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(Bloomberg) — The wife of Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari withdrew a defamation case against a student accused of insulting her on Twitter after the arrest triggered an angry reaction in the West African country.

Aminu Adamu Muhammed was brought before Aisha Buhari in the presidential villa and later detained before being charged on Nov. 21 in the capital, Abuja, according to court documents. He was accused of posting a captioned image of the first lady that he knew to be false and capable of damaging her reputation, the charge sheet shows.

The first lady applied to discontinue the case on Friday, three days after Muhammed was formally arraigned, according to the prosecuting and defense lawyers. The decision came following calls from Amnesty International for the urgent release of the 24-year-old and from an association of Nigerian students for nationwide protests starting on Dec. 5.

Read more: Amnesty Decries Student’s Arrest in Nigeria Over Tweet

Police witness statements filed in the case indicated a high level of personal involvement by the president’s wife and her staff in the tracking and detention of Muhammed. One officer described the operation as a “special assignment of the first lady,” while another said he and a colleague had worked for her “as trackers.”

Nigeria had previously banned Twitter after the company deleted one of President Buhari’s posts for violating its rules. The government said the platform was shut down because “unscrupulous elements” used it for “subversive purposes and criminal activities, propagating fake news, and polarizing Nigerians along tribal and religious lines.”

The country lifted the San Francisco-based social media giant’s seven-month suspension in January.

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©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) — Ukraine has lost at least $1 billion of wheat that was harvested in areas controlled by Russia, according to research using satellite imagery from NASA’s food security and agriculture program.

The analysis gives an idea of what’s happening in occupied territories, where information is tightly controlled. It uses a machine-learning model detecting texture and color changes based on a time-series of satellite images to map where crops have been harvested or left unharvested. 

Almost 6 million tons of wheat was collected from areas not under Ukrainian control, according to NASA Harvest. About 88% of the winter crops planted in occupied areas were harvested, while unharvested areas were mainly along the front line. 

The research raises the question of what is happening to those crops. Russian ships have been exporting grain likely taken from occupied areas to countries including Libya and Iran, but it’s difficult to estimate the volumes involved as shippers are obscuring the origin of the cargoes. Russia has denied stealing grain, but officials have publicly touted the resumption of grain shipments from occupied ports.

Ukraine is a major wheat exporter and the blockade of its ports after Russia’s invasion sent prices soaring, potentially making smuggling grain more lucrative. A deal allowing Ukraine to resume exports helped ease grain prices, but they still remain historically high. 

Almost a quarter of Ukraine’s wheat is grown on land Russia claims to have annexed, though some of that territory is controlled by Ukraine. NASA Harvest’s estimates are for wheat and so far exclude other crops or foodstuffs that were held in storage. The findings do not indicate what happened to the crops after they were harvested.

The NASA Harvest team calculated that farmers harvested 26.6 million tons of wheat this year in Ukraine, several million tons more than other leading forecasts.

The top prosecutor in Switzerland — a leading commodity-trading hub — has warned that the commercialization of looted raw materials could constitute a war crime.

Major Ukraine grower HarvEast said that all the winter crops it planted on its land in Donetsk region had been collected by occupying forces this summer. 

“This year, winter wheat gave a very high yield for this region due to favorable weather conditions,” Chief Executive Officer Dmitry Skornyakov said.  “Everything that was harvested on our fields was stolen and exported from Ukraine.”

–With assistance from Volodymyr Verbyany.

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(Bloomberg) — Insolvency professionals overseeing the cleanup of defunct crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital said they have taken control of more than $35 million of hard currencies, seized more than 60 types of digital tokens and even sought $30 million from the sale of a superyacht named “Much Wow” as part of their recovery efforts. 

But the lack of cooperation from fund founders Su Zhu and Kyle Davies is complicating the liquidation, which is designed to repay creditors owed more than $3 billion as much as possible. Advisers for Three Arrows have still had only two live conversations — via video conference — with the founders, who are believed to be in either Bali or the United Arab Emirates, according to a presentation delivered in bankruptcy court Friday.

“We have had to effectively recreate the company and the records of the company from scratch” because Zhu and Davies aren’t cooperating, said Russell Crumpler, a liquidator for Three Arrows in the British Virgin Islands.

