🇲🇺 Boats, a yacht and a foreign passport: the FCC calls Ravatomanga a flight risk

Boats, a yacht and a foreign passport: the FCC calls Ravatomanga a flight risk

Paramhans Alleear, acting investigations director at the Financial Crimes Commission (FCC), told the Bail and Remand Court on Thursday that the risk of Malagasy tycoon Mamy Ravatomanga fleeing is real. Malagasy authorities, he said, put three boats and a yacht in his hands.

Investigators have traced money they treat as proceeds of crime into a bank account he signs for, though he denies running the companies that hold it. On the Madarail railway project the FCC pointed to $3.7 million paid to a firm called Phidromes, and $11 million it says moved unexplained. A phone belonging to an associate held October searches for sailing times from Mauritius to Réunion, and to France on an Ivorian passport.

His lawyer, Kushal Lobine, spent the hearing picking at the file, arguing there is no underlying offence behind the deals the commission is probing. Ravatomanga followed by video link from the high-security prison at Melrose. What the court decides on bail matters more than the size of the file.

Money laundering charge against former Grant Thornton boss struck out

A Port Louis magistrate has struck out the provisional money laundering charge against Abdul Sattar Hajee Abdoula, ruling that the evidence fell short of reasonable suspicion. The former chief executive of Grant Thornton (Advisory Services) had been accused over a Rs 3,696,000 payment from Air Mauritius.

Magistrate Shaheen Daureeawoo noted the money went to Grant Thornton, not to his personal account, while flagging irregularities in how Air Mauritius awarded the contract. She was careful to add that dropping the charge is not a finding of innocence.

Rs 1.3 billion seized as the drug masterplan faces its first real test

Police logged 1,560 drug offences between January and 8 July, with seizures worth about Rs 1.3 billion, figures PM Ramgoolam put to Parliament. Raids late in August added more, from cannabis at SSR airport to synthetic drugs at Roche-Bois.

The government has now launched a National Drug Control Master Plan for 2026 to 2030, budgeted at Rs 5 billion a year across four fronts, from choking supply to treating dependence. Big number, familiar promise. The test is what it changes on the street.

World Knits workers say two months' pay never came

Workers at the World Knits textile factory in Quartier-Militaire say they have gone unpaid since July, some after as long as 34 years on the line. Many have families to feed. Labour Minister Reza Uteem says the company is talking to a possible buyer, with a decision due within days, and reminded it that making people work for nothing is against the law.

Quatre-Bornes escapee recaptured the morning after

Kursley Louis Olivier Wong Wan Choe, 39, was back in custody by morning, a day after slipping out of the Quatre-Bornes police station around 16:25 on Wednesday. He did not get far. Officers found him at Résidence Kennedy, minutes from where he had walked free.

Shorts

Four held over Albion diesel thefts – Petite-Rivière CID arrested four Quatre-Bornes men over 320 litres of diesel siphoned at Albion.

Police told to repay a sergeant's docked pay – A tribunal called the salary deductions illegal and ordered the force to refund him.

Emirates adds Premium Economy to Mauritius – From September, Emirates puts its Premium Economy cabin on the Mauritius route.

New signs reopen the path to Pointe-d'Esny beach – The Housing and Lands ministry put up four signs to keep the public beach reachable.

IMF flags a gap in the BoM's rate signals – The IMF wants tighter coordination at the Bank of Mauritius between its policy rate and stance.

300,000

The Mauritius Revenue Authority (MRA) expects about that many tax returns next year, down from 347,000, as fewer filers clear the threshold.

$6 million

Nigerian armed groups pulled roughly that much from ransom payments across the period a new study covered, cash that funds the next kidnapping.

50,000

ICE, the US immigration agency, made close to that many arrests during July, its record month and up 15% on June.

Zimbabwe charges an official over a ferry that killed 97

Zimbabwe police have charged a district official with culpable homicide over the sinking of a government ferry that killed at least 97 people. It is the first charge since the disaster. Families had waited weeks for anyone to be named, and it puts an official name to tragedy that until now had been counted only in the dead.

Zambia opposition wants the AU in before the handover

Zambia's opposition is asking the African Union (AU) to weigh in on the disputed election before Hichilema takes office as president on 1 September.

Uganda is declared Ebola-free as Congo's outbreak grows

The World Health Organization (WHO) says Uganda has ended its Ebola outbreak, even as the virus keeps spreading across the border in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Nvidia bets $12.9 billion on buying Hugging Face

Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face, the platform where much of the world's open source artificial intelligence is shared, for $12.9 billion. The deal pushes the chipmaker deeper into the software side of the AI boom, it is already the most valuable company around.

For developers it raises an old worry: how open does an open platform stay once the biggest chipmaker owns the doors?

Ratko Mladic, convicted of the Srebrenica genocide, dies at 84

Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb general convicted over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys, has died in custody at 84.

Trump moves again to fire a Fed governor

Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook denies allegations of mortgage fraud as President Trump renews his push to remove her, reopening a fight over the central bank's independence.

How malaria killed two people who never left the airport

How does malaria kill someone who never left Germany? Two Frankfurt Airport workers have died and four are hospitalised. The likely culprit is one mosquito that rode in on a plane from where malaria is common.

Airport malaria is rare, it slips off the plane, bites whoever is near, and is gone. For an island that spends summers swatting chikungunya, it is a reminder of how far one bite travels.

🙏 Merci, à demain! 👋

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