CNN
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Ukraine has seen the first major anti-government protests since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion over three years ago, as a move by President Volodymyr Zelensky to curb anti-corruption agencies sparked fury across the nation.

Defiant crowds gathered in the capital Kyiv on Tuesday, as well as Lviv in the west, with smaller groups gathering in Dnipro in the east and Odesa in the south, after Ukraine’s Parliament — the Verkhovna Rada — approved a bill that grants oversight of two key anti-corruption agencies to the prosecutor general, a politically appointed figure.

Critics say the move will hamper the two bodies, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), and take Ukraine further away from its dream of joining the European Union. The EU has made it clear to Kyiv that it must implement strong anti-graft measures if it wants to become a member. The Biden administration urged the Ukrainian government to do more to root out corruption in 2023.

Ukraine has long been seen as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. Allegations of corruption have been wielded against some of the country’s top officials, including several close allies of Zelensky – such as former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov.

The bill was fast-tracked through the parliament and signed into law by Zelensky late Tuesday. The Ukrainian leader said in his nightly address that both organizations would “continue to work” but defending his move as a necessary step to rid the two agencies of “Russian influence.” This came after Ukrainian authorities raided one of the bodies on Monday and arrested two of its employees “on suspicion of working for Russian special services.”

He also criticized the previous system as leading to cases being stalled for years.

But opponents say the two agencies will no longer be able to operate independently because the new law gives the prosecutor general power to influence investigations and even shut cases down.

Criticism came from all corners of society. Former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba slammed the move in a statement, calling Tuesday a “bad day for Ukraine.”

The move didn’t go unnoticed on the frontlines, where the military is struggling to hold back Russian forces. Referring to corruption that the agencies were working to root out, Yegor Firsov, chief sergeant of a drone strike platoon, said on X that “this is not a question of NABU or SAP. This is a question of barbarism,” adding that “nothing is more demoralizing than seeing that while you are sitting in a trench, someone is robbing the country for which your brothers are dying.”

Responding to the criticism on Wednesday, Zelensky said “everyone would work solely in a constructive manner to resolve existing issues, deliver greater justice, and truly protect the interests of Ukrainian society.”

The two agencies affected by the law, said in a joint statement on Wednesday that they were “deprived of guarantees that previously enabled them to effectively carry out their tasks and functions in combating high-level corruption.” They called on the government to reverse the law.

Crucially for Kyiv, the criticism is coming from both inside and outside of Ukraine, including from some of the country’s key Western allies.

The Ukrainian branch of Transparency International, a leading independent nonprofit group that monitors corruption around the world, previously urged Zelensky to veto the new law.

It said that the new law destroys Ukraine’s independent anti-corruption institutions, which it said were “one of the greatest achievements” since pro-European protests sparked the Revolution of Dignity in 2014 that ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The two agencies were both founded after the revolution, specifically to tackle corruption among Ukraine’s top political echelon.

NABU is in charge of investigation corruption allegations, passing them to SAPO to prosecute once it has gathered evidence. Transparency International also said the new law would undermine the trust of Ukraine’s international partners, as a myriad of global organizations stepped in to criticize the law.

Marta Kos, European Union’s top official in charge of the process of admitting new member states, said she was “seriously concerned” over the law.

“The dismantling of key safeguards protecting NABU’s independence is a serious step back. Independent bodies like NABU & SAPO, are essential for (the) EU path. Rule of Law remains in the very center of EU accession negotiations,” Kos said on X.

Meanwhile, the American Chamber of Commerce said the move was disappointing. It said the law “threatens the independence of Ukraine’s anti-corruption infrastructure and undermines trust in the country’s anti-corruption efforts.”

The Agency for Legislative Initiatives (ALI), a leading Ukrainian think tank that focuses on democracy building and scrutinizes the work of the country’s parliament, said in a statement that the new law is a “180-degree turn” in European integration efforts.

ALI said the law gives the Ukrainian prosecutor general “nearly unlimited powers,” including the authority to transfer cases to different prosecutors and effectively block any investigations by pushing through administrative obstacles.

The prosecutors working for SAPO have gone through a rigorous selection process that included international expert advisors, ALI said, adding they have expertise that is unparalleled in other parts of the law enforcement system.

ALI also said that while the law purports to be a response to the war and the current extraordinary circumstances, it envisions the oversight of the top prosecutor to continue for three years after Ukraine’s martial law is lifted.