Three Arrows collapsed earlier this year after a series of mistimed bets and soured crypto prices left the fund, known for making trades turbocharged by leverage, facing margin calls. It previously managed around $4 billion in assets. The implosion was one of several blowups in the spring that rocked the industry, which is absorbing a new shock following the sudden undoing last month of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX empire.   

Little Help

Zhu and Davies’ lack of engagement is making even the simplest legal processes difficult. Because their precise whereabouts are unknown, lawyers are trying to subpoena the duo via Twitter. But on Friday, US Bankruptcy Judge Martin Glenn voiced concern about the effectiveness of such an order because Zhu and Davies’ citizenship is unclear. 

• The Collapse of Three Arrows Capital Became a Crypto Contagion

A lawyer for Three Arrows railed against the founders in the hearing Friday, saying the pair are not upholding their duty to help creditors get repaid. He also said the duo hired security experts in the run-up to the hedge fund’s collapse to establish a secure way to communicate that could be deleted. 

“The founders’ behavior shows they have something to hide,” Adam Goldberg, a Latham & Watkins lawyer representing Three Arrows in the US, said in the hearing. Zhu and Davies have left liquidators with “no choice” but to subpoena them for information, he said. 

Zhu, reached by phone, refuted the liquidators, claiming he and Davies “have been cooperating throughout,” and that they provided “legal Saft documents for private investments as well as contract details, a full asset list of the fund, contacts of all service providers who have info, ongoing adhoc support.” Saft refers to a contract that gives its owner the right to a certain number of coins to be issued in the future. 

Davies said on Twitter that “unfortunately our liquidators seem to refuse to engage us constructively. After months, cash in a bank account, minimal asset sales, there have still been no disbursements to creditors. Let us speak openly with all creditors to find a better way forward.”

Representatives at a law firm for Zhu and Davies based in Singapore didn’t respond to a request for comment. 

Much Wow

Advisers have uncovered evidence of money flowing directly from Three Arrows to pay for Much Wow, a luxury superyacht, according to the hedge fund’s liquidators. The firm building the boat ultimately canceled the purchase contract because final amounts owed weren’t paid, and the ship has since been resold. 

The entity formed to own the vessel, Much Wow Ltd., is now in insolvency proceedings in the Cayman Islands. Proceeds from the sale of the boat will ultimately be funneled to Much Wow, and Three Arrows liquidators have filed a $30 million claim in the case. 

• Crypto’s Fallen Stars Pile on Bankman-Fried: Bloomberg Crypto

The liquidators’ Friday presentation also featured screenshots of recent tweets made by Zhu and Davies that criticized Bankman-Fried and FTX, which was displayed as evidence of their willingness to speak publicly. The presentation also noted founders’ tweets that pushed for the truth of FTX’s situation to emerge.

–With assistance from Olga Kharif and Joanna Ossinger.

(Adds comment from Davies in ninth paragraph.)

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(Bloomberg) —

Volkswagen AG is considering funding coding schools in Mexico and Brazil as part of its strategy to recruit software-savvy employees.

The carmaker is already backing similar institutions in the Czech Republic and Germany — including in Berlin and near its Wolfsburg headquarters — and is now weighing to expand, said Gunnar Kilian, the board member in charge of personnel.

Operated by French non-profit 42, the software academies don’t charge tuition and use a collaborative, gamified learning process. Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google also back the schools.

Read more: VW’s Hopes of Catching Tesla Hinge on a $30 Billion Tech Reboot

Germany is under pressure to address a shortage of skilled workers that has been exacerbated by an aging population and a sub-par education system. A dearth of coders is especially troublesome for the country’s auto industry as it ramps up the production of electric vehicles that rely on software platforms and digital features.

“We have a massive need for skilled workers in the IT sector in Germany,” Kilian said in an interview. “We must work together to meet this demand.”

Europe’s biggest automaker is trying to get its tech push back on track after software development hiccups at its Cariad unit delayed several models, including the important electric Porsche Macan. Cariad will be part of an autonomous driving venture in China and has hired roughly 1,500 coders this year, Kilian said.

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(Bloomberg) — A South Korea court dismissed a request from prosecutors for an arrest warrant against Terraform Labs’ co-founder Daniel Shin.

In a ruling on Saturday local time, the Seoul Southern District Court said in a text message that Shin’s behavior during the investigation makes it difficult to believe he poses a flight risk or would destroy evidence. The court also said it dismissed arrest warrants for seven other people involved in the case for the same reason. They include three early investors and four developers of Terra, according to a Yonhap report.

