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Entertainment

The Subsequent Act for Marcel the Shell (and Jenny Slate)

The Next Act for Marcel the Shell (and Jenny Slate)

TELLURIDE, Colonel – Words fail Jenny Slate. It’s Friday night at the Telluride Film Festival and the actress has just flown from her first flight in 17 months, still foggy from quarantine, a time when she became the mother of two different but equally profound projects: a brand new baby and a full-length one Movie she made for a decade.

Slate is here for her vocal work on Marcel the Shell, the most unlikely of all internet sensations. No bigger than a nickel, this stop-motion clam with a single googly eye and shoes stolen from a Polly Pocket doll set the internet on fire when she and filmmaker Dean Fleischer Camp uploaded a three-minute video to YouTube in 2010, Illustrating Marcel’s silent optimism – “I like myself and I have many other great qualities” – attracted immediate interest and ended up receiving more than 31 million views in total. (Two more short films followed in 2011 and 2014.)

Marcel’s voice is different from Slate’s other animation works, be it Harley Quinn in “Lego Batman” or Tammy Larsen in “Bob’s Burgers”. (She spoke to Missy Foreman-Greenwald on “Big Mouth” until she resigned in 2020, saying, “Black characters in an animated series should be played by blacks.”) Marcel has a high, melancholy timbre that could make you cry as easily as laugh. (“Some people say my head is too big for my body and I say, ‘Compared to what?'”) And it was so contagious that it led to appearances on the late night talk shows, two bestsellers, and memes , Tattoos and offers for television shows and commercial sponsorship.

But Slate and Camp, who first started Marcel as a married couple but are now involved in other relationships, protected Marcel so much that instead of taking a simple payday – Slate offers that they would have helped them when they had problems with artists had – they spent the next decade turning it into a feature film.

It was an arduous process that involved a bunch of animators and designers. Friday evening marked the climax of all this work when “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On” had its world premiere. The 90-minute mockumentary shows an aspiring documentary filmmaker, Dean (Camp), who moves into an Airbnb only to discover 1-inch Marcel with his memory-tormented grandmother Nana Connie (voiced by Isabella Rossellini) and his pet. named Alan, grieving after a mysterious tragedy that ripped the rest of their community out of their cozy home.

Slate likens the process of making the film to watching one of those science videos of a flower blooming in fast motion.

“One morning you just wake up and there is a flower and it’s blue,” said Slate. “That’s what it feels like.”

Slate, a little more shy and reserved than you’d expect, is still thinking about her life after the pandemic. Slate is happier than when she and Camp first created Marcel as a fun piece for a friend’s comedy show is the result of the “love infinity loop” she is currently with her baby and fiancé Ben Shattuck experienced.

“We’ve been in the process for so long and this character has so many different roles for me,” she added. “At first I think I just had to prove to myself one more time that I was funny. And then I realized that I was doing something that was actually very personal to me. So the film tried to show that inner part of me. I just can’t believe it worked. “

And it worked. The Hollywood Reporter called it “a cute, no-nonsense movie whose message about self-compassion and community feels particularly forward-looking.” And IndieWire called it a critics’ recommendation, calling it “the cutest family grief movie you might ever see all year round.”

“Marcel” is one of the few films that debuts on Telluride and is looking for a buyer. And while it’s been in the works for nearly a decade, it’s one of many films at the festival, including Mike Mills ‘”C’mon, C’mon”, Joe Wright’s “Cyrano” and Peter Hedges’ “The Same Storm”. feel like a reaction to our current mood of fear and alienation. “I’m really excited that the film is arriving at this moment,” said Camp, who argues that the lucky timing suggests that “even before the Covid success, we felt increasingly isolated and vulnerable”.

In 2010, when Marcel first appeared, Slate said, “She was waiting to be fired from Saturday Night Live,” which she had been working on for an unhappy year. But the voice that Marcel activated was one she never used on the sketch show.

“I felt like I had given every voice I could have done to save myself, and suddenly this voice that I had never done before came out of my mouth,” she said. “In retrospect, it was a real decision to just use it for myself privately. That wouldn’t have belonged to ‘SNL’ anyway and it was this very nice opening to the belief that there is a world outside of the tiny, narrow hallway that contains what you perceive as your own failure. “

To make the film, Slate and Camp spent a year and a half recording improved audio sessions. Then their co-writer and editor Nick Paley and Camp devoted just as much time to turning those improvisational snippets into script form. This eventually became an animation (audio with music and storyboard visuals) that they could watch and perform for the test audience to make sure everything was working before they filmed the live action and eventually the stop motion animation. “Ultimately, we adjusted to an indie version of the Pixar process,” said Camp.

However, the basic premise always remained: Marcel had lost most of his mussel family to an argument with people.

“We have always liked that the overabundance of emotionality from the human world caused this major disruption in the clam world,” said Slate, adding that creating Nana Connie had long been part of the plan. “The idea was what you do when your life as you know it is broken and the only person who remembers it wouldn’t remember at all.”

It is this urgency and this heartache that gives the film its center. It’s also the creative project that Slate is most proud of. Today she sings her daughter songs in Marcel’s voice. (She thinks he’s a better singer than she is.) And while she doesn’t know what’s next for that cute but stubborn avatar of herself, it’s clear that Marcel is buried deep inside her.

“I always see Marcel as my real self and how I would really like to be if my ego and the insignia of being a woman in patriarchy didn’t get in the way.”

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Politics

Males charged in shell firm inventory fraud scheme, used SEC filings

Men charged in shell company stock fraud scheme, used SEC filings

Three men have embarked on a brazen scheme to “secretly kidnap” and take over dormant mailbox companies, whose shares they then fraudulently inflated to sell to ignorant investors, according to the indictment, which was unsealed on Friday.

The 2017-2019 men allegedly used fake resignation letters to take control of four mailbox companies, then used the Securities and Exchange Commission’s EDGAR public filing system and fake press releases to fraudulently “pump up” their stock prices by seeking new business opportunities says.

Millions of shares of those stocks, which the defendants bought in many cases for less than 1 cent a share, were then sold over-the-counter by the men and others at gains of up to 900%, according to the court record.

The defendants – Mark Allen Miller, Christopher James Rajkaran and Saeid Jaberian, also known as Andre Jaberian – are charged in 15 cases of securities fraud, securities fraud conspiracy and wire transfer fraud.

The indictment states that Minnesota residents, Miller and Jaberian, as well as an unidentified person who is a relative of Miller, actually became the nominal CEOs and presidents of the companies affected by the scam.

Prosecutors believe the men made hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal profits just from the behavior described in the indictment, according to a spokeswoman for the US prosecutor in Minnesota.

The indictment, filed in the U.S. District Court in Minnesota, was first reported Friday on the Twitter account of Seamus Hughes, associate director of the Extremism Program at George Washington University.

Hughes regularly scours the federal court’s online archive system, PACER, for interesting criminal and civil litigation documents that were not previously reported.

The Securities and Exchange Commission did not immediately respond when CNBC asked if the agency had taken any action against the defendants and whether they had made changes to the EDGAR file system to prevent tampering by suspected fraudsters.

None of the defendants could be reached for comment.

Rajkaran, a resident of Queens, New York and Guyana, was arrested on Friday as a possible aviation hazard after appearing in court in Brooklyn, New York.

The other two defendants, Miller and Jaberian, are due to appear in federal court in Minnesota on July 2.

The four mailbox companies affected by the alleged conspiracy were Digitiliti, Encompass Holdings, Bell Buckle Holdings, and Utilicraft Aerospace Industries.

While the companies were supposedly doing business – online privacy services, computer software, debt collection, and aerospace – all were actually dormant mailbox companies “with no business or income to speak of,” the indictment said.

The companies had all stopped filing required documents with the SEC and the Secretary of State, but their shares were publicly traded on the over-the-counter market.

After the corporate quartet was identified, “the conspirators then bought shares in the dormant public letterbox companies at low prices on the OTC market,” the indictment said.

“The conspirators were able to buy hundreds of thousands or even millions of shares because the shares traded for a fraction of a penny per share.”

In the Digitiliti case, according to the indictment, Miller drafted a fake resignation letter and board minutes in September 2017, falsely stating that the company’s previous CEO had resigned and Miller had been appointed president and CEO.

Miller then filed with the SEC papers falsely identifying himself as the company’s new head and asked for “the login codes that allow him access to the company’s SEC-EDGAR filing account.”

This in turn “allowed Miller to make public filings with the SEC on behalf of the company.”

The EDGAR system is used by publicly traded companies to disclose material events, including quarterly and annual financial results, changes in management, and sales and purchases of significant amounts of company stock by insiders and others.

The indictment states that Miller bought 50,000 Digitiliti shares in November 2017.

“After Digitiliti’s kidnapping, the Defendant Miller used his control over the company to issue a false and misleading press release on behalf of the company,” the indictment stated.

“On or about July 9, 2018, Miller issued a press release falsely claiming that Digitiliti was ‘negotiating’ with a private company that is trying to ‘buy’ Digitiliti.”

The press release also falsely alleged that the private company “has a proven track record of generating revenue and succeeding in a highly desirable sector of the market,” according to the indictment.

Miller sold his 50,000 Digitiliti shares three weeks later.

During the alleged hijacking of Encompass Holdings from June to November 2017, Miller and Rajkaran together bought more than 40 million shares in the company at low prices, the indictment said.

As with Digitiliti, Miller claimed in a forged letter of resignation and board minutes that he had become president and CEO, the indictment said.

Rajkaran then began posting about the company on investorhub.com to “promote and raise the price of ECMH stock,” the indictment stated.

“For example, he announced that the new CEO is’ likely to have nearly 20 million real estate holdings”[s] and construction machinery … heard, he owns several shopping centers in Mn ‘, “the indictment reads.

Miller then released a press release falsely claiming that Encompass “had signed a letter of intent to acquire approximately $ 6.4 million in assets from DDG Properties. according to the indictment.

“None of that was true.”

The stock price rose in response to the allegations, and Miller shortly thereafter sold 12 million shares in the company at fraudulently inflated prices and made a gain of more than 300%, the indictment said.

