https://arab.news/94r2s
BAGHDAD: Iraq’s premier said Tuesday that new banking regulations had revealed fraudulent dollar transactions made from his country, as the fresh controls coincide with a drop in the local currency’s value.
Iraq has in recent months been making efforts to ensure its banking system is compliant with the international electronic transfer system known as SWIFT.
Referring to the new controls, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani hailed “a real reform of the banking system,” but denounced “falsified invoices, money going out fraudulently,” in particular as foreign currency payments for imports.
“That is a reality,” he said in an interview on state television.
The adoption of the SWIFT system was supposed to allow for greater transparency, tackle money laundering and help to enforce international sanctions, such as those against Iran and Russia.
An adviser to Sudani had said that since mid-November, Iraqi banks wanting to access dollar reserves stored in the United States must make transfers using the electronic system.
The US Federal Reserve will then examine the requests and block them if it finds them suspicious.
According to the adviser, the Fed had so far rejected 80 percent of the transfer requests over concerns of the funds’ final recipients.
Before the introduction of the new regulations, “we were selling $200 million or $300 million a day,” Sudani said.
“Now, the central bank provides $30 million, $40 million, $50 million,” he said, questioning: “What were we importing in a single day for $300 million?“
“There are products that were entering (Iraq) for prices that make no sense. Clearly, the objective was to take foreign currency out of Iraq,” he said. “This must stop.”
Money may have been transported to Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan province “and from there to neighboring countries,” Sudani said, without specifying whether he was referring to Turkiye, Iran or war-torn Syria.
He said the new controls had been planned for two years, in accordance with an agreement between Iraq’s central bank and US financial authorities, and deplored previous failures to put them in place.
Iraq, which is trying to move past four decades of war and unrest, is plagued by endemic corruption.
The official exchange rate is fixed by the government at 1,470 dinars to the dollar, but the currency was trading at around 1,680 on Tuesday on unofficial markets amid dollar scarcity.
The drop has sparked sporadic protests by Iraqis worried about their purchasing power.
Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and the new central bank chief will be among a delegation traveling to Washington on February 7 to discuss the new mechanism and the fluctuating exchange rate, Sudani said.
RAMALLAH: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government has authorized construction bids for more than 1,000 new homes in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
The move comes just a week after Israeli and Palestinian officials met in Egypt’s southern resort city of Sharm El-Sheikh in an effort to calm rising tensions ahead of Ramadan.
Following the meeting, Israel repeated a pledge made at a similar February summit in Aqaba, Jordan, to temporarily freeze the approval of new settlement units in the occupied West Bank.
The anti-settlement Israeli group Peace Now publicized the construction bids on Friday, and said that this was “yet another harmful and unnecessary construction initiative.”
It accused the Netanyahu government of “trampling on the possibility of a future political agreement, and on our relations with the US and friendly countries.”
It added that the government had issued tenders to build 1,029 homes in the Palestinian territories.
The Israel Land Authority published the tenders earlier this week for the construction of 940 homes in the West Bank areas of Efrat and Beitar Illit, along with 89 homes in the Gilo settlement, which lies over the 1967 line on the southern edge of the contested capital of Jerusalem.
The large settlement of Efrat sits deep in the West Bank, near the Palestinian town of Bethlehem.
Palestinians see these lands, captured by Israel in the 1967 war, as part of a future independent state alongside Israel — a long-standing international goal.
Peace Now said: “The most extreme right-wing government in Israel’s history is trampling not only on democracy, but also on the possibility of a future political agreement, and on our relations with the United States and friendly countries.”
It added that “lies and violations of commitments are a sure way to turn Israel into an isolated state.”
The Palestinian Foreign Ministry saw the move as a betrayal of Netanyahu’s vow to freeze settlement construction, showing “official disregard for American and international reactions.”
It criticized approval of the tenders as “a blatant departure and deliberate sabotage of the understandings that were reached between the Palestinian and Israeli sides under American auspices.”
It added: “This also confirms that the Israeli government is continuing to commit the crime of settlement expansion and deepening apartheid, intending to close the door to any opportunity to embody the Palestinian state on the ground.”
Khalil Tafakji, an expert on settlement affairs, told Arab News that what members of the Israeli government said about settlements was one thing; what they did was something else.
He added that Israel was seeking to expand the settlement bloc within the Greater Jerusalem project, which was equal to 10 percent of the West Bank area.
Tafakji said that as part of the project, the Israeli authorities were expanding the tunnels in the Beit Jala area and digging a tunnel near the Qalandiya checkpoint to connect the settlements.
More than 500,000 settlers live in the West Bank, 230,000 in East Jerusalem, Tafakji added.
The Palestinians consider the presence of Israeli settlements as an existential threat to their dream of establishing a geographically contiguous Palestinian state alongside Israel.
The Israeli government has said it aims to entrench military rule in the West Bank, boost settlement construction, and erase differences for Israelis between life in the settlements and within the country’s internationally recognized borders.
In another development, dozens of Palestinian workers in the Beitar Illit settlement, west of Bethlehem, are being forced to pay $6 to the authorities on a daily basis to enter and work. The number of Palestinian workers involved is estimated at 2,000.
The Beitar Illit Development Company says the money is paid to help protect the settlement.
Ahmad Atibi, a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament, raised the issue in the Knesset, but the situation has not been addressed.
Meir Rubinstein, Beitar Illit’s mayor, on March 14 prevented Palestinians from boarding buses, even if they had Israeli IDs or official permits, and ordered passengers to disembark. He mocked them, saying he knew the step was illegal.
About 30,000 Palestinian workers without Israeli permits are working inside West Bank settlements.
London: The FSO Safer supertanker — moored off the Yemeni coast and containing over a million barrels of oil — will “sink or explode at any moment,” wreaking devastation, the UN has warned.
