But, Lv Daliang, the General Administration of Customs’ spokesperson, stated earlier on Friday at a press conference that China’s industry still faces an intricate and challenging physical environment. In September, China’s exports to the ASEAN countries, which have grown to be the largest business partner of the Asian giant dueContinue Reading
By requesting jewelry for washing, Kwak even defrauded her 73-year-old aunt.
When Kwek’s godmother gave her more than 50 pieces of jewelry — most of which were family heirlooms— she pawned them all off for S$ 48, 250 and used the proceeds to pay off her own debts.
In January 2014, Kwek was declared bankrupt. Kwek had come up with justifications when her godmother constantly begged for the jewelry back, perhaps pleading with her.
After being threatened with a police report, she only gave her godmother’s jewelry and some money — a few thousand dollars — to the authorities.
In addition to Lai, Kwek defrauded two other men who developed feelings for her. & nbsp,
One of them was a 35-year-old Certis Cisco personnel who met Kwek after receiving an email inquiry from the company.
Despite never having met or seen each other over a video phone, the sufferer fell in love with Kwek after they started talking.
According to court documents, Kwek never liked him and was actually playing a like hoax on him.
She sent the sufferer pictures that she claimed as her own in order to continue the ruse. When the survivor performed a opposite Google image search, she discovered that the images were those of an Asian blogger.
The target persisted in his relationship with Kwek despite confronting her and debating it.
Between September 2017 and March 2019, Kwek was able to persuade this person to move a total of about South$ 48,000 to her.
The target filed a police statement after realizing he had been conned in June 2021. Kwek was instructed by the police to report to the place for speech recording, but she kept changing her appointments, with one of them occurring on the first day of her test for the offenses connected to Lai’s family.
In April 2021, Kwek returned about South$ 1, 900 to this target.
While Kwek was on parole, she went after her father’s ex-colleague, a 66-year-old American man.
The sufferer made friends with Kwek while working at a bank with his father.
Kwek approached the Briton in March 2020 and pretended she needed funds to assert her inheritance after being accused of a number of offenses.
After receiving the payment, she promised the person that she would return the money, and she hired attorneys to review letters to support her claims.
In order to trick the victim, she even created a chat group about the alleged legal issues and pretended to be sexy.
Through a variety of deceits, including lying that she had cancer, Kwek ultimately defrauded this victim of S$ 338,600.
Kwek lied to the sufferer, telling him that she could support serve as his partner to help pay for the program after learning that he wanted to apply for permanent residency for himself and his relatives.
She did this to get herself more time to pay him back. She warned him that if he tried to get in touch with the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority( ICA ) or the Manpower Ministry, they would deport him right away.
The victim’s jobs at the bank was terminated in January 2021, and his work pass was revoked. After Kwek assured him that his Marketing application had been approved, he decided to stay in Singapore instead of taking a flight back to the United Kingdom.
She cautioned him once more against contacting ICA or MOM and advised him never to accept any additional work offers.
When the survivor requested evidence to support her promises, Kwek falsified records from the ICA. This sufferer, who incurred debts as a result of Kwek’s steps and whose mental health deteriorated, received no compensation.
He was also the subject of ICA overstaying examinations.
A 39-year-old salesman who worked at a music store was the next guy who fell in love with Kwek.
After approaching Kwek on WhatsApp as a business agent in an effort to draw in prospective clients, he got to know her.
Kwek presented the victim with images of” her home” while portraying herself as a wealthy individual. The target thought she was wealthy because she purchased pricey coral in bulk from the victim’s friend.
Kwek claimed it was her and sent the sufferer a picture of someone else. Because Kwek unintentionally sent him the complete picture of the page, the victim realized this was a photo of someone else.
Despite this, the sufferer kept up the intimate relation he had started with Kwek in May 2021.
According to the attorney, Kwek kept requesting money from him for a variety of causes, and he sent it to her because of his love for her.
He was defrauded into sending her about S$ 103, 710 in overall while also borrowing money from his mom, sister, and associates.
He experienced economic problems after leaving his job because he trusted Kwek when she made him a employment offer that never materialized.
Since Kwek had earned his respect and would continue to do so by sending him pricey gifts, he had no reason to believe that they were being defrauded.
