A woman has been arrested on suspicion of premeditated murder after she was accused of poisoning a friend using cyanide in Ratchaburi, central Thailand, with police saying they are also investigating the circumstances of nine further deaths.
The accused, identified in Thai media as Sararath Rangsiwutthiporn, or Am, had travelled with her friend, Siriporn Khanwong, known as Koi, to make merit by releasing fish at a pier in Ratchaburi on 14 April.
Police said an autopsy had found cyanide in the victim’s body. They are investigating the deaths of nine more people known to Sararath.
Sararath, who was arrested on Tuesday morning, has not commented publicly on the accusations. Her lawyer told the broadcaster Channel 3 that such allegations were serious, and that evidence must be seen.
Surachate Hakparn, the assistant national police chief of the royal Thai police, said the accused was known to all of those who died, and that it was possible she had targeted them for financial reasons.
Surachate said police had identified 11 victims in total, including one person who survived. The survivor had gone to eat food with the defendant, he said. “The victim vomited and fainted, but she survived,” he said.
Surachate said the defendant denied all the charges. Autopsies had been carried out on three of the bodies, he said.
A report by Thai media said that items had been stolen from Siriporn, including two phones, two bags and money.
Recovering evidence from previous deaths that were considered suspicious would be challenging, Surachate said. “As no case was filed [at the time of such deaths] there wasn’t any investigation of crime scenes, or anything,” he said.
Surachate said police were not aware of any accomplice but that investigations would continue. Affected families were in contact with police, he said. “Some of them thought that their beloved died of natural causes. We will talk and find more links today,” he said.
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
SRINAGAR: A Special Investigation Team (SIT) has been directed by the Government of Jammu and Kashmir to investigate the unauthorized leasing and usage of temple properties in the Kashmir region.
Aadil Fareed, Assistant Commissioner under the Divisional Commissioner, has written to all deputy commissioners in Kashmir, quoting a communication received from the LG’s office.
The letter requests the deputy commissioners to “identify any cases of illegal leasing of temple properties in your district and take appropriate action under the rules, while keeping this office informed. Additionally, please provide an updated inventory of Religious Minority Properties (such as temples, Gurdwaras, and others) to this office within one week.”
Joly said Canada will join like-minded countries that believe a special tribunal should investigate the alleged crimes. “The ICC [International Criminal Court] and ICJ [International Court of Justice] don’t necessarily have the mandate to be able to prosecute such a crime,” she added.
Right now, for example, the ICC does not have jurisdiction over crimes of aggression.
The United Kingdom also backs the special tribunal and is lobbying other G-7 countries to join.
The United States, Ukraine’s single-largest backer in weapon and military aid during the past year at war, has yet to decide if it will endorse the tribunal.
“From our perspective, the overarching priority is that the perpetrators of these crimes be held accountable for their actions and are unable to create such havoc and destruction with impunity,” Beth Van Schaack, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for global criminal justice, told POLITICO in a statement. “We seek to remain in lockstep with Kyiv’s strongest partners as we consider this proposal, as well as all other options for holding Russia to account.”
One of those options includes developing an international center for the prosecution of the crime of aggression in Ukraine, “which would also preserve and store evidence for future trials,” the statement read.
The special tribunal would comprise a select group invited by Ukraine to map out a way to hold Russia criminally accountable for its wartime aggression, according to details shared by the U.K.
Joly told reporters that Zelenskyy didn’t use their meeting to ask for additional fighter jets, though she noted that President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a pact when they met in Mexico in January to continue to help defend Ukraine.
Joly is next headed to the Munich Security Conference, where she’ll meet with international counterparts to discuss global security threats.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
SEC Chair Gary Gensler (above) is being asked by two congressmen about the timing of the arrest of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. | Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Top House Republicans on Friday demanded answers from SEC Chair Gary Gensler about why former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was arrested on the eve of his scheduled appearance before the Financial Services Committee last year.
House Financial Services Chair Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) and oversight subcommittee Chair Bill Huizenga (R-Mich.) said in a letter to Gensler that “the timing of the charges and his arrest raise serious questions about the SEC’s process and cooperation with the Department of Justice.”
McHenry and Huizenga asked Gensler to hand over SEC records and communications with the DOJ between Nov. 2 and Feb. 9. They gave the agency until until Feb. 23 to comply.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The lawmakers “will also finally get answers to the Covid origins and the federal government’s … research that contributed to the pandemic,” McCarthy said in a statement announcing the appointments.
Greene, who emerged as an ally for the California Republican during his speakership fight but still holds a megaphone with the party’s right flank, is among the Republicans getting a seat on the subcommittee. It’s the latest high-profile boost for Greene, who was stripped of her committee assignments by Democrats and about a dozen Republicans due to her incendiary rhetoric.
But Republican leadership pledged to reinstate her to committees if they won the majority. McCarthy has handed her other plum positions, including a seat on the Oversight Committee and Homeland Security Committee. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) who is leading the Oversight Committee, which will house the select subcommittee, has also pledged to conduct investigations into the coronavirus and pandemic-era aid disbursed as part of several coronavirus relief bills that totaled trillions of dollars.
Other Republicans on the committee will include Reps. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), Michael Cloud (R-Texas), John Joyce (R-Pa.) Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) and Rich McCormick (R-Ga).
Democrats still need to name their own members to the subcommittee.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
The committee Democrats want the GAO to probe why the IRS didn’t ask Treasury or Congress for more resources if the agency was struggling to fully audit Trump’s voluminous returns.