There is need to guarantee the suspect’s right to defend his case against his key allegation related to violating capital market rules, Yonhap also said, citing the court. 

“It is hard to understand the court’s decision,” the prosecutors’ office said in a text message following the court results. The court acknowledged the seriousness of the allegations, yet decided to reject the arrest warrants of those who have made undue profits under the pretext of protecting their rights to defend themselves, they said. Prosecutors will review the dismissal and decide whether to file another arrest warrant.

The TerraUSD stablecoin — which was meant to maintain a 1-to-1 relation with the dollar — and its sister token Luna collapsed in May. Fallen crypto entrepreneur Do Kwon is the other founder of the Terra ecosystem. His whereabouts became unclear after prosecutors in Seoul sought his arrest. He has denied wrongdoing.

Kwon Ohoon, a lawyer at Cha & Kwon Law Offices in Seoul, said Saturday that it’s “questionable” whether the court will find Do Kwon guilty should the prosecutors charge him on allegations of breaking the nation’s capital markets law. “The prosecutors’ arguments linking the capital markets law violations to the Terra/Luna look weak, and the court seems to have decided that they may not be right,” he said.

Crypto’s Vexed Legal Status Clouds Case Facing Fugitive Kwon

The court ruling “illustrates the unfounded nature of the prosecutors’ claims,” said a Terraform Labs spokesperson. “With these allegations behind us, our focus is on building the future of Terra and developing the best ecosystem in web3 to launch and scale a blockchain.”

Shin’s lawyers, in a text message, called the court’s decision a “sound judgment.”

–With assistance from stacy-marie ishmael, Jessica Park and Yueqi Yang.

(Updates from fourth paragraph with comment from the prosecutors office and Shin’s lawyers.)

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©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) — A South Korea court dismissed a request from prosecutors for an arrest warrant against Terraform Labs’ co-founder Daniel Shin.

In a ruling on Saturday local time, the Seoul Southern District Court said in a text message that Shin’s behavior during the investigation makes it difficult to believe he poses a flight risk or would destroy evidence. The court also said it dismissed arrest warrants for seven other people involved in the case for the same reason. They include three early investors and four developers of Terra, according to a Yonhap report.

There is need to guarantee the suspect’s right to defend his case against his key allegation related to violating capital market rules, Yonhap also said, citing the court. 

“It is hard to understand the court’s decision,” the prosecutors’ office said in a text message following the court results. The court acknowledged the seriousness of the allegations, yet decided to reject the arrest warrants of those who have made undue profits under the pretext of protecting their rights to defend themselves, they said. Prosecutors will review the dismissal and decide whether to file another arrest warrant.

The TerraUSD stablecoin — which was meant to maintain a 1-to-1 relation with the dollar — and its sister token Luna collapsed in May. Fallen crypto entrepreneur Do Kwon is the other founder of the Terra ecosystem. His whereabouts became unclear after prosecutors in Seoul sought his arrest. He has denied wrongdoing.

Kwon Ohoon, a lawyer at Cha & Kwon Law Offices in Seoul, said Saturday that it’s “questionable” whether the court will find Do Kwon guilty should the prosecutors charge him on allegations of breaking the nation’s capital markets law. “The prosecutors’ arguments linking the capital markets law violations to the Terra/Luna look weak, and the court seems to have decided that they may not be right,” he said.

Crypto’s Vexed Legal Status Clouds Case Facing Fugitive Kwon

The court ruling “illustrates the unfounded nature of the prosecutors’ claims,” said a Terraform Labs spokesperson. “With these allegations behind us, our focus is on building the future of Terra and developing the best ecosystem in web3 to launch and scale a blockchain.”

Shin’s lawyers, in a text message, called the court’s decision a “sound judgment.”

–With assistance from stacy-marie ishmael, Jessica Park and Yueqi Yang.

(Updates from fourth paragraph with comment from the prosecutors office and Shin’s lawyers.)

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©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk heralded the release of Twitter Inc. executive emails that explore some of the internal debate at the social network over a controversial decision in 2020 to restrict access to a New York Post article about a laptop purportedly owned by Hunter Biden.

