COTONOU: Sadiatou used to be a well-off trader of traditional cloth at the market in Benin’s economic hub of Cotonou, but now sells school equipment from the doorstep of her home.
In 2010 she sank more than 5 million CFA francs ($8,700) into an investment scheme that promised a quick profit.
“It’s a deposit I should never have made,” she told AFP. “My business took a hit and my health as well. I’ve been depressed for a long time.
“I was counting on the savings I’d make to expand my business. But it was useless. All my money has gone.”
Seven years after what was described as the biggest financial scandal in Benin’s history was revealed, 20 people this week went on trial.
Sadiatou is one of nearly 150,000 people that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates were defrauded of more than 150 billion CFA francs in the Investment Consultancy and Computing Services (ICC Services) case.
Some estimates, however, say as many as 300,000 people were lured into parting with their hard-earned or borrowed cash and life-savings on the promise of 150 to 200 percent per quarter returns.
Despite repeated warnings about investing in so-called pyramid or Ponzi schemes, such scams are becoming commonplace throughout Africa.
Frank Engelsman, who heads the Amsterdam- and Paris-based Ultrascan, which specializes in detecting international financial fraud, says such schemes are booming.
“First, because the infrastructure in big cities of Africa is improving rapidly, both phone as well as Internet infrastructure — and that’s what these fraudsters need.
“Second, because in those cities... police are not trained to handle Internet international communication crimes that always cross a border between the fraudster and the victim.”
In Gabon, a business run by a Pentecostal church pastor, Yves David Mapakou, allegedly swindled up to 30,000 French and Gabonese clients by promising profits on investments.
A complaint was lodged in Paris in August last year.
Africa’s most populous nation Nigeria remains the undisputed champion of fraud, having assiduously developed “419” scams over the years — a reference to the relevant section of the criminal code.
Victims from around the world have been duped into handing over billions of dollars through a barrage of unsolicited e-mail appeals and job offers as well as promises of marriage.
Engelsman said this type of fraud has “spread from Nigeria to neighboring countries” in West Africa, taking advantage of the lack of capacity of law enforcement agencies to investigate.
“Like most bad things like crime, they tend to spread when not put to a halt, widen their scope to improve effect/income.” he added.
Development can even play a part.
“It’s easier when the infrastructure is good, in countries where also the chamber of commerce is registering companies easily and bank accounts are opened, based on one or more registrations,” he added.
The Ponzi scheme in Benin — likened to the one run by Bernie Madoff in the US that saw the financier jailed — involved paying initial investors with the money of new clients.
Textile worker Aline Aklassato said she had “no reason at all not to believe” the scheme would not work.
“Colleagues and friends had made deposits and received dividends,” she added.
“I got dividends myself for two months of 300,000 CFA francs before the difficulties started.”
Benin, a Ponzi scheme and a long wait for answers
Benin, a Ponzi scheme and a long wait for answers
Iran FM arrives in Kabul in first visit after Taliban’s takeover
- One-day visit is part of an effort to bolster relations between the two countries and ‘pursue mutual interests’
- Discussions will revolve around border security, strengthening political ties and expanding economic relations
The one-day visit is part of an effort to bolster relations between the two countries and “pursue mutual interests,” according to foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei.
Upon his arrival, Araghchi met with his Afghani counterpart Amir Khan Muttaqi, and he is scheduled to sit down later with the deputy prime minister for economic affairs, Abdul Ghani Baradar, state TV reported.
Discussions will revolve around border security, strengthening political ties and expanding economic relations, it added.
Tensions between Iran and Afghanistan have intensified in recent years over water rights and the construction of dams on the Helmand and Harirud rivers.
Iran shares more than 900 kilometers (560 miles) of border with Afghanistan, and the Islamic republic hosts one of the largest refugee populations in the world, mostly Afghans who fled their country over two decades of war.
The flow of Afghan immigrants has increased since the Taliban took over in August 2021 after US forces withdrew.
In September, local media in Iran announced the building of a wall along more than 10 kilometers of the eastern border with Afghanistan, the main entry point for immigrants.
Officials said at the time that additional methods to fortify the border including barbed wire and water-filled ditches to counter the “smuggling of fuel and goods, especially drugs,” and to prevent “illegal immigration.”
In December, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, Amir Saeid Iravani, said “over six million Afghans have sought refuge in Iran.”
Iran has had an active diplomatic presence in Afghanistan for many years, but it has yet to officially recognize the Taliban government since the takeover.
Several Iranian delegations have visited Afghanistan over the years, including a parliamentary delegation in August 2023 to discuss water rights.
US has not stopped military aid to Ukraine, Zelensky says
- Trump had previously said Ukraine's President Zelensky should have made a deal with Putin to avoid the conflict
- But he recently threatened to impose stiff tariffs and sanctions on Russia if an agreement isn’t reached to end the fighting in Ukraine
KYIV: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Saturday the US has not stopped military aid to Ukraine after newly sworn in US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he would pause foreign aid grants for 90 days.
