China’s heavily indebted property giant Evergrande Group on Thursday filed for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection in a U.S. court.
In a filing with the Manhattan bankruptcy court, the company referenced restructuring proceedings in Hong Kong, the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands.
In a separate statement, Evergrande on Friday said that it will ask the U.S. court for “recognition of the schemes of arrangement under the offshore debt restructuring for Hong Kong and the British Virgin Islands.”
It added, “The application is a normal procedure for the offshore debt restructuring and does not involve bankruptcy petition.”
The world’s most indebted property developer defaulted in 2021 and announced an offshore debt restructuring program in March. Trading of Evergrande shares have been suspended since March 2022.
Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection allows a U.S. bankruptcy court to intervene in cross-border insolvency case involving foreign companies that are undergoing restructuring from creditors. It aims to protect the debtors’ assets and facilitate the rescue of businesses that are in financial trouble.
Tianji Holdings, an affiliate of Evergrande, and its subsidiary, Scenery Journey, also filed for Chapter 15 protection in Manhattan bankruptcy court, according to the filing.
China’s massive real estate sector has long beena vital engine of growth for the world’s second-largest economy, and accounts for as much as 30% of the country’s gross domestic product.
Despite recent policy signals, investor worries linger. In late July, its top leaders indicated a shift toward greater support for the property sector, paving the way for local governments to implement specific policies.
In July, Evergrande posted a combined loss of $81 billion over the past two years, after struggling to finish projects and repay suppliers and lenders.
Net losses for 2021 and 2022 were 476 billion yuan ($66.36 billion) and 105.9 billion yuan ($14.76 billion), respectively, as a result of property write-downs, return of lands, losses on financial assets and financing costs, the company said.
The bankruptcy filing was signed by Jimmy Fong, who listed himself as a “foreign representative” of China Evergrande Group. A “scheme creditors” meeting is set for Wednesday at the Hong Kong office of Sidley Austin, the U.S.-based law firm representing Evergrande, the petition added.
— CNBC’s Evelyn Cheng and Elliot Smith contributed to this story.
The travel website FloridaPanhandle.com analyzed costs in 100 popular vacation spots, looking into average prices for accommodations, transportation, food and attractions.
Here are 10 destinations that certainly call for big budgets.
According to the analysis, the most expensive vacation destinations, excluding flight costs, are:
Gustavia, St. Barts
Gstaad, Switzerland
Aspen, Colorado
Park City, Utah
Maui, Hawaii
London, England
Cocoa Island, Maldives
Maun, Botswana
Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
Monte Carlo, Monaco
The 10 most expensive vacation destinations around the globe.
Source: CNBC
The list was dominated by islands and ritzy ski towns, though the draw of eco-tourism safaris in Botswana and Europe’s financial capital, London, rounded out the ranking.
The Caribbean island of St. Barts is the most expensive vacation destination in the world, largely because of its high accommodation costs, which average $1,770 per night, according to the analysis.
Average hotel rates in Switzerland’s Gstaad (No. 2) are $1,360, according to the research. The town in the Swiss Alps also has the highest average food costs on the list, at $177 per day.
Accommodations at the third priciest spot — Aspen, Colorado — average $1,385 for one person, but a family of four can expect to pay $2,274, according to the analysis.
A street in downtown Aspen, Colorado.
Nik Wheeler | Corbis Historical | Getty Images
To find those prices, FloridaPanhandle.com researched average rates for four- and five-star hotels for stays during Christmas (Dec. 21-27) and the spring (May 19-25), but did not include taxes.
To estimate the price of activities, FloridaPanhandle.com calculated the average cost for each location’s three most-reviewed attractions on TripAdvisor.
The ski town of Park City, Utah, averaged $333 for daily attractions — the highest on the list.
Attractions in Maun, Botswana, Africa’s lone destination on the list, averaged more than $100 per day for activities like a one-day visit to the Okavango Delta.
Despite having higher overall average costs, St. Barts and the Maldives’ attractions were valued at $0. Vacationers may have to pay top dollar for hotels in those locations, but their beaches are free.
Monaco, Monte Carlo.
Ostill | Istock | Getty Images
Monte Carlo had one of the lowest average rates for attractions on the list, a surprising result for a vibrant gambling hot spot.
While “Monte Carlo is known for its casinos, it is also not the most popular thing to do in town,” said a representative from FloridaPanhandle.com.
