America has chosen the wrong path in sanctioning Iran and will be defeated, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Wednesday, according to the Tasnim News Agency.
The U.S. announced reinstatement of sanctions targeting Iran’s oil industry on Nov.7.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump tries to force the Islamic Republic to curb its missile programme as well as its support for proxy forces in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen.
The issue of the U.S. sanctions against Russia was not raised at the Helsinki summit between President Vladimir Putin and his U.S. counterpart Donald Trump, the sides discussed economic cooperation, Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov said on Wednesday.
“The issue of sanctions as such was not discussed. The part of talks which I attended addressed the issues of economic cooperation,” Antonov told reporters.
He also said that Putin and Trump did not make any secret arrangements at the summit.
“Vladimir Vladimirovich has told everything. There are no secret agreements reached at the meetings held in Helsinki, as far as I know,” Antonov told newsmen.
The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) is compiling a list of supervisors who worked against the ongoing May/June West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), for sanctions by relevant authorities.
The council’s Head of Public Affairs Unit, Mr Damianus Ojijeogum, made the disclosure in an interview with newsmen on Tuesday in Lagos.
According to him, investigations revealed that the supervisors photo-shopped previous examination papers and forwarded same to operators of rogue websites, who in turn, swindled gullible candidates.
“Our investigations also revealed that some school heads, invigilators, supervisors and candidates who succeeded in smuggling mobile phones and other electronic devices into examination halls, snapped the questions after the examination had commenced, and forwarded same to their collaborators for solutions.
“We have been compiling a list of all supervisors found wanting; at the end of the entire exercise, we shall forward their names to ANCORPS and the ministry of education for proper disciplinary measures.
“Such persons are not staff of WAEC; we shall blacklist them for good,” Ojijeogu said.
He said that `this cheating by any means’ could be described as examination leakage as being reported by some mass media.
“Question papers for the ongoing WASSCE did not leak as has been erroneously portrayed by a section of the media.
“Leakage can be said to have occurred when questions get into the hands of some individuals who are not supposed to have them before the scheduled time.
“No such case has been established since the commencement of this examination.
“Rather than term it as leakage, it is correct to describe it as malpractice which we are committed to tackling.
“We want to assure the general public that the integrity of our examination is a top priority to the council, and we remain committed in ensuring that it remains so,” he said.
Ojijeogu said WAEC was deploying resources to introduce new techniques to protect its examinations.
“We are all aware that one of the greatest challenges facing the education sector is examination malpractice.
“On our part, we shall continue to do all we can to ensure that this ugly trend is checked.
“We want to commend security agencies, especially the police, for partnering with us in an effort to expose and check the cankerworm,” he said.
Ojijeogu said such partnership led to arrest of some men in Lagos found to be operating the rogue websites to defraud unsuspecting candidates.
He added that the collaboration assisted the council to apprehend a syndicate at various locations in 2017.
Ojijeogu solicited more support from members of the public to rid the education sector of examination malpractice.
“Council will always be ahead in deploying cutting edge technologies that will defy malpractice no matter how hard the perpetrators try.
“We will not compromise standards because we have come a long way; our integrity is key,” he said.
Valentina Matvienko, the speaker of the Russian upper house of parliament, said on Wednesday that Moscow’s response to U.S. sanctions will be targeted and painful, Russian news agencies reported.
The United States this month added several Russian firms and officials to a sanctions blacklist in response to what it said were the Kremlin’s “malign activities”. Moscow says those sanctions are unlawful and has warned that it will retaliate.
Lawmakers in the lower house of the Russian parliament have drawn up legislation that would give the government powers to ban or restrict imports of U.S. goods and services ranging from medicines to software and rocket engines. However, the Kremlin has not yet said if it backs such measures.
A senior U.S. administration official said on Monday President Donald Trump has delayed imposing additional sanctions on Russia and is unlikely to approve them unless Moscow carries out a new cyber attack or some other provocation.
