Hundreds of millions of pesos have been illegally withdrawn from several Mexican banks in possible cyber attacks in recent weeks, Mexican officials have announced.

Hackers sent hundreds of false orders to transfer funds from banks, including No. 2 Banorte, to fake accounts in other banks, and accomplices then emptied the accounts in cash withdrawals in scores of branch offices, two sources close to a Mexican government investigation of the matter said.

One source said the thieves transferred more than 300 million pesos ($15.4 million) while the El Financiero newspaper reported that around 400 million pesos had been stolen.

It was not clear how much of the money transferred was later withdrawn in cash.

Speaking to reporters late on Monday, Mexico’s Central Bank Governor Alejandro Diaz de Leon described the attacks as unprecedented, expressing hope that unspecified measures being taken would stop similar future incidents.

“There’s no evidence that would allow us to say with certainty that this is over,” he said, adding “We’re taking corrective and mitigating action.”

Diaz de Leon declined to name the banks targeted or specify the amounts stolen. He said the central bank was still probing what had happened.

He later said in a radio interview that all the evidence — so far still partial — pointed to cyberattacks.

The central bank’s head of operations, Lorenza Martinez, said on Friday that five financial institutions were targeted with “unauthorized transfers.”

One source said cyber attackers might have received assistance from inside bank branches, since such big cash withdrawals were uncommon.

“In terms of the security of the bank’s offices, I think that is part of the analysis that each bank is doing,” Martinez said.

He stressed that clients’ accounts had not been affected so far and that only the accounts of financial institutions in the Central Bank had been hit.

Source: Presstv

Air France-KLM Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jean-Marc Janaillac has offered to resign after employees rejected a pay raise.

The 65-year-old CEO announced his resignation on Friday making good on an earlier promise to step down if he failed to end the weeks-long strikes.

Staff and management at the flagship carrier have been locked in a wage dispute since February.

“I accept the consequences,” said Janaillac after 55.44 percent of Air France workers voted against a seven percent over a four-year pay raise.

Janaillac described the workers’ decision as a “huge waste” of resources after revealing last month that the industrial action cost Air France 25 million euros per day.

The decision came as workers began a fresh round of intermittent strikes Friday, prompting the cancellation of a quarter of flights on average.

“Air France was on the road to success. I regret that that dynamic was not understood (by workers),” he said.

Unions argued the raise was too little after years of restructuring during which pay was frozen, and demanded a 5.1-percent raise this year instead.

The move coincided with Air France-KLM’s release of first-quarter earnings, which showed a net loss of 269 million euros ($322 million), weighed down by three days of strikes which cost about 25 million euros per day according to the company.

The industrial action by Air France personnel comes amid persisting rolling strikes by rail workers at state-owned SNCF railways, as well as protests by students, public servants, energy workers, and garbage collectors.

Source: Presstv

French industrialist Vincent Bolloré was taken into custody on Tuesday morning at the premises of the judicial police in Nanterre, France.

According to French media company, Le Monde, the billionaire businessman is being investigated for influence peddling and corruption in Africa, specifically the conditions under which he obtained two of the sixteen container terminals in the ports of Lomé and Conakry, in 2010.

State prosecutors believe that Bollores, who has interests in several African countries, could have taken advantage of his Havas communications agency to facilitate African heads of state into power in exchange for concessions to operate these terminals.

They seek to draw a connection between Havas’ management of the 2010 presidential campaigns of the Guinean President Alpha Condé and Faure Gnassingbé of Togo at ridiculously subsidised prices and the subsequent acquisition of port rights by Bolloré Africa Logistics.

Other executives of the group were also taken into custody on Tuesday, including Gilles Alix, CEO of the Bolloré group, and Jean-Philippe Dorent, head of the international division of the Havas communications agency.

According to Le Monde, numerous documents were seized during searches carried out in April 2016 at the headquarters of the Bolloré group in Puteaux (Hauts-de-Seine). These documents reportedly confirm the state’s suspicions about under-invoicing of the presidential campaigns led by Havas.

The group has since formally denied any irregularities in the way they conduct business in Africa.

Source: Africa News

The Cameroonian authorities have banned mining operations of three Chinese companies for non-compliant with contractual terms. Cameroon’s Ministry of Industry, Mines and Technological Development said on Saturday.

The companies, Hong Kong, Peace Mining and Lu, and Lang, the ministry said would no longer perform gold panning activities in the region of East-Cameroon.

The government ordered the companies to leave Cameroon. It appeared from the statement that Hong Kong company did not have documents authorizing it to carry out mining activities.

As for the Peace Mining and Lu and Lang companies, their departure is linked to a series of conflicts recorded between their employees and local populations which have resulted in deaths, in addition to the non-respect of the environment, according to the statement.

