Iran Bans Banks From Sending Statements To ‘Foreign’ E-Mail Addresses

Many Iranians have complained of disruptions to Gmail and other “foreign” e-mail services in recent months.

May 08, 2012

Iran’s minister of communications and information technology, Reza Taghipour, has sent a letter to the head of the country’s Central Bank, Mahmud Bahmani, asking him to instruct banks to refrain from sending bank statements to e-mail addresses administered by foreign providers.
In his letter, Taghipour says that banned foreign e-mail providers include Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, and MSN.
The communications minister has called on banks to only accept national e-mail addresses from customers when they open accounts.
Taghipour has requested that banks provide access to the Internet for customers to be able to create national e-mail accounts at their premises.
The move appears to be aimed at forcing citizens to join the national e-mail system, which many Iranians have been reluctant to use.
Some Iranian websites have reported that the use of the national e-mail is obligatory for those working for the government and state institutions.

North Africa and the Persian Gulf: Lingering Tensions, Different Stakes

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Despite its proximity to Europe and its status as a major African oil producer, Libya‘s sparse population and relative isolation from its neighbors make the stakes of civil unrest much lower than in other regions of the Arab world. 

Libya returned to the headlines Saturday when a protest in front of the headquarters of the National Transitional Council (NTC) turned violent. A group of demonstrators in Benghazi broke into the building, vandalized and looted the property and reportedly drove NTC head Mustafa Abdel-Jalil to flee through a back exit. A leading member of the council has since resigned, and Abdel-Jalil has warned that the country risks heading toward civil war if protests continue to intensify. The euphoria many Libyans felt at the death of former leader Moammar Gadhafi last October has faded, and though elections for a constituent assembly are scheduled for June, it is hard to see a stable, democratic government on the horizon in Libya.

The young men at the protest shared a general feeling of discontent with Libya’s direction more than three months after Gadhafi’s death. But they also share another trait: they all live in Benghazi, the city where the NTC was formed and is supposed to have the highest level of support. Benghazi is where the Libyan revolution started, and many of the NTC leaders come from the city. In less than a year, the council’s self-appointed leaders — many are still involved in the governance of the country — have gone from beloved to vilified in the eyes of many who supported the revolution, including those from Benghazi.

Putin And Kudrin: Russia’s Real Tandem

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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin, who resigned in late September after a spat with President Dmitry Medvedev.

December 16, 2011

Amid all the showmanship and bravado on display during Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’slive call-in program yesterday, there also came a rare moment of sincerity.This happened when Putin was asked to comment on former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin, who resigned under pressure following a public spat with President Dmitry Medvedev in late September.

“Aleksei Leonidovich Kudrin has not left my team,” Putin said. “We are old comrades, he’s my friend. He did a lot for the country. I’m proud that this man worked in my government. Such people are needed and will be needed in current and future governments.”

On one hand, Putin’s comments can be viewed as a subtle dig at President Dmitry Medvedev, who demanded Kudrin’s resignation after the finance minister criticized his plans to increase military spending by $65 billion over the next three years. (The rare public dust-up came just days after Putin announced that he intended to return to the Kremlin next year and planed to make Medvedev his prime minister. Kudrin was reportedly not happy about the job swap.)

Kosovo’s Former Bank Governor Cleared Of Corruption Charges

Monday, December 19, 2011

Police escort former Kosovo Central Bank Governor Hashim Rexhepi (second left) after his arrest in Pristina last year.

The European Union’s mission in Kosovo has said that the former governor of Kosovo’s central bank has been cleared of corruption charges, more than a year after the accusations cost him his job.

The EU’s police and justice mission in Kosovo, EULEX, said a judge had dismissed all five counts against Hashim Rexhepi.

The charges had included abuse of office and fraud.

Iran threatening to cut Hamas funds, arms supply if it flees Syria

Iran had applied intense pressure to Hamas in an effort to persuade it not to leave Damascus, threatening even to cut off funds to the organization if it did so, Palestinian sources have told Haaretz.

