conclusion before there is firm evidence," he said.
The allegations have led a large number of depositors to withdraw their money from the bank, despite its firm denials Friday. Yesterday morning, long queues continued to spill out on the streets outside the bank.
Ho urged Macau to restore confidence in the bank's operations.
"This incident has completely no ties with its operation... I hope you refrain from easily believing market rumors. None of us would like to see a blow to our financial system from such unreasonable scenarios," he said.
Macau, a former Portuguese colony, returned to Chinese rule in 1999. The tiny territory -- only a 10th the size of Washington, D.C. -- includes a peninsula and two islands in the Pearl River delta in southern China. It is renowned for its gambling and seedy nightlife.
The Macau bank is a unit of Delta Asia Group (Holdings) Ltd., a finance company run by Stanley Au, a Macau businessman, local lawmaker and former gold trader.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last