by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Jerusalem : Italy approved on Monday an additional funding of €3.5 million for UNRWA programs to be carried out in Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip, according to a press release by the Italian Consulate in Jerusalem.
“In accordance with the well-established Italian support to UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and given the serious financial difficulties that UNRWA is facing, Italy has approved an additional funding of €3.5 million for programs to be carried out in Lebanon and in the Gaza Strip,” said the statement.
“The contribution comes on top of the financial effort already set up by Italy for the benefit of the Agency. This effort, considered as a whole $14 million in 2017, allows our country to be the 14th most important donor of the agency.”
The statement said “UNRWA keeps playing an essential part by providing basic services to more than 5 million Palestinian refugees. Its activities contribute in a concrete manner to the stability of the region.”
The Italian contribution came after the United States, the largest donor with $360 million in annual aid to UNRWA, decided to stop all funding to the humanitarian agency, a step seen to punish and pressure the Palestinians to accept its terms for a settlement with Israel.
—AG/UNA-OIC
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Paris : Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been taken into police custody for questioning over allegations that he received funding from the regime of the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi for the 2007 presidential election campaign.
Sarkozy, 63, was summoned to a police station in Nanterre and was being questioned in relation to “irregularities” over the financing of his 2007 campaign that swept him to power for a single five-year term, Le Monde daily reported citing court sources.
An inquiry was opened in April 2013 into allegations that Sarkozy’s campaign had benefited from illicit funds from Gaddafi but it was the first time that he is being questioned over the matter. He has denied any wrongdoing.
The development came several weeks after a former associate, Alexandre Djouhri, was arrested in London and later released on bail. One of Sarkozy’s former ministers and a close ally, Brice Hortefeux, was also being questioned on Tuesday, the BBC reported.
The former President can be held by police for up to 48 hours before facing magistrates.
French law bans candidates from receiving cash payments above 6,300 pounds, but the massive donation is said to have been laundered through bank accounts in Panama and Switzerland.
A document made public in Paris apparently showed that the French leader and the former Libyan dictator made an illegal financial deal, reports say.
Written in Arabic and signed by Mussa Kussa, Gaddafi’s intelligence chief, in 2006, it referred to an “agreement in principle to support the campaign for Sarkozy for a sum equivalent to 50 million euro”.
A bundle of evidence was originally leaked by senior members of Libya’s National Transitional Council to French investigative news site Mediapart, according to a Daily Mail report.
A governmental briefing note among papers sent to Mediapart pointed to numerous visits to Libya by Sarkozy and his colleagues which were aimed at securing funding, it said.
—IANS
