Fugitive Moldovan oligarch implicated in $1 billion bank fraud detained in Greece
Vladimir Plahotniuc fled Moldova in 2019 as he faced a series of corruption charges including allegations of complicity in a scheme that led to $1 billion disappearing from a Moldovan bank in 2014, which at the time was equivalent to about an eighth of Moldova's annual GDP.
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Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
France treaty to return Channel migrants is not ‘silver bullet', Cooper says
Yvette Cooper has said the deal struck with France to return Channel migrants will not stop the crossings on their own, as she refused to confirm how many migrants would be returned under the scheme. The Home Secretary said the agreement, which begins on Tuesday, was about the principle rather than the number itself. Ms Cooper pointed to a similar accord between Greece and Turkey in 2016 which she said brought down numbers of migrants to Greece. Migrants for the swap will begin to be detained from Wednesday, she told broadcasters. It is hoped the first migrants will be returned by the end of August. In exchange Britain will receive asylum seekers who have ties to the country through a legal route. Speaking to BBC Breakfast, Ms Cooper said: 'We never claimed that there is a single silver bullet on this. So this goes alongside the 28% increase in returns of failed asylum seekers that we have brought in. 'It goes alongside the change to those French maritime rules that I referred to which means France taking action in French waters to prevent boat crossings in the first place, and the much stronger law enforcement that we announced earlier this week with the additional National Crime Agency investigators and police to be able to go after the criminal gangs. We have to do all of these things.' Ms Cooper said the Government does not want to put a number on the amount of Channel migrants that will be returned to France, as she believed it could aid criminal gangs. It has been reported that about 50 a week could be sent to France. This would be a stark contrast to the more than 800 people every week who on average have arrived in the UK via small boat this year. She told BBC Radio 4: 'We are not putting an overall figure on this programme. 'Of course, it will start with lower numbers and then build, but we want to be able to expand it. We want to be able to increase the number of people returned through this programme.' She added: 'We will provide regular updates, people will be able to see how many people are being detained, how many people are being returned, and it is right that we should be transparent around that. 'But we're not setting the numbers in advance, firstly because there is no fixed number in terms of the overall number of people to come through this system, and secondly because we're not going to provide (gangs) with that operational information.' The initial agreement will be in place until June 2026. Ms Cooper told Nick Ferrari on LBC that the UK will do security checks in France on the asylum seekers who are brought to the UK in exchange for returned Channel migrants. They will have their biometric data taken. She also said any family members of successful asylum seekers brought to the UK would be included in the quota, so would have an equivalent number sent back to France. Some 25,436 people have already made the journey this year, according to PA news agency analysis of Home Office figures – 49% higher than at the same point in 2024. She continued: 'I think this is the right principle that we should be pursuing, that people who are arriving on small boats should, frankly, be returned to France. They're coming on illegal boats, they're paying thousands of pounds to people smugglers. That money should be lost, and they should be returned. 'And also the principle that where we take people from other countries, we should do so through a legal process, where people have gone through security checks. Those are the right principles to establish.' On Monday, shadow home secretary Chris Philp attacked the plans, saying they would return 'just 6% of illegal arrivals' and 'make no difference whatsoever'. Ms Cooper also told broadcasters that the Government was still aiming to close asylum hotels by the end of the Parliament. She said just over 200 were still operating. She told BBC Radio 4: 'The big blockage now is in the appeals system, again, a broken system that we've inherited. We're going to have to do some major reforms to the appeals system, setting those out later this year. 'I think it's just unacceptable that if you've got somebody who has been turned down in the asylum system, on a fair basis, they can end up then still being stuck in the system even for years, as a result of delays in the asylum system.'
