The scheme financed a life of luxury for a man who investigators said earned a salary of $70,650 in 2008: four mansions in the English countryside, a $42.5 million Gulfstream jet, a $13 million golf club outside London and a villa in Sardinia. Hajiyev’s wife, Zamira, ensconced in adjoining Knightsbridge townhouses, splurged on $20 million of diamonds, designer handbags and other luxuries at nearby Harrods. Even as the couple burned through cash, they borrowed millions more.

When the directors of Lumea 2014 PTC jumped on a conference call that September, they grappled with a new reality. The company was cratering and its creditors, including a Swiss bank, were circling, according to internal minutes of its board meetings seen by Bloomberg News. That wasn’t good because Lumea, which had consolidated control of Hajiyev’s assets, was the cog that kept his wealth machine spinning, the records show.

Dialing in to deal with the crisis was a cast of professionals Hajiyev had hired to run his operation. There were Lumea’s four directors – the head of a multifamily office in London, the managing director of a global trust company in Guernsey and two attorneys affiliated with Dentons, the world’s biggest law firm – as well as an Azerbaijani banker.

Their discussion ranged from dwindling cash balances to maneuvers involving shell companies in Luxembourg to making grants to Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, according to the minutes. Striking a reassuring note, Francois Chateau, a senior partner at Dentons, said Hajiyev, who resigned from the bank that March, was “in the middle of reorganizing his personal wealth and finances, which has restricted cash flows.” The process “should be completed within the next 60 days, when liquidity issues should be resolved,” he advised the board.

That turned out to be wishful thinking. Within three months, Hajiyev would be charged in Azerbaijan with plundering the bank he’d led since 2001. He proclaimed his innocence but was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Any hope for a fresh infusion of cash to replenish the coffers was gone.

Hajiyev’s fortune – believed by law enforcement officials to have once exceeded $100 million – has become the focus of a groundbreaking money-laundering case. The U.K.’s National Crime Agency obtained court orders in 2018 freezing some of his assets and requiring Zamira to explain the origins of the family’s wealth. The authorities have said they hope the case will be a blueprint for curbing the estimated 100 billion pounds ($128 billion) in dirty money that worms its way into Britain every year, often from economically deprived countries.One of the keys to doing that is cracking down on so-called professional enablers, who are required under U.K. regulations to carry out know-your-customer checks of clients and report suspicious activity to the authorities. A politically connected chairman of a state-owned bank in a notoriously corrupt country, whose spending far outstripped his earnings, should have raised red flags with those hired to manage his finances. One look at the International Bank of Azerbaijan’s annual reports and prospectuses would have shown that compensation for its five-member management board, plus senior executives, totaled about $1 million a year during Hajiyev’s tenure in the 2010s. In 2018, a British judge said it was “very unlikely” that Hajiyev “would have generated sufficient income” to fund even one of his many properties.

The trove of documents reviewed by Bloomberg provides a rare look at the inner workings of two dozen shell companies that moved Hajiyev’s illicit wealth around the world. The minutes of about 30 meetings from 2011 through 2016 reveal that the banker owned more luxury assets than previously reported, including a vineyard in Sardinia and three mansions in developments in Surrey popular with Russian oligarchs. The records demonstrate how Hajiyev’s advisers handled the day-to-day operation of these financial vehicles and scrambled to keep them afloat after his legal troubles turned off the tap.

A multifamily office called Werner Capital played an instrumental role in steering Hajiyev’s fortune into high-end British properties, Bloomberg reported in July. Led by Tomas Mateos Werner, once a private banker at HSBC Holdings Plc, the firm didn’t register with the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority, which regulates firms that manage client assets, even though it catered to wealthy people in the Russian-speaking world. The FCA declined to comment on whether Werner should have. The new information shows that Chateau, a former Dentons global vice chairman, and Philip Enoch, a consultant for the firm’s U.K. arm, also played important roles advising Hajiyev’s offshore operations.

“Business is supposed to provide a first line of defense against money laundering, and yet time and time again we see firms facilitating it instead,” said Duncan Hames, director of policy at Transparency International UK, the British arm of the global anti-corruption organization. “Faced with suspicious activity, senior partners in a global law firm should not be disregarding red flags and continuing to offer services.”

Lucy Fellows, a Dentons spokeswoman, said the firm doesn’t comment about current or former clients. “We are committed to strict compliance with all laws, regulations and professional standards of the jurisdictions in which we operate, which includes compliance with anti-money-laundering policies and standards,” Fellows said in an email. She added that Hajiyev isn’t currently a client and that neither Chateau nor Enoch had anything further to say.

