FILE PHOTO: Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir delivers a speech inside Parliament in Khartoum, Sudan April 1, 2019. REUTERS/Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah/File Photo
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan’s chief prosecutor said on Saturday that ousted President Omar al-Bashir would be sent for trial soon on corruption charges related to his three decades in power.
Alwaleed Sayed Ahmed Mahmoud told a news conference the trial referral would be made after a one-week period for objections expires, adding that criminal cases have been opened against 41 other former officials accused of graft.
The prosecutor’s office said on Thursday that Bashir, who was ousted by the military in April following months of protests against his 30-year autocratic rule, had been charged with corruption after an investigation was completed.
The charges are related to laws on “suspected illicit wealth and emergency orders,” the office said, without giving more details.
Bashir had already been charged in May with incitement and involvement in the killing of protesters. Prosecutors also ordered his interrogation on suspicion of money laundering and terrorism financing.
Mahmoud also said he had attended a meeting with military heads to discuss judicial supervision of a plan to clear what he called “criminals” from an area adjacent to a protest camp in the center of the capital.
But the idea of dispersing the protesters was not discussed, he added.
The country’s military rulers said on Thursday they had thwarted several coup attempts and that some officers had been arrested over the deadly dispersal of protesters at a sit-in in Khartoum earlier this month.
Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Hugh Lawson and Helen Popper
RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Brazil’s economy minister and lower house speaker exchanged harsh words on Friday over progress on pension reform, creating another drag on Brazilian financial assets already feeling the heat from global market weakness.
Brazil's Economy Minister Paulo Guedes attends a news conference in Brasilia, Brazil June 12, 2019. REUTERS/Adriano Machado
Economy Minister Paulo Guedes kicked off the spat, spurning a congressional committee report for what he called excessive changes to the government’s pension reform bill such as scrapping a plan to launch private savings accounts.
Rodrigo Maia, speaker of the lower house of Congress, hit back at the criticism, saying the collective will had prevailed as it should in a democracy. “We’re not going to pay attention to Minister Paulo Guedes and his recent aggressions against the parliament,” Maia said in a TV interview.
The complaints from Guedes, coming a day after President Jair Bolsonaro’s chief of staff had touted the congressional pension reform report as a “huge victory,” raised concerns about more tension between the government and Congress.
After clashes with lawmakers in recent months, Guedes had struck a more conciliatory tone, contributing to investors’ hopes for a swift approval of the landmark reform to boost public finances. But his disdain on Friday was striking.
Speaking in Rio de Janeiro, Guedes said only a bill generating around 1 trillion reais ($256 billion) of savings over the next decade would represent real reform of the country’s bloated social security system, but around 860 billion meant the issue would need revisiting in five or six years time.
On Thursday, the special committee on pension reform’s long-awaited report recommended changes to the original draft, reducing the government’s planned 1.237 trillion reais of savings to 913 billion reais.
Analysts expect that to be watered down further, but the consensus still appears to be that anything above 800 billion reais would be regarded as a major stepping stone toward putting the country on a more stable financial footing.
Brazilian markets rallied on Thursday, but the political noise soured the taste on Friday, and Guedes came under fire.
“He said what everyone thought, but he shouldn’t have said it,” said a fund manager in Sao Paulo who was not authorized to speak with the press.
The real fell around 1.2% to 3.90 per dollar, its worst day since the end of April, and the benchmark Bovespa stock market fell 0.74%.
Guedes criticized the committee’s report for excluding a transition to private savings accounts, reforms of state and municipal government pensions and changes to how older, disabled and rural workers are treated.
Maia said the special committee will vote on the bill around June 25-26, then present it to the plenary for final lower house approval before a congressional recess in late July.
Reporting by Rodrigo Viga Gaier and Maria Carolina Marcello; Writing by Jamie McGeever; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Will Dunham
FILE PHOTO - Ada Colau, the Mayor of Barcelona, issues a statement in Barcelona, Spain, October 9, 2017. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes
BARCELONA (Reuters) - Barcelona’s acting far-leftist mayor Ada Colau may win a second term in office on Saturday with the support of the Socialists and representatives backed by former French premier Manuel Valls - in a deal aimed at preventing a Catalan pro-independence leader taking the job.
Local elections in May produced a fragmented result in Spain’s second-largest city: Colau’s Barcelona en Comu (Barcelona in Common) and the separatist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Catalonia’s Republican Left) parties each won 10 seats, while the Socialists got eight and Valls’ group took six.
City hall votes to pick a new mayor on Saturday. The winning candidate will need the support of 21 representatives.
The outcome has national importance because Spain’s acting Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez may need the support of Esquerra Republicana to be re-elected by parliament in the coming weeks.
Colau’s party said on Friday its members had voted in favor of her seeking a new term in a deal with the Catalan Socialist Party.
Valls, born in Barcelona to a Catalan father and Swiss-Italian mother, has said he would support Colau or Socialist candidate Jaume Collboni as mayor to avoid a secessionist taking the job.
But if no candidate wins the support of 21 representatives, Esquerra’s Ernest Maragall would take the job as his party won 5,000 more votes than Barcelona en Comu in the May election.
CHISINAU (Reuters) - Moldova’s new prime minister Maia Sandu consolidated her power on Friday as her predecessor resigned, appearing to ease a crisis that shook the country for the past week as two rival governments jostled for control.
Pavel Filip, former Moldova's Prime Minister and one of the leaders of the Democratic Party of Moldova, speaks at a news briefing in Chisinau, Moldova, June 14, 2019. REUTERS/Vladislav Culiomza
Sandu took office last weekend as the head of a new coalition government designed to fight corruption and remove a party led by tycoon Vladimir Plahotniuc from power.
