Tory donor not ‘racist’ despite alleged Diane Abbott remarks, claims minister

Published

1 year ago

March 13, 2024

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A Conservative minister says he does not believe his party’s biggest donor is a racist, despite alleged comments he made about former Labour MP Diane Abbott – apparently saying she made him “want to hate all black women”.

Rishi Sunak took the whole of Tuesday to call out the remarks from businessman Frank Hester – first reported in the Guardian – eventually saying they were “racist and wrong”.

But despite the condemnation, the prime minister said remorse from the donor “should be accepted”.

Politics live: Sunak expected to face ‘storm’ at PMQs

Ahead of today’s Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), business minister Kevin Hollinrake repeated Mr Sunak’s criticism, telling Wilfred Frost on Sky News that the alleged comments were “clearly racist and wrong and there’s no question… you don’t judge somebody’s character based upon their skin colour”.

However, he added: “I think the key thing now is, is Mr Hester himself a racist? I don’t believe so from what I know, and I don’t know him.

“But I think in the context of what we know in the situation that we know right now, we should try and move on from this now, and I think that’s the right thing to do.”

Mr Hollinrake also appeared to reject calls from opposition parties for the Conservatives to return donations from Mr Hester and his company, healthcare software firm The Phoenix Partnership, totalling £10m.

“I think we should judge in the whole context,” he said. “We’ve got the most diverse cabinet in history. We’ve got the first British Asian prime minister in this country. We’re not a racist party.”

Asked if the Tories were “content to spend” the businessman’s money, the minister replied: “Well, on the basis he’s not a racist and has apologised for what he said, yes.”

After the reports first emerged, Mr Hester – who has personally donated over £5m to the Conservatives since the 2019 election – said he was “deeply sorry” for the “rude” remarks he made about Ms Abbott, including apparently saying she “should be shot”.

But he insisted they had “nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin”.

Since then, the Guardian has reported further comments he is alleged to have made to staff, asking a meeting if there was “no room for the Indians”, before suggesting employees climb on a train roof.

Mr Hester has not responded to the latest allegations.

In a statement on Tuesday, Ms Abbott said it was “frightening” and “alarming” to hear the comments allegedly made about her, especially after the murders of two MPs – Labour’s Jo Cox and Conservative Sir David Amess – in recent years.

“I am a single woman and that makes me vulnerable anyway,” she added. “But to hear someone talking like this is worrying.”

The Metropolitan Police confirmed last night they were assessing the alleged remarks from Mr Hester after officers from the parliamentary liaison and investigation team contacted them.

A spokesperson said both the force and the parliament team were staying in contact with Ms Abbott.

Labour also confirmed yesterday that they were supporting Ms Abbott, despite her being suspended from the party.

Tory ministers faced growing criticism throughout the course of Tuesday as they refused to call Mr Hester’s alleged remarks racist – including Mr Sunak’s official spokesperson.

In the morning, Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride told broadcasters the comments were “inappropriate”, but said they weren’t “gender-based or a race-based”, while energy minister Graham Stuart said his party still “welcomed” those who financially supported them.

However, in the afternoon, Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch posted on X to say the comments were “racist”, though adding there should be “space for forgiveness”.

By the evening, the prime minister finally released his own statement, saying: “The comments allegedly made by Frank Hester were racist and wrong. He has now rightly apologised for the offence caused and where remorse is shown it should be accepted.”  

But on Wednesday morning, another business minister, Nus Ghani, appeared to take a swipe at her party’s response, tweeting: “Zero tolerance on racism is just a slogan in today’s politics.

“[I] am reminded of Toni Morrison’s quote: ”The people who do this thing, who practice racism, are bereft. That is something distorted about the psyche. It’s a huge waste and it’s a corruption and a distortion’.”

Labour’s shadow paymaster general, Jonathan Ashworth, told Sky News it was “absolutely staggering it took Rishi Sunak 24 hours to condemn these racist, reprehensible comments about Diane Abbott”, saying it showed how “weak” the prime minister was.

He added: “Fundamentally, [Mr Sunak has] taken £10m from this individual. Every Tory MP and candidate handing out leaflets, paying for Facebook advertising, it’s funded by this £10m from this individual, who has made these deeply, deeply racist offensive comments.

“If Rishi Sunak had anything about him, if he had any backbone, he would pay that money back today.”

According to the Westminster Accounts project – a joint venture between Sky News and Tortoise Media to shine a light on how money works in politics – Mr Hester’s Phoenix Partnership has donated £5.1m to the Conservatives since 2019.

The company also made a single donation of £15,900 to Mr Sunak and, according to the prime minister’s entry in the register of members’ financial interests, it involved the “provision of [a] helicopter to fly me to a political visit and event on 23 November 2023”.

Politics

Trump tariffs squeeze already struggling Bitcoin miners — Braiins exec

Published

6 hours ago

April 4, 2025

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Trump tariffs squeeze already struggling Bitcoin miners — Braiins exec

The new trade tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump may place added pressure on the Bitcoin mining ecosystem both domestically and globally, according to one industry executive.

While the US is home to Bitcoin (BTC) mining manufacturing firms such as Auradine, it’s still “not possible to make the whole supply chain, including materials, US-based,” Kristian Csepcsar, chief marketing officer at BTC mining tech provider Braiins, told Cointelegraph.

On April 2, Trump announced sweeping tariffs, imposing a 10% tariff on all countries that export to the US and introducing “reciprocal” levies targeting America’s key trading partners.

Community members have debated the potential effects of the tariffs on Bitcoin, with some saying their impact has been overstated, while others see them as a significant threat.

Tariffs compound existing mining challenges

Csepcsar said the mining industry is already experiencing tough times, pointing to key indicators like the BTC hashprice.