The private banking units of EFG International AG in Zurich and South Africa’s Investec Ltd. also appear in documents in relation to the Hajiyevs providing loans and other financial services. A spokesman for EFG declined to comment, as did Tomas Werner. An Investec spokesman said the bank doesn’t comment on clients but will immediately review and potentially end a relationship with a customer if “adverse information” comes to light. They and their firms have a right to work with all manner of clients, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with setting up or managing offshore trusts.But British lawmakers who support tougher anti-money-laundering measures say the new disclosures raise questions about the work that professionals do for clients with suspicious sources of wealth. “We have to make financial advisers, lawyers, bankers, accountants and other enablers culpable for facilitating money laundering and other financial crimes,” said Margaret Hodge, a Labour Party Member of Parliament and former government minister. “Nothing ever lands on the advisers who create these structures.”

Hajiyev’s ties to his advisers go back 15 years. In 2005, he paid 4.5 million euros ($5 million) for a villa in the billionaires’ playground of Costa Smeralda near the northern tip of Sardinia, according to corporate filings in Italy. The 11-room Villa Carruba is perched on the side of a hill with panoramic views of the Tyrrhenian Sea. A nightclub called Billionaire, where pizzas can cost as much as 50 euros, is just down the road. It’s a short boat ride across the bay to the mansion where former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi held his “bunga bunga” parties. After a wave of Russian oligarchs bought villas in the area in the early 2000s, an Orthodox church was established to satisfy their spiritual needs.Hajiyev bought his villa through an Italian shell company, Rufus S.R.L., according to an assessment of his wealth prepared by Werner Capital and corporate filings in Italy. His daughter, Leyla Mahmudova, is listed as an administrator on a registration record filed in 2017. Rufus, in turn, was owned by a Luxembourg-domiciled company named Tiara S.A. No mortgage was recorded on the filings.

The villa filings reveal Hajiyev’s relationship to a key figure in the money flows between Azerbaijan and the West – Khagani Bashirov, who’s listed as Tiara’s administrator. Bashirov also showed up as a director, for 18 days, of the Sardinian winery, Tenuta Masone Mannu, that Hajiyev bought in 2014 for about 5 million euros, according to Rufus filings. Bashirov also served as a director of the U.K. company that owned Hajiyev’s private jet and was a shareholder with Zamira in an enterprise that owned an apartment in London where she lived when she first moved there around 2005, company records show.

A 59-year-old Azeri businessman and former government official, Bashirov also holds a French passport and maintains a residence in Luxembourg and company offices in London. He was arrested in Azerbaijan in 2010 for failing to repay $109 million in loans from International Bank of Azerbaijan, then released after five months, according to a 2011 report by Radio Free Europe’s Azeri service introduced into court records.

Bashirov is also linked to companies that have moved tens of millions of dollars out of Azerbaijan, records show. The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project has traced some of these entities to the Azeri Laundromat, an alleged $2.9 billion money-laundering operation that also involved the International Bank of Azerbaijan when Hajiyev was its chairman. A receptionist at a consulting firm Bashirov founded in Azerbaijan said he was out of the country, and he couldn’t be reached for comment at the London addresses where his U.K. companies are based or at a residence in Luxembourg he has listed on filings there.

Investec raised concerns about Bashirov’s connections with Hajiyev. At the September 2015 Lumea board meeting, Ryan Dekker, managing director of the Guernsey office of Trident Trust, said the bank was “voicing concerns” about Bashirov’s dealings with Hajiyev. Dekker, whose firm provides financial services to the wealthy, said Investec wanted to know more about the relationship. Chateau said Bashirov and Hajiyev had known each other for at least five years, the lawyer said, according to the minutes. He had “structured some vehicles” for Hajiyev and “acted as his nominee from time to time.” Chateau added that Hajiyev was now “unwinding this relationship and structuring the assets in his own name.”

Trident said it doesn’t comment on client matters but has always complied with Guernsey’s anti-money-laundering and compliance requirements.

Chateau, 63, leads Dentons’ global practice for the luxury, fashion and beauty industries from his base in New York. He also advises wealthy families and acts as a trustee for their interests, according to the firm’s website. He joined Dentons in 2013 after it merged with Salans, a Paris-based law firm where he was chairman and Enoch was a partner. It isn’t clear if Chateau started working with Hajiyev before Lumea was set up in May 2014, but Salans had an office in Baku. In 2011, Salans worked on plans to privatize the International Bank of Azerbaijan when Hajiyev was chairman, according to a 2016 report by PwC.

The Lumea minutes show that from 2014 through 2016, even as Hajiyev was being prosecuted for financial crimes, the directors were preoccupied with developing and flipping mansions in two of the world’s most exclusive luxury-housing estates. Hajiyev had bought three properties in St. George’s Hill, a 960-acre (388-hectare) gated enclave in Surrey, where houses cost an average of about $7.7 million (6 million pounds). With its manicured lawns, golf course and round-the-clock security, the development has been popular with Russian billionaires, including Oleg Deripaska, a target of U.S. sanctions, and Boris Berezovsky, a onetime ally-turned-enemy of President Vladimir Putin who committed suicide in 2013.

