A capital gains tax on housing sales was intended to cool China’s sizzling property market, but since it was announced last Friday it has had the exact opposite effect: a panic has been unleashed, the Financial Times reported. Sales have spiked and prices have increased as buyers try to close deals before the 20 per cent tax goes into effect. There has also been a jump in divorces, a practical if rather hard-hearted strategy for exploiting a loophole in the rules.

An Afghan special tribunal convicted and sentenced two former executives and 19 others for roles in the fraud that led to the collapse in 2010 of Afghanistan's largest private bank, but in a surprise decision threw out the most serious charges, The Wall Street Journal reported. Former Kabul Bank Chairman Sherkhan Farnood and former Chief Executive Khalilullah Ferozi were convicted of fraud at the bank and given five-year prison sentences, the court said Tuesday.

India has accused Cadbury PLC of dodging about $46 million in taxes by pretending to produce candy at a factory that didn't exist. A 103-page report by the country's tax authorities, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, accuses Cadbury's Indian unit of manipulating invoices and other documents to get a tax exemption available to companies that began production in new plants in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh by March 31, 2010.

Cyprus, the next euro-zone country in line to receive a bailout, has agreed to submit to an independent review of the country's controls on money laundering, in a bid to ease the currency bloc's concerns about lending billions of euros to prop up Cypriot financial institutions, a popular destination for offshore cash, The Wall Street Journal reported. Pumping more capital into Cypriot banks will be a major part of the bailout, which euro-zone finance ministers said after a meeting Monday would be ready by the end of March.

PT Berlian Laju Tanker Tbk, the Indonesian operator of 72 tankers, won't be permitted to proceed in U.S. bankruptcies while keeping all papers sealed and withheld from the public, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stuart Bernstein ruled at a hearing, StamfordAdvocate.com reported on a Bloomberg story. Gramercy Distressed Opportunity Fund II along with two sister funds filed an involuntary Chapter 11 petition against the PT Berlian parent in December. The company responded by asking Bernstein to dismiss the involuntary case.

Memory chipmaker Micron said the Tokyo district court issued an order approving its acquisition of Japanese memory chipmaker Elpida after creditors agreed to the plan, Reuters reported. Boise, Idaho-based Micron, which is losing money due to a crumbling PC industry, wants to create larger economies of scale and offered in July to buy Elpida for about $750 million in cash and to pay creditors a total of $1.75 billion in annual installments through 2019. Elpida's creditors voted to approve the deal on Tuesday, Micron said.

For new South Korean President Park Geun-hye, who in her inauguration speech promised a fairer society, one of the biggest challenges will be to tackle a growing income gap that has seen almost one in two elderly South Koreans slip back into poverty, The Wall Street Journal reported. Ms. Park in her speech on Monday alluded to tougher economic times ahead, talking about a new chapter in the economic miracle that lifted many South Koreans out of poverty in the decades of breakneck growth after the Korean War—but deepened inequalities.

Faced with slowing growth, persistent inflation and sagging investor confidence, India’s government is pinned between conflicting pressures: economists warn that tough steps are needed to avoid long-term fiscal problems, even as political leaders are leery of introducing unpopular measures before important elections this year, the International Herald Tribune reported.

Almost half of China’s provinces are setting their growth sights lower in the wake of the central government’s emphasis on the quality of expansion over speed, a sign of an increased focus on tackling rising debt, Bloomberg reported. Fourteen provinces have set lower targets for gross domestic product expansion this year than in 2012 and the other 17 left their goals unchanged, according to Nomura Holdings Inc. The weighted average target has dropped to 9.9 percent from 10.3 percent, Citigroup Inc. calculates.

Last quarter, 7,221 Thai companies closed down, 27 percent higher than in the same period a year earlier, when the worst floods in 70 years swamped most of the country, Bloomberg reported. The figure is also more than double the average of 3,000 in the previous nine years, according to data from the National Economic & Social Development Board. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s government raised the daily minimum wage to 300 baht throughout the country last month, after a similar increase in April in seven provinces including Bangkok.