These companies reportedly contributed significantly to the degradation of the environment through the diversion of rivers, and obstruction of rivers by mud, which has had a negative impact on agriculture and livestock.

According to some NGOs, the gold exploitation activities in Cameroon of Chinese companies had caused the death of 34 people in 2017.

Besides, just for the first three months of the current year, several people have died as a result of landslides and land erosion.

Source: APA

British private equity firm Actis is investing in a £200m mall and business park in the central African country of Cameroon.

Planned for the city of Douala, the 18,000-sq-m Douala Grand Mall and Business Park will have a Carrefour supermarket, a multiplex cinema, restaurants and shops. A second phase will include a five star hotel and office spaces.

Douala is the commercial capital of Cameroon, with a population of just under 2.5 million. British High Commissioner to Cameroon, Rowan Laxton, laid the foundation stone for the mall on 11 April with Cameroon’s Minister of Commerce, Luc Magloire Mbarga Atangana.

According to the High Commission, the project is funded by the British Investment Fund-Actis, and is being carried out with a local real estate developer, Craft Development.

The scheme is expected to create 4,500 local jobs, with construction scheduled for completion by the end of 2019. “This diversification of portfolio in Cameroon (investing beyond power sector) is a remarkable signal that Cameroon is a good business destination for multinationals like Actis,” said Rowan Laxton.

“As the British High Commissioner, I feel encouraged to persuade more UK investors to come.” Spun out of a UK government investment vehicle in 2004, Actis invests in growth markets across Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Source: Globalconstructionreview

The International Civil Aviation Organization will inspect the airport of Cameroon’s port city, Douala, to monitor improvements to the facility.

The inspection will follow after the French Development Agency gave the country a loan of 46 million euro ($57 million) in 2015 to rehabilitate runways and modernize the facility to comply with ICAO directives, the airport authority Aeroports du Cameroun said in a statement Wednesday.

The runway repairs were finalized in 2016, while the airport authority is waiting for the approval of the FDA to proceed with works to the terminal building, it said. The ICAO’s inspection of the facility will take place from April 22 to 27, said the airport authority.

Source: Bloomberg.com

Thousands of passengers at four German airports, including the biggest hub Frankfurt, were stranded on Tuesday as ground staff and other public sector workers staged walkouts across the country to increase the pressure in a pay dispute.

Lufthansa said on Monday it was cancelling more than 800 of its planned 1,600 flights on Tuesday and Frankfurt airport operator Fraport has warned of disruption.

As well as Frankfurt, airports in Munich, Cologne and Bremen were hit. The industrial action also affected nurseries, rubbish collection services and swimming pools in several German states.

He said the union would escalate the dispute if employers did not present an offer next week. The third round of talks start on April 15.

(Source: Reuters)

Some Chinese miners taking advantage of the vagueness in the allocation of mining licences and the laxity of the administration in Cameroon are illegally engaging in semi-mechanized artisanal mining leading to destruction of the environment and many deaths.

Sidonie Maboue pulls her hands out of the muddy water to nurse her eight-month-old baby. Sitting on a piece of multicolored fabric, she has filled three bags of gravel with five of her twelve children under a blazing sun.

“These pebbles will be crushed, sifted and if you have the chance, you can find gold but it is difficult,” says the 45-year-old widow who sometimes earns 1500 F CFA, approximately $2.8, after several weeks of digging.

Around her, a hundred people noisily search the yellow metal in a chain work at the Kaye craft quarry in Ngoe Ngoe, a village in the region of East Cameroon. Men dig the earth, crush the gravel and dry the holes with a motor pump. Women collect gravel from muddy waters or prepare food in a makeshift kitchen. The children have fun on the back of their mothers or sleep on pieces of cloth spread on the ground.

In November 2017, Sidonie Maboue nearly lost her life when she went with other villagers to search for gold at a Chinese-owned site near Kaye. “As I ran to carry the earth, I heard the cries of the survivors returning from the site and the young people removed the corpses with shovels,” she says in a low voice. She says she takes these risks to feed her offspring. “If I do not do that, how are we going to live. Since the death of my husband, I am the father and mother of the house.”

Gold and death

That night, nine people who extracted the gravel in this quarry operated by a Chinese company called “Lu and Lang” were submerged by a heap 0f sand about ten meters high. “The Chinese have arrived with law enforcement to drive the villagers out of the mine sites to better exploit our resources,” Yaya Moussa, the village chief of Ngoe Ngoe, says, widening her small black eyes. “So the villagers were forced to come in the night, in the absence of the Chinese, to extract gold and find food for their families. It was during one of these nocturnal outings that the earth fell on them.”

