Questions over Rep. George Santos’ ties to $17 million Ponzi scheme – National & International News – MON 16Jan2023

Questions over Rep. George Santos’ ties to Ponzi scheme.

CA braces for more floods this week; 19 already dead.

Saudi academic may get death penalty for having a Twitter account.

NATIONAL NEWS

Questions over Rep. George Santos’ involvement in Ponzi scheme

Newly-seated House member George Santos (R-NY) already has a proven track record as a liar, having been caught in lies about his work and education history and his family background among many other things. There’s some question about whether George Santos is even his real name. At the very least, he seems to have a growing number of aliases.

The extent of Santos’ lying is so great that even several of his fellow New York Republicans have called on him to step down. But the Republican contingent in the House has largely circled the wagons to defend him, or at least his seat.

With a tight majority in the House, and Speaker Kevin McCarthy facing opposition from within his own party, the GOP can hardly afford to send Santos packing, despite his embarrassing antics. Rep. James Comer (R-TN), the new House Oversight Committee Chairman, underscored this yesterday. Comer admitted that Santos was “a bad guy”, but indicated he wouldn’t lose his seat for lying. However, Comer said that Santos would be removed if he’d violated campaign finance laws.

Ponzi, puppet, or both? 

Revelations of Santos’ previous prevarications raised questions about a drastic and mysterious change in his fortunes in the last couple of years. In 2020, the first time Santos ran for Congress, he listed no assets and a salary of $55,000 in his financial disclosure. During his 2022 run, Santos declared assets worth between $2.6 million and $11.25 million.

Santos may have run afoul of campaign finance laws with a $700,000 donation to his campaign from one of his companies, the Devolder Organization. The only clients of this firm that have been traced all happen to be major donors to Santos’ campaign. Some believe Santos set up a sham organization to get around campaign donation limits by laundering donations from his “clients”. 

More recently, news outlets uncovered another potential source of revenue for the Devolder Organization- outright fraud. In 2020 and 2021, Santos worked at Harbor City Capital, an organization that the Securities and Exchange Commission dubbed a “classic Ponzi scheme”. Harbor City Capital was selling fake bonds and promissory notes and paying off investors with money from other investors. The scam netted around $17 million and defrauded over 100 investors. Here you can see a Twitter thread where an investor confronts Santos (under the alias “George Devolder”) about the scam.

As if that weren’t bad enough, Santos didn’t report his Harbor City income on his 2020 financial disclosure.

California braces for more floods this week, with 19 already dead

Communities all over California are cleaning up from recent floods while simultaneously preparing for more. So far, 19 people have been confirmed dead in the storms since Christmas. None of these storms has been very strong individually, but the unrelenting succession of them has made already soaked areas more vulnerable to floods and mudslides from even the slightest rain. This is in part due to drought-parched ground that can’t readily absorb water and the loss of tree cover due to wildfires.

Over the weekend, about 25 million people were under flood watches. President Biden also issued a federal disaster declaration to free up funds for California’s recovery effort. What is passing over the state now is the 8th successive storm system in less than 3 weeks, and a ninth is on its way this week.

Some drought relief, but not a game changer

Much of California has been experiencing drought conditions for years. The recent storms and accumulation of water and snowpack have offered at least a partial reprieve. Before the rains, 27% of California was under “extreme drought” (the second-highest level of drought while 71% was under “severe drought” (the third highest). Now, less than 1% of the state is experiencing “extreme drought” and only 46% is under “severe drought”. 

Even more critically, the state has about 226% of its normal snowpack for this time of year. It’s even higher than the normal amount for April, when the snowpack is typically greatest.

While this is no doubt welcome, and certainly a silver lining for all the recent storm clouds, the state’s drought woes are far from over. Experts say that several seasons of 120% to 200% of normal rain and snowfall will be needed before the drought in the West will pass. The recent rains have also been confined to the area between the coast and the Sierra Nevada mountains. This will not benefit the West’s most important reservoirs, Lake Meade and Lake Powell, which are continuing to dry up.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Saudi academic may get death penalty for using Twitter

Prosecutors in Saudi Arabia are asking that a professor receive the death penalty for his use of social media. Awad Al-Qarni, a 65-year-old reformist law professor, is accused of having a Twitter and WhatsApp account and of using them to share his opinions which are “hostile to the kingdom”.

Having a Twitter account is not formally prohibited in Saudi Arabia. However, it seems even having a Twitter account can itself be an offense if a user doesn’t support the regime. In August last year, PhD student and mother Salma al-Shehab received a 34-year sentence for having a Twitter account and for following and retweeting posts from dissidents and activists. Later in the same month, another Saudi woman, Noura al-Qahtani, received a 45-years prison sentence for using Twitter “to tear the social fabric”.

Under the increasingly dictatorial rule of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom is attempting to project an image that it is keeping up with the modern world by embracing technology, cutting edge infrastructure, and making strong inroads into international sports with its LIV Golf league. The kingdom has invested heavily in tech companies like Meta (Facebook’s parent company), and even Twitter itself.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is Twitter’s second-largest investor and a major backer of Elon Musk’s recent takeover bid. Musk’s deal with his major investors gives them “access to confidential information about the social media platform”. Members of Congress and human rights watchdogs fear that this deal has made it easier for Saudi Arabia to identify the holders of dissident accounts on the platform.

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