Rajkaran achieved an earnings return of around 150% after dumping more than 34 million shares, according to the indictment.

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World News

Dutch courtroom guidelines Shell should minimize carbon emissions by 45% by 2030

Dutch court rules Shell must cut carbon emissions by 45% by 2030

A cyclist passes oil silos at the Royal Dutch Shell Pernis refinery in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on Tuesday, April 27, 2021.

Peter Boer | Bloomberg | Getty Images

LONDON – A Dutch court ruled on Wednesday that oil giant Royal Dutch Shell must cut its CO2 emissions by 45% by 2030 compared to 2019.

This is a much larger reduction than the company’s current goal of reducing its emissions by 20% by 2030.

The landmark ruling comes at a time when the world’s largest corporate emitters are under immense pressure to set short-, medium- and long-term emissions targets that are compatible with the Paris Agreement. The climate agreement is widely recognized as extremely important to avoid an irreversible climate crisis.

According to Shell’s current climate strategy, the company aims to become a net zero issuing business by 2050. The company has set itself the goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 45% by 2035.

A Shell spokesman said the company “fully expects to appeal today’s disappointing court ruling”.

“We are investing billions of dollars in low-carbon energy, including charging electric vehicles, hydrogen, renewables and biofuels,” the spokesman said via email. “We want to increase the demand for these products and expand our new energy business even faster.”

Shell shares traded 0.2% higher in London. The share price is up nearly 10% since the start of the year, after falling nearly 40% in 2020.

“A turning point in history”

The lawsuit was filed in April 2019 by seven activist groups – including Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace – on behalf of 17,200 Dutch citizens. Subpoenas in court alleged Shell’s business model “endangering human rights and lives” by threatening the goals set out in the Paris Agreement.

Under the Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015 and signed by 195 countries, states agreed on a framework to prevent global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degrees Celsius, although the agreement aims to limit global temperature increases by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Roger Cox, an environmental advocate on the case, said in a statement that the ruling marks “a turning point in history” and could have dire consequences for other major polluters.

Meanwhile, Sara Shaw, Friends of Earth’s international program coordinator for Climate Justice and Energy, hoped the ruling would “spark a wave of climate disputes against major polluters, forcing them to stop fossil fuel extraction and burning”.

Mark van Baal, founder of the Dutch group Follow This, told CNBC via email that the judge’s verdict shows that “Big Oil can no longer deny the crucial role it must play in the fight against climate change”.

At Shell’s general meeting last week, shareholders voted overwhelmingly in favor of the company’s energy transition plans. Crucially, however, a growing minority opposed the strategy, insisting that the oil giant had much more to do in the fight against climate change.

Activist investor Follow This said at the time that the outcome would likely mean Shell would have to revise its climate targets yet again.

According to Reuters, the case is the first in which activists have taken a large energy company to court to force it to revise its climate strategy.

Categories
World News

Israel Floor Forces Shell Gaza as Preventing Intensifies

Israel Ground Forces Shell Gaza as Fighting Intensifies

Die israelischen Bodentruppen führten am frühen Freitag Angriffe auf den Gazastreifen durch, um einen Konflikt mit palästinensischen Militanten zu eskalieren, der durch Luftangriffe aus Israel und Raketen aus dem Gazastreifen geführt worden war.

Es war nicht sofort klar, ob der Angriff der Auftakt zu einer Bodeninvasion gegen die Hamas war, die militante islamistische Gruppe, die Gaza kontrolliert.

Ein israelischer Militärsprecher, Oberstleutnant Jonathan Conricus, sagte zunächst, dass “Bodentruppen in Gaza angreifen”, stellte jedoch später klar, dass israelische Truppen nicht in Gaza eingedrungen waren, was auf die Möglichkeit eines Artilleriefeuers von außen hindeutete. Er gab keine weiteren Details an.

Der Anstieg der Kämpfe hat die beispiellose Position Israels unterstrichen – im Kampf gegen palästinensische Militante an seiner Südflanke, um die schlimmsten Unruhen seit Jahrzehnten zu bekämpfen.

Es folgte ein weiterer Tag der Zusammenstöße zwischen arabischen und jüdischen Mobs auf den Straßen israelischer Städte. Die Behörden riefen die Reserven der Armee auf und schickten Verstärkungen der bewaffneten Grenzpolizei in die Innenstadt von Lod, um zu versuchen, das abzuwenden, was die israelischen Führer gewarnt hatten ein Bürgerkrieg werden.

Zusammengenommen deuteten die beiden Schauplätze des Aufruhrs auf eine schrittweise Veränderung des jahrzehntelangen Konflikts zwischen Israel und den Palästinensern hin. Während gewalttätige Eskalationen oft einem vorhersehbaren Verlauf folgen, entwickelt sich dieser letzte Kampf, der schlimmste seit sieben Jahren, schnell zu einer neuen Art von Krieg – schneller, destruktiver und in der Lage, sich in unvorhersehbare neue Richtungen zu drehen.

In Gaza, einem verarmten Küstenstreifen, der 2014 der Schmelztiegel eines verheerenden siebenwöchigen Krieges war, feuerten palästinensische Militante überraschend große Sperrfeuer mit Raketen mit erhöhter Reichweite ab – etwa 1.800 in drei Tagen -, die weit nach Israel reichten.

Nach Angaben der Gesundheitsbehörden des Gazastreifens hat Israel am Donnerstag seine Kampagne für unerbittliche Luftangriffe gegen Hamas-Ziele intensiviert und Gebäude, Büros und Häuser in Streiks pulverisiert, bei denen 103 Menschen, darunter 27 Kinder, getötet wurden.

Sechs Zivilisten und ein Soldat wurden von Hamas-Raketen in Israel getötet.

Ägyptische Vermittler kamen am Donnerstag in Israel an, um den sich verschärfenden Konflikt zu stoppen.

Am alarmierendsten für Israel war jedoch die gewaltsame Gärung auf seinen eigenen Gehwegen und Straßen, wo Tage der Unruhen jüdischer Bürgerwehren und arabischer Mobs keine Anzeichen eines Nachlassens zeigten.

Die Unruhen in mehreren Städten gemischter ethnischer Zugehörigkeit, in denen wütende junge Männer Autos steinigten, Moscheen und Synagogen in Brand steckten und sich gegenseitig angriffen, signalisierten einen Zusammenbruch von Recht und Ordnung in Israel in einem Ausmaß, das seit Beginn des zweiten palästinensischen Aufstands nicht mehr zu beobachten war oder Intifada vor 21 Jahren.

Die Gewalt folgt auf einen Monat kochender Spannungen in Jerusalem, in dem die drohende Vertreibung palästinensischer Familien aus ihren Häusern mit einer Flut arabischer Angriffe gegen israelische Juden und einem Marsch von Rechtsextremisten durch die Stadt zusammenfiel, die „Tod den Arabern“ sangen.

Die erschütternde Gewalt in dieser Woche veranlasste die israelischen Führer, angeführt von Präsident Reuven Rivlin, das Gespenst eines Bürgerkriegs hervorzurufen – eine einst undenkbare Idee. “Wir müssen unsere Probleme lösen, ohne einen Bürgerkrieg auszulösen, der eine Gefahr für unsere Existenz darstellen kann”, sagte Rivlin. “Die stille Mehrheit sagt nichts, weil es absolut fassungslos ist.”

Ministerpräsident Benjamin Netanjahu besuchte Lod, eine Arbeiterstadt mit einer gemischten arabisch-israelischen Bevölkerung, die sich zum Zentrum des Umbruchs entwickelt hat. Haufen ausgebrannter Autos lagen auf den Straßen, wo einige Nächte zuvor arabische Jugendliche Synagogen und Autos verbrannten, Steine ​​warfen und sporadische Schüsse abfeuerten, bevor Banden jüdischer Bürgerwehrleute konterten und ihre eigenen Feuer entfachten.

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Am Donnerstag wurde ein jüdischer Mann erstochen, als er dort zu einer Synagoge ging, aber überlebte.

“Es gibt jetzt keine größere Bedrohung als diese Unruhen”, sagte Netanjahu, der sich geschworen hatte, die israelischen Verteidigungskräfte einzusetzen, um den Frieden in Lod aufrechtzuerhalten. Einen Tag zuvor beschrieb er die Gewalt als “Anarchie” und sagte: “Nichts rechtfertigt das Lynchen von Juden durch Araber, und nichts rechtfertigt das Lynchen von Arabern durch Juden.”

Um Lod zu sichern, holte die Regierung Tausende bewaffneter Grenzpolizisten aus dem besetzten Westjordanland und verhängte eine Ausgangssperre um 20 Uhr, jedoch mit geringem Erfolg.

Arabische Einwohner, auf die etwa 30 Prozent der 80.000 Einwohner der Stadt entfallen, setzten eine Kampagne des Steinwurfs, des Vandalismus und der Brandstiftung fort, während jüdische Extremisten von außerhalb von Lod ankamen und arabische Autos und Eigentum verbrannten. Arabische Demonstranten errichteten brennende Straßensperren.

Als die Nacht hereinbrach, gab es Anzeichen dafür, dass die Gewalt eskalieren könnte, wenn ein großer Konvoi bewaffneter Juden in weißen Lieferwagen in die Stadt zog.

Palästinensische Führer sagten jedoch, die Rede von jüdischen Führern über einen Bürgerkrieg sei eine Ablenkung von dem, was sie als die wahre Ursache der Unruhen in Lod bezeichneten – Polizeibrutalität gegen palästinensische Demonstranten und provokative Aktionen von rechtsgerichteten israelischen Siedlergruppen.

Der israelisch-palästinensische Konflikt

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13. Mai 2021, 17:47 Uhr ET

“Die Polizei hat einen arabischen Demonstranten in Lod erschossen”, sagte Ahmad Tibi, Vorsitzender der Ta’al-Partei und Mitglied des israelischen Parlaments. „Wir wollen kein Blutvergießen. Wir wollen protestieren. “

Herr Tibi sagte, dass Herr Netanjahu, der sich häufig mit rechtsextremen und nationalistischen Parteien zusammengetan hat, um an der Macht zu bleiben, nur sich selbst für die politische Zunderbüchse verantwortlich gemacht hat, die in ganz Israel mit solcher Wildheit explodiert ist.

