MS Risk Blog

Police Seize Dozens of Kilos of Drugs in Australia

Federal authorities have seized 73 kilograms of drugs and arrested three Malaysian nationals trying to smuggle their illicit cargo through Melbourne Airport. After arriving yesterday at Melbourne’s Tullamarine Airport on a flight from Kuala Lumpur, the three men attempted to pass through customs but were intercepted by members of the Australian Border Force (ABF). Their luggage was examined and a total of 55 kilograms of methamphetamine and 18 kilograms of heroin were found. According to ABF Acting Commissioner Michael Outram, the haul was one of the largest that had ever been seized at an Australian airport. “This seizure represents one of the largest seizures in Australian history through an Australian international airport, which proves law enforcement agencies are working harder than ever to keep drugs out of our community,” he said.

So far, two of the men have been charged with the importation of a commercial quantity of border controlled drugs and attempting to possess a commercial quantity of border controlled drugs. The third member of the group will be charged at a later date.

In recent years, there has been an observable tendency on the part of Australian drug users to favour amphetamine type substances (ATS) over alternative narcotics. While a large proportion of these illicit substances were once manufactured domestically, in large part because of the ready availability of precursor chemicals, the tightening of relevant law enforcement mechanisms has reduced this practice. Now, criminal groups are increasingly obliged to source precursor chemicals and drugs offshore. As a result of this, there are noticeably more narcotic and precursor chemical seizures at the border. In the 2013-14 reporting period alone, the number of ATS detections at the border increased to 2 367, the highest number on record. Interestingly, international mail accounted for the majority of ATS detections in Australia during this period while sea cargo accounted for the greatest proportion of detections by weight.

According to a recent report published by the Australian Crime Commission, China is the primary embarkation point for ATS (excluding MDMA), followed by Mexico, Hong Kong and the United States. Serious and organised criminal groups are believed at the centre of this thriving drug market.

Opposition Lawyers File New Petition to Impeach Brazilian President

On Wednesday, opposition lawyers filed a new petition to Congress for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff.

The authors of the filing are prominent lawyers Helio Bicudo, a founding member of the president’s ruling Worker’s Party, and Miguel Feale, a former justice minister, who are backed by the country’s main opposition party, the PSDB. The new petition reinforces an earlier one by the lawyers to include accusations that the doctoring of government accounts continued into Rousseff’s current team. It also accused the president of signing spending decrees of 820 million reais (US $210 million) with approval from Congress, which is an impeachable violation of the country’s budget laws.

If the request is taken up by the speaker of the lower house, Eduardo Cunha, who himself is under growing pressure to resign due to corruption allegations, months-long impeachment proceedings would begin, which will effectively prolong a political crisis that has deepened the country’s economic slump.

The request is considered to be the most serious attempt so far to impeach the Brazilian president as it is based on a federal audit court ruling that her government manipulated its accounts in a bid to disguise the size of the deficit and to allow for more spending in the run-up to her narrow re-election last year.

The president’s government is scrambling to block impeachment proceedings in the lower house, where the president’s opponents would require two-thirds of the votes in order to approve an impeachment trial that would be held in the Senate. Furthermore, polls have shown that two in every three Brazilians want to see the president impeached. Her approval rate has fallen to single digits in recent polls, with many blaming her for not stopping a corruption scandal at state-run oil company Petrobras and for mismanaging the country’s once-booming economy.

If Congress does impeach the president, then Vice President Michel Temer, who is the leader of the country’s largest party, the PMDB, would serve as president of the remainder of the term. However it currently remains unclear when, or even wether, the speaker will decide to take up the impeachment request, as Cunha is battling to remain in office following revelations of secret Swiss bank accounts in his name that link him to the massive bribery and political kickback scandal at Petrobras.

Student Protests Continue in South Africa

On Wednesday, South African police used stun guns outside the parliament building in Cape Town in a bid to disperse students demonstrating against planned tuition fee hikes.

On the ground sources have reported that the violence unfolded after students pushed their way through a parliament gate and scuffled with riot police. Earlier in the day, security guards forcibly removed a group of opposition lawmakers from the parliament floor after lawmakers, who are sympathetic to the students, disrupted the debate by chanting: “Fees must fall!”

The protests are part of a wave of nationwide protests that have resulted in the closing down of many South African universities, which say they are struggling with higher operational costs as well as inadequate state subsidies. Earlier this week, Blade Nzimande, who is the higher education minister, proposed a 6 percent limit on tuition fee increases for next year. However student leaders have rejected this proposal, stating that they will continue with their protests. The University of Witwatersrand (WITS) in Johannesburg, has suspended lectures and other operations for the rest of the week. It had dropped a proposed hike of 10.5 percent in tuition fees after several days of protests. Other universities had also planned increases of at least 10 percent.

Canada’s Liberal’s Sweep to Power

Late on Monday, after a long day of voting, Canada’s Liberal Party decisively won the country’s general election, effectively ending nearly a decade of Conservative rule.

While the centrist Liberal Party, which is led by Justin Trudeau, had initially started the campaign in third place, with the New Democratic Party (NDP) leading and the Conservative Party in second place, in what is a stunning turnaround, they now command a majority. Mr Trudeau, the 43-year-old son of late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau who is considered to be the father of modern Canada, indicated Monday that Canadians had voted for real change. Incumbent Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, in power since 2006, has congratulated his rival and has since announced that he will be stepping down as the party’s leader. Mr Harper, one of the longest-serving Western leaders, had been seeking a rare fourth term in office. His party has announced that while he will stand down as Conservative leader, he will remain as an MP. Tom Mulcair of the left-leaning NDP also disclosed that he “congratulated Mr Trudeau on his exceptional achievement.”

The Liberal Party has won 184 seats of a total 338 seats in parliament while the Conservatives gained 99 seats. The NDP is on course to win 44 seats, less than half the number it held in the outgoing parliament. While there is no fixed transition period under Canada’s constitution, Mr Trudeau is expected to be sworn in in a few weeks’ time.

During the 11-week election campaign, the Liberal Party indicated that it would cut income taxes for middle-class Canadians while increasing them for the wealth; run deficits for three years in order to pay for infrastructure spending; do more in order to address environmental concerns over the controversial Keystone oil pipeline; take in more Syrian refugees and pull out of bombing raids against the Islamic State (IS) group while bolstering training for Iraqi forces; and legalize marijuana.

Guinea Records Two New Ebola Cases After Two Weeks of No New Cases

The World Health Organization (WHO) has reported that there are two new cases of Ebola that have been recorded in Guinea this week, effectively ending two consecutive weeks in West Africa when no cases of the disease were reported.

Officials have indicated that the two new patients were not previously identified contacts being tracked by health authorities. This suggests that officials are still unable to monitor everyone exposed to Ebola. On Friday, WHO spokeswoman Dr Margaret Harris disclosed that the UN health agency had expected to see more cases despite the recent lull in the epidemic, adding that the cases were in areas where scientists knew Ebola was spreading.

In its weekly update, WHO officials disclosed that there was a “near-term risk of further cases among both registered and untraced contacts.” To date, Ebola has killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.