Author: Björn Dressel, ANU On 23 August 2022, Malaysia’s top court unanimously made Najib Razak the first former Malaysian prime minister to be jailed. It upheld his graft conviction and the 12-year jail sentence for looting investments from Malaysia’s 1MDB state fund. The verdict concludes four years of legal manoeuvrings, delaying tactics and backroom interventions...
Author: Stephen Nagy, ICU Tokyo As a ‘cold peace’ settles between Japan and China, both countries are working towards a pragmatic, if not awkward, coexistence. Okinawa will continue to play a pivotal role in enhancing Japanese and US deterrence capabilities vis-a-vis China following Governor of Okinawa Prefecture Denny Tamaki’s re-election on 11 September 2022. Okinawa’s...
Authors: Juliette McIntyre and Adam Simpson, University of South Australia Two genocide cases are before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as of October 2022. The first was brought by the Gambia against Myanmar in 2019 for breach of the Genocide Convention during ‘clearance operations’ against the Rohingya ethnic minority in Rakhine State in 2017....
Author: Yunchen Tian, SMU Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently announced that will Japan drop its strict border policy on 11 October 2022. Alongside China, Japan has some of the world’s strictest visa and entry requirements for inbound foreign visitors. The reopening of the country is an easy win for the embattled Prime Minister and his...
Author: Sung-Young Kim, Macquarie University South Korea and Australia’s trade relationship is one of the most complementary in the world. Seoul is an exporter of high-tech manufactured goods — semiconductors, cars and electronics — and relies almost completely on imports for energy. Australia, on the other hand, is an importer of South Korea’s manufactured products...
Reuters exclusively revealed Beijing has sent a team of regulatory officials to Hong Kong to assist the U.S. audit watchdog with onsite audit inspections involving Chinese companies, as part of a landmark deal between the two countries. The post Reuters reveals China sends regulators to Hong Kong to assist U.S. audit inspection appeared first on...
Reuters exclusively reported Blackstone will sell a stake worth up to $400 million in Embassy Office Parks REIT, India’s biggest real estate investment trust, via Indian stock exchange block deals. Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, one of the world’s largest, is likely to pick up at least half of the stake that Blackstone is to...
Reuters was first to report Grab, Southeast Asia’s biggest ride-hailing and food delivery firm, does not envisage having to undertake mass layoffs as some rivals have done, and is selectively hiring, while reining in its financial service ambitions. The post Reuters reveals Southeast Asia’s Grab sees no big layoffs despite weak market appeared first on...
Reuters exclusively reported India’s long wait to win inclusion in JPMorgan’s influential emerging market debt index is set to be pushed out into next year due to a number of issues New Delhi needs to address. Investors had hoped the green light for inclusion could have come as early as this month after JPMorgan’s index...
Reuters exclusively reported the Taliban have signed a provisional deal with Russia to supply gasoline, diesel and wheat to Afghanistan, Acting Afghan Commerce and Industry Minister Haji Nooruddin Azizi told Reuters. Azizi said his ministry was working to diversify its trading partners and that Russia had offered the Taliban administration a discount to average global...