Centerra Gold Inc.’s units on Wednesday filed a motion in a U.S. Bankruptcy Court seeking penalties of $1 million a day against the Kyrgyzstan government, related to the seizure of the Canadian company’s Kumtor gold mine, Reuters reported. Centerra Gold said in May, its Kyrgyzstan units Kumtor Gold Co. (KGC) and Kumtor Operating Co. (KOC) commenced bankruptcy proceedings in a U.S. court following nationalization of the miner’s Kumtor gold mine by the former Soviet republic.
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Vice President Kamala Harris made the case for the U.S. to strengthen its economic ties with Southeast Asia during a two-day trip to Singapore, where she stressed the need to work with countries to ease supply-chain constraints as a surge of Covid-19 cases has hit factories in the region, the Wall Street Journal reported. Harris said Tuesday she discussed the supply-chain problems extensively with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during their bilateral meetings.
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The remnants of Greensill Capital, the U.K. financing company that collapsed earlier this year, filed for chapter 15 bankruptcy in the U.S., aiming to halt litigation filed by one of its biggest clients, a coal-mining company owned by the governor of West Virginia, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Greensill’s U.S. bankruptcy filing on Wednesday seeks to halt a lawsuit brought earlier this year by coal supplier Bluestone Resources Inc. and its owners, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice and his family, according to court papers filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York.
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The International Monetary Fund said it will prevent Afghanistan from gaining access to some $450 million in aid in the wake of the Taliban's takeover the country, after the U.S. Treasury Department moved to block the funds, Politico reported. The IMF, with U.S. backing, is issuing billions of dollars worth of new “special drawing rights,” a reserve asset that can be converted to government-backed money, to aid poorer countries. A portion of those assets was scheduled to be allocated to Afghanistan next week, an event that generated urgent pushback from Republican lawmakers.
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U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen should intervene at the International Monetary Fund to prevent Taliban-led Afghanistan from being able to use almost $500 million in reserves, Republican House members said, Bloomberg News reported. The group of 18 lawmakers, including Arkansas’s French Hill, wrote to Yellen on Tuesday in a letter obtained by Bloomberg News, asking Yellen to take action at the fund and respond to their request by Thursday afternoon.
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Greensill Capital’s bankrupt U.S. unit won court approval to sell its Finacity Corp. business to White Oak Global Advisors for $7 million after reaching a deal with unsecured creditors, Bloomberg News reported. The transaction includes an agreement with Finacity founder Adrian Katz, who dropped demands for $21.2 million in payments related to Greensill’s purchase of Finacity in 2019. In return, the bankrupt U.S. unit will not try to sue Katz or certain other insiders for their role in the deal.
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London-based Pearson PLC will pay $1 million to settle charges it misled investors about a 2018 cyber intrusion involving the theft of millions of student records, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said on Monday, Reuters reported. The educational-publishing firm did not admit nor deny the regulator's charges, the SEC said, but in 2019 the firm disclosed in its annual report that the data breach may have included birth dates and email addresses, when, in fact, it knew that such records were stolen.
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Qatar National Bank QPSC, the Middle East’s biggest lender, asked a U.S. court to order Eritrea to pay nearly $300 million of debt after the Horn of Africa nation refused to participate in two lawsuits, Bloomberg News reported. The Doha-based bank requested a judgment by default from a federal court in Washington on Friday after Eritrea failed to respond to the bank’s claim seeking to enforce a U.K. ruling in 2019. QNB alleges that President Isaias Afwerki’s government went to drastic lengths to avoid being served with key documents.
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Bayer lost a third appeal against U.S. court verdicts that awarded damages to customers blaming their cancers on use of its glyphosate-based weedkillers, leaving the German drugs and pesticides group to pin hopes for legal relief on the U.S. Supreme Court, Reuters reported. A California appeals court yesterday upheld an $86 million verdict that found Bayer responsible for a couple's cancer after using Bayer's glyphosate-based Roundup against weeds.
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Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. made a new, higher bid for Kansas City Southern, looking to derail the U.S. railroad’s pending merger with rival Canadian National Railway Co. ahead of an important shareholder vote less than two weeks away, Bloomberg News reported. The offer is $300 a share, Canadian Pacific said in a statement Tuesday, or about $27 billion in equity value. While that’s higher than its original $25 billion bid from March, the new price doesn’t match the $30 billion deal that Kansas City Southern’s board accepted from Canadian National in May.
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