21/01/2026

WEDNESDAY | JAN 21, 2026

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Presidential hopeful Lam promises to fight graft

HK court adjourns undersea cable case HONG KONG: A lawyer for a Chinese captain of a Hong Kong-registered ship alleged to have damaged undersea cables in the Baltic Sea said yesterday 18 witnesses would be called to testify in the case. Wan Wenguo, the captain of the container ship NewNew Polar Bear, is alleged to have caused “criminal damage” to an underwater natural gas pipeline and submarine telecom cables between Finland and Estonia on Oct 8, 2023, according to a Hong Kong charge sheet reviewed by Reuters. The Baltic Sea region has been on high alert for sabotage after a series of outages of power cables, gas pipelines and telecoms since Russia began its military operation in Ukraine in early 2022. Wan, 43, appeared in court yesterday but his lawyer, Jerry Chung, said more time was needed to go through documents before entering a plea. The case was adjourned to Feb 11. Chung told reporters 10 witnesses would testify for the criminal damage charge, including crew members, Hong Kong officials, and two experts in maritime matters. The maximum punishment is two years in prison, Chung added. The charge sheet stated that Wan had been “reckless” and “without lawful excuse damaged the property belonging to another”. Finnish authorities allege the NewNew Polar Bear severed the subsea gas pipeline, the Balticconnector, which links Finland and Estonia under the Baltic Sea, by dragging its anchor along the seabed. Estonian police suspect the ship also damaged telecoms cables connecting Estonia to Finland and Sweden before hitting the pipeline. Wan’s lawyer gave no details on what damages might be claimed and from whom, and said he was unaware of any other parties being prosecuted besides Wan. Wan also faces two charges of failing to ensure the ship complied with safety requirements applying to Hong Kong-registered ships, under the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. Chung said these involved the disappearance of one anchor on the ship; and Wan’s failure to report daily to his ship’s company. For these two infractions, eight other witnesses would be called, Chung said. Wan did not apply for bail at his first hearing last May after his arrest, and has remained in custody. While the offences did not occur in Hong Kong waters, the ship’s Hong Kong flag means it comes under the city’s maritime regulatory jurisdiction globally. Hong Kong prosecutors have cooperated with Finnish and Estonian authorities on the case. – Reuters Tokyo zoo pandas to join sister in China TOKYO: Two popular pandas at a Japanese zoo will depart on Jan 27 to join their sister in China, the government and media said, leaving Japan panda-less for the first time in half a century. Loaned out as part of China’s “panda diplomacy” programme, the distinctive black and-white animals have symbolised friendship between Beijing and Tokyo since the normalisation of diplomatic ties in 1972. Japan has only two pandas, Lei Lei and Xiao Xiao, at Tokyo’s Zoological Gardens in the Ueno neighbourhood. The Tokyo Metropolitan Government, which operates the Ueno Zoo, had previously said the last day for their public viewing would be Sunday. The twins will then be flown out of Japan two days later, the Tokyo government said on Monday. They are slated to arrive Jan 28 at a facility in China housing their older sister, Xiang Xiang, Kyodo News agency said. Many fans cried when Xiang Xiang left Ueno Zoo for China in 2023, and her departure was broadcast live on television. – AFP

o Top leader eyes China-style powers

One source briefed on party deliberations told AFP that Lam’s bid for expanded powers had been provisionally approved. But some reports suggested he had to shelve his presidential ambitions to secure support for his reform agenda. Elevated to party chief after general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s death in 2024, Lam has shocked the country with the pace of his changes. But unlike in present-day China or North Korea, political power in Vietnam has not been concentrated in one paramount leader. Its collective system of government rests on four pillars: the party chief, president, prime minister and the chairman of the National Assembly. An internal Communist Party position was added as a fifth pillar last year. If he gets the presidency, Lam would be the first person to be named to the top two jobs simultaneously by a party congress, rather than stepping in following a holder’s death. Regardless of what happens, former US ambassador to Vietnam Daniel Kritenbrink told AFP he expects the party to reaffirm Lam’s “leading if not dominant role” and the “pretty striking policy vision that he’s outlined over the last”. – AFP