The Iranian pressure also included an unprecedented ultimatum – namely, an explicit threat to stop supplying Hamas with arms and suspend the training of its military activists.

	Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal.
	Photo by: AP

According to the sources, Hamas is abandoning its headquarters in Syria and looking at other Arab states as an alternative location for its political command center. Hamas’ move comes despite intense Iranian pressure on the organization to refrain from relocating.

A Syrian opposition spokesman said recently that once Assad is toppled, his successors will have no intention of preserving the strategic alliance between Damascus, Tehran and Hezbollah.

According to the Palestinian sources, only “second and third-ranking” Hamas activists are leaving Damascus, while senior members of the organization’s political wing, headed by Khaled Meshal, are remaining in the Syrian capital.

Review–Turkish Monetary Policy: Playing Catch-up with Reality

And so the inevitable has come to pass. Turkey’s central bank has departed from its controversial commitment to a loose policy stance in the face of growing signs of overheating and vulnerability in the economy. The bank signalled yesterday that a phase of marked monetary tightening has now begun.

True to form, the bank went about this tightening in an unorthodox way. But at least it is now pulling unorthodox policy levers in pursuit of orthodox ends. As recently as August, the bank was still loosening policy, easing its benchmark interest rate despite frothy GDP growth rates, accelerating inflation and a current-account deficit of increasingly eye-watering proportions.

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The bank’s benchmark interest rate is its one-week repo rate, which stands at 5.75%. The simplest and most transparent way for the bank to have tightened monetary policy would have been to hike this rate. Instead, the bank yesterday announced a new policy of switching on and off the supply of money at this rate, depending on conditions on any given day.

When the one-week rate is unavailable, commercial banks seeking money from the central bank are forced to pay up to 12.5% for money provided on an overnight basis. By switching between these 5.75% and 12.5% rates from day to day, the central bank aims to find a balance appropriate to the needs of the economy.

The bank’s governor, Erdem Başçı, seems quite proud of this new policy, declaring that it gives him a level of flexibility enjoyed by no other central bank in the world. One is tempted to suggest that the reason other central banks haven’t rushed to adopt this level of policy flexibility is that there are other, simpler, ways of achieving the same ends.

Yesterday, the central bank withheld funding at the 5.75% rate. Today, it made 8bn TL available at that rate. And so it will go in the days and weeks ahead. Does this provide the bank with a means of tightening monetary policy to varying degrees? Sure. But it feels a little bit like trying to control a room’s lighting by switching the lights on and off repeatedly rather than by using a dimmer switch.

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There can be little doubt that a shift in the central bank’s policy was required. For some time alarm bells have been ringing. In June, I wrote about the threat posed by Turkey’s current account deficit. At that point it stood at about 8 per cent of GDP. It has since moved closer to 10 per cent.

That kind of dynamic is both unsustainable and dangerous. In my earlier post I warned of the risk of a chain reaction being set in motion, with a depreciation of the lira feeding through to higher prices, interest rate hikes and a sharp slowdown in economic activity. We have since seen something like this play out.

The lira slumped in value by almost a fifth during the first nine months of this year. Consumer price inflation is already above the central bank’s 5.5% target and will increase again in the remainder of the year due to recent tax hikes and the rising price of imports. We’ve just seen the beginning of (indirect) interest rate rises to restore stability. It now remains to be seen how significant the impact will be on activity in the real economy.

The Titan of Tbilisi

Is Georgia’s elfin billionaire and new political phenomenon big enough to take down President Mikheil Saakashvili?

I am standing in the foyer of my hotel in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. An unshaven young man with an enquiring expression comes up to me and asks, “Thomas?” I nod and he says the one word, “Bidzina.”

My assignation with the most talked-about man in Georgia is about to begin.

We climb into a Toyota Landcruiser, ascend to the top of a hill in Tbilisi, and then enter a small private drive. Electronic gates slide open and we are soon outside a soaring glass-and-steel construction, a futurist castle constructed by the Japanese architect Shin Takamatsu, surrounded by a small forest of modern sculpture.

