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Boston Globe
18-07-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Extra! Extra! Read all about last newspaper hawker in Paris
Advertisement Such is Akbar's renown that President Emmanuel Macron recently awarded him a Légion d'Honneur, the Republic's highest order of merit. It will be conferred at a ceremony at the Élysée Palace in the fall. 'Perhaps it will help me get my French passport!' said Akbar, who sometimes has a withering take on life, having seen much of its underside. He has a residence permit, but his application for French nationality is mired in Gallic bureaucracy. Akbar moves at startling speed. A sinewy bundle of energy at 72, he clocks several miles a day, selling Le Monde, Les Echos, and other daily newspapers from around noon until midnight. Dismissive of the digital, he has become a human networker of a district once dear to Jean-Paul Sartre and Ernest Hemingway, now overrun by brand-hungry tourists. Advertisement 'How are you, dear Ali?' says Véronique Voss, a psychotherapist, as he enters the Café Fleurus near the Jardin du Luxembourg. 'I worried about you yesterday because it was so hot.' Heat does not deter Akbar, who has known worse. He thanks Voss with a big smile and takes off his dark blue Le Monde cap. 'When you have nothing, you take whatever you can get,' he says. 'I had nothing.' At his next stop, an Italian cafe, Jean-Philippe Bouyer, a stylist who has worked for Dior, greets Akbar warmly. 'Ali is indispensable,' Bouyer says. 'Something very positive and rare in our times emanates from him. He kept the soul of a child.' Born in 1953 into a family of 10 children, two of whom died young, Akbar grew up in Rawalpindi amid rampant poverty and open sewers, eating leftovers, sleeping five to a room, leaving school when he was 12, working odd jobs, and eventually teaching himself to read. 'I did not want to wear clothes that reeked of misery,' he said. 'I always dreamed of giving my mother a house with a garden.' To advance, he had to leave. He procured a passport at 18. All he knew of Europe was the Eiffel Tower and Dutch tulips. A winding road took him by bus to Kabul, Afghanistan, where Western hippies, most of them high, abounded in 1970 — but that was not Akbar's thing. He went on by road to Iran, where he said, 'the shah was an omnipresent God.' Eventually, he reached Athens, Greece, and wandered the streets looking for work. A businessperson took pity and, noting his eagerness, offered him a job on a ship. Akbar cleaned the kitchen floor. He washed dishes. He was faced with aggressive mockery from bawdy shipmates for his refusal, as a Muslim, to drink. Advertisement In Shanghai, Akbar abandoned ship rather than face further taunting. The world is round, and around he went, back to Rawalpindi, and then on the westward road again to Europe. His mother deserved better; that conviction drove him through every humiliation. Visa issues in Greece and eventual expulsion landed him back in Pakistan a second time. His family thought he was mad, but, undaunted, he tried again. This time, he washed up in Rouen, France. It had taken only two years. After working there in a restaurant, he moved on to Paris in 1973. 'By the time I got to Paris I had an overwhelming desire to anchor myself,' Akbar said. 'Since I began circling the planet, I hadn't met many people who didn't disappoint me. But if you have no hope, you're dead.' He slept under bridges and in cellars. He encountered racism. He lost his virginity, and in so doing, he says, encountered the phrase 'Ça y est!' that became his moniker. He spent a couple of months in Burgundy harvesting cucumbers. There, he ceded to wine and pork, forbidden by Islam. 'That was a turning point in my life,' Akbar wrote in a memoir published over a decade ago. 'I still believed in God but I had concluded that eaters of sausages were often better people than Muslims with the strictest practices.' At last, in 1974, Akbar found his calling when he ran into an Argentine student hawking newspapers. He inquired how he could do likewise and was soon in the streets of Paris with copies of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and Hara-Kiri, now defunct. He liked to walk, enjoyed contact with people and, even if margins were small, could eke out a living. Advertisement Fast-forward 51 years, and Akbar is still at it. Because St.