He didn’t realize the truth until a brother fraud target contacted him. On April 18, 2022, when her bail was revoked and she was placed on remand, Kwak stopped responding to his calls and messages.
Kwek paid this victim restitution of about South$ 10, 000.
Phoebe Tan, the deputy public prosecutor, asked for Kwek to serve a sentence of 91 to 100 months in prison, or roughly seven times, seven times, and eight years and four months.
She claimed that Kwek used the computer to feed on outsiders while displaying no signs of stopping.
Despite the fact that Kwek had no prior convictions, she shouldn’t be treated as a first-time criminal because, according to Ms. Tan,” she’s an outright con artist who had conned at least 10 known survivors of an enormous sum of money.”
In addition to having” no qualms” about deceiving her subjects, Kwek egregiously abused the trust Lai’s kids had placed in her.
When test dates were set, she failed to show up and seemed to be” medical leaping” in order to avoid appearing in court, according to Ms. Tan.
She had a number of patients who accepted her lies; some of them were unaware of their deception until others got in touch with them.
The attorney said, adding that the guilty appeal date was difficult to fix in part because new reports kept coming in from various victims,” This shows how much of a deceptive liar and clever lyr she was.”
Raphael Louis, a defense attorney, requested more time to address the defendant’s arguments.
Sentence was postponed by the prosecutor until a later time. & nbsp,
In June 2021, Lai received a 15-month prison term for his part in defrauding his home. He made a promise to his parents at the time that he would work incredibly hard to gain all of their life savings.
At a time when President Xi Jinping’s group is veering in the opposite direction, eminent Chinese analyst Yu Yongding is calling for violent financial growth.
Yu, a previous top official from the People’s Bank of China who is currently employed by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, contends that the shift in policy to” apply fiscal and monetary levers to listen to growth and value files” is the” key to success.” Fiscal and monetary expansion are appropriate if both growth and prices are slow.
According to Yu, the intensity of the headwinds affecting China calls for a strong outburst of public spending in particular to regain demand and thwart negative forces. Instead, he worries that Xi’s economic team is overly preoccupied with” supply-side” solutions like tax breaks, which may ultimately harm China. According to Yu,” supply-side economics is more important in China than in the US ,” even though several Western observers would agree.
It’s difficult to imagine that some major observers, least of all representatives of the International Monetary Fund, would agree with Yu on his proposals for fiscal and monetary expansion, aside from Nobel laureate Paul Krugman.
IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas called for” aggressive actions by the regulators” on a number of fronts, not only looser fiscal policy, in his speech on Tuesday in Marrakech.
In order to prevent an increase in financial instability, to ensure that it stays localized in the real estate business and doesn’t spread out into the larger financial system, and to help rebuild household confidence, Gourinchas argued that Xi’s group if” help rebuild struggling home developers.”
The argument made here is that the largest economy in Asia needs to be stabilized through architectural changes and governmental actions. The IMF’s position does not, of course, preclude increased & nbsp, fiscal spending.
Beijing telegraphed moves to increase its budget deficit for 2023 at the same time Gourinchas spoke at an IMF occasion in Morocco, suggesting a new new stimulus may accompany Xi’s supply-side efforts to calm property markets.
According to Bloomberg, Beijing may issue additional sovereign debt totaling up to 1 trillion yuan($ 137 billion ) to fund new infrastructure projects. China’s 2023 budget deficit would increase above the 3 % cap established in March as a result.
Yu, who is concerned that Xi’s inside circle is extremely devoted to the debt-to-gross-internal-policy provisions of the Maastricht Treaty, the founding document for the European Union, may be encouraged by this development. It maintains that the debt to GDP ratio cannot be higher than 3 %.
According to Yu, the People’s Bank of China has been” juggling too many priorities ,” while Beijing has” pursued a careful financial plan.” ” Economic growth, employment, internal and external price stability, & nbsp, financial stability and even allocation of financial resources” are the terms he uses to describe them.
Yu claims that the PBOC has specifically had to react to the housing price index’s seasonal changes. According to Yu,” the PBOC pulls back the financial plan reins if the score rises quickly.” More generally, the PBOC has vowed to stick to a” precision drip – irrigation” approach rather than pursue” flood irrigation ,” which would mean flooding the economy with liquidity.
