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Musings From Abroad

Swiss firm, ABB, gets $4.3 million fine over bribery case in South Africa

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Judicial authority in Switzerland has fined engineering and technology group ABB, the sum of 4 million Swiss francs ($4.3 million) in connection with a bribery case in South Africa.

According to the country’s Attorney General, the fine on ABB is for “not having taken all necessary and reasonable organisational provisions in order to prevent bribery payments to foreign officials in South Africa”.

The group was found guilty of improper payments and other compliance issues at the Kusile power station after a wide-scale investigation into state corruption concluded in June 2022.

Earlier in the week, ABB and South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) agreed that the company will pay reparations for its involvement in state corruption.

According to a statement by the NPA, the company agreed to pay 2.5 billion rands ($144.51 million) in punitive reparations to South Africa within 60 days from the first day of December.

The reparation is in addition to 1.6 billion rand ($92.48 million)the company paid back to South African state power utility Eskom in 2020.

The Central Europe country has been fingered in lots of corruption cases involving African countries.

Musings From Abroad

UN indicts warring parties in Sudan, calls for peacekeepers

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A United Nations-mandated panel stated on Friday that both sides in Sudan’s civil war had engaged in acts that may qualify as war crimes, and proposed that to protect civilians, international powers must expand the arms embargo and send in peacekeepers.

The report claimed to be based on 182 interviews with survivors, families, and witnesses. It detailed the rape, attacks, use of torture, and arbitrary arrests committed by Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against civilians.

“The gravity of our findings and failure of the warring parties to protect civilians underscores the need for urgent and immediate intervention,” the U.N. fact-finding mission’s chair, Mohamed Chande Othman, told reporters.

Both parties have denied previous allegations by rights organisations and the United States and accused one another of abusing power. Neither stated in reaction to the allegations or answered enquiries for comment on Friday right away.

Othman and the other two mission members demanded the immediate deployment of an independent force.

“We cannot continue to have people dying before our eyes and do nothing about it,” mission member Mona Rishmawi said. A U.N.-mandated peacekeeping force was a possibility, she added.

The mission advocated for the extension of an arms embargo now in place by the United Nations, which only covers the western part of Darfur and the thousands of documented ethnic killings there. Fourteen of the eighteen states in the country have been affected by the conflict that began in Khartoum in April of last year.

 

According to the mission, there were also good reasons to suspect that the RSF and its affiliated militias had perpetrated other war crimes, including kidnapping women forcing them into prostitution and recruiting minors as fighters.

Unnamed support groups had received allegations of over 400 rapes in the first year of the war, but mission member Joy Ngozi Ezeilo said the actual number was likely considerably higher.

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Musings From Abroad

Chinese investments in Africa mutually beneficial, South Africa’s Ramaphosa insists

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South African President, Cyril Ramaphosa, said Thursday that Chinese investments in Africa were mutually beneficial and not a “debt trap” for the continent.

Ramaphosa stated this on the sidelines of a China-Africa meeting in Beijing, with delegations from over 50 African states.

“I don’t necessarily buy the notion that when China (invests), it is with the intention of, in the end, ensuring that those countries end up in a debt trap or a debt crisis,” Ramaphosa said when asked by reporters about China’s pledge at the summit of $51 billion in new funding for Africa.

China pledged to launch three times more infrastructure projects in resource-rich Africa, a region of significant geopolitical conflict between China, Europe, and the US, and to provide financial support over three years.

Ramaphosa also said, without providing details, that South Africa and China have secured an energy security pact. He claimed South Africa could learn energy sector reform from China.

“They already have done exactly what we are seeking to do. So there are lessons for us to learn from China and how to do it,” he said.

Power outages have slowed economic progress in South Africa in recent years. The country plans to pursue China’s largest electric vehicle producers, Ramaphosa added.

“We had good exchanges with BYD, which has shown a great interest to come and invest in South Africa,” he said.

Africa and China have strengthened commercial and political ties in recent decades. China is a major trading partner and lender. Additionally, Chinese companies invested heavily in Africa, making it a major investor in the continent.

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