The U.S. Treasury Department and South Africa’s National Treasury on Wednesday agreed to form a task force to “follow the money” and step up efforts to halt illegal trade in wildlife, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.

Speaking at the Dinokeng Game Reserve outside Pretoria, Yellen told South African officials the new group would work to boost information sharing by the countries’ financial intelligence units and to strengthen controls to combat money laundering and terrorist financing.

Most wildlife poached and trafficked worldwide is destined for China for use in traditional medicines, a U.S. official said. Such trafficking declined sharply during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, but began rising again last year.

Conservation Strategy Fund ranks illegal wildlife trafficking as the world’s fourth-largest internationally-organized crime, with annual revenues of $7 billion to $23 billion.

South African media have reported that the Paris-based Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which sets standards on combating money laundering and illicit financing, could add South Africa to its “grey list” when it meets in February 2023.

Grey-listed countries are subject to greater monitoring by the FATF on concern that they are at higher risk for money laundering and terrorist financing.

“Through closer collaboration to target illicit proceeds linked to wildlife trafficking, as well as overlapping criminal activity like corruption, fraud, and drug trafficking, we are taking a step in the right direction today,” Yellen said after touring the game preserve, which has suffered from poaching of wild animals, including rhinoceros, in the past.

“To help save wildlife populations from further poaching and disrupt the associated illicit trade, we must ‘follow the money’ in the same way we do with other serious crimes,” Yellen said.

Yellen said the U.S. Treasury already worked alongside South Africa with FATF to identify indicators associated with money laundering and wildlife trafficking, but “much more” could be done to crack down on the illegal money flows associated.

This included identifying and seizing the proceeds generated from the illegal wildlife trade and impeding the money laundering and cross-border transactions of transnational criminal organisations often involved in corruption, she said.

“To make an impact against this harmful crime and the illicit financing that accompanies it, we must use this as an opportunity to build a consistent and durable approach,” said Yellen, who will meet South African President Cyril Ramaphosa later on Wednesday and top finance officials on Thursday.

South Africa is the last stop on Yellen’s three-country tour of Africa, which is part of the Biden administration’s push to deepen U.S. economic ties with Africa and provide a counterweight to China, which has dominated trade and investment on the continent for the last decades.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield is expected in Ghana on Wednesday, kicking off her own three-nation African tour that will focus on regional security issues and strengthening food security.

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Hindenburg Research said it held short positions in India’s Adani Group, accusing the conglomerate of improper use of offshore tax havens and flagging concerns about high debt that eroded $11 billion in investor wealth on Wednesday.

The group, which is led by Gautam Adani, the world’s third richest person according to Forbes, dismissed the U.S. short-seller’s claims as baseless, saying it was timed to damage its reputation ahead of a large share offering.

The group’s flagship firm, Adani Enterprises (ADEL.NS), will on Jan. 27 launch the country’s biggest public secondary share offering, aiming to raise to $2.5 billion to fund capital expenditure and pay off some debt.

Hindenburg, known for having shorted electric truck maker Nikola Corp (NKLA.O) and Twitter, said it holds short positions in Adani companies through U.S.-traded bonds and non-Indian-traded derivative instruments.

Its scathing research report questioned how the Adani Group has used offshore entities in offshore tax havens like Mauritius and the Caribbean Islands, adding that certain offshore funds and shell companies tied to the Adani Group “surreptitiously” own stock in Adani listed firms.

It also said key listed Adani companies had “substantial debt” which has put the entire group on a “precarious financial footing”, and asserted that shares in seven Adani listed companies have an 85% downside on a fundamental basis due to what it called “sky-high valuations”.

Adani Group’s Chief Financial Officer, Jugeshinder Singh, said in a statement the company was shocked by the report, calling it a “malicious combination of selective misinformation and stale, baseless and discredited allegations.”

“The Group has always been in compliance with all laws,” the company said, without addressing specific allegations made by Hindenburg.

“The timing of the report’s publication clearly betrays a brazen, mala fide intention to undermine the Adani Group’s reputation with the principal objective of damaging the upcoming follow-on Public Offering from Adani Enterprises,” it added.

Shares in Adani Transmission (ADAI.NS) fell 9%, Adani Ports And Special Economic Zone (APSE.NS) slipped 6.3% and Adani Enterprises ended down 1.5%. Collectively, the seven listed group companies lost $10.73 billion in market capitalization.

The report coincided with bidding for Adani’s secondary share sale by anchor investors on Wednesday. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority was among investors who bid for shares worth 90 billion rupees ($1.1 billion), compared with 60 billion rupees worth of stock on offer, a source told Reuters.

The research report, Hindenburg said, was based on an investigation over two years that involved speaking with dozens of individuals, including former Adani Group executives as well as a review of documents.

India’s capital markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Board of India, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Adani has repeatedly dismissed debt concerns. Singh told media on Jan. 21 “Nobody has raised debt concerns to us. No single investor has.”

