Japan’s financial regulator, the Financial Services Agency (FSA), is set to investigate the nation’s three largest banks for transactions with the Yakuza, according to Reuters on Tuesday.
The probe is part of a wider investigation into banks’ involvements in Yakuza-related financial transactions; and comes after Mizuho Financial, the nation’s second largest bank, admitted to lending 200 million yen ($2 million) to criminal gangs.
Singapore has once again come out top as the world’s best place to run a business, according to the World Bank’s annual competiveness survey, with the Ukraine showing the highest levels of improvement, while Russia made the most progress among the BRICS.
Brazil’s top biomedical research centre, the government-funded Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, has announced plans to begin producing an affordable measles and rubella vaccine for developing countries, becoming only the second country in the world – behind India – to produce such vaccines at lower costs.
Fearing arrest by U.S. tax authorities, many Swiss bankers are now refusing to travel out of the country, be it for work or holiday, according to one business leader in an interview published on Sunday.
Germany is reportedly considering creating its own Internet network service in order to “shield local internet traffic from foreign intelligence services” like the NSA, reported Reuters last week.
Over 40 major donor organisations, including government and private agencies, received “Poor” or “Very Poor” scores in the latest Aid Transparency Index (ATI), bringing into question how and where foreign aid money is being spent, contrary to prior pledges towards more openness.
Sub-Saharan Africa has lost $1 billion a week for the past 30 years due to illicit financial flows related to their natural resources, according to international relief and development organization Oxfam America, urging governments and businesses to work together in introducing sweeping measures to improve transparency and governance in the region.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg was the highest paid CEO in the United States last year, according to an annual poll by corporate governance research group GMI Ratings released this week, raking in nearly $2.28 billion thanks to a combination of salary, bonuses and stock options.
The Spanish economy grew by 0.1 percent between July and September this year on the back of stronger exports, according to estimates from Spain’s central bank on Wednesday, though unemployment remains stubbornly high at around the 26 percent mark.
Highlighting the growing competitiveness of Spanish goods, the Bank of Spain said that exports were likely to continue driving the nation’s growth through next year, ending more than two years of negative GDP growth.
The Iranian government is considering giving crude price discounts to its former customers as long as Western sanctions against it can be eased in the future, said a senior oil official on Tuesday, in the hopes of seeing a return to their old market share, which had been lost to other Middle Eastern nations.