Reuters
The United States government on Friday hit Russian oligarchs, government officials and companies with sanctions, citing Moscow’s “range of malign activity around the globe.”
Seven Russian oligarchs, 12 companies they control and 17 senior government officials are on the list announced by the Treasury Department.
The move targets Russia’s elite and people in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle.
Among them is Kirill Shamalov, who is married to Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova.
The US noted that Shamalov’s “fortunes drastically improved following the marriage,” and a year later he was able to borrow more than 1 billion dollars from state-owned Gazprombank, eventually joining “the ranks of the billionaire elite around Putin.”
Also included on the Treasury list are a state-owned Russian weapons trading company and its subsidiary, a Russian bank.
“The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites,”
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said.
He accused the government in Moscow of engaging in “a range of malign activity around the globe, including continuing to occupy Crimea and instigate violence in eastern Ukraine.”
In addition, Russia supplies the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with “material and weaponry as they bomb their own civilians, attempting to subvert Western democracies and malicious cyber activities,” Mnuchin said.
In March, the U.S. imposed sanctions against five Russian entities and 19 individuals for cyber attacks and attempted interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
It marked the first use of a law Congress passed in June to punish Russia for its alleged election meddling.
While President Donald Trump signed the law, he later issued statements saying that he believed the legislation was “seriously flawed.”
The Treasury Department had in January named and shamed 210 Russian political figures and oligarchs linked to the Kremlin, issued in connection with the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act.
But the list did not impose sanctions, fuelling criticism that Trump is unwilling to confront Moscow over its alleged meddling.
On Friday, Mnuchin said: “Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilising activities.”
dpa/NAN
Oando PLC has challenged at the Appeal Court the findings and sanctions on it by the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC), following an alleged investigation, which began in May 2017.
SECs had placed technical suspension on Oando PLC shares and ordered a forensic audit into the company’s affairs.
A statement published on Oando’s website on Friday states that in addition to legal action, it has written several petitions to various arms of the government expressing concern at the way the SEC under the leadership of ex-Director General, Mounir Gwarzo, managed the investigation and their belief is that the investigation was biased, did not follow due process and lacked fairness.
The company added that a recent leak of the signed September 18, 2017 report of the Technical Committee that was set up by Gwarzo to investigate them is further proof that under his leadership actions taken by the commission were illegal, invalid and calculated to prejudice the business of the company.
Gwarzo set up a five-man committee to investigate the company and on conclusion present a report with findings and recommendations for sanctions. The report shows that the committee found that Oando had satisfactorily responded to all the issues raised by the petitioners and had further recommended that the responses provided by the company and its independent external auditors be forwarded to the petitioners for their information and further escalation if they deemed it necessary.
The report makes no recommendation for the shares of the company to be suspended or for a forensic audit of the company to be conducted.
Instead, the committee recommended that certain unresolved issues be forwarded to the Securities and Investment Services (SIS) department of the Commission to determine whether there was in fact a breach of the ISA or the SEC Rules.
On 27 September, 2017, the Committee of the House of Representatives on Capital Markets and Institutions summoned Gwarzo and mandated him to complete his investigation into Oando and issue a report within two weeks of that meeting.
They also requested that they be sent a copy of the report of the investigation, its findings and recommendations.
“It is interesting to note that Gwarzo failed to inform the House of Representatives that at the time the meeting was held, the signed Technical Committee report had already been submitted. It wasn’t until a month after, on Wednesday, 18 October 2017 that the SEC published a statement on its website detailing alleged infractions committed by Oando and weighty penalties, which included a directive to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) for a 48-hour full suspension followed by a technical suspension in the trading of Oando shares and for a forensic audit into the affairs of the company to be conducted,” the website explained.
Against this background, the company cites a multitude of other reasons why it believes the investigation was biased and thus flawed.
Among the reasons were the fact that some of the actions taken by the then DG were against SECs rules and regulations.