According to the company, the three most popular attractions in Monte Carlo are the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco, an outdoor area called Casino Square, and the Casino of Monte Carlo, which has an entrance fee of 18 euros ($20).
Gambling losses, however, are not included in Monte Carlo’s average attraction costs.
International supermodel Gigi Hadid was arrested and fined in the Cayman Islands after border security agents discovered a small amount of marijuana in her luggage.
Hadid, who has since been released, was arrested shortly after she arrived in the tropical British territory via private plane on July 10.
Rolling Stone verified news of the model’s arrest and reported that Hadid, 28, was fined US$1,000 (nearly C$1,300).
Customs and Border Control agents allegedly discovered “ganja and utensils used for the consumption of ganja” in Hadid’s luggage, according to the local news outlet Cayman Marl Road.
Authorities said the amount of marijuana seized was “relatively small” and likely to be used for personal consumption.
Hadid and her friend Leah Nicole McCarthy, who also had a small amount of marijuana and gear in her bag, were both arrested on suspicion of “Importation of Ganja and Importation of Utensils used for the consumption of ganja.”
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The two women were transported to the Prisoner Detention Center but were shortly after released on bail.
Hadid and McCarthy appeared in court on July 12 to pay the $1,000 fine. TMZ reported there will be no conviction on Hadid’s record.
A representative for Hadid told Rolling Stone the model purchased the marijuana legally in New York using a medical licence.
“(Marijuana) has also been legal for medical use in Grand Cayman since 2017. Her record remains clear and she enjoyed the rest of her time on the island,” Hadid’s rep said in a statement.
In the Cayman Islands, medical marijuana has been prescribed as a drug to treat pain, nausea from chemotherapy and a number of other conditions since it was made legal in 2017. Recreational cannabis use is illegal.
Even still, Hadid appeared unconcerned on social media. On Tuesday, as news of her arrest was breaking, Hadid uploaded several photos and videos from her trip to Instagram with the caption, “All’s well that ends well.”
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It seems Hadid, McCarthy and their friends made the most of the tropical vacation, despite their brief arrest.
According to the paper, Hadid and her friend Leah McCarthy landed July 10 at the Owen Roberts International Airport in Grand Cayman. When their luggage was scanned by Border Control agents, they discovered “relatively small” amounts of pot, the outlet reported, and were arrested “on suspicion of Importation of Ganja and Importation of Utensils used for the consumption of ganja.” They were released on bail.
On July 12, the two pleaded guilty and were fined $1,000 each, and no conviction was recorded, according to Cayman Marl Road.
A spokesperson for Hadid shared this statement with Vanity Fair: “Gigi was traveling with marijuana purchased legally in NYC with a medical license. It has also been legal for medical use in Grand Cayman since 2017. Her record remains clear and she enjoyed the rest of her time on the island.”
Medical marijuana is indeed legal in Grand Cayman, however, traveling into or out of the territory with marijuana is not allowed, even with a prescription.
The model has posted beachy snaps to her Instagram in recent days.
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Gigi Hadid’s rep has clarified local reports that Hadid and her friend were arrested for marijuana possession at Owen Roberts International Airport during their girls’ trip to the Cayman Islands on July 10. TMZ reported about the arrest earlier today.
The rep told E! that “Gigi was traveling with marijuana purchased legally in NYC with a medical license. It has also been legal for medical use in Grand Cayman since 2017. Her record remains clear, and she enjoyed the rest of her time on the island.”
E! pointed out that local outlet Cayman Marl Road reported that Hadid was charged with “possession of ganja,” and smoking utensils were found in her luggage by customs officers. The outlet noted that the quantity was “relatively small” and seemed to be for “personal consumption.” TMZ confirmed that airport personnel determined the amount was for personal use.
Hadid and her friend were arrested on charges of importation of marijuana and smoking utensils, per TMZ. They were processed at the Royal Cayman Islands Detention Center and subsequently released on bail that day pending prosecution of their case. They appeared in Summary Court on July 12 and pled guilty, with each paying a fine of $1,000. No conviction was recorded on their records, TMZ and the Cayman Marl Road reported, something Hadid’s rep confirmed.
Hadid shared photos of herself enjoying her Cayman Islands trip on Instagram on Friday, days after the incident was behind her.
