Search Results for: Climate change

BY ALAN OSBORN
CAN a travel agency be considered a financial institution, and if so how vulnerable is it to money laundering? Should it have to meet the same reporting requirements, for instance, as banks and insurance brokers? These are tricky questions and they have dogged the American anti-money laundering authorities for some three years now, as they try to frame comprehensive controls following the September 11 attacks.…

BY ALAN OSBORN
IT’S fair to say that neither Bulgarian nor Romanian wine stands very high in wine-lovers’ affections at the moment. That wasn’t always so.

The wines were held in some esteem in the 80s, for instance, under the last years of communist rule, but standards have slipped pretty drastically in the score of years since then.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
CHARITIES may be exempt from paying VAT, even if they are formally a profit making enterprise, a European Court of Justice (ECJ) advocate general has advised. Damaso Ruiz-Jarabo Colomer has said that under the EU’s sixth VAT directive (article 13A), profit-making companies can be exempt and that their money-making aims do “not in principle constitute an obstacle to its being regarded as a ‘charitable organisation'”.…

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 ALAN OSBORN

ONLY comparatively recently have the world’s anti money laundering agencies come to grips with alternative remittance systems (ARS) and even today the scale of the systems and the degree of infiltration by criminals is still not fully known.…

BY MONICA DOBIE
FOR many people, Europeans in particular, Canada represents wide-open spaces, pristine wilderness teaming with wildlife, a high standard of living and a country tolerant of other cultures.

And Canadians are generally a happy bunch, who smugly cherish their social differences with their neighbours south of the border, notably that their high taxes are fair because the money creates social programmes and a national health care system that their American counterparts do not enjoy.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE MULTILATERAL Investment Guarantee Agency, or MIGA, is the international organisation companies turn to when they want to invest in a jurisdiction where their assets might not be that safe. Mining companies have long used MIGA to cover risks that are too tasty for the private insurance industry, and the agency has issued 58 guarantees for the sector since it was formed in 1988.…

BY MONICA DOBIE and KEITH NUTHALL

TIME was when Canadians focused a significant proportion of their habitual condescension towards their American neighbours through beer. US brands were dismissed as weak in alcohol, tasteless and generic. But today, even though the big US beer labels taste the same as they ever did – much to the relief of many consumers around the world, of course – Canadian beer tastes are changing, especially among the young.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL
THE SEPTEMBER 11 attacks sparked a tightening of security restrictions around the world and the shipping industry has been a key focus. The latest initiative is the creation of a global system of biometric identifiers for seafarers. Keith Nuthall reports.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

RUSSIA has sent another threat to Europe over gas supplies, undermining its reputation as a potential reliable energy partner for its western neighbours. Semyon Vainshtok, the president of Russia pipeline monopoly Transneft has told the daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta that Russia has "overfed Europe with crude".…