Cambodia finds 33 surrogate mothers
Mahathir turns up pain
PHNOM PENH, June 23, (Agencies): A raid by Cambodian authorities on an illegal surrogacy business in Phnom Penh uncovered 33 women paid to deliver babies for Chinese couples, police said Saturday.
Five people, including a Chinese national, were arrested during the operation in the capital late Friday, Keo Thea, head of the Phnom Penh Anti-Trafficking unit, told AFP.
“We found 33 surrogate mothers, some have already given birth, some are still pregnant,” he said, adding that the women had been offered up to $10,000 to give birth for Chinese clients.
China’s easing of its onechild policy two years ago has produced booming demand for fertility clinics, with figures estimating that 90 million women became eligible for another child after the rule was phased out.
But surrogacy is illegal in China, forcing those who can afford it to look for potential options abroad.
Southeast Asia was long a popular international surrogacy destination, with cheap medical costs, a large pool of poor young women and no laws excluding gay couples or single parents.
But in recent years countries in the region have cracked down on the trade, following a series of scandals and criticism that the business exploited poor women.
Cambodian authorities banned the practice in 2016 after prospective parents turned to the impoverished country in the wake of a ban in neighbouring Thailand the previous year.
An Australian nurse jailed for 18 months for running a surrogacy clinic in Cambodia had her sentence upheld in January in a prominent case highlighting the country’s role in the trade.
Thea
Vietnam arrests 4 more oil execs:
Vietnamese police have arrested four more former senior oil executives for allegedly abusing their power to appropriate property as the communist authorities step up their toughest crackdown on corruption in years.
The four arrested Thursday were former general directors or chief accountants of three subsidiaries of giant state energy firm PetroVietnam, the Ministry of Public Security said in a statement. It also said police were seeking to retrieve property to the state.
The investigation involves Ocean joint stock commercial bank, which was taken over by State Bank in 2015 at no cost after reporting losses of $445 million. PetroVietnam had owned 20 percent of the bank and lost all its investment after the takeover.
The bank gave $69 million in interest exceeding the rate set by the central bank to individuals and 400 companies and institutions, including three subsidiaries of PetroVietnam.
Vietnam busts online betting ring:
Vietnamese police broke up an online football gambling ring worth around $26 million, arresting four people as authorities look to stop black market betting that surges during sporting events like the ongoing World Cup.
Gambling is illegal in Vietnam apart from the staterun lottery and a few casinos which are only open to foreigners.
But the law is widely flouted, especially during toptier sports competitions when many punters head online or to illegal gambling dens to try their luck.
The four people were arrested in Ho Chi Minh City on Friday, according to a report published the same day in the police’s official Cong An Nhan Dan newspaper. Several others were also summoned for questioning.
The suspects allegedly admitted to operating transactions through a website hosted in the Philippines.
“Since early 2017, the total transactions of the gambling ring have been worth more than 600 billion dong ($26 million)”, state-run Vietnam Television reported, adding that thousands of people across Vietnam had used its services.
Anxious wait for relatives:
Among the grief-stricken Indonesians keeping a daily vigil at the shore of a volcanic lake which swallowed a ferry packed with people, some fear they have lost more than a dozen relatives, including children, in the disaster.
Jadianto Nainggolan has barely touched food or got a decent night’s sleep since he got word that the ferry was carrying 12 relatives — including a nephew who was just three years old — headed home after a party on Monday.
“As soon as I heard I was in shock — I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep,” he told AFP.
The overloaded boat capsized on Sumatra’s Lake Toba in what could be one of the country’s deadliest maritime disasters.
Days later, Nainggolan, a power plant worker, cannot believe that four of his siblings and their children could be at the bottom of one of the world’s deepest lakes.
The 40-year-old Nainggolan made an arduous 24hour journey from his home in Jambi province to the picturesque tourist destination after he got a panicked call from his sister.
Mahathir turns up the pain:
The police kept watch close to a holiday villa where Najib Razak this week gave his first sit-down interview since his shock election defeat last month, a reminder for the former Malaysian prime minister that he may not have much more time to relax.
He is under investigation for corruption, has been labelled a crook by his successor, is banned from travelling overseas, and has watched while his family’s homes have been raided and luxury goods hauled away by officers.
Only hours before — also in an interview with Reuters — his mentor-turned-tormentor, the new Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, reeled off the charges he is looking to bring against Najib for his alleged role in a scandal that saw billions of dollars go missing from state fund 1MDB. They included embezzlement, bribery, losing government money.
“People would expect a former prime minister to be treated with decorum. Instead, I’ve been subjected to raids and all the other things,” said Najib.
Plain clothes officers from the police’s special branch intelligence arm were an obvious presence in and around the five-star hotel where he and his family were staying.
No criminal charges have been brought against Najib, and he said he did not know if hundreds of millions of dollars that moved through his personal account was from 1MDB.