However, according to Yu, China” unquestionably” could have been experiencing” higher growth over the past ten years with a more intense economic – coverage strategy.” ” China can still obtain a more powerful coming, even though it’s too late to change the history ,” he claims,” but only if it implements carefully thought-out fiscal and monetary expansion focused on increasing powerful require and, ultimately, rise.”
The problem is that rather than addressing the root causes of China’s financial andNBSP problems, these plans do more to treat its symptoms.
Yu is not the only person who believes that China’s issue is a lack of speedy sugar highs. Leading mainland macro hedge fund Shanghai Banxia Investment Management Center urged Xi’s team to establish a market stabilization fund on Tuesday in order to put an end to the” vicious cycle” that is undermining shares. Li Bei, the fund’s leader, is essentially looking for a return to direct business interventions of the kind used in 2015.
Li stated in a WeChat article that” the key is to split the damage property – price declines are doing to people, and their trust.”
However, these quick fixes have no effect on China’s economic system, business governance, or capital markets. Additionally, they don’t boost efficiency, advancement, or chances for change in a struggling economy.
Incentives for local governments to create more dynamic business environments, create social safety nets, which are needed to find households to invest more and keep less, or handle the world’s aging population won’t change despite loosening fiscal policy and bailing out markets andnbsp.
Stimulus alone cannot promote the shift away from tomorrow’s investment-heavy, state-owned – enterprise-led growth model and toward a demand-driven economy. It won’t increase the confidence of international buyers to place large bets on China. Additionally, it didn’t help to stabilize the unstable real estate markets that are alarmed owners.
The issue with the real estate market is the most pressing. Country Garden is implying that it won’t be able to fulfill its obligations abroad two centuries after China Evergrande Group filed for bankruptcy. One of China’s largest real estate developers, Country Garden, had an estimated debt pile of$ 116 billion as of 2023.
Despite the numerous easing measures implemented in September, the property business” showed signs of weakening again ,” according to Tu Ling, a Nomura scholar. This was particularly true of low-tier locations, which may have been squeezed even more by the relaxation of regulations in high-territ cities.
According to Zhang Wenlang, an analyst at China International Capital Corp.,” We believe that economic development may continue to be hampered by pressures along the real estate price network, such as sales, property acquisition, and building.”
Similarities to Japan’s negative mortgage crisis in the 1990s have been made due to the scope of the issue. According to Gourinchas of the IMF,” aggressive action is necessary to clean up the real estate business.”
There is a possibility that the issue will rot and get worse if that doesn’t happen, he claims.
Of all, the PBOC may contribute. However, the weak yuan & nbsp may restrict Governor Pan Gongsheng’s ability to further reduce interest rates. That implies that there will undoubtedly be some financial relaxation.
According to scholar Ding Shuang at Standard Chartered Plc,” with CPI falling to depreciation, exports contracting further, and the home business also struggling, we see opportunity for the authorities to make full use of the fiscal space under the approved budget to maintain growth.”
According to economist Thomas Gatley of Gavekal Research, problems facing Evergrande and other designers harm the Taiwanese economy as a whole,” as the recent declines in equity and offshore bond pricing attest ,” going far beyond the strain they place on the companies’ direct lenders.
According to Gatley, there are at least three causes for concern for shareholders regarding the future of Evergrande.
First, he claims that there are now more risks associated with government policy mistakes that” disrupt industry and the market.” ” Mistakes are always possible, and the precarious financial situation of developers makes it difficult to predict or control the flow of events ,” says Gatley.
Two, there is still the” potential for further damage to cover – market sentiment, which is already anxious.” Third, Gatley claims that” as engineers delay or default on payments to their manufacturers, the financial strain of house builders is spilling over onto another companies.”
By the middle of 2023, China’s listed designers jointly owed their suppliers 3.4 trillion renminbi( US$ 466 billion ) in business payables. Evergrande only is worth$ 82 billion in the US.
In short, according to Gatley,” the struggles of China’s real estate developers have now drained trillions of rmb of liquidity from the economy andnbsp, and if things get worse for developers, so will the monetary drag on associated industries.”
