Switzerland will return $150 million from blocked Swiss bank accounts by the end of the year to the United States to be given to victims of convicted Ponzi scheme con artist Robert Allen Stanford, the Federal Ministry of Justice said on Monday, Reuters reported. Stanford, a former Texas financier known primarily by his middle name, was convicted of fraud by a Houston jury in 2012 in what prosecutors called a $7.2 billion fraud that lasted two decades and which was eclipsed in size only by the Ponzi scheme run by Bernie Madoff.

The U.K. and the European Union tomorrow will sign the treaty formalizing the post-Brexit trade agreement the two sides reached on Christmas Eve, Bloomberg News reported. After European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel sign the document, it will be flown by Royal Air Force jet to London where Prime Minister Boris Johnson will do the same. British lawmakers will get only a day to debate the agreement, because it needs to be implemented by the time the Brexit transition period ends at 11 p.m. on Dec. 31.

Ireland has added some fresh heat into the question of whether countries should raise minimum wages to put their economies on a more stable footing in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, with Prime Minister Micheál Martin saying his government would look at increasing the level by a fifth, the Wall Street Journal reported. Martin said such a move would be aimed at addressing income equality exposed by the pandemic, with many lower-income workers across the world bearing the brunt of lockdowns while better-paid people work from home.

The Moscow Commercial Court has again extended the procedure of sale of assets of Vneshprombank former co-owner Georgy Bedzhamov, charged with large-scale embezzlement for 6 months, according to court records, RASPSINews.com reported. Previously, the bankruptcy proceedings were extended in July. Bedzhamov was declared bankrupt in July 2018. In 2016, Bedzhamov was put on the international wanted list on embezzlement charges.

The European Union and the United Kingdom made public Saturday the vast agreement that is likely to govern future trade and cooperation between them from Jan. 1, setting the 27-nation bloc’s relations with its former member country and neighbor on a new but far more distant footing, the Associated Press reported. EU ambassadors and lawmakers on both sides of the English Channel will now pore over the “EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement,” which contains over 1,240 pages of text. EU envoys are expected to meet on Monday to discuss the document, drawn up over nine intense months of talks.

Britain yesterday urged businesses to prepare for Brexit, just days before a transition period designed to smooth the UK’s departure from the European Union comes to an end, Reuters reported.Britain and the EU clinched a trade deal on Thursday - one which preserves zero-tariff and zero-quota access to the bloc’s single market but which will still cause disruption. The transition period, under which Britain stayed aligned to the EU’s trading and regulatory rules, ends at 2300 GMT on Dec. 31.

Montenegro Airlines has ceased operations this evening with the company to be shut down, ExyuAviation.com reported. The carrier's final commercial service was operated between Belgrade and Podgorica as flight YM103. In a statement, the airline said, "The Montenegrin government's decision to shut down our company will have a negative impact on the entire aviation sector in the country. We would like to inform the public that starting tomorrow, December 26, 2020, we are completely suspending all operations".

The High Court has appointed a provisional liquidator to an Irish-registered luxury property investment firm operated by an alleged fraudster, The Irish Times reported. The order was made in respect of Lux Estate Capital Limited, with a registered address at Townspark, Trim Road, Athboy, Co Meath, which purports to be involved in real estate investments in various countries, primarily in Spain. The court heard that the company was run and owned by a Polish national called Lukasz Salamander, aka Lukasz Salamandra.

The drop in the amount of distressed debt across emerging markets has been a barely anticipated bonus for many countries this year. But it’s scant comfort for those nations still struggling with mounting obligations, Bloomberg News reported. The number of emerging- and frontier-market nations with debt trading at distressed levels -- yields more than 10 percentage points above those on U.S. Treasuries -- has tumbled from as many as 19 at the height of the coronavirus selloff in March to about a half-dozen now.

The new mutation of COVID-19 risks increasing debt defaults among junk-rated companies next year above what was previously anticipated, Russell Investments’s global head of fixed income said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. A highly infectious new strain of the virus that has led much of the world to cut off travel ties to Britain could increase the U.S. high-yield bond default rate to 6%-8% in the next 12 months, compared to earlier expectations of 5%-8%, Gerard Fitzpatrick told Reuters.