‘Af leader unlikely to have fled Kabul with millions of dollars’
tre will appoint it by a gazette notification. In response to the earlier draft, experts said the plan was aimed at “bringing social media companies under direct government control”.
Chandrasekhar stressed the proposed amendments are at a discussion stage and added that the government is open to other effective solutions to tackle the problem. He said the government wants to make the space accountable.
“It is only after the grievance officer acts on a complaint that the panel can be approached,” the minister said. He promised safeguards related to the amendments to the Information Technology Rules, 2021, which have been controversial and suspended by high courts.
“This is an additional avenue for those who cannot afford to go to court. The government is also open to the industry setting up its own self-regulatory mechanism,” Chandrasekhar said. “An intermediary cannot arbitrarily decide what content to action. There must be a mechanism to ensure that they are also accountable to the digital citizen. The government cannot condone any action that violates the Constitution.”
The government will hold consultations with stakeholders and experts in June to chalk out the nuances and feasibility of the proposed amendments. “This is an umbrella document that aims to level the playing field. This will keep evolving to keep with the times. But one thing is clear: no intermediary can use anonymity as a cover for criminality,” Chandrasekhar said.
Once notified, the rules will be mandatory for intermediaries to follow the panel’s decision. The amendments have been made public for inputs which the government will accept over the next 30 days.
The proposed changes also include a 72-hour deadline for companies to act on complaints if they fall under one of 10 types of violations defined, including copyright infringements, defamatory content and false information. “The proposal of an appellate committee is a welcome move towards ensuring greater recourse for users, which in turn would ensure better protection of their interests. We welcome the government’s exercise of opening up this proposal for multi-stakeholder feedback and we are certain that this will help in exploring more feasible ideas and solutions for sustainably regulating the social media ecosystem,” said Kazim Rizvi, founder of the tech-policy thinktank The Dialogue.
“The composition and independence of the appellate committee will be most crucial in ensuring that they are able to fulfil the fundamental objective behind their constitution, which is to create a fairer and more secure online regime,” he said.
The force has also coordinated with the authorities in South Africa regarding the extradition file to complete the legal procedures,” the statement said.
The Interpol is currently headed by the UAE. It was not immediately known if the third brother, Ajay Gupta, 56, was arrested.
The Gupta family, hailing from Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, entered South Africa by setting up a shoe store in 1993. They soon set up the family business under the name Sahara Computers.
The company had over 10,000 employees in South Africa and developed financial holdings in mining, air transport, energy, technology and media.
The arrests came as an investigation was concluded into the plundering of state institutions during former president Zuma’s era. Zuma was South African President from 2009 until 2018 when he was forced to resign. The Gupta brothers are accused in South Africa of using their relationship with former president Zuma to profit financially and influence senior appointments, charges that they have vehemently denied.
In 2018, the Gupta family went into self-exile in Dubai after looting billions of rands from parastatal institutions in South Africa, authorities in Johannesburg said. “The ministry of justice and correctional services confirms that it has received information from law enforcement authorities in the UAE that fugitives of justice, namely Rajesh and Atul Gupta have been arrested,” the South African Department of Justice and Correctional Services said in a statement on Monday.
“Discussions between various law enforcement agencies in the UAE and South Africa on the way forward are ongoing,” it added.
The family fled South Africa in 2018 when the net closed in on them as huge public protests eventually led to the African National Congress (ANC) removing Zuma and appointing Cyril Ramaphosa as the Acting President.
WASHINGTON: Former Afghan president Ashraf Ghani almost certainly did not flee Kabul as it fell to the Taliban with millions of dollars in stolen cash, a US government watchdog’s report said on Monday.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (Sigar) report, which was to be published on Tuesday, is an interim document, as the office is still awaiting answers to questions sent to Ghani.
First reported on by Politico, it interviews witnesses as well as officials who were in the helicopter convoy with Ghani as they hastily fled the Presidential Palace in Kabul while the Taliban marched into the capital on August 15, 2021.
In subsequent days, multiple reports suggested that Ghani and the other officials took up to $169 million in Afghan government money with them. Ghani has always fiercely denied these claims. “Although Sigar found that some cash was taken from the grounds of the palace and loaded onto these helicopters, evidence indicates that this number did not exceed $1 million and may have been closer in value to $500,000,” the report states.
It based that assessment heavily on interviews with the witnesses and officials involved, all of whom said they saw no signs of such large amounts of cash on the helicopters already overloaded with people fleeing for their lives.
“$169 million in hundred dollar bills, stacked end to end, would form a block 7.5 feet (2.3m) long, 3 feet wide, and 3 feet tall... This block would have weighed 3,722 pounds, or nearly two tonnes,” Sigar noted, adding that witnesses reported “minimal luggage” on the helicopters, which had no cargo holds.
Instead one official carried around $200,000, another carried some $240,000 and others had “$5,000 to $10,000 in their pockets... No one had millions,” one former senior official told Sigar. “If true, this puts the total amount of cash on board the three helicopters at approximately $500,000, with $440,000 belonging to the Afghan government,” the report said.
“Sigar also identified suspicious circumstances in which approximately $5 million in cash was allegedly left behind at the presidential palace,” the report added.
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