Writer Matt Taibbi posted a series of tweets and images of what he said were leaked internal Twitter messages and emails, without saying how he obtained them. Billionaire Musk, who took over Twitter in late October, earlier this week began teasing the publication of information he called “the Twitter Files,” as part of a series of recent tweets claiming to defend free speech and accusing the company’s former management — and advertisers such as Apple Inc. — of opposing it.

In late 2020, in the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Twitter decided to restrict a New York Post article containing unverified claims about Hunter Biden’s activities in Ukraine. Twitter said at the time that the Post story included screenshots and images that violated the company’s “Hacked Materials Policy,” which forbids users from sharing images of hacked materials on the site. The company blocked users from sharing the article on Twitter.

Then-Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey later tweeted that blocking the links without providing more context was “unacceptable.” The company also changed its policies shortly after restricting the Biden story, saying it would “label tweets to provide context instead of blocking links” to stories. Dorsey also answered questions about the incident before Congress in November 2020 alongside Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In one message from that time, according to Taibbi, Trenton Kennedy, a member of Twitter’s communications team, wrote to a group including legal and policy head Vijaya Gadde and site integrity leader Yoel Roth to voice questions about why the story was being restricted.

“I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe, and I think the best explainability argument for this externally would be that we’re waiting to understand if this story is the result of hacked materials,” Taibbi’s tweets show Kennedy as writing. “We’ll face hard questions on this if we don’t have some kind of solid reasoning for marking the link unsafe.”

Kennedy declined to comment on the report on Friday.

Musk was aware that the tweet storm was coming on Friday, and intimated in a post on the network that he helped coordinate it, saying, “We’re double-checking facts, so probably start live tweeting in about 40 minutes.” When Taibbi began tweeting, Musk posted, “Here we go!!”

Even as Musk sought to build anticipation for the documents’ release, the materials shared by Taibbi on Friday broke relatively little new ground on a two-year-old episode. It’s not clear who authorized the release of the materials from Twitter, though Musk is in control and has dismissed many top executives, and was actively promoting Taibbi’s tweets on Friday. The full extent of the document release was unclear, since it was filtered through one reporter.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, conservative news outlets published information that purportedly came from a laptop that Hunter Biden had left at a Wilmington, Delaware, repair shop. Then-President Donald Trump’s campaign alleged the materials — the origin of which wasn’t verified by Bloomberg News — undercut Joe Biden’s claims that he and his son never discussed overseas business dealings.

Some Republicans said Twitter’s move to block the story helped President Joe Biden in his victory over Trump, but a Federal Election Commission ruled last year that Twitter didn’t break election laws by doing so.

Now, Joe Biden is gearing up to face Republican-led investigations next year that will examine Hunter Biden and his business dealings. GOP lawmakers allege the president’s son traded on his family name and created conflicts of interest for his father, allegations both men deny. A White House spokesman, Ian Sams, declined to comment on Friday.

Musk has attempted to please both sides of the online speech debate during his first few weeks in charge at Twitter, though like previous Twitter leaders he has largely been unsuccessful. 

Some conservatives who have said Twitter is too heavy-handed with moderation were upset that Musk on Thursday suspended rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, for sharing antisemitic posts. Others who feel Twitter doesn’t go far enough on policing content are upset that Musk reinstated hundreds of banned accounts to the platform, including Trump’s.

A New York Times story Friday said that Twitter has seen a dramatic rise in hate speech since Musk took over; Musk replied that the story was “utterly false.”

Read more: Biden Staffs Up for GOP Probes That Threaten to Cloud 2024 Run

–With assistance from Jordan Fabian.

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(Bloomberg) — “It’s been an interesting few weeks,” said Sam Bankman-Fried. No kidding. From SBF’s own account of what went wrong in his crypto empire, to the nervous weekend ahead in China, your Saturday reading is about communication.

Lounging in his $30 million Bahamas penthouse, SBF opens up about what really went wrong at his collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX (“a few, very large, boneheaded decisions”), how much he reckons he used to be worth ($100 billion) and what he thinks happened to the $8 billion that went missing from the accounts.

A failure to recognize the extent of the problem was also behind the sudden outpouring of anger in China over botched Covid measures and lack of clarity. As China braces for what could be an uneasy weekend, with police out in force and protesters wary of a crackdown on any public demonstrations, its citizens have found a new underground network to communicate their frustration and anger.

But what if the person you need to persuade is yourself? We asked Elton John, Bill Ackman, Dina Powell McCormick and 15 other leading philanthropists what advice they would give their younger selves. Dear 18-year-old me, here’s how to change the world.

