La politica es la politica: February 2019

Tuesday 26 February 2019

Scotiabank offices raided by prosecutors in Costa Rica

On February 21, 2019, the Prosecutor in the Central American country of Costa Rica raided the offices of the Canadian multinational Scotiabank, claiming that the bank had failed to provide the government with information on accounts and deposits that could allegedly implicate Alejandro Toledo, the former president of Peru, with money laundering.

Scotiabank's offices in the Sabana Norte district,
in San Jose, Costa Rica, were raided on February 21

During his presidency, Toledo is believed to have received C$26 million in bribes from the Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht S.A. as payment to secure infrastructure contracts.

Toledo was last reported to be in the United States, with Peru having requested extradition. Interpol has had a red notice out for the former politician since May, 2017.

Bribery allegations against Odebrecht broke in Brazil in 2015. Since then, the company has been connected to corruption in at least ten countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, with some of the allegations dating back many years.

Friday 22 February 2019

Jamilah Taib and Sean Murray ordered to pay $220,000 to Swiss NGO

A Swiss court has ordered the Malaysian-Canadian entrepreneur Jamilah Taib Murray and her Canadian husband Sean Murray to pay C$220,000 in damages, as well as C$26,000 in court costs, to the Swiss NGO Bruno Manser Fonds (BMF).

(For an update on this story, see Jamilah Taib Murray continues campaign against Swiss NGO.)

This decision is the first round in a larger defamation suit. Jamilah Taib Murray and Sean Murray, who are active in philanthropic circles in Ottawa, are continuing to seek a permanent injunction that would ban 255 publications and 1,100 “infringing statements” allegedly made by BMF. The Ottawa couple are specifically named as plaintiffs in the suit, as are two of their companies, Sakto Corporation and Sakto Development Corporation.

The BMF team after the court victory in Basel, Switzerland

BMF, named in honour of the late Swiss environmentalist Bruno Manser, has been running a campaign against deforestation in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo. It claims that over many years Jamilah Taib Murray, as the daughter of Sarawak’s chief minister, Abdul Taib Mahmud, has received significant financial support from her father, who is alleged to have engaged in corrupt practices in Malaysia.

Mezcalero, a Detective Sánchez novel

Bicultural and transgender, detective Ernesto Sánchez seeks a missing Canadian woman on Mexico’s Pacific coast. Moving uneasily in a world where benign tourism co-exists with extreme violence, he becomes a pawn in a shadowy power-play between corrupt police and drug cartels. Forced to make hard choices – desperate, wounded, and friendless – Sánchez takes refuge in the lawless mountains of Oaxaca. And discovers his fate.

Praise for Mezcalero:

“Wilson’s Mezcalero is a real-pager turner…While the milieu of Wilson’s novel is reminiscent of the hard-boiled tradition, his creation of P.I. Ernesto Sánchez is original, and helps Wilson push the boundaries with respect to genre. Sánchez is a hard-hitting private eye, but Wilson also depicts him as struggling with many of the issues that transgender individuals typically face; in this manner, Wilson creates both a riveting mystery and timely story about navigating life as a gender nonconforming individual.”

Heather Duerre Humann, author of Gender Bending Detective Fiction: A Critical Analysis of Selected Works.

“Mezcalero is a remarkable read, with sustained suspense, surprise explosions of poetry and violence, and some new answers to old questions...Wilson understands something about violence and gender that I have never encountered before: that women’s violence is perhaps the most feared. Sanchez’s womanly violence in his manly body is a mystery revealed, a truth told that we suspected all along. This is a profoundly feminist book. The women in the book are the power brokers, the activators of action; even the most oppressed empleada is a container of her own complete power. Mezcalero is deftly plotted, and deploys an acrobatic narrative that is, frankly, exhilarating. Sanchez has a lot to teach us. Wilson, too.”

Janette Platana, author of A Token of My Affliction (2015 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize; 2016 English Language Trilium Book Award finalist).

“T.E. Wilson’s Mezcalero is, as a novel, a tacit consequence of the author’s real-world work as a reporter/journalist in Mexico. His work is rich in essence, and rich in detail, of how widespread organized crime and corruption permeate Mexican society. Highly recommended. This is great, well-grounded fiction.”

Dr. Edgardo Buscaglia, Senior Research Scholar in Law and Economics, Columbia University, and President of the Citizens’ Action Institute (Instituto de Acción Ciudadana).

“T.E. Wilson has crafted a terrific, terrifying and yet sensationally witty portrait of modern Mexico. Detective Sánchez is irresistible. You won’t soon forget his journey through that unpredictable jungle that is Mexico today.”

León Krauze, Mexican journalist, author and news anchor.

You can order a paper copy here, and the Kindle edition here. To find out more, go to DetectiveSanchez.com.