Under the SEC rules, the Administrative Proceedings Committee (APC) is the committee empowered to look into matters of the nature of which the petitioners alleged.
However, Gwarzo did not utilise this committee but instead set up a Technical Committee and later a Special Task Force to investigate Oando.
SEC laws state that the DG does not have the legal or administrative authority to set up committees; only the board can do this.
However, at the time of the investigation, SEC had no board and even if it did, there was a committee already in place that could investigate the company.
There is also the legality of SEC investigating a petition brought by an indirect shareholder and one that is currently in arbitration when SECs rules categorically state that it will not consider any complaints regarding matters that are already the subject of arbitration or court proceedings.
In Oando’s statement, it cites the example of MRS Oil and Gas PLC, where the SEC stopped investigating and a call for a forensic audit into MRS when it was brought to the regulators attention that there were ongoing arbitration proceedings in France between Petroci Holdings and MRS.
The company and its shareholders have continuously raised concerns at the public nature of the investigation. At the company’s AGM in August, shareholders had spoken out about the substantial amount of media attention the investigation was receiving.
According to the Group Chief Executive Officer (GCE), Oando PLC, Wale Tinubu: “The SEC investigation and continued media leaks have had a deleterious impact on market confidence, our share price and a negative impact on other critical stakeholders.”
The statement makes mention of further bias by SEC agreeing to meet with the petitioners but not Oando during the course of the investigation despite several requests by the company for a meeting.
The reclassification of one of the petitioners, Ansbury Inc. as a whistleblower despite the fact that Ansbury brought its petition to the SEC as an indirect Oando shareholder and previous SEC investigations, ie Ikeja Hotels, where the SEC did not suspend the shares of the company when it embarked on a forensic audit.
More recently when SEC released its alleged findings and sanctions, the company was quick to respond and point out to the SEC and the public that the alleged infractions all have specific SEC penalties, none of them whether singularly or together warrant the suspension of the trading of Oando shares or the institution of a forensic audit.
The company’s most ardent objection to the forensic audit is the fact that SEC has itself said it needs to do an audit to confirm its weighty findings. It is unjust to make a company pay N160 million to be investigated so the regulator can confirm whether its findings are indeed correct or true. It begs the question how did the regulator come about its weighty findings?
The company’s biggest concern is that because all actions to date have been illegal and biased then a forensic audit could also be biased.
This is not the first legal action taken by the company against SEC on this investigation but its recent actions is evidence that it won’t back down and will fight SEC until justice prevails.
Consequent to the indefinite suspension of Gwarzo on allegations of corruption by the Minister of Finance, the SEC had notified Oando that it would commence the forensic audit with effect from December 6, 2017. According to the company, the appointed auditors are yet to approach the company to commence the audit.
Oando concluded the statement by expressing willingness to comply with the directives of the commission.
The company said: “Despite our objections to the forensic audit, the company would like to reiterate that we recognise and respect the authority of the commission and in the spirit of cooperation, transparency and full disclosure, the company will comply with the directives of the commission whilst reserving our legal rights in this matter.
“Accordingly, we welcome the appointment of Dr. Abdul Zubair as the Acting Director-General (ADG) of the SEC and see this as an opportunity for the regulator to act independently and for a new and enduring relationship to be established. We trust that he will investigate the matters raised in an independent and transparent manner and look forward to his support in ensuring due process is indeed followed.”
The company reiterated that it recognises and respects the authority of the SEC and is hopeful that a new and independent DG will act in the best interests of the company and its 274,000 shareholders.
The new Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in Ekiti State, Prof. AbdulGaniy Olayinka Raji has said Governor Ayodele Fayose his deputy, Prof. Kolapo Olusola, and some All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship aspirants risk getting penalised for allegedly campaigning ahead of the time stipulated by law for the 2018 election.
Raji stated this when he addressed reporters on Wednesday in his office in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital.