These were investment properties for the Hajiyevs, and each was placed inside its own shell company, with names like Astra and Lumen, the documents show. After spending more than 10 million pounds buying the houses, Hajiyev’s companies borrowed millions more from EFG to raze them and build even grander residences.One was the Warreners, a five-bedroom, Regency-style mansion with an indoor swimming pool and an elevator that lowered cars from the driveway to an underground garage. In 2011, Werner Capital arranged for EFG to provide one Hajiyev company with a 4.6 million-pound mortgage to refinance and develop the property. The two-year loan cost 140,000 pounds in fees and monthly interest of about 17,250 pounds, according to the minutes. Hajiyev personally guaranteed the debt.

Tomas Werner and his brother Daniel were more than property developers. As early as 2010, Hajiyev authorized Tomas Werner to manage his money, and the following year Werner Capital prepared a net-worth statement detailing his assets for EFG’s private bank. Their firm offered to provide clients, primarily in the Russian-speaking world, with “complex, cross-border corporate governance structures” to protect their assets from “political upheaval, changes in legislation or unwarranted claims,” according to an old version of Werner Capital’s website. It also helped clients settle in the U.K., obtain residency visas and gain access to private schools for their children. Daniel Werner declined to comment.The Werners managed every aspect of the redevelopments, from hiring builders to commissioning interior designers and security consultants, even getting the water mains and electricity connected. They spent 210,000 pounds on “stone and ceramic works” for the Warreners and 54,000 pounds on “furniture from Italy,” the minutes show. The spending continued until Hajiyev left the bank in March 2015. A month earlier, Zamira had used credit cards issued by her husband’s bank to spend more than 140,000 pounds at Harrods on merchandise from Gucci, Fendi and Christian Dior.

By February 2016, the mood among Lumea’s directors had darkened. Bankers at EFG were running out of patience, the minutes show. Unpaid bills and stalled building projects meant that its 13 million pounds in loans were in jeopardy. Three days before that month’s meeting the Swiss bank had directed Lumea to sell one of Hajiyev’s mansions, Robin Hill, to one of its own clients for 4.5 million pounds – 2 million pounds less than the purchase price. But that wasn’t enough. EFG was also demanding that all creditors be paid and 1 million pounds be placed on secured deposit with the bank.

Trident Trust’s Dekker informed the board that if the shell companies failed to pay their debts, EFG was threatening to seize control of all the properties, the documents show. That “would result in the likely fire sale of the developments to meet the bank’s outstanding secured facility,” Dekker said. “This would not be in the interests of the beneficiaries.”

It’s unclear from the documents how much the advisers received in compensation. But with insolvency looming, some restructured their fees. At a meeting on April 15, 2016, Tomas Werner said he was owed about 200,000 pounds that he was willing to forgo in lieu of a monthly retainer of 7,200 pounds for the next 90 days. Trident also started billing on a monthly basis, charging almost 30,000 pounds for its services in March 2016, the minutes show. As for Dentons, it was owed 24,300 pounds that month.

By June of that year, Hajiyev’s finances had deteriorated so much that the directors decided to hold off paying an estate fee of 6,888 pounds to the St. George’s Hill residents’ association. Meanwhile, Zamira had hired her own lawyer to chase Lumea’s directors for her “distributions” from the proceeds of the Robin Hill sale. In the past, they had approved a $2.3 million payment from Lumea to Zamira to settle her credit-card balances, the minutes show.

Now they were rebuffing her demands, arguing that any such disbursement would trigger EFG’s takeover of the trust’s assets. Zamira had stopped responding to their texts and emails and no longer accepted their calls. In an apparent fit of pique, the directors noted: “It was clear to the board that Mrs. Hajiyeva has a very limited understanding of trusts, her role as protector of those trusts, her entitlement as beneficiary and the consequences of unraveling the current arrangements.”

By 2018, Zamira had become the target of a new type of legal action designed to root out dirty money. That February and April, the National Crime Agency obtained two Unexplained Wealth Orders directing her to disclose how she and her husband could afford to buy the adjoining townhouses on Walton Street for 11.5 million pounds and an 18-hole golf course and club outside London. British authorities didn’t accuse the Hajiyevs of any crimes, but Azerbaijani prosecutors charged Zamira with fraud and sought her extradition from the U.K. In September, a judge declined to send her back because there was a risk she wouldn’t receive a fair trial in a case with political implications.