Hashprice — a measure of a miner’s daily revenue per unit of hash power spent to mine BTC blocks — has been on the decline since 2022 and dropped to all-time lows of $50 for the first time in 2024.

According to data from Bitbo, the BTC hashprice was still hovering around all-time low levels of $53 on March 30.

“Hashprice is the key metric miners follow to understand their bottom line. It is how many dollars one terahash makes a day. A key profitability metric, and it is at all-time lows, ever,” Csepcsar said.

He added that mining equipment tariffs were already increasing under the Biden administration in 2024, and cited comments from Summer Meng, general manager at Chinese crypto mining supplier Bitmars.

“But they keep getting stricter under Trump,” Csepcsar added, referring to companies such as the China-based Bitmain — the world’s largest ASIC manufacturer — which is subject to the new tariffs.

Trump’s latest measures include a 34% additional tariff on top of an existing 20% levy for Chinese mining imports. In response, China reportedly imposed its own retaliatory tariffs on April 4.

BTC mining firms to “lose in the short term”

Csepcsar also noted that cutting-edge chips for crypto mining are currently massively produced in countries like Taiwan and South Korea, which were hit by new 32% and 25% tariffs, respectively.

“It will take a decade for the US to catch up with cutting-edge chip manufacturing. So again, companies, including American ones, lose in the short term,” he said.

Csepcsar also observed that some countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States region, including Russia and Kazakhstan, have been beefing up mining efforts and could potentially overtake the US in hashrate dominance.

“If we continue to see trade war, these regions with low tariffs and more favorable mining conditions can see a major boom,” Csepcsar warned.

As the newly announced tariffs potentially hurt Bitcoin mining both globally and in the US, it may become more difficult for Trump to keep his promise of making the US the global mining leader.

Trump’s stance on crypto has shifted multiple times over the years. As his administration embraces a more pro-crypto agenda, it remains to be seen how the latest economic policies will impact his long-term strategy for digital assets.

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Malta regulator fines OKX crypto exchange $1.2M for past AML breaches

Published

6 hours ago

April 4, 2025

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Malta regulator fines OKX crypto exchange .2M for past AML breaches

Cryptocurrency exchange OKX is under renewed regulatory scrutiny in Europe after Maltese authorities issued a major fine for violations of Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws.

Malta’s Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit (FIAU) fined Okcoin Europe — OKX’s Europe-based subsidiary — 1.1 million euros ($1.2 million) after detecting multiple AML failures on the platform in the past, the authority announced on April 3.

While admitting that OKX has significantly improved its AML policies in the past 18 months, the authority “could not ignore” its past compliance failures from 2023, “some of which were deemed to be serious and systematic,” the FIAU notice said.

OKX was among the first crypto exchanges to receive a license under Europe’s new Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulation via its Malta hub in January 2025.

The news of the $1.2 million penalty in Malta came after Bloomberg in March reported that European Union regulators were probing OKX for laundering $100 million in funds from the Bybit hack.

Bybit CEO Ben Zhou previously claimed that OKX’s Web3 proxy allowed hackers to launder about $100 million, or 40,233 Ether (ETH), from the $1.5 billion hack that occurred in February.

This is a developing story, and further information will be added as it becomes available.

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US court fines UAE crypto firm CLS Global $428K for wash trading

Published

7 hours ago

April 4, 2025

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US court fines UAE crypto firm CLS Global 8K for wash trading

Authorities in the US state of Massachusetts continue targeting unlawful cryptocurrency market practices, with a local court fining crypto financial services firm CLS Global.

A federal court in Boston on April 2 sentenced CLS Global on criminal charges related to fraudulent manipulation of crypto trading volume, according to an announcement from the Massachusetts US Attorney’s Office.

In addition to a $428,059 fine, the court prohibited CLS Global from offering services in the US for a probation period of three years.

CLS Global, a crypto market maker registered in the United Arab Emirates, in January pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit market manipulation and one count of wire fraud.

CLS agreed to manipulate the FBI’s “trap token” NexFundAI

The charges against CLS Global followed an undercover law enforcement operation involving NexFundAI, a token created by the FBI as part of a sting operation in May 2024.

CLS Global was among at least three firms that took the FBI’s bait and agreed to provide “market maker services” for NexFundAI, including a fraudulent scheme to attract investors to purchase the token.

In October 2024, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced fraud charges against CLS and its employee, Andrey Zhorzhes. The US securities regulator also filed complaints against two other NexFundAI manipulators, Hong Kong-linked ZM Quant Investment and Russia-linked Gotbit Consulting.

CLS Global’s profile

According to CLS Global CEO Filipp Veselov, the company was founded in 2017 to fill in a “huge gap in the market for high-quality market-making solutions and trading consulting.”

Prior to CLS, Veselov worked at the Russian cryptocurrency exchange platform Latoken, which is advertised as a “global digital asset exchange” and has about 370,000 followers on X.

The CLS team also includes chief revenue officer Pavel Singaevskii, who previously served as sales manager at Stex, a crypto platform that reportedly ceased operations without warning in 2023.

US court fines UAE crypto firm CLS Global $428K for wash trading — *Source:* *CLS Global*

According to CLS Global’s X page, the platform continues operating and has more than 110,000 followers at the time of publication.

How much wash trading is in crypto?

Wash trading is an illegal practice involving artificially inflating trading volume by repeatedly buying and selling the same asset, generating a misleading perception of demand.

According to a January 2025 report by the US blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, the crypto market has at least $2.6 billion in estimated wash traded volumes, or just about 2% of total daily crypto trading volumes, as reported by CoinGecko.

Some studies indicate that wash trading makes up a bigger share of the crypto market.

In 2022, the US National Bureau of Economic Research reported that illegal wash trading may account for as much as 70% of average trading volumes on unregulated exchanges.

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