“We don’t want the Red Sea to become the Black Sea. That’s what’s going to happen. It’s an ancient vessel from 1976 that’s unmaintained and likely to sink or explode at any moment,” David Gressly, UN humanitarian coordinator for Yemen, told Sky News.
“Those who know the vessel, including the captain who used to command the vessel, tell me that it’s a certainty. It’s not a question of ‘if,’ it’s only a question of ‘when’.”
Given the million-plus barrels of oil on the Safer, Gressly said it is vital that action is taken quickly, with scientific modeling suggesting that an oil spill would hit Yemen’s Red Sea ports of Hodeidah and Salif “within days,” abruptly ending food aid relied on by 6 million people.
Furthermore, it would lead to a cessation of “most” fuel imports essential for the functioning of pumps and trucks supplying fresh water to some 8 million people.
While the catastrophe can be impeded at a cost of $130 million — a figure dwarfed by the potential $20 billion clean-up cost — the UN finds itself some $34 million short, and has even resorted to using crowdfunding to purchase a rescue tanker for the hoped-for salvage operation.
“There are complexities, but for most member states the difficulty — and it’s ironic — is there’s plenty of money available in state budgets for a response to an emergency, but nobody seems to have budget lines for avoiding a catastrophe,” said Gressly.
Nor is Yemen the only country at risk, with the modeling suggesting that the oil spill would hit the coasts of Saudi Arabia, Eritrea and Djibouti within two to three weeks, leading to profound environmental impacts for coral reefs and protected coastal mangrove forests.
With the entirety of Yemen’s Red Sea fishing stock facing extinction, the concern is the upending impact on the millions of people reliant on the ocean for their food and livelihoods.
Hisham Nagi, professor of environmental science at Yemen’s Sana’a University, told Sky News: “The oil tanker is unfortunately located near a very, very healthy coral reef and clean habitat, and it has a lot of species of marine organisms.
“Biodiversity is high in that area, so if the oil spill finds its way to the water column, so many marine sensitive habitats are going to be damaged severely because of that.”
Beirut: The death toll in US air strikes on pro-Iran installations in eastern Syria has risen to 19 fighters, a Syrian war monitor said on Saturday, in one of the deadliest exchanges between the US and Iran-aligned forces in years.
The US carried out strikes in eastern Syria in response to a drone attack on Thursday that left one American contractor dead, and another one wounded along with five US troops. Washington said the attack was of Iranian origin.
The retaliatory strikes by the US on what it said were facilities in Syria used by groups affiliated to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps left a total of 19 dead, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The war monitor said air raids killed three Syrian troops, 11 Syrian fighters in pro-government militias and five non-Syrian fighters who were aligned with the government.
The monitor’s head Rami Abdel Rahman could not specify the nationalities of the foreigners. Reuters was unable to independently confirm the toll.
The initial exchange prompted a string of tit-for-tat strikes. Another US service member was wounded, according to officials, and local sources said suspected US rocket fire hit more locations in eastern Syria.
President Joe Biden on Friday warned Iran that the United States would “act forcefully” to protect Americans.
Iran has been a major backer of President Bashar Assad during Syria’s 12-year conflict.
Iran’s proxy militias, including Lebanese group Hezbollah and pro-Tehran Iraqi groups, hold sway in swathes of eastern, southern and northern Syria and in suburbs around the capital.
Tehran’s growing entrenchment in Syria has drawn regular Israeli air strikes but American aerial raids are more rare. The US has been raising the alarm about Iran’s drone program.
TUNIS: At least 34 African migrants were missing on Friday after their boat sank off Tunisia, the fifth shipwreck in two days, raising the total number of missing to 67 amid a sharp increase in boats heading toward Italy, Tunisian officials said.
The Italian coast guard said on Thursday it had rescued about 750 migrants in two separate operations off the southern Italian coastline, hours after at least five people died and 33 were missing in an attempted sea crossing from Tunisia.
Tunisian Judge Faouzi Masmoudi said that seven people had died in the boat capsizes off the coast of the city of Sfax, including babies and children.
Houssem Jebabli, an official at the National Guard, said the Coast Guard had stopped 56 boats heading for Italy in two days and detained more than 3,000 migrants, mostly from sub-Saharan African countries.
According to UN data, at least 12,000 migrants who have reached Italy this year set sail from Tunisia, compared with 1,300 in the same period of 2022. Previously, Libya was the main launch pad for migrants from the region.
The coastline of Sfax has become a major departure point for people fleeing poverty and conflict in Africa and the Middle East for a shot at a better life in Europe.
Tunisia is struggling with its worst financial crisis due to stalled negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for a loan amid fears of a default in debt repayment, raising concerns in Europe, especially in neighboring Italy.
Tunisia has been gripped by political upheavals since July 2021, when President Kais Saied seized most powers, shutting down parliament and moving to rule by decree.
Europe risks seeing a huge wave of migrants arriving on its shores from North Africa if financial stability in Tunisia is not safeguarded, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Friday. Meloni called on the IMF and some countries to help Tunisia quickly to avoid its collapse. “If we do not adequately address those problems we risk unleashing an unprecedented wave of migration,” he said.
LATAKIA, Syria: Latakia’s governor has lauded the UAE’s efforts to rescue those affected by the earthquake that hit several cities in Syria last month, the Emirates News Agency reported on Friday.
“The UAE has supported the Syrian people since the quake first struck the country,” Amer Ismail Hilal was quoted as saying. He added that the support included search and rescue teams, as well as humanitarian aid.
Hilal highlighted the deep-rooted relations between the two countries, underscored by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s visit to the UAE last Sunday.
On behalf of Latakia governorate, Hilal thanked the UAE’s government and people for the continuous efforts of the Emirates Red Crescent field teams.