She reposted another vacation photo on her Instagram Story this morning:
Instagram
Senior News and Strategy Editor
Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao are accused of misusing investor funds, operating as an unregistered exchange and violating a slew of U.S. securities laws in a lawsuit filed by the SEC.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit on Monday lists thirteen charges against the firm — including commingling and divert customer assets to an entity Zhao owned called Sigma Chain.
Binance is a Cayman Islands limited liability company founded by Zhao and the charges are familiar to practices uncovered after the collapse of the second largest cryptocurrency exchange, FTX, last year.
The lawsuit lays out the extent to which the firms owners knew of the alleged legal violations: “Binance’s CCO bluntly admitted to another Binance compliance officer in December 2018, “we are operating as a fking unlicensed securities exchange in the USA bro.”
SEC Chair Gary Gensler in a written statement that Zhao and Binance “engaged in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law.”
“The public should beware of investing any of their hard-earned assets with or on these unlawful platforms,” Gensler said.
In a social media post, Binance said that it has been cooperating with the SEC’s investigation but said that the agency “chose to act unilaterally and litigate.”
“While we take the SEC’s allegations seriously, they should not be the subject of an SEC enforcement action, let alone on an emergency basis. We intend to defend our platform vigorously,” the company said in a Twitter post. “Unfortunately, the SEC’s refusal to productively engage with us is just another example of the Commission’s misguided and conscious refusal to provide much-needed clarity and guidance to the digital asset industry.”
The lawsuit comes roughly eight months after the collapse of FTX, which was also accused of co-mingling customers’ funds and investing the proceeds in high-risk investments that customers were unaware they were participating in.
“The new complaint from the SEC against Binance is a laundry list of charges laying out exactly the same claims that many in the Bitcoin and crypto communities have made against Changpeng Zhao and his companies for many years. These practices of Binance have essentially been open secrets, so no one who operates in the space will be surprised by any of the charges,” said Cory Klippsten, CEO of Swan Bitcoin, a bitcoin financial services company.
U.S. regulators have gone after Binance before.
In March, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed an enforcement action against Binance and Zhao in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois charging them with numerous CTFC violations.
The complaint also charges Samuel Lim, Binance’s former chief compliance officer, with aiding and abetting Binance’s violations.
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AP Business Writer Ken Sweet contributed to this report from New York.
Western governments are ticked off with TikTok. The Chinese-owned app loved by teenagers around the world is facing allegations of facilitating espionage, failing to protect personal data, and even of corrupting young minds.
Governments in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and across Europe have moved to ban the use of TikTok on officials’ phones in recent months. If hawks get their way, the app could face further restrictions. The White House has demanded that ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, sell the app or face an outright ban in the U.S.
But do the allegations stack up? Security officials have given few details about why they are moving against TikTok. That may be due to sensitivity around matters of national security, or it may simply indicate that there’s not much substance behind the bluster.
TikTok’s Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew will be questioned in the U.S. Congress on Thursday and can expect politicians from all sides of the spectrum to probe him on TikTok’s dangers. Here are some of the themes they may pick up on:
1. Chinese access to TikTok data
Perhaps the most pressing concern is around the Chinese government’s potential access to troves of data from TikTok’s millions of users.
Western security officials have warned that ByteDance could be subject to China’s national security legislation, particularly the 2017 National Security Law that requires Chinese companies to “support, assist and cooperate” with national intelligence efforts. This law is a blank check for Chinese spy agencies, they say.
TikTok’s user data could also be accessed by the company’s hundreds of Chinese engineers and operations staff, any one of whom could be working for the state, Western officials say. In December 2022, some ByteDance employees in China and the U.S. targeted journalists at Western media outlets using the app (and were later fired).
EU institutions banned their staff from having TikTok on their work phones last month. An internal email sent to staff of the European Data Protection Supervisor, seen by POLITICO, said the move aimed “to reduce the exposure of the Commission from cyberattacks because this application is collecting so much data on mobile devices that could be used to stage an attack on the Commission.”
And the Irish Data Protection Commission, TikTok’s lead privacy regulator in the EU, is set to decide in the next few months if the company unlawfully transferred European users’ data to China.
Skeptics of the security argument say that the Chinese government could simply buy troves of user data from little-regulated brokers. American social media companies like Twitter have had their own problems preserving users’ data from the prying eyes of foreign governments, they note.