As in Ngoe Ngoe, artisanal mining of gold through the use of manual methods and processes draws crowds in several localities in the Eastern Region. But, the vagueness in the allocation of mining authorizations often creates conflicts between local gold miners and expatriates. According to the Mining Code of 2001, only craftsmen of Cameroonian nationality are entitled to an artisanal exploitation permit. In recent months, this exclusivity is threatened by the presence in the artisanal sites of Chinese operators who practice semi-mechanized artisanal mining through the use of mechanical shovels and loaders, gravel washing machines and chemicals.

Semi-mechanized artisanal mining was conducted for the first time in Cameroon in 2007. In that year, the government had asked the South Korean company C&K Mining to conduct an operation to salvage some 13 tonnes of gold that was likely to be washed away by overflowing water from the Lom Pangar dam. The authorities knew that this decision violated the 2001 mining code, which does not recognize semi-mechanized artisanal mining. At the time, they  used the emergency situation as justification. Later, this act by the government was capitalized upon by some unscrupulous operators who started semi-mechanized artisanal mining of gold.

In December 2016 President Paul Biya promulgated a new mining code that recognizes semi-mechanized artisanal mining. However, this exploitation should be carried under Cameroonian law which states that the shareholding in the companies should have nationals controlling at least 51 per cent. This mining code could have helped to reduce the impact of the confusion around mining permits and the rehabilitation of mine holes. But, the decree implementing the new mining law is not yet signed by the Prime Minister.

When contacted, the regional delegate in charge of mines did not wish to comment. “The minister has launched a mapping campaign with drones to identify mining sites and operators pending the decree implementing the mining code,” said anonymously a director at the Ministry of Mines who said he was not allowed to speak to the press. “All the time we hear of reports of deaths in mining sites and, we do not know who is who.”

Meanwhile, semi-mechanized artisanal mining, although illegal, is already doing damage to Cameroon. In 2017, open and abandoned mining holes by operators of the semi-mechanized artisanal mine including Chinese left 50 people dead in the Ngoura, Betare Oya or Ngoe Ngoe communities in the East, according to NGO Forêts et Developpement Rural (Foder) calculations. This civil society organization reported that 250 mining sites opened between 2012 and 2014 have not been rehabilitated by operators of the semi-mechanized artisanal mine. It therefore, launched an online petition to get the Ministries of Mines and Environmental Protection to intervene.

In a video published by Foder on the dangers of illegal mining, a farmer tells how Chinese gold miners grabbed her land and destroyed her plantation with excavators. “The Chinese entered my field and started mining gold without my permission,” says Philiphine Boh. “The Chinese told me that it is the authorities that sent them and they will give me 70,000 F CFA ($ 131.2) for compensation. I said that this money is insignificant for a field of one hectare that they spoiled. Currently, I have nothing left,” said this mother of five.

Secret deals

The losses are not just human lives. In Ngoe Ngoe, a village of 2,600 inhabitants, Chief Moussa says that during the exploitation of gold the Chinese have destroyed rivers and that many domestic animals have been stuck in abandoned mining holes. Mahamadou Abdoulaye, a 42-year-old registered miner, noted that, “when the Chinese saw a local mining artisan, a Nagbata, discovering gold, they chased everyone out of the site including the artisans who have their card while we also paid, it’s not good,” he complains. “The government must intervene because these Chinese are threatening us.”

The local populations are often surprised by the Chinese presence in the mining sites. They wonder how these expatriate operators were allowed to exploit the gold on their land. The Center for Education, Training and Support to Development Initiatives in Cameroon (Cefaid), an NGO based in Yokadouma in the Eastern Region, reports that some local elites are signing secret deals with Chinese miners.

“An elite is collecting photocopies of ID cards from villagers under the pretext of wanting to bring in companies that will provide water, electricity and jobs to the village,” said Victor Amougou, Cefaid’s coordinator, who knows by heart the tricks these people use. “With ten photocopies, this elite can obtain 40 artisanal logging authorizations equivalent to 40 hectares of land. Later, the elite bring in the Chinese operator with whom he has a contract. The villagers who ate and drank are not aware of the deal and only notice the presence of the Chinese who have in the meantime offered envelopes to the mining authorities and military officials to be able to calmly carry out their activities.”

In addition to corruption, some Chinese in their greed for gold do not care about taxes. After the death of nine people in Ngoe Ngoe, some local NGOs and media reported that the site in which the tragedy occurred was operated by the Chinese company called “Lu and Lang”. Yet neither the reports of the local branch of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (ITEI) nor the tax services know the name of the company responsible. The local official in charge of mines in the East refused to comment on this accident, indicating that this file is being handled by his bosses. “This company is not registered in our books,” says a source at the Ministry of Mines. “No Chinese company has obtained a semi-mechanized artisanal gold mining license in Cameroon,” the source said.