Zamira argued that the NCA didn’t have grounds to target her. She asked an appeals court to throw out the orders. On Feb. 5, a three-judge appellate panel rejected her claim and noted that Werner Capital’s tally of Hajiyev’s fortune “posed more questions as to the source of his wealth than it answered,” highlighting $20 million he claimed to have earned while he was a student. Zamira has appealed the decision to the U.K. Supreme Court. If the nation’s highest court declines to accept the case she will have to show the properties were purchased with legitimate funds or the NCA could move to seize the assets. Her lawyer declined to comment.

While Unexplained Wealth Orders have passed a legal test, lawmakers must take other steps to attack the scourge of illicit finance, said Andrew Mitchell, a Conservative MP and former minister, speaking broadly about the problem. These include beefing up law enforcement agencies and bringing more transparency to the offshore world. Working with his Labour counterpart Hodge, Mitchell has backed new laws to stop the “ultimate beneficial owners” of crooked enterprises from hiding behind anonymously held shell companies. A bill that would require overseas owners of British properties to publicly disclose their holdings is winding its way through Parliament.

As useful as these measures might be, they won’t be enough to make a lasting difference unless professionals on the front lines take more responsibility for their actions, Mitchell said. In October, Transparency International UK reported that hundreds of billions of pounds in corrupt wealth had moved through 86 banks and financial institutions, 81 law firms, 62 accounting firms and thousands of companies in Britain and its overseas territories in the past 30 years.

“Money launderers are always one step ahead of us,” Mitchell said. “If the enablers don’t take their responsibilities seriously, then we should throw the book at them.”

Of the total, 200,000 were snapped up by Tos at an average price of Bt36.75. Suthilaksh bought 300,000 shares at an average price of Bt37.

After the transaction, Tos owns 38,461,600 shares in CRC.

On March 3, Tos and CRC director Prin Chirathivat purchased a total of 300,000 CRC shares worth Bt10.65 million. Tos bought 200,000 shares at an average price of Bt35.38. Prin bought 100,000 shares at an average price of Bt35.75.

The new smartphone model comes in three types: 6.2-inch Galaxy S20, 6.7-inch S20 Plus and the 6.9-inch S20 Ultra. All the three variants support 5G network and camera system that utilizes artificial intelligence technology and the company’s high-end image sensor.

However, the 6.2-inch Galaxy S20 does not have mmWave module, which is specifically designed to support 5G cellular network at higher frequencies from 30 GHz to 300 GHz. The 6.2-inch model has the lowest-end camera array among the three.

The S20 Plus and the S20 Ultra have one extra camera each and come with mmWave modules for 5G networks.

All the models that have been launched in Korea do not come with mmWave modules as the nation has not built network infrastructure that uses the millimeter wave spectrum.

In Korea, customers can get free Bixby-enabled smart speaker Galaxy Home Mini or portable printer Nemonic Mini, when purchasing S20 models on Samsung’s official website or other online shopping platforms, the company said.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp.com)

The executive runs Ladders, a job-search site he founded after the first digital boom, in 2003. On a typical day, he’s guiding his staffers – about two-thirds engineers – at the company’s headquarters 50 stories above New York’s financial district.

On Thursday, the 49-year-old found himself helming a more forward-minded experiment. He told employees to schedule as much face-to-face work and meetings as possible – and then do it all from their homes. Cenedella would run Ladders from the apartment he shares with his wife and three kids in Nolita, the boutique-dotted downtown neighborhood.

As the novel coronavirus has started to spread in the United States, some chief executives have begun considering how remote work would be conducted in the case of a lockdown, following the trend in Asia. Cenedella, though, decided to attempt this one-day trial 10 days earlier, before any New York cases had been reported, and put it into place even as its mayor, Bill de Blasio, urges residents to commute to work as usual. Cenedella hoped to learn both the adjustments a lockdown would require and the toll it could take.

“We’re normally a very in-person company,” Cenedella said Thursday morning. He wore a casual button-down shirt, jeans and white socks as he sat in front of two monitors he’d set up on the large wooden table in his dining area, opposite children’s drawings and other signs of its normal inhabitants. “But I wanted everyone to start to feel more comfortable in case there’s a long lockdown – to feel reassured there’s a plan in place and know how to execute it.”

He paused. “Of course, the question isn’t Day 1 but Day 20. It will be harder to keep people from feeling lonely.”

Managers can be reluctant to trot out emergency protocols too soon out of fear of rattling employees. But Cenedella thought a lack of preparation would lead to more anxiety. He called the process a “rehearsal,” not a “drill.”

First order of business: a welcome call.

“Good morning and welcome to our coronavirus rehearsal,” he said to the staffers brought together on Google Hangouts from basements and bedrooms across the New York metropolitan area. “We want to do everything possible to make this a full, productive workday for everyone.”