Hindenburg’s report said five of seven key listed Adani companies have reported current ratios – a measure of liquid assets minus near-term liabilities – below 1. This, the short-seller said, suggested “a heightened short-term liquidity risk”.

Adani Group’s total gross debt in the financial year ended March 31, 2022, rose 40% to 2.2 trillion rupees.

Refinitiv data shows debt at Adani Group’s seven key listed Adani companies exceeds equity, with debt at Adani Green Energy Ltd (ADNA.NS) exceeding equity by more than 2,000%.

CreditSights, part of the Fitch Group, described the group last September as “overleveraged”. While the report later corrected some calculation errors, CreditSights said it continued to be concerned about Adani Group’s leverage.

Hindenburg also said it was concerned that a high proportion of equity held by promoters or key shareholders in Adani Group listed companies has been pledged for loans.

“Equity share pledges are an inherently unstable source of lending collateral,” it said in the report.

Last year, the Adani Group bought cement firms ACC (ACC.NS) and Ambuja Cements (ABUJ.NS) from Switzerland’s Holcim (HOLN.S) for $10.5 billion. Days later, it pledged shares in the two firms, worth about $12.5 billion at the time, to banks in a non-disposal agreement that prevents it from offloading the shares until lenders agree that debts are paid.

ACC and Ambuja both fell over 7% on Wednesday.

When the news first broke that President Joe Biden’s representatives had found classified documents in Biden’s home, Palmer Report predicted that this would end up being a non-scandal that went nowhere. There was simply no correlation between the Biden non-scandal and Donald Trump’s classified document criminal scandal, and any attempt at making any such connections would fall flat.

Sure enough, even as Fox News and right wing propagandists have desperately tried to make the Biden documents story into a scandal, the mainstream media has already grown bored with the story. After Biden had the FBI come search his home, we said that would more or less put the whole thing to bed. And now things have taken a turn that really is going to let the air out of the Biden documents narrative.

It turns out Mike Pence’s representatives searched his home and also found classified documents, which Pence has now turned over to the FBI. This makes clear that former Presidents and Vice Presidents tend to handle so many classified documents while in office, it’s not uncommon for a smattering of them to get placed in the wrong boxes when packing up and leaving office.

It’s also clear that the likes of Biden and Pence aren’t in any actual trouble; they searched their own properties and turned over what they found in order to make sure they weren’t going to be in any trouble.

This also draws a clear contrast between these non-scandals and Donald Trump’s criminal scandal, in which he repeatedly lied about being in possession of classified documents, and tried to obstruct the investigation once he was caught being in possession of them. Trump’s attempt at a coverup alone makes him guilty of felony obstruction of justice, no matter how the documents ended up in his home. And his actions give away that he obviously took the classified documents – which include nuclear state secrets – for nefarious purposes.

In other words, this is a good day for President Biden. He’s completely off the hook, in both a legal and perceptual sense, now that Mike Pence has also found classified documents in his home. And it’s a terrible day for Donald Trump, because it draws a clear dividing line between the Biden non-scandal and the Trump criminal scandal.

The post So much for the supposed Biden documents scandal appeared first on Palmer Report.

Lucid

• There are a lot of rules for new electric vehicles to qualify for tax credits.
• Those rules mean a lot of EVs on the market might not qualify for credits.
• Some automakers might look to capitalize on the commercial credit by leasing their EVs instead.

Automakers might be racing to find a way around the requirements set forth in the new EV tax credit to get their customers a $7,500 benefit.

Last summer’s Inflation Reduction Act set forth all sorts of rules for EVs to qualify for new electric car tax credits. 

Those rules — with more details to come from the Internal Revenue Service and Department of the Treasury in March — touch on minimum battery capacity, assembly in the US, pricing caps, and more. 

And they could leave EVs made by plenty of automakers ineligible for credits in the near-term, posing a threat to the multi-billion-dollar promises that car companies have made in their bids to electrify. 

But there may be another way. The commercial EV credit comes with way fewer requirements that are far less difficult to achieve — and it could be a clever workaround for the passenger vehicle space. 

Finding a workaround

The commercial credit was designed to incentivize commercial fleets to electrify. It goes to the company buying the vehicle, like fleet manager, or an automaker or its finance arm. The credit is limited to $7,500 for vehicles that weigh less than 14,000 pounds, and $40,000 for all other commercial EVs.

But the law does not say that vehicles that claim the commercial credit through leasing have to be a commercial vehicle.

Therefore, an automaker can currently get the credit simply by owning the vehicles it leases. 

They then aren’t required to pass the savings on to the lessee, but they could apply the $7,500 credit that they received to the price of the EV, and thus, lower a customer’s monthly payment.

More automakers may opt to pass the credit on to consumers, if it gives them a leg up on competition.

EV startup Lucid, already, has emailed reservation holders about its efforts to get them the credit, as first reported on Drive Tesla.

Lucid vehicles don’t qualify for the new EV credit given they are priced at higher than the MSRP cap requirements.