CNN
an hour ago
- CNN
Funeral home owner who sent families fake ashes pleads guilty to fraud
A Colorado funeral home owner accused of stashing nearly 200 decomposing bodies in a room-temperature building admitted in federal court Monday that she cheated customers and defrauded the federal government out of nearly $900,000. Carie Hallford, who ran Return to Nature Funeral Home with her husband Jon Hallford, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Carie Hallford faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, though federal prosecutors agreed to ask for 15 years at a December sentencing hearing. Hallford already pleaded guilty once in federal court, but a judge last year rejected the agreement with prosecutors and still has to approve this one. Crystina Page's son David died in 2019, and his body was left in an inoperable refrigerator for four years. Standing outside the federal courthouse Monday, Page said she's disappointed about the possibility that neither Hallford goes on trial, something she hoped would have brought answers about what happened to her son and others entrusted to their care. 'We still don't know the truth of what they've done to us,' she said. The federal case brought against both Hallfords focused on two schemes: falsifying documents to siphon nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 pandemic-era financial aid from the U.S. Small Business Administration and deceiving customers by taking payments for cremations the Hallfords never did. Instead of cremating the nearly 200 bodies between 2019 and 2023, the Hallfords allegedly stored the bodies in a decrepit building and sent some customers dry concrete instead of ashes. The Hallfords pocketed around $130,000 of their customers' payments meant for cremations or burial services and spent it, along with the federal funds, on luxury products — a GMC Yukon, laser body sculpting, vacations, jewelry and cryptocurrency. In a separate case in state court, both Hallfords have been charged with 191 counts of corpse abuse, including for twice burying the wrong body and leaving others to decompose. Jon Hallford has already pleaded guilty to those 191 counts, as well as a fraud charge in the federal case for which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The building packed with bodies was discovered in 2023 in Penrose, Colorado, about a two-hour drive south of Denver. It shook already grieving families. Many learned that their loved ones' remains weren't in the ashes they spread or held tight but were instead decaying in a building. Investigators found bodies stacked atop each other, swarms of bugs and maggots, and so much liquid on the ground it had to be pumped out.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Funeral home owner who sent families fake ashes pleads guilty to fraud
A Colorado funeral home owner accused of stashing nearly 200 decomposing bodies in a room-temperature building admitted in federal court Monday that she cheated customers and defrauded the federal government out of nearly $900,000. Carie Hallford, who ran Return to Nature Funeral Home with her husband Jon Hallford, pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiracy to commit wire fraud. Carie Hallford faces a maximum of 20 years in prison, though federal prosecutors agreed to ask for 15 years at a December sentencing hearing. Hallford already pleaded guilty once in federal court, but a judge last year rejected the agreement with prosecutors and still has to approve this one. Crystina Page's son David died in 2019, and his body was left in an inoperable refrigerator for four years. Standing outside the federal courthouse Monday, Page said she's disappointed about the possibility that neither Hallford goes on trial, something she hoped would have brought answers about what happened to her son and others entrusted to their care. 'We still don't know the truth of what they've done to us,' she said. The federal case brought against both Hallfords focused on two schemes: falsifying documents to siphon nearly $900,000 in COVID-19 pandemic-era financial aid from the U.S. Small Business Administration and deceiving customers by taking payments for cremations the Hallfords never did. Instead of cremating the nearly 200 bodies between 2019 and 2023, the Hallfords allegedly stored the bodies in a decrepit building and sent some customers dry concrete instead of ashes. The Hallfords pocketed around $130,000 of their customers' payments meant for cremations or burial services and spent it, along with the federal funds, on luxury products — a GMC Yukon, laser body sculpting, vacations, jewelry and cryptocurrency. In a separate case in state court, both Hallfords have been charged with 191 counts of corpse abuse, including for twice burying the wrong body and leaving others to decompose. Jon Hallford has already pleaded guilty to those 191 counts, as well as a fraud charge in the federal case for which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The building packed with bodies was discovered in 2023 in Penrose, Colorado, about a two-hour drive south of Denver. It shook already grieving families. Many learned that their loved ones' remains weren't in the ashes they spread or held tight but were instead decaying in a building. Investigators found bodies stacked atop each other, swarms of bugs and maggots, and so much liquid on the ground it had to be pumped out.