He continued offering encouragement and guidance. “It’s really important we stick with regular meetings and not push them off or blow them off. We want to experience this in case we’re in a work-from-home scenario. We want to feel the full burden.”

After another moment of speaking he realized he wasn’t getting much feedback. “Am I muted? ” Someone responded on the accompanying chat that he was. “The whole time?” Also affirmative.

“I guess the first lesson of lockdown rehearsal is to turn off the mute,” he said self-deprecatingly and started the spiel again.

The meeting ended and the names vanished from the screen. Cenedella went into a virtual meeting with sales executives.

After a moment of getting the glitches out from among the trio (“Can you share your camera?” “We want to see you.” “I don’t see you.” “I see me.” “I see you.” “Oh, there you are.”), they dived in and started discussing employer clients.

A few minutes in, a nonhuman sound could be heard.

“Sorry, I think my dog wants to join the conversation,” one of the sales executives said.

Ladders bills itself as a site for higher-paying jobs, in contrast to competitors like Indeed, LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter. To attract subscribers (the site charges both employers and job-seekers), it is constantly adding content and features. Normally employees work in one-week “sprints” – getting a new set of innovations going Wednesday and passing them to other teams the following Tuesday. A lockdown of a few days would be one thing; an entire cycle without in-person meetings to pitch, plan and polish is another.

“We’ve never had a problem doing one snow day – people do ‘personal’ work that doesn’t require a lot of interaction,” Cenedella said. “But once it interrupts a full sprint or several sprints, I don’t know how that will go.”

When he’s done personal work, Cenedella said, it was from a desk set up in his bedroom. But he wasn’t getting on video calls then. “You don’t want employees to see the CEOs’ bed,” he said.

One of the executive’s tasks is staying on top of tickets – essentially high-end versions of what the rest of us send to the IT department when we can’t log in. He spent some time dealing with that. Ladders also has a content team, which works on a parallel product offering Web posts about the job market.

Cenedella held a call with some of the editors who run that department.

“With social, every 12 months something’s new so we have to stay on top of it, “Cenedella said. “It was Facebook, now it’s Instagram – ”

“TikTok,” a millennial editor said.

“But what’s the upper age limit of TikTok?” Cenedella asked.

“Honestly it’s kind of all over the place. Parents do it to see what their kids are up to. I’ve seen people in their 80s doing it. I personally didn’t download it because I think it would take over my life,” the editor responded.

Cenedella’s three children are all under the age of 8. The youngest, 3, came scampering into the room as he was responding to an email about a client.

“Do you want to help Daddy type?” he asked his daughter.

She said yes, then plunged into a description of a character she liked, pointing out they should be on the screen before running off. It was like a hardware check from a tech staffer but with more “My Little Pony” talk.

An all-staff Slack channel was active; Cenedella had encouraged employees to weigh in on how their day was going. He clicked over to it.

One had written. “I feel like I’ve been grounded and sent to my room.” Cenedella clicked off. “They’re one of the more extroverted people we have here,” he explained.

A ticket came through on an engineering issue. He studied it for a moment. “There are too many opinions to solve it in Slack,” he concluded. “Normally I’d just say let’s huddle for five minutes and we’ll solve it. We can’t do that now.”

He decided to punt it to Friday when everyone would be back in the office. That luxury wouldn’t be available in a real lockdown, but he felt he had no choice; he couldn’t just message everyone to get on a conference call.

“Popping by an engineer’s desk – when they have their head down and headphones on – is easy. But Slacking them to stop what they’re doing will make it seem like a much bigger deal that it is.”

Couldn’t he just preface that it wasn’t a big deal? “Whenever a CEO says that you know it’s a big deal,” he noted.

It was nearly 6 p.m., time for an end-of-day wrap call on the rehearsal.

“Hopefully this has been a helpful experiment for everyone in case things begin to really go poorly,” he said as everyone gathered virtually. He asked what they missed being out of the office. A few said they missed the more efficient hardware; another said the lack of distractions.

“None of you missed me?” Cenedella asked, prompting a raft of employees to say they did.

After the call, Cenedella said he thought the experiment mostly ran smoothly. But a number of incidents – especially the engineering ticket – convinced him there would be hurdles. “What I realize now is that to make this work we need to pull in as much work that’s independent and push out as much that’s collaborative, which I don’t know if we can do for several weeks.”

Asked if it felt strange for his offices to sit empty on a workday, he said, “But it’s not really empty. Everyone’s here.” He gestured to a screen. “Are they here? Where is here?”

“I may have been away from people for too long,” he said.

The document provides the first indication of how Court of Federal Claims judge Patricia Campbell-Smith views the evidence presented on both sides.