Therefore, economists like Yu downplay the urgent need for the supply-side rebellion.
Vitor Gaspar, chairman of financial affairs for the IMF, approached the issue from a different angle this week in Marrakech. According to Gaspar, both China and the US are getting less value for their signal investment.
According to Gaspar, the US and China’s budget deficits, which range from 6 % to 7 % of GDP over the course of the period up to 2028, are what are really driving them. However, for both of the world’s two largest markets,” growth has slowed and the medium-term leads are the weakest in some day.”
The opacity built into the Communist Party’s growth model, including the explosion of off-balance-sheet borrowing via local government financing vehicles ( LGFVs ) since the late 2000s, is a major concern in China.
Lower China’s long-standing emphasis on real estate and massive infrastructure projects for growth, according to Gaspar, is the current top priority. According to Gaspar,” The concern for China is development, balance, and innovation.”
According to Gaspar,” China” has” enough coverage space” and” many options” to switch to a new development model that prioritizes domestic need over exports and investment. He cites development in the electric vehicle industry and other energy markets as examples of those options.
Encourage households to eat more and keep less must be the main focus. According to Eric Khaw, older portfolio manager at Nikko Asset Management,” China’s huge benefits imbalance is the trouble now.” The savings rate is significantly higher than the purchase price, which has been impacted by a liberal decline in investment demand, and China currently has one of the highest savings rates in the region.
This implies, according to Khaw,” that China, with its surplus discounts, will need to have higher purchase.” You can see that the overall level of personal loan is lower than that of the US, South Korea, Japan, and many other nations if you look at it.
He also notes that, based on IMF information, China’s public debt is only about 71 %. ” Relatively less than those of the US and Japan ,” to put it mildly. Therefore, in our opinion, there is a lot of room to raise the nation’s purchase rate.
According to Khaw,” more borrowing and lending will need to be done for China’s economic mediation the bigger the discounts.” Saving must either be invested domestically or borrowed internationally. China used to be able to export its extra benefits worldwide. However, politics then place restrictions on Chinese imports. Saving might be the only option available to the Chinese authorities.
Therefore, claims like Yu’s that a debt-fueled signal growth is necessary to return to 6 % only serve to continue the boom-bust period that the Xi team is trying to break. In order to win China’s financial game, fresh and disruptive policies must be taken on, rather than being reliant on tried-and-true safeguards.
It is crucial to regain trust in the industry. In stark contrast to the planned actions by some classmates, Sunac sweetened the reform deal in June to win more bank help. One of the three options offered by Yuzhou Group may have a cut of about 70 % in August,Continue Reading
BEIJING: Russian President Vladimir Putin is anticipated to attend a gathering of foreign leaders next week to commemorate the Belt and Road infrastructure project’s tenth anniversary, which China announced on Wednesday( Oct 11 ). President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road initiative is a historic undertaking, and Beijing announced this weekContinue Reading
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A blackmail scam is using instant loan apps to entrap and humiliate people across India and other countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. At least 60 Indians have killed themselves after being abused and threatened. A BBC undercover investigation has exposed those profiting from this deadly scam in India and China.
Astha Sinhaa woke up to her aunt’s panicked voice on the phone. “Don’t let your mother leave the house.”
Half-asleep, the 17-year-old was terrified to find her mum Bhoomi Sinhaa in the next room, sobbing and frantic.
Here was her funny and fearless mother, a respected Mumbai-based property lawyer, a widow raising her daughter alone, reduced to a frenzied mess.
“She was breaking apart,” Astha says. A panicked Bhoomi started telling her where all the important documents and contacts were, and seemed desperate to get out of the door.
Astha knew she had to stop her. “Don’t let her out of your sight,” her aunt had told her. “Because she will end her life.”
Astha knew her mother had been getting some weird calls and that she owed somebody money, but she had no idea that Bhoomi was reeling from months of harassment and psychological torture.
She had fallen victim to a global scam with tentacles in at least 14 countries that uses shame and blackmail to make a profit – destroying lives in the process.
The business model is brutal but simple.