The lawmakers also ask in their letter what administrative actions the IRS and Treasury could take and what laws Congress could consider passing to protect the program from potential meddling.
“Members of Congress need further information related to the failures to conduct presidential audits during the Trump Administration to ensure that, as elected representatives, we are adequately equipped to assess and address the integrity and continued function of the presidential audit program, as well as necessary improvements to the program,” they wrote.
The questions follow the release of a report in December describing how a single agent at the IRS was assigned to audit Trump and none of the described audits were completed before the former president left the White House. An internal IRS memo dug up by the Ways and Means Committee said it was impossible to examine the more than 400 pass-through entities reported by Trump with existing agency resources.
The subsequent release of six years of Trump’s returns included more than 2,700 pages of a complex array of sole proprietorships and income flowing from foreign countries.
Democrats are eager to keep the issue in the spotlight as Trump mounts another bid for the presidency.
Republicans have countered that Democrats cherrypicked information from the audit files of the former president and that they didn’t see anything out of the ordinary in Trump’s tax returns.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
MI5 repeatedly refused to investigate evidence that an alleged Russian spy was attempting to cultivate influence with senior Conservative politicians and channel illegal Russian funds into the party, a Tory member has alleged in a new complaint lodged with the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT).
Sergei Cristo, a Conservative party activist and a former journalist with the BBC World Service, has lodged a complaint with the investigatory powers tribunal, filing the case after corresponding with the chair of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, Conservative MP Julian Lewis, who recommended he take the information to the authorities.
The committee’s Russia report claimed in 2020 that the security services had turned a blind eye to “credible evidence” of Russian interference and Cristo’s allegations offer potentially explosive new evidence that confirms its findings. Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said “allegations that the security services ignored evidence from a Conservative whistleblower exposing Russian infiltration at the highest levels of the party are truly shocking” and claimed the “Conservative party’s Russia problem” was an ongoing threat to Britain’s national security.
Cristo says that it was reading the Russia report that made him “suddenly aware that maybe the story I had was more significant than I thought” and, at Lewis’s suggestion, he wrote to Cressida Dick, then commissioner of the Met police.
He received a response from the counter-terrorism command (SO15) who said it was not a matter for the Met and advised him to take it to the IPT – which oversees the security services – which he has now done.
The allegations centre around the formation of a group called Conservative Friends of Russia in 2012, and its relationship with a Russian diplomat, Sergey Nalobin.
In August of that year, the Russian ambassador, Alexander Yakovenko, hosted a lavish launch party for the group in the gardens of his residence in Kensington with guests who included the former minister of culture, media and sport, John Whittingdale, and Boris Johnson’s now wife, Carrie Symonds. The Russian government also funded an all-expenses-paid trip to Moscow for a handpicked group of members including the future CEO of Vote Leave, Matthew Elliott.
Cristo says his suspicions about Nalobin, who was the political first secretary at the embassy, had been aroused two years earlier when he was approached by the diplomat and they met at the Carlton Club. When Nalobin learned that Cristo was a volunteer with the treasurers’ department of the Conservative campaign headquarters (CCHQ), he said he could “make introductions to Russian companies who would donate money to the Conservative party”.
Russian diplomat Sergey Nalobin at a function with Boris Johnson. Photograph: Twitter
“I knew straight away that what he was suggesting was illegal under UK law,” Cristo wrote in a letter to Lewis last year.
Alarmed by Nalobin’s efforts and the embassy’s sponsorship of the group, Cristo contacted Luke Harding at the Guardian and revealed Nalobin’s background and his disturbing relationship with the group. Harding and journalists at Russia’s The Insider found Nalobin had family connections to the FSB spy agency: his father, Nikolai, was a KGB general whose responsibilities included supervising Alexander Litvinenko, while his brother Viktor also worked for the FSB.
The resulting articles led to the resignation of the honorary president of Conservative Friends of Russia, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, and the renaming of the group.
What Cristo has never previously revealed is his abortive attempts to get the security services to act. He says that he whistleblew to the Guardian only after his attempts to get the authorities to act failed. In 2011, he tried repeatedly to raise the alarm with MI5. After an initial meeting with a junior agent went nowhere, he wrote to the director general of MI5, which resulted in a further meeting with two agents in a government building in Whitehall.
Cristo offered to meet Nalobin again and question him while wearing a hidden camera about how the Russian government intended to make the donations. That offer was also declined and he was advised to cease contact with Nalobin.
He also took his concerns to senior members of the party after a discussion with Britain’s most famous Russian defector, Oleg Gordievsky, a former KGB colonel. Gordievsky studied Nalobin’s biography and told Cristo that he believed he was a spy.
Conservative Friends of Russia was reinvented as the Westminster Russia Forum and only finally shut down altogether last year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Meanwhile Nalobin continued to cultivate close relationships with MPs and Conservative party activists for a further three years until the Foreign Office declined to renew his visa.
In 2017, the Observer published an article that referred to Nalobin’s interest in the rivalry between David Cameron and Boris Johnson and his forced departure from the UK. It resulted in a series of furious emails from the Russian ambassador who sought to “correct” the article. The Observer declined to do so. Last year, Nalobin surfaced in Estonia when news broke that he had been expelled for espionage and had been “directly and actively engaged in undermining Estonia’s security”.
Russian president Vladimir Putin has been accused of deploying more intelligence agents in London than at the height of the Cold War.
“I think this is important because none of this ought to have happened,” Cristo said last week. “If MI5 had taken action, Conservative Friends of Russia would never have launched and Nalobin would not have been allowed to get close to so many key Conservative politicians and party members.”
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( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