and a regional economic bright spot, where the Communist Party has sought to deliver rapid growth to bolster its legitimacy. In a series of closed-door meetings this week nearly 1,600 party delegates will finalise the country’s leadership roster for the next five years and set key policies. Lam will remain the party’s top leader, according to sources briefed on key internal deliberations. But he is seeking the presidency as well; a dual role similar to Xi Jinping in China. Xi himself led an extensive anti-corruption drive, promising to target both “tigers and flies”, which analysts say was also used for political purposes, taking down internal opponents within his ruling party. Experts say if Lam secures both roles it will signal the supremacy of his security dominated faction. If so, he will have “the strongest mandate for the Vietnamese leadership since the end of the Vietnam war”, said Nguyen Khac Giang of Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute. He and other analysts said Lam’s reach will depend on who else secures top posts and politburo positions during the conclave, particularly from the more conservative military faction that opposes him.

HANOI: Vietnam’s top leader promised to fight corruption yesterday in an address to a twice-a-decade congress of the Communist Party where he is seeking expanded powers similar to China’s political structure. In just 17 months as general secretary, To Lam has swept aside rivals and centralised authority in an aggressive reform drive officials describe as a “revolution”. He accelerated a sweeping anti-corruption campaign that ensnared thousands of officials, thinned and streamlined bureaucracy and spurred infrastructure investment. The party is “determined to fight corruption ... considering the private sector is an important pillar of the economy”, he said. The party would pursue administrative reform and tackle “wastefulness and negativity”, he told the meeting, adding that “all wrongdoings must be dealt with”. The Southeast Asian nation of 100 million people is both a repressive one-party state

People gather in front of the Indonesian Embassy in Phnom Penh on Monday. – AFPPIC

Over 400 Indonesians ‘released’ by scam networks PHNOM PENH: Cyberscam networks in Cambodia have freed more than 400 Indonesians this month, Jakarta said on Monday, after Phnom Penh announced a fresh crackdown. continue, the embassy predicts many more will flow in from the provinces,” Santo said. He said the Indonesians who went to the embassy had been “involved in online scams” for anywhere between a few months and several years, and some had their passports taken from them. targeted Chinese speakers, but have expanded their vast scam operations. About 100 people were also queueing outside the Chinese embassy in Phnom Penh on Monday, but those approached by AFP declined to speak.

Scammers working from hubs across Southeast Asia, some willingly and others trafficked, lure internet users into fake romances and cryptocurrency investments, netting tens of billions of dollars each year. Some foreign nationals have left suspected scam compounds across Cambodia this month as the government pledged to “eliminate” problems related to the online fraud trade, which the United Nations says employs at least 100,000 people in Cambodia. Recent Cambodian law enforcement measures resulted in “many online scam syndicates .. letting their workers go”, Indonesia’s ambassador to Cambodia, Santo Darmosumarto, said in a video. Between Jan 1 and 18, 440 Indonesians came to the embassy in Phnom Penh after they had been “released by online scam syndicates”, many seeking to return home, according to a post on Instagram. “Because Cambodia’s crackdown will

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said Beijing “attaches great importance to the safety of Chinese citizens overseas” when asked at a regular news briefing about the lines outside the embassy in Cambodia. Cambodia arrested and deported Chinese born tycoon Chen Zhi, accused of running internet scam operations from Cambodia, to China this month. Chen, a former Cambodian government adviser, was indicted by US authorities in October. Mark Taylor, an anti-trafficking expert in Cambodia, said Chen’s extradition seemed to have sent shockwaves through the scam industry, with some operators likely fearing legal consequences and opting to release people or evacuate their compounds. Many scam operators likely fear “that they’re going to face punishment, eventually”, Taylor said. – AFP

Santo said the embassy would expedite repatriations but all Indonesians were “being directed to return home independently”. Dozens of people, some with suitcases, lined up outside the Indonesian embassy on Monday. An 18-year-old from Sumatra said he fled a compound in Bavet city, near Cambodia’s border with Vietnam, where he was forced to scam people online for eight months without pay despite being promised US$600 (RM2,432) a month. He said he arrived in Phnom Penh on Sunday and came to the embassy to ask for a new passport because his was “with a Chinese boss”. “They heard police were coming inside the compound, so they let everyone go,” he said. Transnational crime groups, mostly based in Cambodia and Myanmar, initially largely