TikTok says it has never given data to the Chinese government and would decline if asked to do so. Strictly speaking, ByteDance is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, which TikTok argues would shield it from legal obligations to assist Chinese agencies. ByteDance is owned 20 percent by its founders and Chinese investors, 60 percent by global investors, and 20 percent by employees.
There’s little hope to completely stop European data from going to China | Alex Plavevski/EPA
The company has unveiled two separate plans to safeguard data. In the U.S., Project Texas is a $1.5 billion plan to build a wall between the U.S. subsidiary and its Chinese owners. The €1.2 billion European version, named Project Clover, would move most of TikTok’s European data onto servers in Europe.
Nevertheless, TikTok’s chief European lobbyist Theo Bertram also said in March that it would be “practically extremely difficult” to completely stop European data from going to China.
2. A way in for Chinese spies
If Chinese agencies can’t access TikTok’s data legally, they can just go in through the back door, Western officials allege. China’s cyber-spies are among the best in the world, and their job will be made easier if datasets or digital infrastructure are housed in their home territory.
Dutch intelligence agencies have advised government officials to uninstall apps from countries waging an “offensive cyber program” against the Netherlands — including China, but also Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Critics of the cyber espionage argument refer to a 2021 study by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which found that the app did not exhibit the “overtly malicious behavior” that would be expected of spyware. Still, the director of the lab said researchers lacked information on what happens to TikTok data held in China.
TikTok’s Project Texas and Project Clover include steps to assuage fears of cyber espionage, as well as legal data access. The EU plan would give a European security provider (still to be determined) the power to audit cybersecurity policies and data controls, and to restrict access to some employees. Bertram said this provider could speak with European security agencies and regulators “without us [TikTok] being involved, to give confidence that there’s nothing to hide.”
Bertram also said the company was looking to hire more engineers outside China.
3. Privacy rights
Critics of TikTok have accused the app of mass data collection, particularly in the U.S., where there are no general federal privacy rights for citizens.
In jurisdictions that do have strict privacy laws, TikTok faces widespread allegations of failing to comply with them.
The company is being investigated in Ireland, the U.K. and Canada over its handling of underage users’ data. Watchdogs in the Netherlands, Italy and France have also investigated its privacy practices around personalized advertising and for failing to limit children’s access to its platform.
TikTok has denied accusations leveled in some of the reports and argued that U.S. tech companies are collecting the same large amount of data. Meta, Amazon and others have also been given large fines for violating Europeans’ privacy.
4. Psychological operations
Perhaps the most serious accusation, and certainly the most legally novel one, is that TikTok is part of an all-encompassing Chinese civilizational struggle against the West. Its role: to spread disinformation and stultifying content in young Western minds, sowing division and apathy.
Earlier this month, the director of the U.S. National Security Agency warned that Chinese control of TikTok’s algorithm could allow the government to carry out influence operations among Western populations. TikTok says it has around 300 million active users in Europe and the U.S. The app ranked as the most downloaded in 2022.
A woman watches a video of Egyptian influencer Haneen Hossam | Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Reports emerged in 2019 suggesting that TikTok was censoring pro-LGBTQ content and videos mentioning Tiananmen Square. ByteDance has also been accused of pushing inane time-wasting videos to Western children, in contrast to the wholesome educational content served on its Chinese app Douyin.
Besides accusations of deliberate “influence operations,” TikTok has also been criticized for failing to protect children from addiction to its app, dangerous viral challenges, and disinformation. The French regulator said last week that the app was still in the “very early stages” of content moderation. TikTok’s Italian headquarters was raided this week by the consumer protection regulator with the help of Italian law enforcement to investigate how the company protects children from viral challenges.
Researchers at Citizen Lab said that TikTok doesn’t enforce obvious censorship. Other critics of this argument have pointed out that Western-owned platforms have also been manipulated by foreign countries, such as Russia’s campaign on Facebook to influence the 2016 U.S. elections.
TikTok says it has adapted its content moderation since 2019 and regularly releases a transparency report about what it removes. The company has also touted a “transparency center” that opened in the U.S. in July 2020 and one in Ireland in 2022. It has also said it will comply with new EU content moderation rules, the Digital Services Act, which will request that platforms give access to regulators and researchers to their algorithms and data.
Additional reporting by Laura Kayali in Paris, Sue Allan in Ottawa, Brendan Bordelon in Washington, D.C., and Josh Sisco in San Francisco.
