15/04/2025

TUESDAY | APR 15, 2025

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Xi warns protectionism leads nowhere

Indonesia arrests judges on graft charges JAKARTA: Indonesian authorities arrested three judges who acquitted three palm oil companies of charges of corruption in obtaining export permits, an official said yesterday, following the arrest of a chief judge on bribery charges. A court last month acquitted the three companies – Wilmar Group, Musim Mas Group and North Sumatra-based Permata Hijau Group – of charges of misconduct in obtaining export permits in 2022. The three judges who made the ruling were arrested on Sunday night, said a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office, Harli Siregar yesterday. On Saturday, prosecutors arrested Muhammad Arif Nuryanta, chief judge of South Jakarta district court. He was allegedly paid US$3.57 million (RM15.79 million) to arrange for a favourable verdict by two lawyers for the companies, Siregar said in a statement, adding that US$1.07 million was then allegedly paid to the three other judges. “The bribe was given so that the judges would rule that it’s not a crime,” Siregar said, adding that a court clerk and two lawyers had also been arrested. Reuters could not immediately reach the three judges or their lawyers for comment. Siregar said the Attorney General’s Office had filed an appeal against the court’s March acquittal of the companies. Wilmar Group, Musim Mas Group and Permata Hijau Group did not immediately respond to a request for comments. Nuryanta was the deputy chief of the court when the verdict was announced. He did not hear the case directly. Indonesia, which accounts for about 60% of global palm oil supply, imposed severe export measures in 2022, including a three-week ban on shipments, in an attempt to rein in soaring prices of local cooking oil. When the corruption charges were first brought against the companies, prosecutors were seeking fines and payments of up to 11 trillion rupiah (RM2.8 billion). – Reuters Indian fraud accused arrested in Belgium NEW DELHI: Fugitive jeweller Mehul Choksi has been arrested in Belgium, a source with India’s Enforcement Directorate told Reuters, seven years after details of his involvement in one of India’s biggest bank frauds became public. The Indian government had sent a request for Choksi’s extradition before his arrest, but he is likely to challenge it on medical grounds, the source said. Punjab National Bank (PNB), India’s second largest state-run lender by assets, had announced in 2018 that it had discovered alleged fraud worth US$1.8 billion (RM7.96 billion) at a branch in Mumbai. The bank had filed a criminal complaint with India’s federal investigative agency against several entities including billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi and Choksi, his uncle and the managing director of Gitanjali Gems, saying they had defrauded PNB. Indian federal police filed fraud charges against Choksi, Nirav Modi and others in connection with suspected involvement in fraudulent transactions that led to huge losses for PNB. The two diamond tycoons have denied any wrongdoing. Choksi said in a letter in 2018 that the “investigating agencies were acting with pre determined minds and interfering with the course of justice”. Nirav Modi fled India in 2018 before details of his alleged role in the case became public. He was arrested in Britain in 2019. – Reuters

China and Vietnam already share a “comprehensive strategic partnership”, Hanoi’s highest diplomatic status. Vietnam has long pursued a “bamboo diplomacy” approach striving to stay on good terms with both China and the United States. The two countries have close economic ties, but Hanoi shares US concerns about Beijing’s increasing assertiveness. The Chinese leader insisted in his article that Beijing and Hanoi could resolve those disputes through dialogue. “We should properly manage differences and safeguard peace and stability in our region. “With vision, we are fully capable of properly settling maritime issues through consultation and negotiation,” Xi wrote. Lam said in his article on the government news portal that “joint efforts to control and satisfactorily resolve disagreements ... is an important stabilising factor in the current complex and unpredictable international and regional situation”. After Vietnam, Xi will visit Malaysia. He then travels on Thursday to Cambodia, one of China’s staunchest allies in Southeast Asia and where Beijing has extended its influence in recent years. – AFP

o China, Vietnam to sign about 40 cooperation documents

HANOI: Chinese leader Xi Jinping warned that protectionism “leads nowhere” and that a trade war would have “no winners”, state media said, as he arrived in Vietnam yesterday on the first leg of a Southeast Asia tour. Xi will visit Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia on his first overseas trip of the year as Beijing seeks to tighten regional trade ties and offset the impact of huge tariffs unleashed by his US counterpart Donald Trump. A line of well-wishers stood outside the Vietnamese capital’s airport waving Chinese flags as Xi arrived in Hanoi for the start of a tour that Beijing says “bears major importance” for the broader region. He said in a statement reported by Xinhua news agency soon after his arrival that he looked forward to an “in-depth exchange of views with Vietnamese leaders on issues concerning ties between the two parties and countries that have a global impact”. Xi earlier urged the two countries to “resolutely safeguard the multilateral trading system, stable global industrial and supply chains, and open and cooperative international environment”.

He also reiterated Beijing’s line that a “trade war and tariff war will produce no winner, and protectionism will lead nowhere” in an article published yesterday in Vietnam’s Nhan Dan newspaper. Beijing is trying to present itself as a stable alternative to an erratic Trump, who announced, and then mostly reversed, sweeping tariffs this month that sent global markets into a tailspin. Vietnam’s top leader To Lam said in an article posted on the government’s news portal yesterday that his country “is always ready to join hands with China to make cooperation between the two countries more substantive, profound, balanced and sustainable”. About 40 cooperation documents are expected to be signed by both nations, Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Bui Thanh Son told state media. Firming up ties with Southeast Asian neighbours could also help offset the impact from a closed United States, the largest single recipient of Chinese goods last year. Xi will be in Vietnam until today, his first trip there since December 2023.

SAFE HANDS ... Buddhist nuns relocate statues from a collapsed building at Myawaddy Nunnery in Mandalay on Sunday, following the devastating March 28 earthquake. – AFPPIC

Clorox Australia fined A$8.2m over recycling claims SYDNEY: Australia’s competition regulator said yesterday Clorox’s local unit had been fined A$8.25 million (RM23 million) by the Federal Court over falsely claiming its GLAD kitchen and garbage bags were partially made from recycled ocean plastic. half recycled oceanic plastic waste. In reality, over 2.2 million of these bags were made of about 50% plastic waste collected from Indonesian communities without formal waste management systems, and up to 50km from any shoreline.

environmental friendliness were crucial in assessing the violating conduct. Clorox was also directed to establish an Australian Consumer Law compliance programme, publish a corrective notice on its website, and bear a portion of the ACCC’s legal costs, according to the regulator’s statement. The company stopped production of the products in July 2023 after investigations began. Clorox did not immediately respond to a request for comment. – Reuters

The Australia Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) said the cleaning products maker admitted to breaching the Australian Consumer Law from June 2021 to July 2023 by falsely claiming on its “GLAD” kitchen and garbage bags that these were made of at least

The court ruling comes amid a broader societal focus on environmental impact and sustainability, with misleading “green” claims potentially eroding consumer trust and creating unfair market conditions. The court noted that claims of