-Germain is the home of intellectuals, actors, and politicians, he has rubbed shoulders with the influential. From François Mitterrand to Bill Clinton (who told him Pakistan was 'dangerous'), and from actress and singer Jane Birkin to author Bernard-Henri Lévy, he has met them all. None of this has gone to his head. He remains a modest guy with a winning manner. His main newspaper is now Le Monde, which he acquires at a kiosk for about $2 a copy and sells for almost double that. He makes around $70 on an average day; he rarely takes a day off. Newspaper reading remains ingrained in France. Friends may buy two or three copies and slip him 10 euros or invite him to lunch. He has no pension, but he gets by — and his mother got a Rawalpindi garden. From an arranged marriage with a Pakistani woman in 1980, Akbar has five sons, one of them autistic, one with various physical ailments. A sixth child died at birth. Life has not been easy, one reason 'I have made it my business to make people laugh.' Some 50 years later, Akbar remains on the move. Lose sight of him for a second, and he's gone. But then comes the cry: 'Ça y est! Marine is marrying Jordan!' — a reference to far-right leader Marine Le Pen and her young protégé Jordan Bardella. His jokes are a sales pitch; they also reflect a yearning for a happier, simpler world. Advertisement
The Star
10-07-2025
- Business
- The Star
Britain to invest 163 million euros in France's Eutelsat, Les Echos reports
FILE PHOTO: Eutelsat Group logo is pictured at their Paris headquarters in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France, April 3, 2025. REUTERS/Benoit Tessier/File Photo (Reuters) -Britain will invest 163 million euros (140.49 million pounds) in French satellite operator Eutelsat, Les Echos reported on Thursday, citing an Elysee source, after a much bigger cash injection by France to help it compete with SpaceX's Starlink. French President Emmanuel Macron, who is on a two-day state visit to the UK, in a post on X thanked Britain as it continues to "follow us on the Eutelsat adventure". "We're over the moon to keep going with you. Together we go further!," Macron said. Eutelsat and the British and French governments could not immediately be reached for comment. The French state will become the largest shareholder in Eutelsat later this year and is leading a 1.35 billion euro capital increase to support the debt-laden company. By investing 163 million euros, Britain will maintain its 10.9% stake in Eutelsat, Les Echos said, avoiding dilution from the recapitalisation announced in June. The investment will bring the recapitalisation to a total of 1.5 billion euros, it added. It could also open the door to Britain's involvement in the European Union's IRIS² satellite constellation project, for which Eutelsat is one of the main contractors, the report said. Britain became a shareholder in satellite operator OneWeb in 2020 as part of a $1 billion bailout alongside investor Bharti Space, before OneWeb merged with Eutelsat in 2023. (1 British pound = 1.1602 euros) (Reporting by Gianluca Lo Nostro and Mathieu Rosemain; Additional reporting by Elizabeth Pineau in Paris and Muvija M in London; Editing by Barbara Lewis)
Local France
02-07-2025
- Business
- Local France
Audit of French payments firm after dubious payments
Director general Pierre-Antoine Vacheron told financial daily Les Echos the company would 'scan its entire portfolio of riskiest activities by the end of July'. Board chairman Wilfried Verstraete said the key findings of an external audit of merchants engaged in risky activities will be unveiled on July 30th, along with the presentation of the firm's half-year results. The company has entrusted the audit to financial consulting firm Accuracy. Another consulting firm, Oliver Wyman, has been brought in to evaluate Worldline's overall control system. Worldline, a key link in the global payments chain, earns commissions on the flow of payments made both to physical and online customers. Some clients, such as online casinos, crypto-asset platforms and porn sites, are considered high-risk. An investigation published last week by a media consortium accused Worldline of processing billions of euros in fraudulent transactions in such sectors, as well as with suspected money laundering networks. French new website Mediapart accused Worldline of having 'knowingly closed its eyes, in violation of its regulatory obligations, to fraudulent practices by 'high-risk' clients.' The media investigation presaged an investigation by the Brussels prosecutor's office into the group's Belgian subsidiary over potential money laundering. The firm is also under investigation by Germany's financial supervisor, BaFin. Advertisement As the story emerged, Worldline said it had beefed up its merchant risk management framework since 2023 to ensure full compliance with legal requirements. In a statement last Wednesday it added it had 'terminated commercial relationships deemed non-compliant'. 'The cleanup has been largely completed,' Vacheron told Les Echos , saying high-risk transactions represented some '1.5 percent of Worldline's acquisition volume out of approximately €500 billion in transactions in 2024.' He said the audit, 'should make it possible to verify there are no black sheep within this 1.5 percent'. Shares in Worldline, a former subsidiary of Atos but independent since 2019, slumped to a record low of 2.70 euros last Wednesday, a having peaked at 85 euros in 2021. They were trading Wednesday at 3.89 euros.