In a blow to Microsoft and the Defense Department, Campbell-Smith ordered the Pentagon to halt work on JEDI last month. In an opinion explaining her reasoning, Campbell-Smith sided with Amazon’s contention that the Pentagon had made a mistake in how it evaluated prices for competing proposals from Amazon and Microsoft. She also concluded that the mistake is likely to materially harm Amazon, an important qualifier for government contract bid protests. And she rejected arguments raised earlier by Microsoft and the Defense Department that Amazon should have raised its concerns sooner.

A Defense Department spokesman expressed disappointment in the ruling but declined to comment on its specifics.

“The Department is disappointed in the Court’s ruling,” Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Robert Carver said in an email. “We remain focused on getting this critical capability into the hands of our warfighters as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

Microsoft spokesman Frank Shaw downplayed the ruling, saying it focused on a single technical factor.

“The decision disagreed with a lone technical finding by the Department of Defense about data storage under the evaluation of one sub-element of one price scenario,” Shaw said in a statement. “While important, there were six pricing scenarios, each with multiple sub-elements, and eight technical factors, each with numerous subfactors evaluated during the procurement. The decision does not find error in the Department of Defense’s evaluation in any other area of the complex and thorough process that resulted in the award of the contract to Microsoft.”

Shaw further defended the Defense Department’s handling of JEDI, adding: “We have confidence in our technology, our bid, and the professional staff at the Department of Defense.”

The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, better-known as ‘JEDI’, calls for a powerful cloud computing system through which military agencies can access data centers operated by a commercial tech company. Top defense officials have labeled it a crucial national security priority that will improve deployed troops’ access to technology and intelligence, and lay the groundwork for the military’s adoption of artificial intelligence. It has been delayed repeatedly since it was first announced in early 2018.

In its bid protest, Amazon accused Trump of improperly interfering in the bid protest to spike the company’s bid. It cited repeated public statements Trump has made against the company and its founder, Jeff Bezos, going back to the early days of his campaign. And it has asked to depose Trump along with Defense Secretary Mark Esper, chief information officer Dana Deasy and others.

(Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Campbell-Smith has not yet ruled on Amazon’s contention that Trump interfered personally in the bidding process.

Representatives from Amazon did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday’s ruling.

The discussions are a sign that the White House is grappling with how to respond to an outbreak they have publicly downplayed. The talks remain fluid and are preliminary.

These tax deferrals for the travel industry are being considered as airlines cut back on routes and warn about dropping ticket sales. Hotel chains are struggling with vacancies in Asia and are bracing for similar waves in the United States. Businesses travel is falling, and trade shows, music festivals and conventions are being canceled from San Francisco to Chicago to Miami. Families and college students are reconsidering spring break excursions and distant summer plans.

Other countries have already enacted tax relief for their hardest hit industries. On Sunday, Italy announced a tax credit for any company that has seen revenue decline by more than a quarter. This is on top of Italy’s announcement last month that companies and individuals living in areas affected by the “epidemiological emergency” would be granted an extension on spring tax filings.

It’s not clear how U.S. relief would be administered or whether President Donald Trump’s own hotels could be beneficiaries. Administration officials also disagree on the extent to which some of these measures could be done without Congress.

On Friday, White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow confirmed the administration is considering “timely and targeted” federal interventions to help workers, businesses and industries most vulnerable economically to the outbreak.

“Perhaps on a large scale, some of the sectors might need some temporary assistance,” Kudlow said on Fox Business, adding, “We don’t want to act prematurely.”

Kudlow’s comments were the administration’s most definitive public admission yet that U.S. companies have been hurt by the coronavirus.

Speaking on CNBC, he specifically pointed to airlines, saying they are “in trouble in some of their numbers.” But he stressed that the White House was not concerned about widespread economic damage, a stark difference to most independent economists and investors who see growing risk of a recession.

Yet many travel experts and industry executives are comparing the current industry upheaval to that of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks because fear and uncertainty are driving consumer behavior and keeping people at home.

“It has a 9/11-like feel,” Southwest Airlines CEO Gary Kelly said Thursday on CNBC. He also said that “9/11 wasn’t an economically driven issue for travel. It was more fear, quite frankly, and I think that that’s really what’s manifested this time.”

This week, the International Air Transport Association warned the outbreak could cost airlines as much as $113 billion in lost revenue. The U.S. Travel Association forecasts that international travel to the U.S. will decline 6 percent over the next three months – the largest decline since the 2008 financial crisis.

The sector’s grim outlook comes as coronavirus cases surpass 100,000 worldwide and deaths number in the thousands. The United States announced its 14th fatality, and Maryland joined states with confirmed new cases. Meanwhile, health officials have warned against travel restrictions on China, Iran, Italy and South Korea, while the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has advised advanced precautions regarding travel to Japan.