Zelensky did not clarify whether humanitarian aid had been paused. Ukraine relies on the US for 40 percent of its military needs. “I am focused on military aid; it has not been stopped, thank God,” he said at a press conference with Moldovan President Maia Sandu.
The two leaders met in Kyiv on Saturday to discuss the energy needs of Moldova’s Russian-occupied Transnistria region, which saw its natural gas supplies halted on Jan. 1 due to Ukraine’s decision to stop Russian gas transit. Ukraine has said it can offer coal to the Transnistrian authorities to make up for the shortfall.
The future of US aid to Ukraine remains uncertain as President Donald Trump begins his second term in office. The American leader has repeatedly said he wouldn’t have allowed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to start if he had been in office, although he was president as fighting grew in the east of the country between Kyiv’s forces and separatists aligned with Moscow, ahead of Putin sending in tens of thousands of troops in 2022.
On Thursday, Trump told Fox News that Zelensky should have made a deal with Putin to avoid the conflict. A day earlier, Trump also threatened to impose stiff tariffs and sanctions on Russia if an agreement isn’t reached to end the fighting in Ukraine.
Speaking in Kyiv on Saturday, Zelensky said he had enjoyed “good meetings and conversations with President Trump” and that he believed the US leader would succeed in his desire to end the war.
“This can only be done with Ukraine, and otherwise it simply will not work because Russia does not want to end the war, and Ukraine does,” Zelensky said.
Grinding eastern offensive
With Trump stressing the need to quickly broker a peace deal, both Moscow and Kyiv are seeking battlefield successes to strengthen their negotiating positions ahead of any prospective talks.
Opinion
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For the past year, Russian forces have been waging an intense campaign to punch holes in Ukraine’s defenses in the Donetsk region and weaken Kyiv’s grip on the eastern parts of the country. The sustained and costly offensive has compelled Kyiv to give up a series of towns, villages and hamlets.
Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed Friday that Russian troops had fought their way into the center of the strategically important eastern of Velyka Novosilka, although it was not possible to independently confirm the claim.
Elsewhere, three civilians were killed Saturday in shelling in the Russian-occupied area of Ukraine’s Kherson region, Moscow-installed Gov. Vladimir Saldo said.
He urged the residents of Oleshky, which sits close to the frontline in southern Ukraine, to stay in their homes or in bomb shelters.
Russia also attacked Ukraine with two missiles and 61 Shahed drones overnight Saturday. Ukrainian air defenses shot down both missiles and 46 drones, a statement from the air force said. Another 15 drones failed to reach targets due to Ukrainian countermeasures.
The downed drones caused damage in the Kyiv, Cherkasy and Khmelnytskyi regions, with Ukrainian emergency services saying that five people had to be from a 9-story apartment block in the Ukrainian capital.
Russia also struck Ukraine’s eastern Kharkiv region with drones causing casualties and damage, local authorities said Saturday.
Drones targeted the city’s Shevchenkivskyi, Kyivskyi and Kholodnohirskyi districts, said Mayor Ihor Terekhov.
Russia used a Molniya drone – an inexpensive weapon that has been developed and recently deployed by Russia – in the Shevchenkivskyi district, sparking a fire. The attacks disrupted the city’s water and electricity supplies, the mayor said.
Terekhov said the number of victims was still being determined, while Kharkiv’s governor, Oleh Syniehubov, said three people, two women and a man, were injured in the strikes.
US teacher put on leave after allegedly calling Palestinian child an extremist
- “I do not negotiate with terrorists,” the teacher reportedly remarked when a Palestinian American student asked for a seat change
- Recent incidents involving Palestinian American children include an attempt to drown a 3-year-old girl in Texas and the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old boy in Illinois
WASHINGTON: A public teacher in Pennsylvania was put on leave after allegedly calling a Palestinian American middle school student an extremist, the school district and a Muslim advocacy group said.
Why It’s Important
Human rights advocates say there has been a rise in anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian and antisemitic hate in the US since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza following an Oct. 7, 2023, attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Key Quotes
The Central Dauphin School District said on Saturday it had learned about the allegations that the teacher made the derogatory comment last week in an after-school program.
“The teacher involved in the alleged incident is on administrative leave pending our investigation,” the district said in a statement, adding it had no tolerance for racist speech.
The Council on American Islamic Relations said the allegation was that the teacher had remarked, “I do not negotiate with terrorists,” when the Palestinian American student asked for a seat change.
The district and CAIR did not name the teacher or the student. CAIR said it was in touch with the child’s parents.
Context
Recent US incidents involving children include the attempted drowning of a 3-year-old Palestinian American girl in Texas and the fatal stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy in Illinois.
Other incidents include the stabbing of a Palestinian American man in Texas, the beating of a Muslim man in New York, a violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters in California and the shooting of three Palestinian American students in Vermont.
Incidents raising alarm over antisemitism include threats of violence against Jews at Cornell University that led to a conviction and sentencing, an unsuccessful plot to attack a New York City Jewish center and physical assaults against a Jewish man in Michigan, a rabbi in Maryland and two Jewish students at a Chicago university.