In fact, this fictional company is the initiative of lady Lu, an economic operator of Chinese nationality, who did not wish to comment. After Ngoe Ngoe, she and her employees moved to Colomine, another mining town in eastern Cameroon, where they continued to mine gold at a site guarded by soldiers.

“The mining sector is a mafia,” concludes Victor Amougou. “This crime unfolding before our eyes does not benefit either Cameroon or Cameroonians, perhaps an elite who would have received 5 or 10 million CFA ($ 9,376 to $ 18,755)”.

Source: Ghana Business News

Norwegian shipping firm Golar LNG on Monday said liquefied natural gas (LNG) production had started at its floating LNG production platform in Cameroon, the world’s second working example of the nascent technology.

The trading arm of Russia’s Gazprom has purchased the entire 1.2 million tonne per annum output from Golar’s FLNG platform, the Hilli Episeyo, for eight years.

The deal was agreed in late 2015 between Golar, Gazprom Marketing and Trading, Cameroon’s state-run Societe Nationale des Hydrocarbures and Perenco Cameroon. Golar LNG gave no indication of when the Hilli would achieve commercial LNG production or begin exports.

First LNG deliveries were initially targeted for the second half of 2017. The first ever FLNG project came on stream in Malaysia last year, developed by state-run energy giant Petronas, but the project has operated at a fraction of its production capacity.

Source: Reuters

Top White House economic adviser Gary Cohn has announced his resignation following US President Donald Trump’s controversial plan to impose hefty tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

Cohn,the director of the National Economic Council, handed in his notice on Tuesday after a little more than a year on the job.

His resignation came after Trump announced plans last week to impose a 25-percent tariff on steel imports and a 10-percent one on aluminum, a move that Cohn had firmly opposed.

“It has been an honor to serve my country and enact pro-growth economic policies to benefit the American people,” the adviser said in a statement about his resignation, refusing to provide further details. “I am grateful to the President for giving me this opportunity and wish him and the Administration great success in the future.”

Trump’s plans to impose the tariffs has reportedly triggered an intense debate within the oval office between Cohn and other advocates of free trade, on one side, and protectionist advisers on the other.

In response to Cohn’s resignation, Trump said in a statement that “Gary has been my chief economic adviser and did a superb job in driving our agenda … He is a rare talent, and I thank him for his dedicated service to the American people.”

The president also said in a tweet that he would make a decision soon on appointing a new chief economic adviser after Cohn’s resignation from the post.

“Will be making a decision soon on the appointment of new Chief Economic Advisor. Many people wanting the job – will choose wisely!” Trump wrote.

Unveiled on Thursday, the plan sparked a flurry of criticism both at home and aboard.

Trump believes the tariffs will safeguard US jobs, but economists say the measures will destroy more jobs than they create and will hurt the very US companies and workers that Trump has said he aims to protect.

Top US energy industry trade groups, which rely on imported steel for drilling equipment, pipelines, liquefied natural gas terminals, and refineries, have issued statements, calling on Trump to scrap the plan.

The decision also drew complaints and counter-threats from the European Commission, Canada, Mexico, Australia and the world’s biggest steel producer, China.

Beijing said it was ready to “take necessary measures” against Washington if it aimed to harm China’s economic interests following the imposed tariffs.

During his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly blamed what he called unfair trade deals and allegedly abusive practices by countries such as China and Mexico for the massive US trade deficit and the loss of high-paying American factory jobs.

Trump lashes out at EU trade rules

Also on Tuesday, the US president criticized the European Union’s trade rules as the 28-member bloc threatened to take retaliatory measures against Washington’s new trade tariffs.

“The United States has been taken advantage of by other countries, both friendly and not so friendly, for many, many decades, and we have a trade deficit of $800bn per year, and that’s not going to happen with me,” Trump said at a press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven at the White House.

“The European Union has been particularly tough on the United States. They make it almost impossible to do business with them, and yet they send their cars and everything else back into the United States. They can do whatever they like but if they do that, then we put a big tax of 25 percent on their cars and believe me, they won’t be doing it very long,” he added.

Trump had earlier warned to impose more tariffs on car imports from the European Union despite the new tariff plan, with member states being concerned about the impact of the new tariffs on their economies.

Following Trump’s announcement, European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker complained that the proposed tariffs were a blatant intervention that amounted to protectionism, vowing to act “firmly” against the plan.

“We will not sit idly while our industry is hit with unfair measures that put thousands of European jobs at risk,” Juncker said.

EU’s response matches similar measures during a 2003 “steel war” unleashed by George W. Bush’s administration that eventually prompted the US to back down before the EU carried out its threat.

Source: Presstv