While there are no restrictions on domestic travel – and basic habits like hand washing remain among the best defenses against the flu-like virus – the outbreak has sent global markets into near-hysteria. The Dow Jones Transportation Average careened into a bear market this week, meaning these stocks have fallen more than 20 percent from their recent highs.

United Airlines and American Airlines stocks are both down about 40 percent to date this year, while Delta Air Lines has shed more than 20 percent.

In addition to helping sectors like hospitality and airlines, the White House also is considering helping people unable to work because they are forced to stay home, as well as small businesses who may need some “cash flow” help amid the outbreak, Kudlow said.

Kudlow didn’t specify what types of assistance the government could offer. Trump signed legislation on Friday to address the outbreak, which includes $7 billion in loans for the Small Business Administration.

Travel and tourism accounted for 5.9 million jobs in 2018, including jobs in lodging, dining and transportation. The sector accounted for 2.9 percent of the economy in 2018, federal data show.

Cruise prices are beginning to fall, after two high profile quarantines, said Mike Driscoll, editor in chief of the trade publication Cruise Week. On the Diamond Princess 700 people were infected and seven died and now the Grand Princess, is being held off the coast of California as passengers await test results.

Because cruises are generally booked months in advance, it’s hard to predict how many people will cancel summer plans, said Mike Driscoll, editor in chief of Cruise Week. Fewer Americans take cruises to Asia compared to Europe or elsewhere, so the industry’s long-term impact depends heavily on where the outbreak takes hold. “The potential is so worrisome for the cruise business,” Driscoll said. “It depends on what happens in the Caribbean. It depends on what happens in Mexico.”

Debra Adams, 57, is counting down to April 19, the start of her 27-day cruise across the Atlantic and through Europe. She regularly checks for bulletins from Princess Cruises that may threaten her trip, but says she and her 81-year-old father are determined to go. Adams said she sees no reason to sit and home and worry when she has this “opportunity to live.”

“Right before we get off the ship, my dad and I spend a day in Paris,” she said. “It’s going to be amazing. I’m going to go until they tell me I can’t.”

Glenn Wilcox has been fielding questions by anxious callers looking to rearrange European vacations or finagle flights to avoid certain airports. His company, Wilcox Travel, books trips for leisure travelers and humanitarian aid groups. Wilcox estimates that future bookings are down 20 to 30 percent compared to last year.

“We’ve had constant questions,” Wilcox said. “It’s a hard thing. What I’m telling folks is that we can only go off of what travel restrictions there are.”

As people cancel flights, they ditch hotel reservations too. Marriott said in an earnings call that revenue from bookings in China plunged in February. Hilton estimates that coronavirus will affect its bottom line by as much as $50 million if the outbreak lasts several months. And Hyatt said its hotels in Singapore, Bali and Japan saw bookings fall as Chinese travelers stayed home.

At San Francisco’s Moscone Center, the city’s largest convention and exhibition complex, at least seven groups – including Facebook and IBM – have canceled or rescheduled for total economic losses of roughly $138 million, according to Laurie Armstrong Gossy of San Francisco Travel Association.

Airport hotels in particular are seeing a loss in bookings, said Jan Freitag, senior vice president of lodging insights at the data firm STR. Especially those with a lot of international traffic. And there’s some indication that people are canceling weekend bookings, suggesting leisure travel could be pulling back more than corporate travel.

But Freitag said that if people want to travel, they’ll do it. He pointed to high occupancy rates at New Orleans hotels during Mardi Gras, a hot spot for travelers coming in very close contact.

“One week does not a trend make,” Freitag said.

In suburban Maryland, it seemed like business as usual at the MGM Grand casino. In the food court, the only sign of coronavirus fears was an oversized jug of hand sanitizer next to the register of a Vietnamese eatery. On the casino floor, one slot player out of dozens wore a face mask. At blackjack and baccarat tables, players sat as close to each other as ever, fiddling with chips that had been handled by countless others that day.

Yet, some were staying away. Maryland poker pro Andrew Brokos, an author and host of the podcast “Thinking Poker,” said he was focusing on his coaching business and finishing his latest book.

“I actually have not been going to casinos,” he said. “By the time we’re hearing about confirmed cases in the area, it’s too late.”

A spokeswoman from MGM Grand declined to comment on the outbreak’s impact on business but said the casino had placed additional hand sanitizer dispensing stations in high-traffic areas, among other cleaning protocols.

The White House conversations over tax relief for hospitality leaves a big question about whether the president might directly benefit. Trump’s company, which he still owns but which is run by his sons, owns and operates hotels in the District of Columbia, Chicago and Las Vegas, plus the Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida and a vineyard in northern Virginia.

