Search Results for: Lebanon

BY PAUL COCHRANE, in Cairo

WITH the fight against money laundering and counter terrorism financing relatively new to the Middle East (the first plenary session of the Middle East and North Africa Financial Action Task Force

– MENA-FATF – was only held last year), financial institutions from the US and MENA met in Cairo for a Private Sector Dialogue (PSD) conference to discuss the implementation of international regulations in the region.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE, in Beirut

THE NUMBER of Syrians studying in the US has dropped a steep 32% over the past five years, with sometimes-criticised universities in Syria the direct beneficiaries, even attracting foreign students from around the Middle East.

The move comes as Arab students are increasingly shunning top ranked US universities because of anger about its government’s foreign policy, and as Syria’s ossified university system opens up to the private sector.…

BY DEIRDRE MASON

THE LATEST round of European Union (EU) proposals to tighten up laws fighting the use of illegally unsafe commercial shipping, announced on November 23, 2005, will place shippers who want to continue operating in EU-controlled waters under closer scrutiny than ever, says the European Commission.…

BY MARK ROWE AND PAUL COCHRANE

INTRODUCTION

JUST as chocolate sells well in cold countries, so do soft drinks flourish in hot countries, which would suggest that North Africa and the Levant presents an inviting face to the international drinks market.…

BY PAUL COCHRANE
FOLLOWING the Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon at the end of April 2005 the country’s tobacco industry has encountered certain setbacks, largely connected with the exodus of Syrian workers. These migrants were Lebanon’s primary source of cheap labour, particularly in agriculture and construction, and their departure has affected the tobacco picking season, particularly in the Bekaa Valley, one of Lebanon’s main tobacco growing areas.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE INDEPENDENT Inquiry Committee into financial irregularities bedevilling the UN Iraq Oil for Food Programme has published details of illicit surcharges demanded of oil companies by the Saddam regime to participate in the scheme. Its investigators show how, for instance, from September 2000 to August 2002, US$228.8 million in illegal surcharges were demanded from oil exporters and which were paid to Iraqi controlled bank accounts in Jordan or Lebanon, and to Iraqi embassies.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

SOAP supplies companies paid together hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in kickbacks to the toppled Saddam regime, the Independent Inquiry Committee into the UN Iraq Oil for Food programme scandal has claimed. There were 101 (mostly toilet) soap suppliers, from countries largely from the Middle East and east Asia, named in a report paying Iraq to secure humanitarian supply contracts.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
SUGAR, honey and biscuit supply companies paid together hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in kickbacks to the toppled Saddam Hussein regime, the Independent Inquiry Committee into the UN Iraq Oil for Food programme scandal has claimed. There were 79 suppliers of these confectionary-related products (76 supplied sugar) named in a report, who paid Iraq to secure humanitarian supply contracts under the scheme, out of 2,200 companies overall.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

SOAP supplies companies paid together hundreds-of-thousands of dollars in kickbacks to the toppled Saddam regime, the Independent Inquiry Committee into the UN Iraq Oil for Food programme scandal has claimed. There were 101 (mostly toilet) soap suppliers, from countries largely from the Middle East and east Asia, named in a report paying Iraq to secure humanitarian supply contracts.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
FERROUS and non-ferrous metal companies paid together millions of dollars in kickbacks to the toppled Saddam Hussein regime, the Independent Inquiry Committee into the UN Iraq Oil for Food programme scandal has claimed. More than 150 suppliers of ferrous metal products ranging from carbon steel plates, steel coil, steel joists, galvanised steel cores, steel bars, steel pipes, fabricated steel and others are named in the report, as are around 50 suppliers of aluminium, copper and lead.…