There are many apps that promise hassle-free loans in minutes. Not all of them are predatory. But many – once downloaded – harvest your contacts, photos and ID cards, and use that information later to extort you.
When customers don’t repay on time – and sometimes even when they do – they share this information with a call centre where young agents of the gig economy, armed with laptops and phones are trained to harass and humiliate people into repayment.
At the end of 2021, Bhoomi had borrowed about 47,000 rupees ($565; £463) from several loan apps while she waited for some work expenses to come through. The money arrived almost immediately but with a big chunk deducted in charges. Seven days later she was due to repay but her expenses still hadn’t been paid, so she borrowed from another app and then another. The debt and interest spiralled until she owed about two million rupees ($24,000; £19,655).
Soon the recovery agents started calling. They quickly turned nasty, slamming Bhoomi with insults and abuse. Even when she had paid, they claimed she was lying. They called up to 200 times a day. They knew where she lived, they said, and sent her pictures of a dead body as a warning.
As the abuse escalated they threatened to message all of the 486 contacts in her phone telling them she was a thief and a whore. When they threatened to tarnish her daughter’s reputation too, Bhoomi could no longer sleep.
She borrowed from friends, family and more and more apps – 69 in total. At night, she prayed the morning would never come. But without fail at 07:00, her phone would start pinging and buzzing incessantly.
Eventually, Bhoomi had managed to pay back all of the money, but one app in particular – Asan Loan – wouldn’t stop calling. Exhausted, she couldn’t concentrate at work and started having panic attacks.
One day a colleague called her over to his desk and showed her something on his phone – a naked, pornographic picture of her.
The photo had been crudely photoshopped, Bhoomi’s head stuck on someone else’s body, but it filled her with disgust and shame. She collapsed by her colleague’s desk. It had been sent by Asan Loan to every contact in her phone book. That was when Bhoomi thought of killing herself.
We’ve seen evidence of scams like this run by various companies all over the world. But in India alone, the BBC has found at least 60 people have killed themselves after being harassed by loan apps.
Most were in their 20s and 30s – a fireman, an award-winning musician, a young mum and dad leaving behind their three- and five-year-old daughters, a grandfather and grandson who got involved in loan apps together. Four were just teenagers.
Most victims are too ashamed to speak about the scam, and the perpetrators have remained, for the most part, anonymous and invisible. After looking for an insider for months, the BBC managed to track down a young man who had worked as a debt recovery agent for call centres working for multiple loan apps.
Rohan – not his real name – told us he had been troubled by the abuse he had witnessed. Many customers cried, some threatened to kill themselves, he said. “It would haunt me all night.” He agreed to help the BBC expose the scam.
He applied for a job in two different call centres – Majesty Legal Services and Callflex Corporation – and spent weeks filming undercover.
His videos captured young agents harassing clients. “Behave or I will smash you,” one woman says, swearing. She accuses the customer of incest and, when he hangs up, she starts laughing. Another suggests the client should prostitute his mother to repay the loan.
Rohan recorded over 100 incidents of harassment and abuse, capturing this systematic extortion on camera for the first time.
The worst abuse he witnessed took place at Callflex Corporation, just outside Delhi. Here, agents routinely used obscene language to humiliate and threaten customers. These were not rogue agents going off-script – they were supervised and directed by managers at the call centre, including one called Vishal Chaurasia.
Rohan gained Chaurasia’s trust, and together with a journalist posing as an investor, arranged a meeting at which they asked him to explain exactly how the scam works.
When a customer takes out a loan, he explained, they give the app access to the contacts on their phone. Callflex Corporation is hired to recover the money – and if the customer misses a payment the company starts hassling them, and then their contacts. His staff can say anything, Chaurasia told them, as long as they get a repayment.
“The customer then pays because of the shame,” he said. “You’ll find at least one person in his contact list who can destroy his life.”
We approached Chaurasia directly but he did not want to comment. Callflex Corporation did not respond to our efforts to contact them.
One of the many lives destroyed was Kirni Mounika’s.
The 24-year-old civil servant was the brains of her family, the only student at her school to get a government job, a doting sister to her three brothers. Her father, a successful farmer, was ready to support her to do a masters in Australia.