The company also owns 11 golf courses in the U.S. and three golf resorts in Europe. Like Hilton, Marriott and other big-name hotel firms – which mostly manage but do not own hotels – the Trump Organization also operates properties under the Trump brand for other owners in Hawaii, New York and Vancouver.

Since Trump’s election, his politics have taken a toll on the business, with the “Trump” name being removed from hotels in New York, Rio de Janeiro, Toronto and Panama, as well as from a number of residential buildings in New York. The Trump Organization is now looking to sell its D.C. hotel business.

The company did not respond to questions about how the outbreak has affected its business and any actions it has taken in response.

Two new power plants will begin commercial operation this year, with the 16-megawatt Bo Thong wind farm in Mukdahan province set to start in September.

She said the company was in talks on merger and acquisition (M&A) deals of several power plants. Targeted facilities are small power plants (SPP) with combined capacity of 400MW and a natural gas plant in Malaysia with a capacity of 250MW.

The company has also studied plans to invest in a wind power plant in South Korea, a liquefied natural gas (LNG) power plant in Vietnam, and a solar farm in the Philippines.

Nopadej Karnasuta, Chief Financial Officer, said BGrimm Power may issue debentures worth not more than Bt8 billion in the middle of this year, depending on interest rate trend.

The investment also marks the next step in the partnership between Singtel and SK Telecom, after an earlier memorandum of understanding was inked to develop the region’s gaming and e-sports ecosystem.

The joint venture will partner with leading international game developers, and leverage the partners’ Korean and Southeast Asian gaming and entertainment content offering to engage the 800 million gamers in the region, the companies said in a statement.

It will benefit from Singtel’s regional knowledge, digital and telco assets, SK Telecom’s expertise as a pioneer in Korean entertainment and gaming, and AIS’s experience in e-sports and digital content, the statement added.

“The games market in Thailand is showing remarkable growth,” Alistair David Johnston, managing director of New Business at AIS, said. “There are more than 27 million active gamers across all platforms, with revenue in 2019 exceeding Bt23 billion, which is expected to increase to Bt27 billion in 2020. AIS has been a pioneer in the Thai e-sports space, hosting several successful tournaments, and the company’s fixed and mobile networks also provide a great gaming experience to our customers. We aim to provide a great experience to all gamers in Thailand and across the region,” he added.

“Gaming is growing in popularity as digital entertainment for our customers in the region,” Singtel CEO Arthur Lang said. “There are some 200 million gamers in our markets, and the numbers continue to grow. In the past two years, we’ve worked with various partners in the gaming ecosystem on regional e-sports efforts, such as PVP Esports, to connect with Generation Z and millennial audiences. This has received strong support from the community and spurred us to deepen our engagement beyond e-sports into gaming content distribution. We’ve built a team of technology and gaming veterans to lead the charge as we take our next big step. By combining our strengths with SK Telecom and AIS, we can contribute significantly to the gaming scene – from offering local community engagement solutions to content and payment channels, which are often regarded by game developers as challenges to enter Asian markets. We look forward to launching our new initiative later this year,” he added.

“SK Telecom is delighted to participate in the joint venture with Singtel and AIS,” said Charles Huh, vice president and head of Private Placement Group at SK Telecom. “Building on our extensive experience in the area of gaming, which includes the successful establishment of T1, a global e-sports joint venture with Comcast Spectator, and long-standing leadership in mobile game distribution in Korea, SK Telecom will help create a new level of gaming experience by providing popular Korean gaming content throughout the Asia-Pacific region.”

The joint venture is not expected to have a material impact on Singtel Group’s finances.

Thus, its refining ratio of jet fuel is lowered to 15 per cent from 23 per cent, while that of diesel increases to 41 per cent from 33 per cent. The refining of benzene remains unchanged at 16 per cent.

Thai Oil will ask shareholders’ approval in April on issuing US$2 billion worth of additional debentures within 2025 to fund business expansion and debt repayment. The company has a high cash flow of approximately US$300 million a year.

Tris Rating agency assigned a credit rating of “A/Stable Outlook” on February 21.

The debentures are a private placement offering to no more than 10 specific investors on March 4. They were issued the next day, with Bangkok Bank acting as underwriter.

The previous debentures offered by NN2 have been used to repay all remaining loans from financial institutions, the company said. The issuance of this new set of debentures is a part of CK Power’s ongoing financial cost reduction plan, which is offered during a period of relatively low interest rates.

“This will help to further reduce financial costs and enhance the strength of our business,” Thanawat said.

NN2 is the first juristic firm registered in Laos to issue debentures in Thai baht in order to refinance 100 per cent of its commercial loans, reflecting investor confidence in CKPower’s business potential, strong performance and experienced management team with direct expertise in the field of sustainable power business, the company added.