Financial Times - Miles Johnson, Mehul Srivastava and Chloe Cornish / Assad dispatched $250mn of Syria’s cash to Moscow
 

• Bashar al-Assad’s central bank airlifted around $250mn in cash to Moscow in a two-year period when the then-Syrian dictator was indebted to the Kremlin for military support and his relatives were secretly buying assets in Russia. 

• The Financial Times has uncovered records showing that Assad’s regime, while desperately short of foreign currency, flew banknotes weighing nearly two tonnes in $100 bills and €500 notes into Moscow’s Vnukovo airport to be deposited at sanctioned Russian banks between 2018 and 2019. 

• Russian records show that regular exports from Russia to Syria — such as shipments of secure paper and new Syrian banknotes from the Russian state-owned printing company Goznak, and consignments of replacement Russian military components for Syria’s Ministry of Defence — took place in the years before and after the large amount of banknotes were flown to Moscow. 

• Syrian cash transfers had previously elicited sanctions from Washington. The US Treasury in 2015 accused former Syrian central bank governor Adib Mayaleh and a central bank employee called Batoul Rida of facilitating bulk cash transfers for the regime to Russia, and managing fuel-related deals to raise foreign currency. Rida was also accused by the US of trying to procure the chemical ammonium nitrate from Russia, which is used in barrel bombs.

    
Bloomberg - Jana Randow and Martin Ademmer / Germany Is Unraveling Just When Europe Needs It Most

• Following five years of stagnation, Germany’s economy is now 5% smaller than it would have been if the pre-pandemic growth trend had been maintained.     

• More worryingly, Bloomberg Economics estimates that the bulk of the shortfall will be tough to recover, due to structural blows such as the loss of cheap Russian energy and Volkswagen AG and Mercedes-Benz Group AG struggling to keep pace with China’s auto firms. The decline in national competitiveness means every household is worse off by about €2,500 ($2,600) a year.

• With Chancellor Olaf Scholz expected to lose a confidence vote on Monday, snap elections offer a chance for a change of course, but the trend of gradual decay creates little sense of urgency. The risk is dull policy responses that lack the ambition needed to tackle underlying challenges.

• What that looks like is Germany losing more of its energy-intensive manufacturing and exports sliding as unsettled companies rein in domestic investment. As living standards erode, voters cast around for someone to blame, and the social tensions drive away the foreign talent the country desperately needs. The toxic cocktail of caution and resentment would then ripple out across Europe.

Euractiv / Serbia used Israeli firm’s tech to enable spy campaign, Amnesty says

• Serbian officials installed homegrown spyware on the phones of dozens of journalists and activists, Amnesty International said in a report released on Monday (16 December), citing digital forensic evidence and testimony from activists who said they were hacked in recent months. 

• According to Amnesty, Serbia received phone-cracking devices from Cellebrite as part of a broader package of assistance designed to help Serbia meet the requirements for integration into the European Union. 

• That package, which was funded by the Norwegian government and administered by the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), was provided to the Serbian interior ministry from 2017 to 2021 in order to help Serbia fight organised crime, the report said. 

• “The claims made in the report are alarming and, if correct, unacceptable,” Norway’s deputy foreign minister, Maria Varteressian, told Reuters. “We will meet Serbian authorities as well as UNOPS later this month to get further information on the matter”.

Related article: Al Jazeera / Israel approves plan to surge settler population in occupied Golan Heights
               
South China Morning Post - Sylvia Main and Ji Siqi / China’s November consumption misses estimate, adds urgency to stimulus

• China’s consumption growth slowed in November, as did property investment, while the industrial sector showed limited signs of recovery, underscoring challenges to Beijing’s push for an “all-around” expansion of domestic demand in 2025 amid external uncertainties. 

• Retail sales, a key indicator of consumption, increased by 3 per cent year on year last month, down from the 4.8 per cent growth in October, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday. 

• A readout issued after China’s annual tone-setting central economic work conference (CEWC) on Thursday prioritised the need to “vigorously boost consumption, improve investment efficiency, and expand domestic demand on all fronts” as the top economic work next year, up from second place for this year.

• Before the two-day conference, the Politburo – the Communist Party’s major decision-making body – pledged to adopt “more active” policies and “unconventional” countercyclical adjustments to steer the economy next year, with observers saying they believed the forceful rhetorical change signalled fiscal expansion and monetary easing.

   

Our opinion reads for today:

• Foreign Affairs - Mitch McConnell / The Price of American Retreat
• Project Syndicate - Helmut K. Anheier / Angela Merkel’s World of Yesterday