Am Donnerstagabend forderte das Außenministerium die amerikanischen Bürger auf, die Reise nach Israel zu überdenken, und warnte davor, in das besetzte Westjordanland oder in den Gazastreifen zu gehen. In einem Gutachten stellte das Ministerium Raketenangriffe fest, die Jerusalem erreichen könnten, Proteste und Gewalt in ganz Israel sowie ein „gefährliches und volatiles“ Sicherheitsumfeld im Gazastreifen und an seinen Grenzen.

Die Probleme begannen am Montag, als eine schwere Polizeirazzia in der Al-Aqsa-Moschee in Jerusalem – der drittheiligsten Stätte im Islam, die sich auf einer Stätte befindet, die auch von Juden verehrt wird – eine sofortige Gegenreaktion auslöste.

Abgesehen von den Bildern von Polizisten, die Betäubungsgranaten schleuderten und Gummigeschosse in die Moschee feuerten, wurde die palästinensische Empörung auch durch viel größere, jahrzehntealte Frustrationen angeheizt.

Human Rights Watch beschuldigte Israel kürzlich, eine Form der Apartheid begangen zu haben, das rassistische Rechtssystem, das einst Südafrika regierte, und verwies auf eine Reihe von Gesetzen und Vorschriften, die angeblich die Palästinenser systematisch diskriminieren. Israel lehnte diese Anklage vehement ab. Aber seine Sicherheitskräfte sind jetzt mit einer wachsenden Welle der Wut der arabisch-israelischen Minderheit des Landes konfrontiert, die sich darüber beschwert, als Bürger zweiter Klasse behandelt zu werden.

“‘Koexistenz’ bedeutet, dass beide Seiten existieren”, sagte Tamer Nafar, ein berühmter Rapper aus Lod. “Aber bisher gibt es nur eine Seite – die jüdische Seite.”

Die Raketenangriffe aus dem Gazastreifen unterscheiden sich auch quantitativ und qualitativ vom letzten Krieg im Jahr 2014. Die mehr als 1.800 Raketen, die die Hamas und ihre Verbündeten seit Montag auf Israel abgefeuert haben, machen bereits ein Drittel der Gesamtzahl der während des siebenwöchigen Krieges 2014 abgefeuerten Raketen aus.

Der israelische Geheimdienst hat geschätzt, dass die Hamas, der Islamische Dschihad und andere militante palästinensische Gruppen etwa 30.000 Raketen und Mörsergeschosse im Gazastreifen versteckt haben, was darauf hinweist, dass es den Militanten trotz der israelisch-ägyptischen Blockade des Küstengebiets gelungen ist, ein riesiges Arsenal anzuhäufen.

Die Raketen haben auch eine größere Reichweite gezeigt als die in früheren Konflikten abgefeuerten und reichen bis nach Tel Aviv und Jerusalem.

Sie haben sich auch als wirksamer erwiesen. Im Krieg 2014 haben sie insgesamt sechs Zivilisten in Israel getötet, die gleiche Anzahl, die in den letzten drei Tagen getötet wurde.

Diese Verluste schienen das Ergebnis der neuen Taktik der Hamas zu sein, mehr als 100 Raketen gleichzeitig abzufeuern und das von den USA finanzierte Raketenabwehrsystem Iron Dome zu vereiteln, das laut israelischen Beamten zu 90 Prozent Raketen abfangen kann, bevor sie in Israel landen.

Die Bewohner des Gazastreifens haben keinen solchen Schutz vor israelischen Luftangriffen, die drei mehrstöckige Gebäude im Streifen zerstörten, nachdem die Bewohner zur Evakuierung gewarnt worden waren. Israelische Beamte sagten, dass in den Gebäuden Hamas-Operationen untergebracht waren und dass sie sich bemühten, die Opfer unter der Zivilbevölkerung zu begrenzen, aber viele Bewohner des Gazastreifens betrachteten die israelischen Angriffe als eine Form der kollektiven Bestrafung.

Der Donnerstag sollte ein Festtag für die Palästinenser sein, da sie das Ende des heiligen Monats Ramadan markierten, an dem sich Muslime normalerweise versammeln, um zu beten, neue Kleidung zu tragen und ein Familienessen zu teilen. In Jerusalem versammelten sich Zehntausende von Gläubigen im Morgengrauen vor der Aqsa-Moschee, einige schwenkten palästinensische Flaggen und ein Banner mit einem Bild von Ismail Haniyeh, dem Führer der Hamas.

In Gaza war es jedoch ein düsterer Tag voller Beerdigungen, Angst und Raketenangriffe. Einige Familien begruben ihre Toten, andere legten Gebetsmatten neben Gebäuden aus, die kürzlich bei israelischen Luftangriffen zerstört wurden, und wieder andere wurden von über ihnen schwebenden israelischen Drohnen angegriffen.

“Rette mich”, plädierte Maysoun al-Hatu, 58, nachdem sie laut einem Zeugen bei einem Raketenangriff vor dem Haus ihrer Tochter in Gaza verwundet worden war. Augenblicke später kam ein Krankenwagen, aber es war zu spät. Frau al-Hatu war tot.

Amerikanische und ägyptische Diplomaten gingen nach Israel, um Deeskalationsgespräche zu beginnen. Die ägyptischen Vermittler spielten eine Schlüsselrolle bei der Beendigung des Gaza-Krieges 2014, aber diesmal gibt es wenig Optimismus, dass sie ein schnelles Ergebnis erzielen können.

Israelische Militärbeamte haben erklärt, ihre Mission sei es, die Raketen aus Gaza zu stoppen, und das Militär hat am Donnerstag Panzer und Truppen entlang der Grenze zu Gaza an Ort und Stelle gebracht, um sich auf eine mögliche Bodeninvasion vorzubereiten.

Die Entscheidung, die Kampagne zu verlängern, ist letztendlich politisch. Analysten sagten, dass eine Bodenoperation wahrscheinlich hohe Verluste verursachen würde, und es war unklar, ob der Truppeneinsatz mehr als eine Bedrohung war.

Die politische Berechnung wurde jedoch am Donnerstag nach dem Zusammenbruch der Verhandlungen zwischen Oppositionsparteien, die eine neue Regierung bilden wollten, komplizierter.

Naftali Bennett, ein ultranationalistischer ehemaliger Siedlerführer, der sich der palästinensischen Staatlichkeit widersetzt, zog sich aus den Gesprächen zurück und verwies auf den Ausnahmezustand in mehreren israelischen Städten.

Sein Rückzug erhöht die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass Israel später in diesem Sommer Parlamentswahlen abhält – in etwas mehr als zwei Jahren zum fünften Mal. Und der Zusammenbruch der Gespräche scheint Herrn Netanjahu zu nützen, was es Oppositionsparteien unmöglich macht, ein Bündnis zu bilden, das groß genug ist, um ihn aus dem Amt zu verdrängen.

Herr Netanyahu, der wegen Korruptionsvorwürfen vor Gericht steht, fungiert als Ministerpräsident, bis eine neue Regierung gebildet werden kann.

Auf palästinensischer Seite hat die unbestimmte Verschiebung der Wahlen durch den palästinensischen Präsidenten Mahmoud Abbas im letzten Monat ein Vakuum geschaffen, das die Hamas mehr als bereit ist zu füllen.

Isabel Kershner berichtete aus Lod, Israel; Iyad Abuheweila aus Gaza-Stadt; Patrick Kingsley, Irit Pazner Garshowitz und Myra Noveck aus Jerusalem; Gabby Sobelman aus Rehovot, Israel; Mona el-Naggar und Vivian Yee aus Kairo; Megan Specia aus London; Steven Erlanger aus Brüssel; und Lara Jakes aus Washington.

Categories
Politics

Former Trump lawyer owned shell firm

Hometown International, NJ deli owner, worth millions in stock

Your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, N.J.

Google Earth

Shell companies sure make strange bedfellows.

A New York real estate tax lawyer — who did work for former President Donald Trump decades ago — in 2011 purchased a shell company whose creators later became key investors in a mystery $100 million company that owns just a small New Jersey deli, records show.

The shell company — Europa Acquisition I Inc. — was one of eight shell entities set up in 2010 by Peter Reichard and Peter Coker Sr., the North Carolina-based investors in deli owner Hometown International.

After Reichard and Coker sold them, most of those shell companies — including the one later purchased by Trump’s former real estate tax lawyer Allan Schwartz — ended up having their registrations revoked by the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to keep current in their disclosure filings, records show.

More about the $100 million NJ deli

Your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro, N.J., is no mere neighborhood delicatessen. Despite racking up less than $40,000 in sales over the past two years, the deli’s parent company has a $100 million valuation on the over-the-counter stock market.

CNBC has done some digging into the deli and the mysterious firms and investors linked to it. Here are some recent stories:

The shell companies were named in numerical sequence, starting with Europa Acquisition I and ending with Europa Acquisition VIII.

Schwartz, the former Trump lawyer, told CNBC in a phone interview that he knew nothing about Coker Sr. and Reichard, Hometown International, or its deli in Paulsboro, New Jersey, which has minuscule sales. Coker Sr. and Reichard sold the Europa shell months before Schwartz bought it from other entities.

Schwartz, 73, is the latest person with an eyebrow-raising history to pop up in financial records linked to the deli company investors or to entities they were involved in.

Schwartz laughed Monday when a reporter told him details about Hometown International, including its market valuation of $100 million despite owning a South Jersey deli that had sales of less than $37,000 for the past two years.

“I know nothing about it,” Schwartz chuckled after being told that key investors in Hometown International had created a shell company he once owned.

‘Buyer beware’

Schwartz is in good company.

A lot of people have laughed or made jokes about Hometown International since last month, when hedge fund manager David Einhorn first highlighted the deli owner’s preposterous market capitalization, and used it as a warning to retail investors.

“The pastrami must be amazing,” Einhorn racked in an oft-quoted line from that letter.