“Save $7500 immediately,” the email, viewed by Insider, said. “Starting now, customers who lease any Lucid Air through Lucid Financial Services will receive an automatic $7,500 savings in the form of a capital cost reduction. By taking advantage of this savings, customers get a lower monthly payment for their new Lucid Air.”

A spokesperson for Ford’s financial services arm, Ford Credit, told Automotive News that it can claim the tax credit on qualifying EVs that it owns and leases, but that “these are competitive decisions that we won’t discuss publicly.”

This loophole could also help non-domestic manufacturers claim the credit, negating the point of implementing a domestic supply chain.

“That opens up everything from the Lucid to the GMC Hummer to Mercedes to Hyundai, Kia, et cetera, that are disqualified for some reason,” said Loren McDonald, EV analyst and founder of research site EVAdoption. “My expectation is that many of the non-US manufacturers will start offering this.”

What it means for car-buyers

Implementation of the commercial credit “bends to the desires of the companies looking for loopholes,” West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said in an issued statement.

Another detail of the law could make for an interesting challenge.

If an EV is eligible for the new tax credit through a vehicle purchase, it cannot take the credit if leased. If an EV is only eligible for the commercial tax credit through a lease, it cannot take a credit if purchased. 

“If you wanted to lease, let’s say, the Chevrolet Bolt, which does qualify, you don’t get the credit with the loophole, because it qualifies” for the new EV credit instead, McDonald said. 

“Good news is, the Tesla Model 3 or Chevy Bolt qualifies, so go buy it — but if you want to lease it, you’re screwed,” McDonald added. “But, if you want to buy the Kia EV6 or the GMC Hummer, which doesn’t qualify, if you lease it, it does.”

It may result in more car-buyers interested in leasing higher-cost EVs. But car-buyers can’t assume the auto company will automatically pass along the credit.

Spencer Platt /Getty Images

• A laid-off Google employee saw a co-worker scan his badge to get into the NYC office but the reader kept turning red.
• He saw his confused co-worker walk past the reception only to get blocked and escorted out by security.
• The strict badge-scanning came as Google announced overnight layoffs impacting 12,000 employees.

Google employees were notified early Friday morning by email that they’d been laid off — but if they didn’t check their inbox before commuting to work, they were in for a tough surprise.

One laid-off Google employee, a software engineer who requested anonymity to speak freely, told Insider that he witnessed one of his co-workers repeatedly try to scan his employee badge to get into Google’s Chelsea, New York office, only for the card reader to turn red and deny him entry.

His colleague was clearly confused, the former employee told Insider, and after his badge failed to work, he walked past reception toward the staircase that led up to the office, where he was met by a security guard who escorted him out. 

The laid-off employee said that his co-worker who tried to badge-in “seemed a little flustered” and that it didn’t seem like he was trying to sneak in. 

Another former Google employee, Zac Bowling, — who worked at Google for nearly eight years as an engineer before he, too, was laid off — told Insider that he’d also heard that any Google employee trying to access the NYC office was required to scan their badge on the day of the layoffs.

Strictly requiring employees to scan their badges to get into the office struck him as unusual.

“It was very clear what was going on,” he said. “We never had a problem with tailgating through doors, and not tapping your badge in the past. If you just show your badge to the person in front of you, they just hold the door open.” 

Google’s Chelsea, New York office building, where security ensured people were badging in the morning after layoffs.

Shutterstock

The former Googler who requested anonymity echoed the sentiment. Normally, he said, Google employees often quickly show their badges to the guards in front of the elevator and are allowed to take the elevator up to whatever floor they needed to go to. But on Friday, the guards ordered him and other people entering the office to take the elevator to the second floor to scan their badges at the reception. 

A Google spokesperson pushed back on that characterization, telling Insider that all New York employees are required to tap their badges at the entrance to enter the facilities.

The former Googler who witnessed the failed badge-in attempt by a colleague also said that he noticed more security guards than usual that day. There’s usually only two guards standing in front of the elevator, he said. But on Friday, he remembered seeing about four or five.

Security guards also told employees to badge in individually at the building in Mountain View, California, on the morning of the layoffs, an additional source familiar with the matter told Insider. 

12,000 employees — 6% of the company’s global workforce — were laid off, Google CEO Sundar Pichai wrote in a memo to employees.

One laid-off software engineer told Insider that getting laid-off via email was “a slap in the face.” Another worker said she couldn’t “control her shaky hands” after she learned she was being let go.

The layoffs also sent shockwaves throughout the company. During Google’s tense all-hands meeting on Monday, employees requested “psychological safety” at work and asked management if they will reduce their bonuses and pay raises. 

Google joins big tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon that also announced this month that they will be laying off thousands of their employees. In total, more than 55,3000 employees have been impacted by layoffs in 2023, according to tracking site Layoffs.fyi. 

Are you a current or former Google employee? Do you work at another Big Tech company? Got a tip? Contact Aaron Mok via a non-work email at amok@insider.com, or on Signal at 718.710.8200.

Additional reporting by Rosalie Chan.