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.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Filipino farmers like Romeo Wagayan have been left with little choice but to let their vegetables rot in the field rather than sell them at a loss, as rising oil prices linked to the Iran war drive up the cost of harvesting, labor and transport. “There’s nothing we can do,” said Wagayan, a 57-year old vegetable farmer in the northern Philippine province of Benguet. “If we harvest it, our losses only increase because of labor, transportation and packing costs. We don’t earn anything from it. That’s why we decided not to harvest at all,” he said. Soaring costs caused by the Middle East
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s officially declared wealth is fairly modest: some savings and a jointly owned villa in Budapest. However, voters in what Transparency International deems the EU’s most corrupt country believe otherwise — and they might make Orban pay in a general election this Sunday that could spell an end to his 16-year rule. The wealth amassed by Orban’s inner circle is fueling the increasingly palpable frustration of a population grappling with sluggish growth, high inflation and worsening public services. “The government’s communication machine worked well as long as our economic situation remained relatively good,” said Zoltan Ranschburg, a political analyst
RSS