The Monday she took her own life, three years ago, she had hopped on her scooter to go to work as usual.
“She was all smiles,” her father, Kirni Bhoopani, says.
It was only when police reviewed Mounika’s phone and bank statements that they found out she had borrowed from 55 different loan apps. It started with a loan of 10,000 rupees ($120; £100) and spiralled to more than 30 times that. By the time she decided to kill herself, she had paid back more than 300,000 rupees ($3,600; £2,960).
Police say the apps harassed her with calls and vulgar messages – and had started messaging her contacts.
Mounika’s room is now a makeshift shrine. Her government ID card hangs by the door, the bag her mum packed for a wedding still lying there.
The thing that upsets her father the most is that she hadn’t told him what was going on. “We could have easily arranged the money,” he says, wiping tears from his eyes.
He’s furious at the people who did this.
As he was taking his daughter’s body home from the hospital her phone rang and he answered to an obscenity-laden rant. “They told us she has to pay,” he says. “We told them she was dead.”
He wondered who these monsters could be.
Hari – not his real name – worked at a call centre doing recovery for one of the apps Mounika had borrowed from. The pay was good but by the time Mounika died he was already feeling uneasy about what he was part of.
Although he claims not to have made abusive calls himself – he says he was in the team that made initial polite calls – he told us managers instructed staff to abuse and threaten people.
The agents would send messages to a victim’s contacts, painting the victim as a fraud and a thief.
“Everyone has a reputation to maintain in front of their family. No-one is going to spoil that reputation for the measly sum of 5,000 rupees,” he says.
Once a payment had been made the system would ping “Success!” and they would move on to the next client.
When clients started threatening to take their own lives nobody took it seriously – then the suicides started happening. The staff called their boss, Parshuram Takve, to ask if they should stop.
The following day Takve appeared in the office. He was angry. “He said, ‘Do what you’re told and make recoveries,'” Hari says. So they did.
A few months later, Mounika was dead.
Takve was ruthless. But he wasn’t running this operation alone. Sometimes, Hari says, the software interface would switch to Chinese without warning.
Takve was married to a Chinese woman called Liang Tian Tian. Together, they had set up the loan recovery business, Jiyaliang, in Pune, where Hari worked.
In December 2020, Takve and Liang were arrested by police investigating a case of harassment and released on bail a few months later.
In April 2022 they were charged with extortion, intimidation and abetment of suicide. By the end of the year they were on the run.
We couldn’t track down Takve. But when we investigated the apps Jiyaliang worked for, it led us to a Chinese businessman called Li Xiang.
He has no online presence, but we found a phone number linked to one of his employees and, posing as investors, set up a meeting with Li.
With his face shoved uncomfortably close to the camera, he bragged about his businesses in India.
“We are still operating now, just not letting Indians know we are a Chinese company,” he said.
Back in 2021, two of Li’s companies had been raided by Indian police investigating harassment by loan apps. Their bank accounts had been frozen.
“You need to understand that because we aim to recover our investment quickly, we certainly don’t pay local taxes, and the interest rates we offer violate local laws,” he says.
Li told us his company has its own loan apps in India, Mexico and Colombia. He claimed to be an industry leader in risk control and debt collection services in South East Asia, and is now expanding across Latin America and Africa – with more than 3,000 staff in Pakistan, Bangladesh and India ready to provide “post-loan services”.
Then he explained what his company does to recover loans.
“If you don’t repay, we may add you on WhatsApp, and on the third day, we will call and message you on WhatsApp at the same time, and call your contacts. Then, on the fourth day, if your contacts don’t pay, we have specific detailed procedures.
“We access his call records and capture a lot of his information. Basically, it’s like he’s naked in front of us.”
Your phone is private. Or is it? A BBC investigation exposes the blackmail scam causing misery across India.
Promising easy money, loan app scammers collect personal data from customers’ phones and then use that information to threaten or humiliate people into repayment. BBC Eye goes undercover to take you inside the loan app scam, and to expose the people making money from misery, fear, and shame.
Watch on iPlayer (UK only)
Bhoomi Sinha could handle the harassment, the threats, the abuse and the exhaustion – but not the shame of being linked to that pornographic image.