In recent weeks, CNBC has detailed criminal and regulatory sanctions imposed on people and entities linked to Coker Sr. and Reichard, reported on the investments by Duke and Vanderbilt universities in Hometown International, and revealed details about the opaque nature of a group of Macao-based investors in that company.

Articles also have explored the incongruous professional backgrounds of Hometown’s two executive officers — both of whom are public high school administrators — and the existence of a related shell company. That shell company E-Waste, like the deli owner, has a sky-high stock market capitalization that is not justified by any meaningful business operations.

Those articles led to the termination of consulting agreements in which Hometown International and E-Waste had paid thousands of dollars per month in fees to a firm controlled by Reichard and Coker Sr.

Another firm controlled by the two men, Europa Capital Investments, remains a major investor in Hometown International, as does Coker Sr. as an individual. Coker Sr.’s son, Hong Kong-based Peter Coker Jr., is the deli company’s chairman.

Peter Reichard, a top Perdue aide, takes the oath before his apearance in Wake County Court, Wednesday, December 14, 2011 in Raleigh, N.C.

John Rottet | The News & Observer | AP

A crooked pedigree

Records reviewed in recent days by CNBC show that a now-disbarred lawyer — who last year pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges related to a shell company factory scheme — also was involved in the creation of the Europa Acquisition shells for Coker Sr. and Reichard. That same lawyer three years later played a similar role in the creation of Hometown International and later securities filings for that company.

SEC records show that the accounting firm involved during the registration of the Europa Acquisition shell companies was an earlier incarnation of a Florida-based firm that handled accounting work for Hometown International.

The Florida firm itself was censured last year by an accounting oversight board last year for lack of oversight in work for a company that is not connected to either the deli owner or to the Europa shell companies.

CNBC last week obtained from the Raleigh, North Carolina, Police Department a record of Coker Sr.’s arrest on April 30, 2010, on a charge of soliciting a prostitute, who herself was arrested that day.

That arrest came nearly 18 years after Coker Sr. was reportedly arrested in Allentown, Pennsylvania — where he had been a high school basketball star — on prostitution and other charges. The Morning Call newspaper at the time reported that the then-49-year-old Coker was nabbed by police after allegedly exposing himself to three girls, one as young as 10 years old, and trying to proposition them.

Peter Lee Coker mugshot from the Raleigh/Wake City-County Bureau of Identification (CCBI).

Source: Raleigh/Wake City-County Bureau of Identification

“Yes,” Coker Sr. said when he answered his phone Monday and told that a reporter was calling.

“Thanks, but no,” he said when told that CNBC was preparing to publish another article about him. He then hung up after a reporter asked if he would listen to details of that article.

Coker, 78, previously was accused in lawsuits of hiding assets from a bank that he owed nearly $900,000, and also sued for business-related fraud. He has denied those allegations at the time of the lawsuits.

The 64-year-old Reichard, who was sued along with Coker Sr. in 2019 in a now-settled case regarding alleged business fraud involving a specialty foods retailer in North Carolina, did not return repeated requests for comment. His lawyer in the lawsuit had denied the plaintiff’s claims of wrongdoing at the time the case was filed.

In late 2011, Reichard was convicted in North Carolina court of a criminal scheme that illegally contributed thousands of dollars to the successful campaign of Bev Perdue, a Democrat, for governor of that state in 2008. The scheme involved the use of bogus consulting contracts with Tryon Capital, a firm controlled by Reichard and Coker Sr. The elder Coker was not charged in that case.

Tryon Capital is the same firm that until last month was being paid $15,000 a month by Hometown International for a consulting agreement, and $2,500 per month by E-Waste for a similar agreement.

In financial filings, Hometown International and E-Waste have indicated that they are marketing themselves as candidates for reverse mergers or other financial maneuvers, which would have them effectively taken over by a private company that wants to become publicly traded in the United States.

Shell game

Investments by outside entities in the past year, including ones linked to Duke and Vanderbilt that were placed by a Hong Kong-based investment firm, in both companies were meant to bolster that effort.

But the investments do not explain the bizarre steep rise of share prices of both Hometown International and E-Waste in the past year, particularly since E-Waste has no actual business.

Both stocks are thinly traded, at best, each day. They also, despite having millions of common stock shares outstanding, have relatively few shareholders, the largest of which are entities involved in the plan to have the companies merge with other firms.

If that plan is successful, shareholders are expected to receive a return on their investment that bears little, if any, resemblance to the current share prices of either company.

All of those facts raise the question of why anyone would pay so much now to buy shares of the companies on the open market.

Adding to the oddness is the fact that the CEO of the deli owner, 62-year-old Paul Morina, is the principal of Paulsboro High School, and the head coach of the school’s renowned wrestling team. The only other executive is Christine Lindemuth, 46, an administrator and a teacher at the same high school, which is close to the deli.

Paulsboro coach Paul Morina cheers on George Worthy as he takes on Bergen Catholic s Wade Unger in the 152-pound bout during a wrestling match at The Palestra in Philadelphia,

Joe Warner | USAToday

E-Waste’s only executive, 66-year-old New Jersey resident John Rollo, is a Grammy-winning music recording engineer who last year worked as a patient transporter at a New Jersey hospital.

The eight Europa Acquisition shell companies themselves were set up by Reichard and Coker Sr. as so-called blank check companies to become vehicles for transactions like those being sought by Hometown International and E-Waste according to SEC filings.

Several of the shells actually ended up being used for that purpose, in transactions that ended with them being controlled by China-based companies.

Those filings show that Europa Acquisition I was incorporated in Nevada in June 2010, and a month later filed a registration of securities with the SEC, as did four other Europa shells.

The three highest-numbered Europa shells were registered with the SEC in December 2010.

In 2020, Gregg Jaclin, the lawyer named on the Europa Acquisition company filings, pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges related to his creation of shell companies to sell to individuals “who use those shell companies as publicly traded vehicles for market manipulation schemes,” court records show.

None of the companies involved in that scheme were the Europa Acquisition shells.

Nor were they Hometown International, whose first SEC filings lists Jaclin as a lawyer for that corporation.

Jaclin, who was disbarred as a lawyer and sanctioned by the SEC for his actions, did not return requests for comment.

The Schwartz story

The July 2010 registration filing for Europa Acquisition I said that Reichard, who served as its president and director, held 60,000 shares of the company, while Coker Sr. held the remaining 40,000 shares.

That share split between the business partners was mirrored in other initial filings by Europa shells.

Less than three months later, Reichard and Coker sold all of their shares for $15,000 to two companies, Beige Holdings and Marlin Financial Group, filings show.

One of Schwartz’s sons, Gregory, then was appointed as president of Europa Acquisition I, filings state.

Then, in January 2011, Allan Schwartz himself paid $18,750 for 90%, or 90,000 shares, of the company, while Beige Holdings retained 10,000 shares.

“I had no doubt that I bought a quiet, clean shell company,” Allan Schwartz said in a phone interview.

Schwartz said that he purchased Europa Acquisition I — his first and only shell company — “with the hope that we could do something with it,” along the lines of a merger with a small company and possibly an additional issuance of stock.

But, he noted, “it never did anything,” after several years of Schwartz paying thousands of dollars annually to maintain the existence of the company, which at some point he had renamed Wintahenderson International.

“At a certain point, I said that’s the end of it,” recalled Schwartz. “We just let the company go out of business.”

Wintahenderson last filed a required quarterly report with the SEC in 2017, according to the regulator’s online database.

Last September, the SEC revoked Wintahenderson’s registration for failing to file required periodic reports. The SEC had taken similar action for the same reason against most of the other Europa Acquisition shells years earlier.

Working for Trump

Schwartz currently is senior counsel and senior managing partner at the Manhattan firm of Podell, Schwartz, Schecter & Banfield, which represents property owners seeking to reduce their property taxes.

Schwartz’s current firm, which is a leader in real-estate tax work, merged in 1997 with his prior firm, Schwartz & Weiss.

“At one point in time our firm did represent Trump, but that’s going back 27 years or more,” Schwartz said.

“I don’t think I represented Trump for more than two, three years,” Schwartz said. “I think I met him once in his office at Trump Tower … 99% of the time I was dealing with someone in his office.”

At some point, Schwartz said, Trump “switched real estate tax attorneys.”

“Sometimes clients choose to go with another firm,” Schwartz said. “Maybe he wasn’t happy, and he changes lawyers.”

Schwartz said that decades ago a former New York City tax assessor and city Tax Commission hearing officer named Thomas McArdle may have done some work for his law firm after becoming a consultant.

But Schwartz said that he had “zero recollection” of McArdle performing any work in connection with Trump’s properties for Schwartz’s firm

In 2002, The New York Times reported that McArdle was a key figure in a federal indictment filed against 18 other then-current and former city tax assessors, who were charged in a decades-long scheme with accepting millions of dollars of bribes in exchange for lowering property taxes for commercial property owners.

Prosecutors said at the time that the scheme had cost New York City $160 million in lost tax revenue during the prior four years alone.

McArdle, who died in 2013, was never charged in that case but was identified in news reports as a cooperating witness in the investigation.

In a 2002 Times article, Schwartz’s then-lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, acknowledged that Schwartz had worked for Trump in the past, but added that “it did not involve Mr. McArdle, to our knowledge.”

”McArdle was an industrywide consultant who was used by the most prominent and well-respected law firms and real estate firms in the city,” Brafman said at the time. Brafman also said Schwartz was “not aware of any wrongdoing by McArdle” or anyone else.

The Times reported at the time that Trump told the newspaper that “he stopped using Mr. Schwartz in the early 1990s because he seemed ineffectual.”

Jason Miller, a spokesman for Trump, did not return a request for comment from CNBC.

Echoes of scandals past

Schwartz on Monday told CNBC that he was aware nearly two decades ago that “there was a scandal” around McArdle. But he also said that he was not personally aware of any wrongdoing by McArdle in connection with his work for Schwartz’s firm.

In March 2020, an article by ProPublica and WNYC radio reported that five former city tax assessors and city employees, as well as a former Trump Organization employee, had said that the Trump Organization paid bribes, using middlemen to city tax assessors to lower its property tax bills for several Manhattan buildings in the 1980s and 1990s.