Rubio threatens bounties on Taliban leaders over detained Americans
- The new top US diplomat issued the harsh warning via social media, days after the Afghan Taliban government and the US swapped prisoners in one of the final acts of former president Joe Biden
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Saturday threatened bounties on the heads of Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders, sharply escalating the tone as he said more Americans may be detained in the country than previously thought.
The threat comes days after the Afghan Taliban government and the United States swapped prisoners in one of the final acts of former president Joe Biden.
The new top US diplomat issued the harsh warning via social media, in a rhetorical style strikingly similar to his boss, President Donald Trump.
“Just hearing the Taliban is holding more American hostages than has been reported,” Rubio wrote on X.
“If this is true, we will have to immediately place a VERY BIG bounty on their top leaders, maybe even bigger than the one we had on bin Laden,” he said, referring to the Al-Qaeda leader killed by US forces in 2011.
Rubio did not describe who the other Americans may be, but there have long been accounts of missing Americans whose cases were not formally taken up by the US government as wrongful detentions.
In the deal with the Biden administration, the Taliban freed the best-known American detained in Afghanistan, Ryan Corbett, who had been living with his family in the country and was seized in August 2022.
Also freed was William McKenty, an American about whom little information has been released.
The United States in turn freed Khan Mohammed, who was serving a life sentence in a California prison.
Mohammed was convicted of trafficking heroin and opium into the United States and was accused of seeking rockets to kill US troops in Afghanistan.
The United States offered a bounty of $25 million for information leading to the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden shortly after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, with Congress later authorizing the secretary of state to offer up to $50 million.
No one is believed to have collected the bounty for bin Laden, who was killed in a US raid in Pakistan.
Trump is known for brandishing threats in his speeches and on social media. But he is also a critic of US military interventions overseas and in his second inaugural address Monday said he aspired to be a “peacemaker.”
In his first term, the Trump administration broke a then-taboo and negotiated directly with the Taliban — with Trump even proposing a summit with the then-insurgents at the Camp David presidential retreat — as he brokered a deal to pull US troops and end America’s longest war.
Biden carried out the agreement, with the Western-backed government swiftly collapsing and the Taliban retaking power in August 2021 just after US troops left.
The scenes of chaos in Kabul brought strong criticism of Biden, especially when 13 American troops and scores of Afghans died in a suicide bombing at the city’s airport.
The Biden administration had low-level contacts with Taliban government representatives but made little headway.
Some members of Trump’s Republican Party criticized even the limited US engagements with the Taliban government and especially the humanitarian assistance authorized by the Biden administration, which insisted the money was for urgent needs in the impoverished country and never routed through the Taliban.
Rubio on Friday froze nearly all US aid around the world.
No country has officially recognized the Taliban government, which has imposed severe restrictions on women and girls under its ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam.
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor on Thursday said he was seeking arrest warrants for senior Taliban leaders over the persecution of women.
China tells Trump’s top diplomat to behave himself in veiled warning
- A China Foreign Ministry statement said FM Wang Yi issued the veiled warning in a phone call with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio
- Rubio, a long-time vocal critic of China, earlier expressed “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan and in the South China Sea”
BEIJING: China’s veteran foreign minister has issued a veiled warning to America’s new secretary of state: Behave yourself.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi conveyed the message in a phone call Friday, their first conversation since Marco Rubio’s confirmation as President Donald Trump’s top diplomat four days earlier.
“I hope you will act accordingly,” Wang told Rubio, according to a Foreign Ministry statement, employing a Chinese phrase typically used by a teacher or a boss warning a student or employee to behave and be responsible for their actions.
The short phrase seemed aimed at Rubio’s vocal criticism of China and its human rights record when he was a US senator, which prompted the Chinese government to put sanctions on him twice in 2020.
It can be translated in various ways — in the past, the Foreign Ministry has used “make the right choice” and “be very prudent about what they say or do” rather than “act accordingly.”
The vagueness allows the phrase to express an expectation and deliver a veiled warning, while also maintaining the courtesy necessary for further diplomatic engagement, said Zichen Wang, a research fellow at the Center for China and Globalization, a Chinese think tank.
“What could appear to be confusing is thus an intended effect originating from Chinese traditional wisdom and classic practice of speech,” said Wang, who is currently in a mid-career master’s program at Princeton University.
Rubio, during his confirmation hearing, cited the importance of referring to the original Chinese to understand the words of China’s leader Xi Jinping.
“Don’t read the English translation that they put out because the English translation is never right,” he said.
A US statement on the phone call didn’t mention the phrase. It said Rubio told Wang that the Trump administration would advance US interests in its relationship with China and expressed “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan and in the South China Sea.”
Wang was foreign minister in 2020 when China slapped sanctions on Rubio in July and August, first in response to US sanctions on Chinese officials for a crackdown on the Uyghur minority in the Xinjiang region and then over what it regarded as outside interference in Hong Kong.
The sanctions include a ban on travel to China, and while the Chinese government has indicated it will engage with Rubio as secretary of state, it has not explicitly said whether it would allow him to visit the country for talks.