He spoke after holding a stakeholders’ meeting with leaders of political parties under the auspices of Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC).
The REC also said about 221,000 Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) had not been collected by eligible voters in the state.
Raji said the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was empowered by law to prosecute politicians who engaged in any form of “early campaign” before the time allowed by law.
Fayose has erected billboards bearing his pictures and those of his deputy in which he referred to Olusola as “Your Next Governor”.
Governorship aspirants of other parties also mounted billboards and banners in front of their campaign offices, on the major roads and boundaries of Ekiti with other neighbouring states.
He noted that the act of erecting campaign billboards before the ban on open campaign is lifted constitutes an electoral offence punishable by fine and jail term if the offender is found guilty.
Raji also frowned against running of campaign jingles on the electronic media and placing of campaign adverts in the newspapers which he said violate electoral law.
All these infractions, he said, violates Section 99 of the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended).
Raji said: “All these acts are not in line with the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 and the Electoral Act 2010 (as amended).
“Activities that look like campaign are against the Constitution and people should desist from them. Media houses should scrutinise jingles and adverts that may implicate them.
“Any offender convicted is liable to a maximum fine of N500,000 and a jail term at the discretion of the judge. The law also permits INEC to remove such billboards.”
Raji advised political parties to join hands with INEC to ensure the success of the 2018 governorship poll in Ekiti State.
Sequel to his alleged investments in the party and presidential campaign funds of President Muhammadu Buhari at the 2015 polls and his subsequent sidelining in government, the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, has perfected plans to send delegates to former Vice President Atiku Abubakar to verify and investigate his claims.
The party noted that all members of the party contributed to its candidates wining the elections at all levels and nothing was expected in return since they were only rendering services in the interest of the nation.
It noted further that if Atiku was interested in the 2019 elections, he should wait till then to contest rather than making comments that can put the party in a chaos.
The Organising Secretary of the Adamawa State chapter of the APC, Ahmed Lawan, who disclosed this, said, ‘’Plans by the state working committee to wade into the issue have been delayed by the participation of some members of the state exco, who travelled to Saudi Arabia to observe the hajj.
“ Some of our members, including the chairman of the APC in the state, are on hajj; we are only waiting for them to return and we are going to discuss this issue. Definitely, our meeting is going to dwell on Atiku, perhaps we may form a committee to reach out to the former vice-president to ask him what his grievances are. Definitely, if there’s anything we can do as a party at the state level, we will do,” Lawan said.
The party, according to him, has ways of dealing with any of its members, and if it finds sufficient grounds, especially with the rumours associated with the former vice-president, the party will not hesitate to take action.
While dismissing reported cracks within the party, he said the party was however worried by recent utterances credited to the former vice-president, including his remarks that the party abandoned him.
“The utterances of the former vice-president only portrayed him as a man whose sole motive for contributing to the success of the party is to profit from it, whilst it ought to have been selfless. We all sacrificed, nobody wanted to get something from it. If you want to contest, you wait for 2019 to test your popularity. If you are very popular, the people will listen to you and vote for you. There’s no need for any utterance which is capable of portraying the party in bad light. We are very surprised that the former vice-president came out to say the party didn’t reward him, which is like saying the party didn’t reward him enough. We all sacrificed, nobody did it because we wanted to get something out of it.”
On the mode of the planned meeting with Atiku, he said, “When our committee meets him, if definitely what he’s saying is against the party, the party is going to take action on it; but if he lodges his complaints and the party feels there’s merit in what he’s saying, then definitely the party will look into it.
“But for now, we are waiting for the members of Exco to come back. We will summon a meeting and then take a decision,” Lawan said.
TheNewsGuru.com reports that the former Vice President has however indicated his interest in the 2019 Presidential elections when he said last week that he will corruption and Boko Haram insurgence better than the incumbent administration is doing.