But Plahotniuc’s Democratic Party called her a usurper and insisted Prime Minister Pavel Filip was still in charge. Filip stepped down on Friday but demanded a snap election and refused to recognize Sandu’s government as legal.
The crisis threatened more instability for one of Europe’s smallest and poorest countries, where the West and Russia vie for influence.
Moldova has been dogged by scandals and the emigration of citizens to Russia or wealthier European countries to find work. Sandu is the country’s eighth prime minister since 2013.
“I have a message to the entire world. Moldova is finally free,” Sandu told a televised briefing.
Earlier on Friday in an interview with Reuters, she laid out some of her government’s priorities: fight corruption, sack dishonest officials, make the electoral system fairer and get foreign aid flowing.
“The biggest challenge of the country is that people are leaving. It’s the young people who are leaving.”
UNLIKELY ALLIANCE
After a February election produced a hung parliament, Sandu, a Harvard-educated former World Bank economist, became head of a coalition government comprising her ACUM bloc and the Socialist party of President Igor Dodon.
It is an unlikely alliance – ACUM wants Moldova to join the EU, while Dodon wants closer ties with Russia.
Sandu told Reuters her government will adhere to Moldova’s current international agreements, including a political and trade pact with the EU rolled out in 2014.
“This is not a natural alliance. There is no question about it, and probably half a year ago nobody would have said that this could happen,” she said.
She is keen to ensure Moldova receives two outstanding tranches of aid from the International Monetary Fund before the current program expires in November.
Sandu joined politics in 2012 as an education minister, where she became well known for her efforts to clamp down on rampant cheating during exams.
Tackling corruption on a national scale would likely prove popular as it is one of voters’ biggest concerns.
Plahotniuc’s Democratic Party said Sandu had missed a legal deadline to form the government and the Constitutional Court last weekend declared her government invalid.
It suspended Dodon temporarily to allow Filip as acting president to declare an election in September. Sandu and Dodon ignored the ruling.
The crisis led to two rival governments issuing orders. Sandu’s ministers could not enter government buildings, which were surrounded by police and Plahotniuc’s supporters. She ran her government out of offices in the parliament.
When the man Sandu appointed interior minister tried to enter police headquarters earlier this week, it ended in a scuffle with officers in helmets and balaclavas.
Russia supports the new government. The EU, which froze aid to Moldova last year, said it was “ready to work with the democratically legitimate government”. Washington had earlier called on all sides to show restraint.
Sandu accuses Plahotniuc of corruption and trampling on democracy. Plahotniuc’s camp says such allegations against him are politically driven lies, and that Sandu’s government would let Moldova fall into Moscow’s orbit.
Filip, for his part, has accused Sandu and Dodon of subverting democracy and called their administration an “illegal, Kremlin-backed government”.
Slideshow (6 Images)
He resigned on Friday but said he only did so because of the pressure being put on his administration.
“Our resignation does not unblock the legal process, because the constitutional crisis continues,” he said.
Sandu called on the Democratic Party to withdraw its supporters from surrounding government buildings and desist from protests.
Additional reporting by Alexander Tanas; Editing by Kevin Liffey
CHISINAU (Reuters) - The Democratic Party of Moldova said on Friday it would step down from power and dismiss Prime Minister Pavel Filip’s government.
“The resignation of the government of Pavel Filip is the only possible and legitimate solution to prevent a political crisis,” Vladimir Cebotari said in a televised briefing.
Moldova has been in turmoil for the past week as two rival governments tussled for control of the east European country. Maia Sandu was nominated as Prime Minister last weekend, but Filip’s camp refused to recognize her government’s legitimacy.
Reporting by Matthias Williams and Alexander Tanas; Editing by Hugh Lawson
FILE PHOTO: Jailed Catalan politician Oriol Junqueras attends the first session of parliament following a general election in Madrid, Spain, May 21, 2019. Bernat Armangue/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
MADRID (Reuters) - Spain’s Supreme Court on Friday blocked Catalan separatist Oriol Junqueras from leaving jail to collect his credentials for the European Parliament, to which he was elected on May 26.
Without the credentials, Junqueras, who is in prison awaiting the conclusion of a high profile trial on Catalonia’s bid for independence from Spain, is unable to claim his seat in the European legislature.
The court said its ruling did not mean he would permanently lose his European seat and that he must remain in jail while it concludes its deliberations surrounding the trial of 12 Catalan political leaders who led the region’s secession push in 2017.
Junqueras had been set to temporarily leave the prison where he has been held since 2017 on Monday to collect the papers.
Catalonia’s independence drive has overshadowed Spanish politics for years and is a major test for Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists after they won a national election in April but fell short of a majority.
Junqueras, the former deputy head of the region, is charged with rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds for his part in organizing a referendum and declaration of independence that were deemed illegal by Spain’s Constitutional Court. He denies the charges.
Two other Catalan politicians won European Parliament seats in May but have also been unable to formalize their places because they will be detained if they return to Spain to collect their MEP papers.
The region’s former leader Carles Puigdemont and local council member Antoni Comin have both lived in self-imposed exile in Belgium since arrest warrants were issued following the attempted secession.
Junqueras was allowed to leave jail in May to collect his credentials as a member of Spain’s lower house of parliament following April’s election although he will not be able to serve as a lawmaker until the trial is concluded.
Reporting by Belen Carreno; Writing by Paul Day; Editing by Jesus Aguado and Catherine Evans
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Sudan’s military rulers said on Thursday that some officers had been arrested for their involvement in the deadly dispersal of a protest sit-in in Khartoum.
An investigation into the storming of the sit-in had concluded and the results would be announced on Saturday, the military council said.
Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz, writing by Lena Masri; Editing by Toby Chopra