The city employees interviewed for that article were among those 18 who all pleaded guilty in the scheme said to involve McArdle.

CNBC has reached out for comment to the Trump Organization.

Last year, the Trump Organization’s chief legal officer, Alan Garten, denied the allegations. “To be clear, at no time did the Trump Organization or any of its employees or principals ever pay anyone for the purpose of unlawfully obtaining a lower tax valuation,” he told ProPublica and WNYC for their article.

“This was corroborated by multiple investigations which found no evidence of any wrongdoing by the company or any of its principals. … If anything, the Trump Organization was a victim of the scandal,” Garten said.

Trump and his company currently are the subjects of a criminal investigation by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.

Vance’s office among other things is eyeing allegations that the Trump Organization manipulated the valuation of certain real estate properties to lower their tax bill and insurance costs, and to receive more favorable terms from lenders.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James is conducting a civil investigation of the Trump Organization that is focused on those same allegations. The claims were first raised during testimony to Congress in 2019 by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, who is cooperating with Vance’s investigation.

Trump, a Republican, has denied any wrongdoing and also has claimed that both investigations are “witch hunts” by Vance and James, both of whom are Democrats.

Among the Trump properties being eyed in both probes is 40 Wall Street, a skyscraper in lower Manhattan.

Schwartz said that he represented the owners of 40 Wall Street before it was sold to Trump. He also said that he never represented Trump in connection with that building.

The lawyer said that no one from either Vance’s or James’ office has contacted him to ask about his work for Trump.

Schwartz said he has no reason to believe that Trump or his company misstated the incomes of their properties in their appeals of city assessment rulings, which if successful led to a reduction in tax liabilities.

He noted that property owners “must submit certified statements of income and expenses on their tax commission forms.”

“That’s the basis on which real estate attorneys argue” for lower assessments, he said.

“Do I think he submitted phony statements?” Schwartz added. “I would suspect no, but I have no idea. I don’t know, nor would I have any reason to suspect that he did.”

Schwartz was bemused and spoke matter-of-factly about his link to Trump.

“I can’t dispute the facts, but it’s funny that there are so many facts that are related to each other,” Schwartz said. “Everything that you discussed is in the public record.”

He added: “Of all the characters you’ve mentioned, the only one I can tell you that I knew was Trump, for a short period of time. And McArdle.”

In addition to having worked for Trump, Schwartz at one point had an office in the Villard Houses in Manhattan, a historic landmark owned by the Sultan of Brunei, on land leased from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York.

Schwartz’s office there was one floor below the office of the mysterious money manager Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex criminal who killed himself in 2019 while in a Manhattan jail awaiting trial on federal child sex trafficking charges.

Epstein was a former friend of Trump’s, as well as of another former president, Bill Clinton.

“Never met him,” Schwartz said of Epstein. “I never saw him in the building.”

Categories
Politics

$100 million New Jersey deli linked to shell firm E-Waste

Hometown International, NJ deli owner, worth millions in stock

Ihr Deli in Ihrer Heimatstadt in Paulsboro, NJ

Google Earth

Wir werden haben, was sie haben.

Ein mysteriöses 100-Millionen-Dollar-Unternehmen, das nur ein kleines Delikatessengeschäft in New Jersey besitzt, ist in mehrfacher Hinsicht mit einem anderen Unternehmen verbunden, E-Waste Corp.

Die Aktien von E-Waste, wie die des Deli-Besitzers Hometown International, sind im vergangenen Jahr stark angestiegen und haben Anfang dieses Monats eine Marktkapitalisierung von mehr als 100 Millionen US-Dollar erzielt. Dieser Anstieg ereignete sich, obwohl E-Waste kein wirklich laufendes Geschäft hat, wie Aufzeichnungen belegen.

Aus den Unterlagen geht auch hervor, dass Hometown International Ende letzten Jahres E-Waste 150.000 US-Dollar geliehen hat. Das Delikatessengeschäft war im vergangenen Jahr wegen der Covid-Pandemie für mehr als fünf Monate geschlossen.

Und wie der CEO von Hometown International, ein Schulleiter und Head Wrestling-Trainer aus New Jersey, hatte John Rollo, CEO von E-Waste, kürzlich einen Job, der für den Leiter eines Unternehmens ungewöhnlich ist, das auf dem Papier einen Wert von mehreren zehn Millionen Dollar hat. Er war ein Patiententransporter in einem Krankenhaus im Norden von New Jersey und arbeitet offenbar immer noch im selben Gesundheitssystem.

Die Karrieregeschichte des CEO von E-Waste ist voller anderer überraschender Umwege. Der 66-jährige Rollo, der keinen Anruf mit der Bitte um einen Kommentar erwiderte, gewann zuvor zwei Grammy-Preise während seiner langen Karriere als Toningenieur und Produzent auf Alben von Künstlern wie The Kinks, Joe Cocker, Whitney Houston, Kool & the Gang und Quiet Riot , zeichnet Zustand auf.

Außerdem war er fast 18 Jahre lang Vice President für Operations bei Comus International, einem in New Jersey ansässigen Schalt- und Sensorhersteller. Rollo wurde 2019 von Comus entlassen, laut einer Klage, die er in diesem Jahr im Zusammenhang mit seiner Kündigung eingereicht hatte.

Zu den Verbindungen zwischen E-Waste und Hometown International, deren Your Hometown Deli in Paulsboro in den letzten zwei Jahren zusammen einen Umsatz von nur etwa 35.000 US-Dollar erzielt hatte, gehört, dass dasselbe Unternehmen in Hongkong ihre größten Anteilseigner sind, ähnliche Beratungsverträge mit Unternehmen, die von Investoren kontrolliert werden, und deren Unternehmen derzeitige Nutzung derselben New Yorker Anwaltskanzlei.

Und genau wie bei frühen Finanzanträgen von Hometown International zeigen die ersten behördlichen Einreichungen von E-Waste die Beteiligung eines Anwalts, der später von der Securities and Exchange Commission wegen Beteiligung an betrügerischen Vorhaben zur Gründung von Unternehmen verklagt wurde.

Der Anwalt für E-Waste war ein anderer als der ursprünglich von Hometown International verwendete – Hometowns früherer Anwalt wurde im Gegensatz zu E-Waste wegen verwandter Bundesverbrechen angeklagt und verurteilt.

Eine weitere Ähnlichkeit zwischen den Unternehmen besteht darin, dass niemand, der mit ihnen in Verbindung steht, Anrufe oder E-Mails von CNBC zurückgegeben hat.

Eine Schlüsselfigur in beiden Unternehmen ist Peter Coker Sr., ein 78-jähriger Geschäftsmann aus North Carolina, dessen Sohn Peter Coker Jr. Vorsitzender von Hometown International ist.

Der jüngere Coker ist Executive Chairman von South Shore Holdings Ltd., einem Unternehmen in Hongkong, das ein finanziell angeschlagenes Hotel in Macau, China, besitzt: The 13.

Zu den ersten Investoren dieser überaus luxuriösen Immobilie gehörten Steve Cohens SAC Capital Advisors, Fidelity International und Omega Advisors. Die Website der 13 gibt an, dass sie seit dem 15. Februar 2020 wegen der Coronavirus-Pandemie geschlossen ist.

Aufzeichnungen zeigen, dass Coker Sr. ein Investor in Hometown International ist, ebenso wie ein Unternehmen von ihm, Europa Capital.

Zu den größten Anteilseignern von Hometown International gehören drei separate Unternehmen in Hongkong, die alle dieselbe Adresse haben, und vier separate Unternehmen in Macau, die dort ebenfalls alle dieselbe Adresse haben.

Paul Morina, der CEO des Deli-Besitzers und Direktor und Wrestling-Trainer der örtlichen High School, ist ebenfalls ein Hauptaktionär von Hometown.

Ein Nettoverlust und große Verbindlichkeiten

E-Waste, das sich in den von der Securities and Exchange Commission eingereichten Unterlagen als Shell-Unternehmen bezeichnet hat, hatte im November eine Bilanzsumme von fast 183.000 USD und Verbindlichkeiten von fast 412.400 USD, wie aus der jüngsten 10-Q-Meldung bei der SEC hervorgeht.

Das Unternehmen hatte in den neun Monaten zum 30. November einen Nettoverlust von fast 58.000 USD.

Das Unternehmen wurde 2012 in Florida gegründet, “um ein E-Abfall-Recycling-Geschäft aufzubauen”, aber “war in seinen Bemühungen nicht erfolgreich und hat diesen Geschäftsbereich eingestellt”, so die SEC-Unterlagen.

Seitdem ist das Unternehmen ein Shell-Unternehmen und möchte “einen Unternehmenszusammenschluss mit einem privaten Unternehmen eingehen, dessen Geschäft seinen Aktionären eine Chance bietet”, heißt es in der Akte.

Aus dieser Einreichung geht auch hervor, dass erhebliche Zweifel daran bestehen, dass E-Waste im nächsten Jahr im Geschäft bleiben kann, und dass das Unternehmen “seit seiner Gründung erhebliche Verluste erlitten hat und nicht in der Lage ist, ausreichende Einnahmen zu erzielen”, um rentabel zu werden .

“Es kann nicht garantiert werden, dass rentable Operationen jemals erreicht werden oder, falls sie erreicht werden, auf kontinuierlicher Basis aufrechterhalten werden können”, heißt es in der Akte.

“Wenn das Unternehmen kein zusätzliches Kapital erhält, muss das Unternehmen den Umfang seiner Geschäftsentwicklungsaktivitäten reduzieren oder den Betrieb einstellen.”

Trotz dieser äußerst schlechten Aussichten geht es der Aktie von E-Waste recht gut.

Die Aktie, die offenbar im Juli letzten Jahres mit 2 Cent pro Aktie gehandelt wurde – danach wurden die Aktien wochenlang für deutlich unter 1 USD pro Stück verkauft – ist seitdem stark gestiegen.