The new leadership of the Edo State House of Assembly has threatened to institute criminal action against a former Speaker of the assembly, Hon Elisabeth Ativie, over refusal of Ativie to return her official vehicles.
It said claims by the former Speaker that the vehicles were given to her by former governor Adams Oshiomhole were untrue as there was no evidence to show that Oshiomhole and the leadership of the House took such decision.
Hon Ativie who represents Uhunmwode constituency served as Speaker for 84 days after the impeachment of Hon Victor Edoror.
Ativie stepped down as a result of political pressure for balance of power in the state and Hon Justin Okonoboh emerged as Speaker while she became Deputy Speaker.
Last week, both the Ativie and Okonoboh were impeached but Ativie has refused to return her official vehicles.
Ativie had through her lawyer, Olayiwola Afolabi, written the Assembly that the vehicles were given to her by former Governor Oshiomhole as compensation for relinquishing her position as Speaker.
She stated in the letter that she has sold one of the vehicles, a Prado Jeep 2016 model.
Current Speaker of the Assembly, Hon Kabiru Adjoto, in a letter to Counsel to Ativie’s, lawyer, said the signature in the letter purportedly written to Ativie by Oshiomhole was not genuine.
Speaker Adjoto in the letter signed by the clerk of the House, Mr James Omoataman, pointed out that the leadership of the House warned of severe consequences of parading such document.
Adjoto said original documents of the vehicles were still in possession of the House.
The letter reads in parts, “As your client will recall,the said vehicles were purchased for the use of the office of the Speaker when your client occupied the office. Consequently, when she became the Deputy Speaker, the official vehicles were left with her office whilst alternative arrangement were made for the office of the Speaker.
“Despite the clarity of the above, your client deliberately skewed the words used in the purported letter from the former governor claiming that the former governor wrote to say the vehicles were given to her, which is far from the truth.
“Further, the original documents of the vehicles are still in the possession of the House of Assembly till date which means that title to the vehicles were never transferred or intended to be transferred to your client contrary to your client’s assertions.
“Accordingly, I hereby reiterate my instruction and demand your client’s immediate return of the vehicles attached to the office of the Deputy Speaker which are still in her possession. Finally, if your client maintains that she indeed sold one of the vehicles, the Lexus Jeep 2016 model, then we expect that your client will furnish us with the details of sales.
It warned further that “the House expects to receive all the said vehicles or the vehicles that have not been sold, together with the details of the alleged sale of the Lexus jeep as enumerated not later than 2 days from the date of receipt of this letter. Failure to do so will attract the necessary legal action, both civil and criminal against your client”.
The Senate Joint Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff and Marine Transport yesterday gave Dana Group and 12 other companies allegedly involved in N30 trillion revenue scam up till Monday to appear before it or face the full wrath of the law.
In a statement issued in Abuja, the Chairman of the committee, Sen. Hope Uzodinma, said the committee was giving the companies the last opportunity to appear before it.
The companies are A-kehnal Integrated & Logistics Limited, Don Climax/Skyaim, Gagsel International, Africa Tiles & Ceramics and Network Oil & Gas.
Others are IBG Investment Limited, BUA International limited, Huawei Technologies, Indorama Petrochemicals, StarComms Plc, African Industries and African Wire and Allied.
Uzodinma revealed that the investigation has so far led to the recovery of more than N120 billion from erring companies and vowed to follow up on others .
He further disclosed that the committee had resolved to direct the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to start issuing Demand Notice (DM) to companies found culpable in the ongoing investigation.
According to him, the demand notice is to ensure the companies return monies due the Federal Government.
He added that companies found to have been involved in round tripping and money laundering would be charged to court with immediate effect.
”The committee has only taken the first batch of the companies invited.
”Only 61 companies have been interrogated and over 2000 companies are still expected to appear before us.
”During the committee sitting on Friday, 18th August most of the company representatives heaped praises on the committee for what they described as a thorough job,” he said.