World
Danish lawmaker acquitted of EU funds fraud
A right-wing Danish lawmaker was acquitted on Wednesday of misusing European Union funds value 98,835 kroner (€13,286) and falsifying paperwork.
A Copenhagen court docket discovered Morten Messerschmidt, who heads the once-powerful Danish Folks’s Occasion, not responsible of creating false statements about holding an EU convention in 2015 so as to obtain EU funding. He maintained his innocence all through his trial.
“This implies lots. The case has forged lengthy shadows over the Danish Folks’s Occasion and me as a politician for seven years and some months,” Messerschmidt mentioned after the decision.
Danish prosecutors haven’t indicated whether or not they would attraction.
Messerschmidt served within the European Parliament on the time of the alleged crimes. He obtained extra private votes than some other Danish candidate within the 2014 election for the EU legislature and campaigned on a promise to fight alleged EU fraud.
One other Danish court docket gave Messerschmidt a suspended sentence in August 2021 in the identical case. As a result of the decide earlier on Fb had appreciated feedback criticising Messerschmidt and the anti-immigration Danish Folks’s Occasion, Messerschmidt was given a retrial on the idea of judicial bias.
In its ruling Wednesday, the Frederiksberg District Courtroom mentioned Messerschmidt, 42, spent EU cash on a convention in northern Denmark along with his Motion for a Europe of Liberties and Democracy (MELD), a pan-European celebration which was dissolved in 2015.
The case began after the European Union’s anti-fraud physique, OLAF, alleged in 2019 that funds granted by the European Parliament to 2 pan-European political teams have been misused by their members.
However the court docket acquitted Messerschmidt of utilizing a solid doc that he offered as a contract between the Danish Folks’s Occasion and the lodge the place the MELD convention was held. The contract was signed by the Danish Folks’s Occasion’s administrative chief, who presupposed to be representing the lodge as a result of the celebration was utilizing the lodge similtaneously MELD.
In the course of the trial, a number of prime Danish Folks’s Occasion members and different witnesses contradicted Messerschmidt, who turned the celebration’s chairman earlier this yr.
Inner squabbles led to the collapse of the populist celebration, which spearheaded Denmark’s crackdown on immigration 20 years in the past. The Scandinavian nation has a few of Europe’s strictest immigration legal guidelines due to the position of the Danish Folks’s Occasion.
The celebration confronted competitors for nationalist voters from new right-wing events on this yr’s Nov. 1 basic election. It obtained 2.6% of the vote, its worst consequence since its creation in 1995.
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Climate activists glue themselves to Munich airport runway, pausing traffic
A group of climate protesters have been arrested in Germany after breaking into an airport and gluing themselves to the runway.
Six activists broke through security fencing at Munich airport in the German state of Bavaria on Saturday, according to the news outlet dpa.
Approximately sixty flights were canceled after the half-dozen protesters glued themselves to the tarmac, forcing officials to temporarily close the airport.
CLIMATE ACTIVISTS ARRESTED FOR BLOCKING AIRSTRIP IN MASSACHUSETTS
An additional fourteen flights into Munich were forced to divert to other nearby airports to avoid the disruption.
Climate protest coalition Last Generation took credit for the stunt, claiming it was intended to draw attention to the German government’s inaction on the airline industry’s environmental impact.
CLIMATE GROUP TAKES RESPONSIBILITY FOR US OPEN CHAOS, OFFERS WARNING: ‘NO TENNIS ON A DEAD PLANET’
All six protesters were arrested and charged by law enforcement.
“Trespassing in the aviation security area is no trivial offense. Over hundreds of thousands of passengers were prevented from a relaxed and punctual start to their Pentecost holiday,” German Airports Association General Manager Ralph Beisel told dpa.
“Such criminal actions threaten air traffic and harm climate protection because they only cause lack of understanding and anger,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser wrote about the protests on social media platform X.
The Munich incident was just one of many similar protests around the world against air transportation. Last Generation has performed at least two similar airport disruptions in Germany since last year.
World
Russian court seizes two European banks’ assets amid Western sanctions
Freezing hundreds of billions of dollars in lenders’ assets was part of dispute over gas project halted by sanctions.
A Russian court has ordered the seizure of the assets, accounts, property and shares of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank in the country as part of a lawsuit involving the German banks, court documents showed.
The banks are among the guarantor lenders under a contract for the construction of a gas processing plant in Russia with the German company Linde. The project was terminated due to Western sanctions.
European banks have largely exited Russia after Moscow launched its offensive on Ukraine in 2022.
A court in St Petersburg ruled in favour of seizing 239 million euros ($260m) from Deutsche Bank, documents dated May 16 showed.
Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt said it had already provisioned about 260 million euros ($283m) for the case.
“We will need to see how this claim is implemented by the Russian courts and assess the immediate operational impact in Russia,” the bank added in a statement.
The court also seized the assets of Commerzbank, another German financial institution, worth 93.7 million euros ($101.85m) as well as securities and the bank’s building in central Moscow.
The bank is yet to comment on the case.
In a parallel lawsuit on Friday, the Russian court also ordered UniCredit’s assets, accounts and property, as well as shares in two subsidiaries, to be seized. The ruling covered 462.7 million euros ($503m) in assets.
UniCredit said it “has been made aware” of the decision and was “reviewing” the situation in detail. The bank was one of the most exposed European banks when Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine, with a large local subsidiary operating in Russia.
It began preliminary discussions on a sale last year, but the talks have not advanced. Chief executive Andrea Orcel said UniCredit wants to leave Russia, but added that gifting an operation worth three billion euros ($3.3bn) was not a good way to respect the spirit of Western sanctions on Moscow over the conflict.
Russia has faced heavy Western sanctions, including on its banking sector, since the start of the war in Ukraine. Dozens of US and European companies have also stopped doing business in the country.
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