Letzte Woche erreichte die Aktie, von der 10 Millionen Stammaktien im Umlauf sind, einen Höchststand von 10,25 USD je Aktie. Es gab dem Unternehmen eine Marktkapitalisierung von 100,25 Millionen US-Dollar. E-Waste schloss am Mittwoch mit 8,26 USD je Aktie, was einem Rückgang von 17,4% entspricht, was einer Marktkapitalisierung von 82,6 Mio. USD entspricht.

Am 12. April schloss E-Waste einen sogenannten “Zeichnungsvertrag … mit drei” akkreditierten Investoren “ab, die 2,5 Millionen Einheiten der Wertpapiere des Unternehmens zu einem Preis von 1 USD pro Einheit kauften, was 2,5 Millionen US-Dollar entspricht ein Unternehmen, das bei der SEC einreicht. Jede Einheit besteht aus einer Stammaktie und einem Optionsschein zum Kauf von zwei weiteren Stammaktien zu einem Ausübungspreis von 4,50 USD pro Aktie.

E-Waste erklärte in seiner Einreichung, dass es beabsichtige, den Erlös aus dem Verkauf der Einheiten für “Betriebskapital, allgemeine Unternehmenszwecke” zu verwenden und einen Unternehmenszusammenschluss mit einer privaten Einrichtung zu suchen, zu untersuchen und gegebenenfalls zu betreiben, deren Das Geschäft ist eine Chance für unsere Aktionäre. “

Weitere Verbindungen zwischen Heimatstadt, E-Waste

Der Bestand von E-Waste und Hometown International wird im Freiverkehr gehandelt. Das Handelsvolumen in beiden Unternehmen war im vergangenen Jahr in der Regel sehr gering.

Das Volumen der Hometown International-Aktien hat sich jedoch nach einer spöttischen Erwähnung der Unternehmensbewertung in einem Brief an Kunden des Hedgefonds-Managers David Einhorn am Donnerstag erhöht, der sagte: “Der Pastrami muss erstaunlich sein.”

Die Aktie von Hometown International stieg von 3,25 USD pro Aktie Ende März 2020 – als die Covid-19-Pandemie ihr Delikatessengeschäft für mehr als fünf Monate geschlossen hatte – auf bis zu 14 USD pro Aktie Anfang dieses Monats.

Der eigene Anstieg von E-Waste an der Börse erfolgte nach einem großen Wechsel in Eigentümer und Management des Unternehmens, der vor Herbst 2020 bei einer Firma in der Park Avenue in Manhattan, GEM Group, registriert wurde.

Anfang letzten Jahres waren vier der fünf größten Anteilseigner von E-Waste in der Reihenfolge der Größe der gehaltenen Anteile: der in Valletta, Malta, ansässige GEM Global Yield Fund LLC SCS, und drei Personen, deren Adresse die eines sogenannten GEM war Berater in der Madison Avenue in New York.

Zu dieser Zeit war der Präsident, Schatzmeister und Sekretär von E-Waste ein Mann namens Peter de Svastich, der Geschäftsführer der GEM Group ist.

Als CNBC am Mittwoch de Svastich anrief, schnappte er: “Ich weiß nicht, wer Sie sind, und ich spreche nicht mit Reportern” – bevor er auflegte.

GEM, der Mehrheitsaktionär von E-Waste, verkaufte im vergangenen Jahr 6 Millionen eingeschränkte Aktien des Unternehmens für 30.000 USD an Global Equity Limited – ein in Macau, China, ansässiges Unternehmen.

Global Equity Limited ist der größte Einzelaktionär von Hometown International, dem Deli-Eigentümer, dessen Vorsitzender der Sohn von Coker Sr. ist.

De Svastich trat im Rahmen dieses Verkaufsvertrags für E-Waste-Aktien an Global Equity Limited zurück – und Rollo, der Musikproduzent und Patiententransporter, übernahm die alleinige Geschäftsführung bei E-Waste.

Die Registrierung und Telefonnummer von E-Waste wurde ebenfalls in das Büro von Coker Sr. in Carrboro, North Carolina, geändert. Das Unternehmen schloss einen einjährigen Mietvertrag für das dortige Büro zu einem monatlichen Preis von 250 US-Dollar ab, teilte das Unternehmen in seiner SEC-Meldung mit.

Im selben Monat erhielt E-Waste von Coker Sr. ein Darlehen in Höhe von 255.000 USD. Dies geht aus der Einreichung hervor, wonach die Zinsen für dieses Darlehen 8% pro Jahr betragen.

E-Waste zahlt der Firma Tryon Capital von Coker Sr. monatlich Beratungsgebühren in Höhe von 2.500 USD, wie aus einer SEC-Meldung hervorgeht.

Hometown International zahlt Tryon Capital außerdem eine monatliche Beratungsgebühr von 15.000 USD. Dieser Deal bedeutet, dass Hometown über drei Monate mehr Beratungsgebühren zahlt als das zugrunde liegende Deli-Geschäft, das in den letzten zwei Jahren im Verkauf getätigt wurde.

Die Heimatstadt leiht E-Waste Geld

Ende November gab E-Waste Hometown International einen Schuldschein über 150.000 US-Dollar aus, aus dem hervorgeht, dass Hometown dem anderen Unternehmen einen Kredit in dieser Höhe gewährt hat. Der Zinssatz für diese Schulden gegenüber Hometown wird in der Anmeldung in einem offensichtlichen Tippfehler sowohl mit 8% als auch mit 6% angegeben.

Die Notiz wurde von Rollo unterzeichnet und von Morina, dem Präsidenten und CEO von Hometown International, als akzeptiert unterzeichnet.

Morina, 62, ist Direktorin der Paulsboro High School, die sich in der Nähe des Delikatessengeschäfts befindet, das Hometown International besitzt. Er ist auch Cheftrainer des renommierten Wrestling-Teams dieser Schule, das unter seiner Führung häufig staatliche Meisterschaften gewonnen hat.

Morinas 1,5 Millionen Stammaktien von Hometown International haben auf dem Papier einen Wert von mindestens mehr als 19 Millionen US-Dollar. Er verfügt über Optionsscheine für weitere 30 Millionen Aktien, die theoretisch einen Wert von fast 400 Millionen US-Dollar zum aktuellen Aktienkurs von Hometown International haben.

Der Schuldschein von E-Waste an Hometown International gab die Firmenadresse des Deli-Eigentümers als Wohnsitz in Woodstown, New Jersey, an, wo Christine Lindenmuth wohnt.

Lindenmuth ist Vizepräsident und Sekretär von Hometown International. Sie ist außerdem Mathematiklehrerin und Administratorin an der Paulsboro High School.

Von Morristown nach Indien

Laut einer SEC-Meldung ist Rollo seit März 2020 als Patiententransporter für Atlantic Health Systems in New Jersey tätig.

Ein Vorgesetzter im Büro für Patiententransport in einer der Einrichtungen des Unternehmens, dem Morristown Medical Center, teilte CNBC mit, dass Rollo zuvor in dieser Abteilung gearbeitet habe, derzeit aber an anderer Stelle in Atlantic Health Systems arbeite.

CNBC hat Sprecher von Atlantic Health kontaktiert, um zu fragen, wo Rollo derzeit arbeitet.

Laut SEC-Unterlagen von E-Waste war Rollo von Januar 2010 bis November 2019 auch “Vorstandsvorsitzender von Switching Technologies Gunther, LTD (‘STG’) in Chennai, Indien”, einem Unternehmen, das früher an der BSE notiert war bekannt als die Bombay Stock Exchange.

Dieser Zeitrahmen überschneidet sich mit Rollos Arbeit bei Comus, die sich selbst als einer der führenden Hersteller von Schaltern auszeichnet.

Aufzeichnungen zeigen, dass Rollo CEO eines anderen Unternehmens ist, Med Spa Vacations, dessen Postanschrift auch das Carrboro-Büro von Coker Sr. ist.

SEC-Einreichungen von Med Spa Vacations zeigen, dass zu seinen Aktionären Global Equity Limited gehört.

Global Equity Limited hält außerdem 2 Millionen Stammaktien von Hometown International, die das Unternehmen im April 2020 von Peter Coker Jr., dem Vorsitzenden des Unternehmens, gekauft hat. Global Equity Limited verfügt über Optionsscheine für weitere 40 Millionen Aktien von Hometown International.

Die Eigentümer von Global Equity Limited sind als zwei Personen aufgeführt, Michael Tyldesley und Ibrahima Thiam.

Laut Angaben von Med Spa Vacations besitzen Tyldesley und Thiam “90% bzw. 10% der Anteile an Global Equity Limited und verfügen über eine gemeinsame Stimm- und Investitionsbefugnis über die Aktien, die direkt im Besitz von Global Equity Limited sind.”

Tyldesley ist auch als Geschäftsführer von VCH Limited aufgeführt, einem weiteren Unternehmen in Macau, das 500.000 Stammaktien von Hometown International besitzt und über Optionsscheine für weitere 10 Millionen Aktien verfügt.

Im vergangenen Mai hat Hometown International, wie aus den Unterlagen hervorgeht, einen Beratungsvertrag mit VCH Limited geschlossen, der vom Deli-Eigentümer monatlich 25.000 US-Dollar ausgezahlt wird.

Diese monatliche Zahlung ist nur etwa 10.000 US-Dollar weniger als die Delikatessen von Hometown International, die in den letzten zwei Jahren in italienischen Hoagies, Cheesesteaks und Pommes Frites verkauft wurden.

Die Geschichte von Coker Sr.

Categories
Business

Cheniere and Shell gas tankers change course to keep away from logjam as oil tankers divert routes

Cheniere and Shell fuel tankers change course to avoid logjam as oil tankers divert routes

A dredger tries to free the stranded container ship Ever Given, one of the largest container ships in the world, after it ran aground in Egypt’s Suez Canal on March 26, 2021.

Suez Canal Authority | Reuters

According to MarineTraffic and ClipperData, companies are trying to divert shipping ships to avoid congestion on the Suez Canal, including at least two U.S. ships carrying natural gas for Cheniere and Shell / BG Group.

At least ten tankers and container ships change course as Ever Given, one of the largest container ships in the world, continues to be stranded along the canal along Egypt, MarineTraffic spokesman Georgios Hatzimanolis told CNBC in an interview.