Fighting rampant government corruption was Zelensky’s main campaign pledge ahead of the 2019 election. A former comedian who played Ukraine’s president on a hit TV show, Zelensky had zero political experience before his victory – but he tapped into voters’ dismay on the issue.

During the war, Zelensky has fired a slew of senior Ukrainian officials over corruption allegations, and his government has instigated anti-corruption measures, including the National Anti-Corruption Strategy.

International organizations, including the EU, the United Nations and the Group of 7 have previously praised Zelensky’s government for its anti-corruption efforts.

But those same organizations are now denouncing the new law – while its critics in Ukraine say Zelensky’s campaign platform to rid the country of corruption was simply empty promises.

CNN
 — 

President Donald Trump and his predecessor Barack Obama have met for a substantive conversation exactly once: November 10, 2016, two days after Trump won his first election. It was Trump’s first time in the Oval Office. By most accounts, it was a little awkward.

Eight years and eight months later, the meeting cropped up again this week in a very different context. On Sunday, Trump posted an AI-generated video using footage from the session to depict FBI agents bursting into the office, pulling Obama from his chair and handcuffing him as he falls to his knees.

In the video, Trump watches on with a grin. His campaign anthem “Y.M.C.A.” blares in the background.

For years — since well before he launched a bid to become president himself — Trump has marinated in a singular fixation on the 44th president, whom he almost always refers to as “Barack Hussein Obama.”

This week, Trump’s preoccupation with Obama — and specifically his role in probing Russia’s role in the 2016 election — reemerged in dramatic fashion, drawing a rare rebuke from Obama’s office and reigniting the bitterest feud inside the rarified club of presidents.

Trump revived his old — but never forgotten — grievance as questions swirl about his own handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, pivoting quickly from a reporter’s question Tuesday about an Epstein associate to a lengthy diatribe in which accused his predecessor of treason.

Critics saw in Trump’s response a clear attempt to divert attention from a controversy that has put him at odds with influential members of his own base. Yet his resentments toward Obama predate any one effort at deflection, and aides say Trump has been as animated about his new accusations in private as he’s been this week in front of cameras.

His enmity has alternated between strategic attempts to erode Obama’s legacy and what advisers have described as more visceral disdain for someone Trump views as both unwarrantedly popular and the root of many of his troubles since entering politics a decade ago.

“Whether it’s right or wrong, it’s time to go after people,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Tuesday. “Obama’s been caught directly.”

During his first term, Trump’s gripes ran the gamut, from complaints about Obama’s handling of foreign policy to outlandish accusations he spied on Trump Tower.

Since retaking office in January, however, Trump had mostly been directing his ire toward his more immediate predecessor, Joe Biden, whom he portrays as a largely comatose bystander to his Democratic advisers’ radical agenda.

Obama and Trump even appeared to have a friendly conversation in the pews at Washington National Cathedral in January when they both attended the late President Jimmy Carter’s funeral. Trump invited Obama for a round of golf at one of his clubs, a person familiar with the conversation said.

“Boy, they look like two people [who] like each other,” Trump said a few days later when asked about the footage. “And we probably do.”

Now, probably not.

“He’s guilty,” Trump said Tuesday of Obama, sitting alongside the Philippine president. “This was treason. This was every word you can think of.”

The basis for Trump’s claims came via a report, issued last week by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, that sought to undermine an assessment made in 2017 that Russia sought to influence the election the year earlier in favor of Trump.

That assessment was later backed up by a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report that was endorsed by every Republican on the panel, including then-Sen. Marco Rubio, who is now Trump’s Secretary of State and acting national security adviser.

But Gabbard and Trump came to a different conclusion, and have accused Obama and top officials in his administration of manipulating intelligence to support a theory that Russia swung the results of the election.

Their findings appear to conflate Russia’s attempts to sow dissent through leaks and social media campaigns with efforts to hack election infrastructure and change vote totals, which intelligence officials have said did not happen in the 2016 contest.

Nonetheless, Trump framed the new report Tuesday as the “biggest scandal in the history of our country.”

“Obama was trying to lead a coup,” Trump said. “And it was with Hillary Clinton.”

A few hours later, a spokesman for Obama dismissed the accusations, making sure to note that ordinarily the former president ignores Trump’s “constant nonsense and misinformation” but could not, in this case, remain silent.

“These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,” said the spokesman, Patrick Rodenbush.

Trump has long viewed the Russia investigation as a cloud over his first presidency, one cooked up by his political rivals to subvert his legitimacy and undermine his ability to win an election.

In his second term, Trump has prioritized retribution against those who led investigations into him — and, in his mind, made his first term miserable.