Ya Biladi
02-07-2025
- Business
- Ya Biladi
Italy's far-right government opens doors to 500,000 foreign workers amid labor shortage
In Italy, the far-right government continues to rely on labor immigration, despite its often hostile rhetoric toward foreigners. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's administration has just approved a new decree allowing the entry of 500,000 non-EU workers between 2026 and 2028, Les Echos reported. The plan sets quotas at 164,850 entries in 2026, 165,850 in 2027, and 166,850 in 2028. The objective is clear: to address a labor shortage that is severely affecting critical sectors such as agriculture, tourism, and domestic care. Since coming to power in 2022, Meloni has overseen the arrival of nearly one million foreign workers, an outcome that stands in stark contrast to her pre-election promises of tougher immigration controls. This policy shift has been welcomed by the Italian business community, which has long warned of a pressing need for labor. According to estimates from Confindustria, Italy will require at least 600,000 additional foreign workers over the next five years to sustain its economy. Yet in practice, the system remains fraught with challenges. The work permit allocation process, known as «click day», operates like a lottery, requiring online registration at a set date. Applicants must also navigate cumbersome administrative procedures, lengthy delays, and financial barriers. As a result, many of the quotas set by the government never translate into actual visas or employment contracts. According to the association Ero Straniero, only 20% of the 2023 quotas led to residence permits and stable jobs—a rate that is expected to fall to just 12% in 2024. «As long as the system isn't reformed, we'll continue to generate irregularity», the association warns. Even Meloni herself has acknowledged the flaws. «The gap between the quotas and the contracts actually signed means that regular immigration becomes an additional channel for irregular immigration. Organized crime has infiltrated the application process», she admitted.
Yahoo
02-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Worldline initiates independent reviews following fraud claims
French payments processor Worldline has enlisted external specialists to scrutinise its client base and internal controls after media allegations of overlooking fraud led to a steep drop in its stock value. In an interview with Les Echos, the company's chairman Wilfried Verstraete confirmed that Accuracy, an auditing firm, will evaluate the company's portfolio of high-risk merchants. Additionally, consultancy Oliver Wyman has been appointed to examine Worldline's compliance mechanisms. Worldline intends to disclose preliminary results from these reviews alongside its half-year financial results on 30 July, Verstraete told Les Echos, aiming to restore confidence among investors and stakeholders. The audits follow reports by the European Investigative Collaborations, a network of 21 European media outlets, which alleged that Worldline disregarded regulatory warnings and maintained relationships with clients linked to high fraud rates. In response, Worldline stated that it has enhanced its merchant risk controls since 2023 and terminated non-compliant client relationships. These claims caused Worldline's market value to fall from a high of €24bn ($28.1bn) four years ago to under €1bn, Bloomberg reported. Last week, Belgian prosecutors have initiated an investigation into Worldline's Belgian operations following the media reports. Sweden's Financial Supervisory Authority has requested a meeting with the company. The European Central Bank (ECB) continues to hold two Worldline bonds—a €500m note due in 2027 and a €600m note maturing in 2028—as part of its quantitative easing programme, reported Bloomberg. According to data released, these bonds, acquired years ago, remain on the ECB's holdings list. The ECB does not disclose the size of its individual corporate bond holdings and is not obligated to sell bonds if their ratings are downgraded to non-investment grade. These securities are generally available for lending, enabling investors to borrow them and speculate on price declines. "Worldline initiates independent reviews following fraud claims " was originally created and published by Electronic Payments International, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