I am ushered into the presence of the man himself. Bidzina Ivanishvili is quite small, a little elfin, immaculately dressed, and smiling. I have never interviewed a billionaire before but his manner is easy. He starts by showing me the pictures on the wall: Egon Schiele, Claude Monet, Lucian Freud. He admits that they are, in fact, high-quality copies; the originals are in London. There is a chatty simplicity about him but also huge self-confidence and self-control.

We sit down, he under a Lucien Freud portrait, and I ask a variation on the same question he has been asked 100 times in the last month: “What motivated you to go into Georgian politics?”

In one month, it is no exaggeration to say, Ivanishvili has turned the politics of his country upside down. Georgia has had a turbulent decade. First, the peaceful Rose Revolution of 2003 swept aside Eduard Shevardnadze‘s tired old regime. Then, Mikheil Saakashvili became Europe’s youngest head of state at the age of 36 and embarked on a series of hair-raising modernizing reforms. The volatile Saakashvili also went head-to-head with Russia over the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, a confrontation that burst out into full conflict in 2008. After defeat in the war, Saakashvili’s popularity plummeted, but he clung to power. He and his governing party slowly recovered the initiative and, as the next elections approached in 2012-13, they found themselves again in a commanding position, with a virtual monopoly over the executive, parliament, local government, and the media.

Afghan Parliament Approves Central Bank Governor, Spy Chief

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Saturday, 26 November 2011 16:48 Last Updated on Saturday, 26 November 2011 18:44 Written by TOLOnews.com

Afghanistan‘s House of Representatives on Saturday approved President Hamid Karzai‘s candidates for the posts of the head of the National Directorate of Security (NDS), the governor of the Central Bank and a member of the High Office of Oversight.

At total of 228 MPs attended the session and each of the candidates needed 115 “yes” votes to secure his position.
The new NDS director, Rahmatullah Nabil, got 208 votes in his favour; the new head of the Central Bank, Noorullah Delawari, got 173 vote of approval; and Mohammad Munir got 155 votes endorsing his membership of the High Office of Oversight.
At the session, the three officials outlined their future plans and strategies, and responded to the questions of the representatives.
Mr Nabil has serviced as the acting director of the NDS for the past year and President Hamid Karzai put him forward to continue in the role after MPs praised the security measures put in place during the four-day Loya Jirga earlier this month.
Mr Delawari worked as head of the Central Bank from 2004 to 2007.

Anti-money laundering experts inspect Vatican

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Sunday, November 27, 2011

VATICAN CITY (AP) — European inspectors fighting money laundering on Saturday wrapped up a week of meetings with church officials as part of ensuring that the Holy See’s law conforms with international efforts to combat financing of terrorism, the Vatican said.

The officials will issue a report that will that will be discussed by experts at the Council of Europe, likely in mid-2012, the Vatican said in a statement.

Earlier this year, Italian prosecutors ordered the release of (euro) 23 million ($33 million) seized from a Vatican Bank account as part of a money-laundering probe. Italian financial police had seized the money in September 2010, and placed the bank’s two top officials under investigation, over allegations that the bank broke the law by trying to transfer funds without identifying the sender and recipient.

Venezuela begins gold shipments

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Published: Nov. 26, 2011 at 1:05 PM

CARACAS, Venezuela, Nov. 26 (UPI) — The head of the Central Bank of Venezuela said shipments of gold to the bank from Europe gave the country a larger degree of financial independence.

“It has historic value. It has symbolic value. And it has financial value,” bank chief Nelson Merentes said about the first shipment of gold to arrive from Europe under orders from President Hugo Chavez, the British Broadcasting Corp. reported Saturday.

Chavez has ordered 85 percent of the country’s gold — about $11 billion worth — to be physically returned to Venezuela.

“The gold is returning to where it was always meant to be: the vaults of the Central Bank of Venezuela,” Chavez said.

Merentes supported the move, saying, “The country’s finances will be backed by autonomous wealth, so we are not subject to pressure from anyone.”

But some have complained that moving the gold has no purpose and is an expensive project.