Even though Obama was out of power by the time a special counsel was appointed and Congress began probing, Trump has singled out the former president as the “ringleader” of the effort.

“This is, like, proof — irrefutable proof — that Obama was seditious,” Trump said, adding a few seconds later that assigning blame on lower-level officials was a mistake: “I get a kick when I hear everyone talks about people I never even heard of,” he said. “No, no, it was Obama. He headed it up. And it says so right in the papers.”

Trump initially launched into the lengthy screed when asked a question about the Justice Department’s plans to interview Ghislaine Maxwell, the Epstein associate who is serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison for conspiring with the late sex offender to sexually abuse minors.

That Trump pivoted almost immediately — and without a great deal of explanation — from answering the Epstein question to his diatribe on Obama did little to dispel the impression he was using the issue to deflect from a scandal now entering its third week. Trump has been explicit that he believes the Epstein case is getting too much attention.

“We had the Greatest Six Months of any President in the History of our Country, and all the Fake News wants to talk about is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax!” he wrote on social media Tuesday.

But his anger toward Obama, voiced repeatedly over the course of his meeting, spoke to something deeper than a diversion tactic. It was a glimpse into a lingering grudge that appears unlikely to ever entirely disappear.

The resentments stretch back more than a decade, to the “birther” conspiracy Trump fueled years before vying for the presidency himself. His indignation appeared to deepen when Obama made fun of him during a 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech and television cameras found Trump scowling in the audience.

By the time Obama was handing off power to Trump, the seeds of suspicion had been planted, even if the two men put on a show of comity in the Oval Office.

Trump’s aides now look back on that period as a moment of deception.

“I watched a clip of (Obama) this weekend saying, you know, I’m going to do everything I can to help Donald Trump come in. That’s how our country will be successful. He said that to President Trump’s face in the Oval Office during that transition period,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said this week on the “Ruthless Podcast.”

“Meanwhile, he was holding secret meetings in the White House with top law enforcement and intelligence officials to put out this fake intelligence and mislead the American public,” she went on.

It’s all a distant cry from the mostly cordial — at least in public — relations between presidents that had been the norm for decades. That standard mostly died during Trump’s first term.

Since their single meeting in 2016, Trump and Obama have barely spoken, except for pleasantries at state occasions.

Former first lady Michelle Obama has taken to skipping any event where Trump might also appear.

London
Reuters
 — 

Tom Hayes, the first trader ever jailed for interest rate rigging, had his conviction overturned by Britain’s top court Wednesday after a years-long fight to clear his name.

The UK Supreme Court unanimously allowed Hayes’ appeal, overturning his 2015 conviction of eight counts of conspiracy to defraud by manipulating Libor, a now-defunct benchmark interest rate.

The court said there had been “ample evidence” for a jury to reasonably conclude Hayes had conspired with others to manipulate Libor submissions – much of it coming from Hayes’ own interviews with Britain’s Serious Fraud Office, which brought the charges against him.

But the jury 10 years ago was misdirected by the judge, the court said, and that “undermined the fairness of the trial.”

Supreme Court judge George Leggatt said Hayes was entitled to present his defense against allegations that he conspired to submit false information, including his insistence that he acted honestly, and to have those claims fairly considered by the jury.

“He was deprived of that opportunity by directions which were legally inaccurate and unfair,” the court said, adding that his convictions were “therefore unsafe and cannot stand.”

Hayes had initially received a 14-year prison sentence, later reduced to 11 years on appeal. He served five and a half years before being released on license in 2021.

A former star Citigroup and UBS trader, Hayes became the face of the global Libor scandal and challenged his conviction during three days of hearings at the UK Supreme Court along with Carlo Palombo, 46, a former Barclays trader who was found guilty in 2019 of skewing Libor’s euro equivalent, Euribor.

The court also quashed Palombo’s conviction. He was given a four-year sentence in 2019.

The SFO said that after considering the judgment it would not be in the public interest for it to seek a retrial.

Hayes and Palombo had argued that their convictions depended on a definition of Libor and Euribor that assumes there is an absolute legal bar on a bank’s commercial interests being taken into account when setting rates.

The Libor rate, phased out in 2023, was designed to reflect banks’ short-term funding costs and based on daily estimates from a group of banks as to how much they would expect to pay to borrow funds from each other for a range of currencies and periods.

Hayes’ challenge at the Supreme Court followed a landmark US court decision in 2022 that overturned the Libor rigging convictions of two former Deutsche Bank traders.