“That message actually stripped me naked in front of the entire world,” she says. “I lost my self-respect, my morality, my dignity, everything in a second.”
It was shared with lawyers, architects, government officials, elderly relatives and friends of her parents – people who would never look at her in the same way again.
“It has tarnished the core of me, like if you join a broken glass, there will still be cracks on it,” she says.
She has been ostracised by neighbours in the community she has lived in for 40 years.
“As of today, I have no friends. It’s just me I guess,” she says with a sad chuckle.
Some of her family still don’t speak to her. And she constantly wonders whether the men she works with are picturing her naked.
The morning that her daughter Astha found her she was at her lowest ebb. But it was also the moment she decided to fight back. “I don’t want to die like this,” she decided.
She filed a police report but has heard nothing since. All she could do was change her number and get rid of her sim card – and when Astha started receiving calls her daughter destroyed hers too. She told friends, family and colleagues to ignore the calls and messages and, eventually, they all but stopped.
Bhoomi found support in her sisters, her boss and an online community of others abused by loan apps. But mostly, she found strength in her daughter.
“I must have done something good to be given a daughter like this,” she says. “If she hadn’t stood by me then I would have been one of the many people who’ve killed themselves because of loan apps.”
We put the allegations in this report to Asan Loan – and also, through contacts, to Liang Tian Tian and Parshuram Takve, who are in hiding. Neither the company nor the couple responded.
When asked for comment, Li Xiang told the BBC that he and his companies comply with all local laws and regulations, have never run predatory loan apps, have ceased collaboration with Jiyaliang, the loan recovery company run by Liang Tian Tian and Parshuram Takve, and do not collect or use customers’ contact information.
He said his loan recovery call centres adhere to strict standards and he denied profiting from the suffering of ordinary Indians.
Majesty Legal Services deny using customers’ contacts to recover loans. They told us their agents are instructed to avoid abusive or threatening calls, and any violation of the company’s policies results in dismissal.
Additional reporting by Ronny Sen, Shwetika Prashar, Syed Hasan, Ankur Jain and the BBC Eye team. Thanks also to the undercover reporters who cannot be named for their safety.
Communities of those who reside in Israel are most afraid.
Tiw Nakhonpen, 25, made the decision to use Facebook in an effort to get government assistance for him and at least 100 different Thai laborers in Israel who were caught up in Hamas strikes coming from the Gaza Strip.
This Udon Thani-born laborer was reportedly staying in a inventory with his coworkers, according to Jakkraphong Seankham, an MP for the city and local writers.
The inventory in Netivot, a southern area, was only two kilometers away from the Gaza Strip, which made matters worse.
This indicated that on the day of the attacks, missiles rained down and exploded outside, leaving them broad awake and frightened.
Tiw, a local of Ban Dong Yang of tambon Jom Sri in the Phen area, said that everyone in their party was immediately prepared to escape.
Yet, no one was able to get in touch with any Jewish personnel who could assist them in escaping, including the Royal Thai Embassy in Tel Aviv.
Tiw made the decision to upload a video clip to his Facebook asking for assistance from the government and being saved because he believed that jihadists could kill them at any time.
We only came to Israel for work and money, but we are now discouraged by the battle. Also the debt we left on in Thailand doesn’t matter to us.
” Just like in the movies, the jihadists killed all they saw.” They killed more Thai people, and the amount was higher than what you’ve seen in the media. We need to be saved, and I’m now accepting offers of assistance on my Facebook accounts, said Tiw.
At least 18 Thais were reportedly killed in Hamas’ invasion as of Tuesday, and the militants are said to have kidnapped 11 more.
The state has been asked to return the 3, 000 additional Thais to Thailand.
Some people are still unable to reach concerned community members. One of those who was unaware of the whereabouts of both of his brothers, Apichart, 29, and Phongthep, 26, was Rampoei Kusaram, 62, from tambon Non-That in Khon Kean’s Nong Song Hong area.
He claimed that prior to the season’s drama, he had been in regular contact with both of his siblings, who both worked on farms in Israel.
The siblings, along with two different laborers, have not yet been heard from, despite the fact that four different Thai residents of the same neighborhood have spoken to their families.