While the Bahamas may attract billionaires and crypto klutzes, Thailand’s tourism mecca of Phuket is seeing a surge in visitors from a different quarter: Russians. With their military killing thousands in Ukraine, Russian tourists are using overseas credit cards and chartered planes to circumvent the effect of sanctions and head out on holiday.

For millions of workers around the world the problem is communicating their desire for higher wages and better conditions in the face of soaring food and living costs. That face-off is increasingly ending in strikes, with South Korea being a prime example in Asia of the growing discontent. Labor strife deepened this week with a nationwide strike by truck drivers costing at least $1.2 billion in supply disruptions in everything from steel to autos and oil. Here’s  what that means for the global supply chain. 

The Bahamas is also not the only place with aspirations to become a new financial hub. India’s latest effort is rising from scrubland once dominated by marsh birds and grazing buffalo. Known by the acronym GIFT City, the lonely cluster of glass-fronted towers housing 20,000 employees of companies such as JPMorgan Chase and HSBC Holdings is the latest effort to claw back the billions of India-centric trading that moved to Dubai, Mauritius or Singapore.

For governments, communicating your economic strategy to the markets is key, as the previous UK administration discovered. It helps to have a good finance chief. But what if you’ve just taken power and aren’t sure who would be the best candidate? One way is to appoint yourself.

And finally, you know markets are nervous when even real estate prices in the metaverse are falling. Listen to the podcast about who’s still investing in virtual penthouses.

Have an agreeable weekend.

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©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

(Bloomberg) — Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris and the first Jewish spouse of a US leader, decried recent anti-Semitic comments by Ye and others saying, “it’s painful, it hurts.” 

Emhoff, who largely keeps a discreet profile as the nation’s first Second Gentleman, described his unique place in history during remarks to the NewDEAL Leaders conference in Washington on Friday, according to the White House.

“There’s never been a Jew married to a president, or vice president, or has been president or vice president,” Emhoff said. “As it turns out, that has become a very big deal in the Jewish community and in other communities that aren’t represented. And I felt it was very important to kind of take that on, accept that responsibility, and really lean into it.” 

He spoke a day after Ye, the hip hop performer and producer formerly known as Kanye West, praised Adolf Hitler on the Infowars program of the right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.  

“So I don’t want it to feel normal,” Emhoff told the gathering. “I don’t want people to think well, it’s just words, it’s just Kanye, no – this matters. This is important. We have to all step up and speak out about this as leaders in your communities.”

“This not OK. It’s not OK,” he added. “We cannot be silent. We gotta push back. We gotta speak up. And we cannot make this normal. We cannot.”

In a tweet earlier Friday, President Joe Biden condemned anti-Semitism, and rebuked political leaders who he said “should be calling out and rejecting anti-Semitism wherever it hides. Silence is complicity.”

He mentioned no one by name, but last week former President Donald Trump had dinner with Ye and Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. While some prominent Republicans have criticized Trump over the now notorious episode, others have not. Several have denounced anti-Semitism in general or assailed Fuentes without mentioning Trump.

Trump has said he didn’t know Fuentes. Former Vice President Mike Pence, however, said his former running mate should apologize. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, like Pence a potential presidential candidate in 2024, castigated the former president, who is running again.

Adidas AG and other companies cut ties with Ye after he made a series of antisemitic and racist remarks.

And Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter Inc., said late Thursday night that Ye’s account on the social media platform had been suspended. Ye had posted an image combining the Star of David with a swastika, which was  removed by the company.

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(Bloomberg) — French President Emmanuel Macron said he had a “clear and honest discussion” with Twitter’s Elon Musk about content moderation.  

“Transparent user policies, significant reinforcement of content moderation and protection of freedom of speech: efforts have to be made by Twitter to comply with European regulations,” Macron said in a tweet shortly after the meeting.

The unannounced meeting, which took place during Macron’s visit to New Orleans, comes days after the French leader criticized Musk’s decision to relax Twitter content-moderation policies around subjects like coronavirus disinformation. 

Macron, in an interview with ABC News on his state visit to the US, said he believed democracies were under “very strong pressure” from forces including social media, where users could say “crazy things about a vaccine, a pandemic, the war.”

After his meeting with Musk, Macron said he discussed future green industrial projects such as manufacturing of electric vehicles and batteries.

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