“We assume that this number will increase as the closure continues,” said Hatzimanolis.

The 1,300-foot ship ran aground on Tuesday en route from Malaysia to the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The stranded ship has caused other ships to return in the canal, holding goods worth around $ 400 million an hour, according to Lloyd’s List shipping journal. That has slowly increased in recent days after Egypt’s repeated efforts to get the 247,000-ton container ship afloat again failed. The officials there are digging sand around the earthed ship on the banks of the canal with eight large tugs and excavation equipment.

According to MarineTraffic, 97 ships are stuck in the upper part of the canal, 23 ships are waiting in the middle and 108 ships are waiting in the lower part. The traffic jam extends through the Red Sea, past the Gulf of Aden to the border between Yemen and Oman.

“Ships from Asia to Europe are being diverted in the Indian Ocean below the southern tip of Sri Lanka,” added Hatzimanolis. For Europe-bound ships from Asia, the journey through Africa instead of the canal can take up to seven days, he said.

The LNG tanker Maran Gas Andros took off from Ingleside, Texas on March 19, loaded with Cheniere fuel and a deadweight of 170,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas. Pan Americas’ LNG tanker carrying Shell / BG fuel left Sabine Pass on March 17 and can carry up to 174,000 cubic meters of liquefied natural gas. Matt Smith, Director of Commodity Research at ClipperData, confirmed which companies are using the ships.

Both tankers changed course in the middle of the North Atlantic before sailing around the cape.

ClipperData is also showing the Suezmax Marlin Santorini loaded with 700,000 barrels of Midland West Texas intermediate crude oil diverted away from the canal. Smith said the original route to Suez was an “unusual diversion”.

“The vast majority of US crude exports avoid the Suez Canal and instead head either to Europe or to Asia around the Cape of Good Hope,” said Smith. The Suezmax Marlin was at Magellan’s Seabrook Terminal in Houston, Texas on March 10, where it was replenished with 330,000 barrels of West Texas light crude before heading to Galveston, Texas the next day.

The ship then left the United States, declaring itself for Port Said in northeastern Egypt, but turned south on Thursday after passing the Azores near Portugal. “The ship has yet to update its declared destination,” said Smith.

ClipperData shows the number of fully loaded fuel tankers waiting outside Port Said and on the US Gulf Coast. From Friday afternoon, two more tankers and a Suezmax, the largest tanker that can navigate the Suez Canal and transport vacuum gas oil from the USA, drove past Crete and anchored off the coast of Egypt.

Another ship, the container ship HMM Rotterdam, turned away from the canal shortly before entering the Strait of Gibraltar and changed course to circumnavigate Africa.

Peter Sand, chief shipping analyst at BIMCO, said the diversion pattern is similar for other ships.

“We see not only container ships diverting in both directions, but also LNG carriers and dry matter from the US Gulf of Mexico,” said Sand. “The ships turn sharply right in the middle of the Atlantic to head south to the Cape of Good Hope and avoid the traffic jam around Suez.”

Kevin Book, managing director of ClearView Energy Partners, says while a long Suez hiatus introduces latency into the utility system, the length of the delay depends on where the ship started, where it is going, and where it changed course in the voyage Has .

“For US golf exporters, circumnavigating the Horn means only three days or less at sea for the port of Tokyo,” Book said. “For cargoes from Doha to northwestern Europe, this route could take ten days.”

Cargo originating in the Gulf of Mexico and stuck in the Mediterranean Sea may face a ten-day diversion instead of three, he said.

At the time of publication, Cheniere and Shell / BG responded to CNBC’s request for comment.

The MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company announced that 11 of their ships were diverted, 19 ships were anchored on either side of the canal and two ships were turned back from Friday afternoon.

The blockade of the Suez Canal is one of the “biggest disruptions to world trade in recent years,” said Caroline Becquart, senior vice president of MSC, in an email on Saturday.

“We expect the second quarter of 2021 to be more disruptive than the first three months and maybe even more challenging than the end of last year,” she said. “Companies should expect the Suez blockade to reduce shipping capacity and equipment in the coming months, and thus to some deterioration in the reliability of the supply chain.”

Categories
Health

She Beat Most cancers at 10. Now She’ll Be a part of SpaceX’s First Personal Journey to Orbit.

She Beat Cancer at 10. Now She'll Join SpaceX's First Private Trip to Orbit.

Hayley Arceneaux, 29, had hoped this would be the year she would achieve her goal of visiting all seven continents before she turned 30.

However, she won’t have time for it.

She goes into space.

Ms. Arceneaux, a medical assistant at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, will be one of four people on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket taking off from Florida. It’s slated to launch later this year and be the first crewed mission to orbit Earth where no one on board is a professional astronaut.

“I asked, ‘Will I get a passport stamp to go into space?'” Ms. Arceneaux said. “But I don’t think I’ll do it. So I’ll just draw a star and the moon in one of my passports. “

This adventure is led by Jared Isaacman, a 38-year-old billionaire who announced in January that he had bought the rocket launch from SpaceX, the space company founded by Elon Musk. Mr. Isaacman said at the time that he wanted the mission to be more than an outing for the super rich and that he had given St. Jude two of the four available spots.

One of them will go to a random winner of a sweepstakes competition to raise money for the hospital, which treats children for free and develops cures for childhood cancer and other diseases.

The other seat, Isaacman said, is occupied by a front line health worker in St. Jude, someone who symbolizes hope.

On Monday, St. Jude and Mr. Isaacman officials announced that Ms. Arceneaux was the person they had selected.

Ms. Arceneaux could be the youngest American to ever travel to orbit. She will also be the first person to go into space with a prosthetic body. She was a patient in St. Jude nearly 20 years ago, and metal bars replaced parts of the bones in her left leg as part of her treatment for bone cancer.

In the past, this would have kept her firmly on the ground and would not have been able to meet NASA’s strict medical standards for astronauts. But the advent of privately funded space travel has opened the final frontier to some people who were previously excluded.

Dr. Michael D. Neel, the orthopedic surgeon who installed Ms. Arceneaux’s prosthesis, says that while artificial leg bones mean she can’t practice contact sports on Earth, they shouldn’t limit her on this SpaceX trek.

“It shows us that the sky is not the limit,” said Dr. Neel. “It’s Heaven and Beyond. I think that’s the real point of it all, that it has very few restrictions on what you can do. Unless you’re playing soccer up there. “

Ms. Arceneaux said she hoped to inspire patients at St. Jude.

“You will be able to see a cancer survivor in space, especially one who went through the same thing as you,” she said. “It will help you visualize your future.”

Richard C. Shadyac Jr., president of ALSAC, the St. Jude fundraising organization, said of Ms. Arceneaux, “If anyone was a symbol of hope, it was Hayley.”

Mrs. Arceneaux herself did not find out until early January that she would take a seat on the rocket. Hospital officials had vaguely told her there was an opportunity they wanted to talk to her about. She said she thought “maybe it would be a commercial or maybe give a speech somewhere.”

Instead, it was an opportunity to become an astronaut.

“I even kind of laughed,” said Ms. Arceneaux. “I thought: what? Yes. Yes, please, that would be great. “She added,” Let me talk to my mom. “

Her mother had no objection.

Ms. Arceneaux first stepped on St. Jude in 2002. She was 10 years old. She had earned her black belt in taekwondo shortly before, but complained of pain in her leg. Her mother saw a lump sticking out over her left knee. The pediatrician in the small town of St. Francisville, La., Where they lived not far from Baton Rouge, told them it was a cancerous tumor.

“We have all fallen apart,” said Mrs. Arceneaux. “I remember being so scared because by the age of 10 everyone I knew with cancer had died.”

In St. Jude, doctors gave the good news that the cancer had not spread to other parts of the body. Ms. Arceneaux had chemotherapy, prosthetic leg surgery, and long sessions of physical therapy.

Already at this young age, bald from chemotherapy, Ms. Arceneaux was helping with fundraising for St. Jude. The next year she was recognized by Louisiana Public Broadcasting with one of its Young Heroes Awards.

“When I grow up, I want to be a nurse in St. Jude,” she said in a video shown at the 2003 ceremony. “I want to be a mentor to patients. When they walk in I’ll say, “I had this when I was little and I’m fine.”

Last year Ms. Arceneaux was hired by St. Jude. She works with children with leukemia and lymphoma, such as a teenager she recently spoke to.

“I informed him that I had also lost my hair,” said Ms. Arceneaux. I said to him, ‘You can ask me anything. I am a former patient. I will tell you the truth, everything you want to know. ‘And he said,’ Are you really going to tell me the truth? ‘ And I said yes. “

His burning question: “Are you the one who goes into space?”

Mrs. Arceneaux had to evade. “I said, ‘Well, we’ll see who gets announced.'” She said. “But I think he knew because then he and his father said,” Yes! “and fifty.”

Ms. Arceneaux and Mr. Isaacman visited SpaceX’s California headquarters three times to meet with engineers and plan the trip. Unlike the missions SpaceX flies for NASA, it won’t go to the International Space Station, but will orbit the earth for three or four days before splashing off the coast of Florida.

“She has an adventurous spirit,” said Isaacman of Ms. Arceneaux. “And now she’s allowed to travel to the stars, which is pretty cool.”

It will be a few more weeks before they know who their companions will be.

The St. Jude Sweepstakes, featured in a television commercial that aired during the Super Bowl two weeks ago, will run until the end of the month. Around $ 9.5 million has been raised to date. That appears to be way below the $ 100 million Isaacman himself pledged for St. Jude, or the overall goal of $ 200 million. But Mr. Isaacman and Mr. Shadyac said the fundraiser was going beyond the sweepstakes and that they were happy with the progress.

“This is going to be a campaign that will last until launch,” said Shadyac.

The competition is structured in such a way that the amount of donations is effectively limited. Entry is free. A minimum donation of $ 10 buys 100 entries, and each additional dollar donated buys 10 additional entries, up to $ 1,000 for 10,000 entries.

There were some more expensive options that are now sold out. For example, Mr. Isaacman will give a donor who has donated $ 100,000 a ride on the Russian-built MiG-29 jet fighter he owns. The donor will also be given a trip to watch the launch at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. But that donor still only has 10,000 entries in the contest, just like someone who donated $ 1,000.