According to Atsuek Chanahan, acting chairman of Nakhon Ratchasima’s Office of Employment, the Labour Ministry has helped establish a Line implementation team to inform Israeli workers and their families as well as give them more contact information.
According to Mr. Atsuek, the party talk now had more than 130 participants, and many of the workers expressed a desire to go back to Thailand because they felt safe. He continued,” Over 1, 000 visitors from the county work in the southern district close to the Gaza Strip, and 2, 163 in total are already employed in Israel.”
PUBLISHED: 11 October 2023 at 4:00 p.m.
The government is considering eliminating affluent people from its 10,000-baht digital wallet release program, according to deputy finance secretary Julapun Amornvivat yesterday.
According to Mr. Julapun, Thailand has long-standing issues that have a significant impact on people’s living conditions, particularly in the inland, while the state has collected fewer taxes.
Public debt has increased from 40 % to more than 60 % of the gross domestic product ( GDP ), while household debt is also rising.
The digital wallet program, according to Mr. Julapun, is therefore required to help start the business the following year, when the government anticipates 5 % economic growth.
Despite criticism from more than 120 academics, researchers, monetary experts, and also former governors of the Bank of Thailand, the plan will be carried out.
Mr. Julapun insisted that all parties involved should be heard by the state. He claimed that because so many people have been anticipating the project’s completion, the government will never back down.
He stated that the Digital Wallet Steering commission will think about changing the plan to eliminate rich people during its meet tomorrow or on October 19.
Low-income individuals and resilient teams will still be the project’s main targets.
He thought that the project, which aims to give every Thai federal 16 years of age and older 10,000 baht in digital currency, would not be popular with the rich.
Next month, the state anticipates that people will start signing up for the program, adding that those who don’t do but will likely decide not to participate.
He added that the council may think about broadening the application of the digital currency. The 4 km radius from a person’s residence to the tambon, city, or even county where their formal home registration is located may be widened.
Mr. Julapun assured that there would be financial solutions to support the project for the estimated amount of money, which is around 560 billion baht.
He declined to provide more information, citing the Budget Bureau’s consideration of cutting the costs of various government tasks for the upcoming fiscal year in order to fund it as one example.
Deputy fund minister insists that the digital budget plan will proceed despite mounting opposition.
According to Deputy Finance Minister Julapun Amornvivat, the government is considering eliminating affluent people from its 10,000-baht digital wallet release program.
The plan is made at a time when Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin’s administration has been defending the foundation of its economic revival strategy from critics who claim that its value, at 560 billion ringgit, is excessive. Additionally, they claim that it is still unclear how the program may get funded.
According to Mr. Julapun, the electric pocket steering committee may think about changing the plan to eliminate rich people when it meets on Wednesday or on October 19 as some critics have suggested.
The government anticipates 5 % economic growth if the program succeeds, he continued, adding that the plan is necessary to help start the business the following year.
While it has been collected fewer fees, the nation has long-standing issues that have had a significant impact on people’s living situations, Mr. Julapun noted.
Public debt has increased from 40 % a decade ago to more than 60 % of GDP, while household debt is now almost 90 % of the gross domestic product ( GDP ).
To find money moving around the business and increase tax collection, the Pheu Thai Party suggested distributing 10,000 ringgit to all adult Thais over the age of 16. It is anticipated to begin in February.
Despite opposition from more than 120 academics, researchers, economic experts, and also two former governors of the Bank of Thailand, Mr. Julapun said the plan will proceed.
Although some people have been waiting for the venture to start, he insisted that the government has been aware of the expressed concerns and will not back down.
Perhaps if people who are better off were excluded, he said, the job may also target vulnerable groups and low-income individuals.
Next month, the state anticipates that people will start signing up for the program, Mr. Julapun said, adding that if they do not, it means they will not want to participate.
The council will even think about broadening the application of digital currency. The 4 km radius from a person’s residence to the tambon, city, or even county where their formal home registration is located may be widened.
The president’s claim that there will be enough financial resources to support the project was reiterated by Mr. Julapun.
The Budget Bureau is considering cutting some other state projects’ costs for the upcoming fiscal year to aid fund it, he said, declining to provide any additional information.
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