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Australians held over alleged SL bribes_我的网站

A |     Canberra, Oct 11 (UNI) Two Australian men have been charged with bribing Sri Lankan officials to secure infrastructure contracts worth millions of dollars.
Australian police arrested the pair last month after a decade-long investigation spanning several countries, BBC reported.
The men, aged 67 and 71, worked for a company which has been accused of misconduct in South Asian countries, it said.
They are yet to respond to the charges and will face court.
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) say the men arranged bribes of more than A$304,000 ($190,000) to government officials between 2009 and 2016.
The bribes were allegedly made in the pursuit of two Sri Lankan projects -- which police did not name -- worth A$14m.
The charges follow an investigation into SMEC International Pty Ltd, an Australian-based engineering firm, which involved authorities from the US, Canada, India and elsewhere, the BBC reported.
More arrests and charges are possible, the AFP said.
"Corruption undermines fair competition and can have disastrous consequences for developing economies, global anti-poverty and development efforts," Detective Supt Helen Schneider said.
Originally known as the Snowy Mountains Engineering Corp, SMEC was formed in 1949 to build an iconic Australian infrastructure project. It has since grown to employ 5,400 staff in many countries.
In 2017, the World Bank temporarily barred SMEC and four subsidiaries in India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka from bidding for any of its contracts, the report said.
The World Bank said it had discovered evidence linking the company to suspected "inappropriate payments" in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
At the time, a spokesperson for SMEC said the allegations did not relate to any Australian projects, and that the company would continue to strengthen its corporate integrity compliance programmes.
Protests erupted in Sri Lanka this year over corruption allegations and the country's worst economic crisis in history, it said.
UNI MR。    A latest Fox News poll has painted a depressing picture, with 75% of those questioned believing that the US is going in the wrong direction, expressing dissatisfaction with the state of the economy, domestic and foreign policy, amongst other issues. The dissatisfaction comes from poll participants across the board, but Democrats showed the biggest jump in dissatisfaction, from 67% in May 2022 to the current 75%.,The respondents saw the economy as the country's biggest problem, with most claiming to fail to have seen any improvements from the Biden administration’s actions. Over 40% also took issue with the state of the foreign affairs, energy policy and border security.,Why Does the Government Fail to Address the Issues?,In contrast, the latest index of consumer sentiment published by the Michigan University showed that US citizens’ trust in the country's economy jumped from almost its lowest point of 51.5% in July to 55.1% in August.,With the Michigan Uni index suggests that US citizens see some hope for improvement, political commentator and Newsmax columnist, Michael Shannon, believes that the current administration will not deliver. Biden's team is more interested in pushing their agenda rather than assisting US citizens, he alleged.,"This is the Thelma and Louise administration that is more than ready to drive the country off the cliff if it means advancing their ideological goals," Shannon said.,The political commentator pointed out that even as fuel prices spiked, with other goods reliant on transport also experiencing a subsequent price rise, the Biden administration failed to take action to incentivize more oil and gas drilling in the country, instead continuing to stick to what Shannon described as its "suicide pact” with global warming activists.,Fed’s Bullard Claims It's Hard to Call US Recession When Job Market 'So Strong'3 August, 17:18 GMT,Shannon goes on to point out that current US problems span beyond the economy and include, for instance, its policy in the conflict in Ukraine, which Washington continues to fuel with money and armaments. The Newsmax columnist added that the only groups to profit from the Ukraine funding are donors and defense contractors, who do so at the expense of ordinary US citizens.,Political Elite 'Out of Touch' With the People,The continuing decline in satisfaction with the state of affairs in the country seemingly correlates with increasing concerns of the US citizenship with their president's ability to lead the country.,Not only do Biden's ratings continue to remain as low as 42%, but this week's Issues and Insights poll showed that 59% of respondents have grown concerned with POTUS’ mental health, Shannon pointed out.,"I think that American voters may have finally realized that exchanging a president who sent mean tweets for a candidate that was mentally deficient is a bad trade," he suggested.,However, Shannon continued to claim that the country's problems won't go away if US voters simply vote the Democrats out of Congress and the White House, as Republicans sometimes support the very policies that are hurting ordinary citizens too.,"Mitch McConnell, the curator of the Senate, says the most important issue facing America right now is the Ukraine, which shows how out of touch he is. Taiwan blew up - or no pun intended - because Nancy Pelosi for some reason decided to pay a visit there. I think that took [the] Biden administration by surprise and I don't even think Pelosi thought it would be that big a deal, which shows you what a lightweight she is", he said.,The Biden administration does not listen to US voters, not even the ones that voted for the Democrats – they want them to "sit down and shut up" as they rule the country, the columnist believes.,In his opinion, the only way the situation can change for good, is when the Democrats lose the 2022 midterms and the GOP gets purged of the so-called "unit party Republicans", siding with the Dems. Shannon insists that for a notable change in the state of affairs in the US, a group of "genuine national populist conservatives, who will be placing priority on America first, must come to power.”。

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