Headlines

The Hong Kong government will investigate the publisher of the now defunct Apple Daily for fraud, in the latest setback for the company after being forced to shut down the pro-democracy local newspaper last month, Nikkei Asia reported. The territory's financial secretary Paul Chan Mo-po told a hastily called new conference on Wednesday evening he had appointed a special inspector to investigate Hong Kong-listed Next Digital. Apple Daily published its final issue on June 24, after its assets were frozen by the government.

Private equity group American Industrial Partners has moved to take control of one of Sanjeev Gupta’s key assets, the Dunkirk aluminum smelter, in an escalation of an acrimonious battle between the businessman and the suitor he spurned, Bloomberg News reported. A U.K. holding company for the smelter has been placed into administration, according to a filing last week. The legal action was initiated by AIP, according to a person familiar with the matter, who declined to be named as the matter isn’t public. AIP owns most of the senior debt on the Dunkirk plant.

Permanent or long-term debt relief arrangements on mortgages “have substantially higher success rates” than temporary arrangements and are in the best interest of both borrowers and lenders, a new research paper published by the Central Bank has concluded, the Irish Times reported. “This is particularly true during a crisis such as that in Ireland after the 2008 crash, where borrower income shocks were deep and long-lasting, and negative equity was widespread,” the paper’s authors Claire Labonne, Fergal McCann and Terry O’Malley have written.

This month, Argentina's central bank is issuing money to the General Treasury at the fastest rate so far this year, which could fuel even faster inflation, while helping finance public spending ahead of the legislative elections of November, Bloomberg News reported. The monetary authority led by Miguel Pesce sent between July 1 and 22, 180,000 million pesos (US $ 1,860 million) to the Government, double the amount for the entire month of June and the highest figure since last December.

Germany’s top court on Wednesday dismissed an appeal by two British bankers over their conviction in a massive tax evasion case, confirming that the so-called cum-ex transactions they used were illegal, the Associated Press reported. The Federal Court of Justice also confirmed that the seizure of 14 million euros ($16.5 million) from one of the defendants and about 176 million euros ($207 million) from Hamburg-based private bank M.M. Warburg was justified. The ruling sets a key precedent for future trials in the “cum-ex” scandal involving hundreds of suspects.

Fully vaccinated travelers from the United States and much of Europe will be able to enter Britain without quarantining starting next week, U.K. officials said Wednesday — a move welcomed by Britain’s ailing travel industry, the Associated Press reported. The British government said people who have received both doses of a vaccine approved by the FDA in the U.S. or by the European Medicines Agency, which regulates drugs for the European Union and several other countries, will be able to take pre- and post-arrival coronavirus tests instead of self-isolating for 10 days after entering England.

There was a 38% increase in the number of Israelis filing for bankruptcy and opening debt cases with legal aid in 2020 during the coronavirus crisis, a market study has found, the Jerusalem Post reported. Oded Chen law firm, one of the country’s leading law firms in the field of insolvency, bankruptcy and debt cancellation, found that approximately 24,000 debt cases were opened with legal aid in 2020, of which about 9,000 were bankruptcy and insolvency proceedings of individuals.

The government’s move to amend the insolvency law to allow pre-packaged insolvency resolution plans for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) with defaults of not more than ₹1 crore is welcome, according to a commentary in the Economic Times of India. The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (Amendment) Bill, 2021, that seeks to replace an Ordinance, will enable the creditor and the debtor to informally work on a rehabilitation plan (instead of financial bidding) without a bankruptcy court’s involvement.

Federal Law No. 241-FZ of July 1, 2021 has introduced a number of changes to criminal prosecution under Articles 195 ("Unlawful Actions in Bankruptcy") and 196 ("Deliberate Bankruptcy") of Russia's Criminal Code, according to a Dentons' analysis on Mondaq.com. Only one or two dozen people a year are currently prosecuted under these articles. On the one hand, the changes are intended to harshen punishment and expand practice in application of these articles. To this aim, a number of qualifying elements with harsher types and amounts of punishment have been devised.

South African Airways (SAA) subsidiary Mango Airlines temporarily suspended all flights and services on Tuesday until further notice due to outstanding payments to Air Traffic Navigation Services, Mango acting CEO William Ndlovu said, Reuters reported. “Senior management and our shareholder are locked-in in emergency discussions to find an amicable solution to this impasse,” Ndlovu said in a statement. The budget carrier is in a dire financial position despite the South African parliament having approved a special allocation of 2.7 billion rand ($182.3 million) for SAA subsidiaries.