Mr. Isaacman said this was a deliberate choice to prevent a wealthy person from trying to win the grand prize of a trip to space by buying millions of items.

“Will it represent everyone on earth and not just rich whites?” Mr. Isaacman said.

The fourth SpaceX seat goes to the winner of a competition sponsored by Shift4, Isaacman’s company, that sells terminals and point of sale systems for credit card processing to restaurants and other businesses. The “Shark Tank” -like competition calls on entrepreneurs to design an online shop with the Shift4 software and then publish a video on Twitter describing their business.

As of last week, fewer than 100 people had submitted full entries. “It means that once you’ve created and entered a Shift4 store, your chances are pretty amazing,” said Isaacman.

Categories
Business

Shell Says Its Oil Manufacturing Has Peaked and Is Prone to Decline

Shell Says Its Oil Production Has Peaked and Is Likely to Decline

Royal Dutch Shell made the boldest statement among its peers on Thursday about the decline of the oil age, saying its production peaked in 2019 and is now expected to gradually decline.

Shell’s “total oil production peaked in 2019” and will now decrease by 1 to 2 percent annually, the company said in a statement.

The announcement, part of the fine print of a presentation on future clean energy goals, marks a turning point for one of the world’s leading oil companies in the 19th century. And it underscores a point that the company’s CEO Ben van Beurden has made for years: To stay in business, Shell needs to be seen as part of the solution, not the cause of climate change.

As Europe’s largest oil and gas producer, Shell was skeptical about how willing or able it would be to break away from its roots. Indeed, like other oil chiefs, Mr van Beurden is trying to draw the fine line between promoting green commitments and continuing to promote the oil and gas units that produce most of Shell’s money.

“Even if the world is decarbonised, it will still need oil and gas for decades,” said van Beurden on Thursday at a presentation of the company’s new strategy. Oil and gas, he said, “will help fund Shell’s transformation.”

The momentum for change is increasing significantly. In Europe in particular, the pandemic is proving to be a catalyst for more action by energy companies and others.

Demand for oil has picked up somewhat since the collapse last spring, and oil futures returned to pre-pandemic levels on Monday. However, Shell and other companies clearly understand that oil is no longer the mainstay they can count on and are therefore investing more in renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and hydrogen.

European oil companies are all moving in roughly the same direction with regard to fossil fuel production, with some different approaches. BP said last year that it would likely cut oil and gas production by 40 percent by 2030. Last year the company’s production declined 10 percent, largely due to the sale of oil fields.

Shell said Thursday that its carbon emissions would likely have peaked in 2018 and that it would step up its previously announced efforts to reach zero net carbon emissions by 2050 with tougher intermediate targets.

The company also stressed that its emissions reduction targets would include those of the products it sold to customers. That said, in attempting to reduce net carbon emissions to zero, Shell will consider not only the emissions generated in its business, but also the gases emitted from the exhaust pipes of cars using fuels marketed by Shell. Burning and other uses of fuel that shell sold Make up 90 percent of the company’s emissions.

The announcement received praise from activist investors but disappointed some environmentalists who want a faster transformation.

Adam Matthews, director of ethics and engagement for the Church of England Pensions Board, said Shell’s plans to meet its 2050 goals are the “most comprehensive” in the industry. “There’s no room for maneuver,” said Matthews, who encouraged Shell to cut emissions on behalf of a group of institutional investors called Climate Action 100+.

Shell takes a slightly different approach than its Paris-based rivals BP and Total, who recently looked into renewable energy projects like wind and solar at prices that are sometimes viewed as high.

Instead, Shell wants to help customers cope with the complexities of reducing their own carbon emissions. In retail, this could be because they plug their electric vehicles into Shell’s growing network of 60,000 charging stations, or they fill vehicles with hydrogen, a clean fuel that Shell has been promoting for years and is becoming increasingly popular.

Shell also wants to leverage its large energy trading unit and other capabilities to provide businesses with clean electricity and other low-carbon fuels, and to help them with other needs. For example, van Beurden said he could foresee Shell’s growing know-how in capturing emissions and storing gases underground – so-called carbon capture technology – which would become a service that Shell could offer. They’re ready to put money into clean power generation like wind farms, but Shell executives say they don’t think owning renewable assets will necessarily be a big money maker.

“We believe that developing the right products and solutions for customers has more value than just generating green electricity,” said van Beurden when he called reporters on Thursday.

According to analysts, Shell’s relatively cautious approach to renewable investments came as no surprise, as the stock prices of companies that have moved into these areas recently seem not to benefit. Shell said it plans to invest $ 2 to 3 billion a year in renewables like wind and solar, as well as clean power plants, a small portion of the capital investment of up to $ 22 billion.

“Despite the green spin, the substance would suggest a more cautious approach to renewable energy,” said Stuart Joyner, an analyst at Redburn, a market research firm.

Although Shell says oil production has peaked, natural gas flows will keep all fossil fuel production flat. The company views liquefied natural gas, a marine fuel, as a vital business in which it is a global leader and as a transition fuel between petroleum and renewables.

Shell said Thursday that it plans to spend $ 8 billion on oil and gas development and $ 4 billion on its natural gas facility annually in the near future.

The prospect that Europe’s largest oil company will continue to pump fossil fuels for a long time drew fire from some environmentalists.

Greenpeace UK said in a statement that Shell’s strategy could not be successful or “taken seriously” without specific commitments to cut production. Greenpeace also called Shell’s plans to offset emissions through the establishment and protection of forests and wetlands “delusional”.

Mr Matthews of the Church of England said the increasingly detailed plans of European oil companies to reduce emissions were a huge step forward from three years ago, when such discussions were barely going on.

“Things have moved a lot during that time,” he said.

Categories
Politics

Cracking down on China’s shady shell corporations

Cracking down on China's shady shell companies

A Chinese policeman guards a giant portrait of the late Chairman Mao Zedong at Tiananmen Gate in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China.

Getty Images

When you think of anonymous shell companies, you might think of illegal activities by shady criminal groups, or tax evaders trying to hide their money, or crooked foreign officials trying to defraud the population.

But there is one other thing to keep in mind: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

While it hasn’t received nearly as much attention as some other topics related to the Chinese government, anonymous shell companies have proven to be a key component in the country’s recent rise.

More importantly, these shell companies preventing investigators from successfully tracking financial flows have proven to be key tools for both the CCP’s corrupt and heightened influence in the country and its expansive overseas efforts, all of which are aimed at this increasing the influence of the People’s Republic of China and eroding American power and American interests.

Take a look at Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), for example. While the CCP spins the initiative as mere economic expansion and global integration, further investigation reveals far more suspicious and far more corrupt deals – often with anonymous Shell companies at their core.

From Southeast Asia to Africa to Europe, the BRI has relied on anonymous Shell companies to hide payments to corrupt officials overseas and smear their palms to sign love agreements with representatives of the PRC and state-affiliated companies.

These shell companies, which prevent investigators from successfully tracking financial flows, have proven to be key tools both in the corrupt and heightened influence of the Chinese Communist Party in the country and in its expansive efforts abroad.

According to a report by the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative, the Belt and Road Initiative has “loaded the kleptocracy in developing countries with bribes and unprecedented embezzlement opportunities” – much of it relied on anonymous Shell companies, which are both journalists and anti-corruption activists blocked from exposing the details of crooked deals.

Not only has the BRI further undercut American efforts elsewhere, but the CCP has relied on anonymous Shell companies to prop up the rogue regime in North Korea. As recently as this year, the Justice Department charged dozens of people with laundering billions of dollars through anonymous corporations to help develop North Korea’s nuclear program.

Or look at the role anonymous Shell companies are playing in the CCP’s domestic stranglehold. Like other corrupt authoritarian powers in countries like Russia and Iran, the CCP often seems more interested in looting its people than in providing things like basic freedoms.

Most of the time, anonymous shell companies are at the center of these corrupt, oligarchic schemes. To take just one example, the Panama Papers revealed global transplant operations that were hidden behind anonymous Shell companies. Around 40,000 anonymous shells were directly linked to politically influential Chinese nationals, including Chinese President’s brother-in-law Xi Jinping.

The revelations also pulled the curtain back on a number of other CCP majors, all of whom are hiding their looted millions behind anonymous Shell companies.

Even the CCP’s biggest human rights violations rely on anonymous Shell companies. In Xinjiang, where the CCP set up the largest concentration camp system in the world since World War II and where the CCP forcibly detained millions of Uyghurs and Kazakhs for their ethnicity, Beijing has relied on anonymous shell companies to hide their funding.

A paramilitary organization set up by the CCP in Xinjiang relied on hundreds of thousands of anonymous Shell companies to cover up how Beijing is funding its massive crimes.

Easier than getting a library card

Shell anonymous companies are clearly key to the CCP’s designs. But in all of these details and the way China uses and abuses anonymous shell companies, there is an unfortunate reality.

The largest provider of anonymous shell companies is not in Beijing or other traditional offshore ports. Right here in the US, getting an anonymous shell company is often easier than getting a library card – and the Chinese government has turned over and over again for many of their anonymous needs.

Fortunately, the US is finally on the verge of eliminating this scourge. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2021, which went into effect January 1, 2021, contained our legislation – the ILLICIT CASH Act – effectively banning anonymous shell companies once and for all. The move will not only be the largest anti-corruption reform in the US in decades, it will also eliminate one of the world’s most popular tools for the criminals and corrupt.

Needless to say, there are many reasons to celebrate the passing of our laws. It will finally end one of the favorite tools used by cartels trying to hide their profits and oligarchs hiding their plundered wealth from battered populations. And it will include critical reforms of the anti-money laundering tools in our country that will bring our anti-money laundering laws into the 21st century.

It will also exemplify American unity and strength, thanks to its strong support from both parties. And perhaps most importantly, the Chinese Communist Party leaders who bribe officials overseas are building concentration camps at home and undermining American interests wherever they get a chance.

Sens. Mark R. Warner, D-VA and Mike Rounds, R-SD.