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May 27 (Reuters) The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is looking into Tesla Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk&#8217;s disclosure of his stake in Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) in early April, according to a letter the agency sent to him in April.



In the letter, now made public by the SEC, the regulator asks Musk why it appears he did not file required paperwork within 10 days of the acquisition, and to provide more information on his public statements on the platform regarding whether Twitter adheres to free speech principles.



Specifically, the SEC asked Musk to explain why he opted to ultimately file a &#8220;13G&#8221; disclosure form, which is meant for investors who plan to hold their shares passively instead of a &#8220;13D&#8221; form, which is for activist investors who intend influence management and policies of the company.



Spokespeople for the SEC and Musk did not immediately respond to requests for comment.



Outside experts had previously said Musk&#8217;s late filing, and that he may have used improper paperwork, could attract the attention of the SEC, which has sparred with Musk in the past.



The SEC&#8217;s letter is dated the same day Musk disclosed a 9.2% stake in Twitter. The billionaire, who has since offered to the Twitter private for $44 billion, has been sued by investors claiming he manipulated the company&#8217;s stock price downward.



The Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) chief executive officer has landed in trouble with the SEC before, when the agency sued him in 2018 after he tweeted he had &#8220;funding secured&#8221; to potentially take the electric car company private at $420 per share. In reality, a buyout was not close.



Reporting by Nivedita Balu and Sweta Singh in Bengaluru, Svea Herbst-Bayliss and Pete Schroeder in Washington Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Mark Potter

Elon Musk

U.S. SEC looking into Musk’s Twitter stake purchase

LONDON/NEW YORK, May 27 (Reuters)



The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has received $40 billion in pledges for its new Resilience and Sustainability Trust to address challenges such as climate change, IMF head Kristalina Georgieva said on Friday, close to their target set last month.



Building resilience to the effects of climate change will cost trillions of dollars over the next decade, she said in a pre-recorded speech broadcast to the Ibrahim Governance Forum, an Africa-focused conference.



Climate investment globally needs to increase by up to six times from the roughly $640 billion spent in 2020, to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said in April.



&#8220;The devastating effects of climate change are robbing Africa of lives and livelihoods,&#8221; Georgieva told the conference, which was scheduled to mark six months until the COP27 climate conference in Cairo.



The IMF launched the new financing facility for low and middle-income countries in April, with the goal of raising at least $45 billion.



Its finance director had said it would need to receive &#8220;a substantial fraction&#8221; of the total before starting operations of the new trust by the time of the meetings of the IMF and World Bank in October.



Georgieva said at the conference that many African countries were dealing with droughts that were increasing food and political insecurity.



&#8220;Now the surge in food, fuel and fertiliser prices have dramatically raised import costs, all in the context of already high sovereign debt and limited fiscal capacity,&#8221; Georgieva said.



&#8220;African countries cannot face these overlapping crises &#8211; climate, food, pandemic &#8211; alone,&#8221; she said, adding that IMF lending to African countries in the last year was 13 times the annual average.



Reporting by Rachel Savage and Rodrigo Campos; Editing by John Stonestreet and Edmund Blair

IMF story

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Ethiopia&#8217;s state-appointed human rights body called on Friday for the release of 16 journalists and media personnel after new arrests in recent days in the capital Addis Ababa and the restive region of Amhara.



Press watchdogs and rights groups say Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed&#8217;s government is increasingly intimidating the media and harassing opponents as it seeks to quell unrest in regions.



Ethiopian authorities have been particularly cracking down in Amhara and Oromiya regions recently. They justify arrests of media personnel by accusing them of siding with rebels. 



In the latest round-up, Temesgen Desalegn of Feteh Magazine and Yayesew Shimelis of Ethio Forum Media were held on Thursday in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said.



Last week, Amhara authorities arrested five journalists of media outlet Ashara in a move thought linked to their coverage of a volunteer militia known as Fano. 



On the same day, Amhara authorities also arrested another four employees of U.S.-based online outlet Nisir International Broadcasting. 



Rights commission head Daniel Bekele said the total number of detained journalists was now 16 and urged their immediate release.



&#8220;No claim about the alleged offense committed through media justifies violation of the newly adopted media law which clearly prohibits pre-trial detention of persons charged with committing an offense through the media,&#8221; he said in a statement.



Government spokesperson Legesse Tulu did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Bekele&#8217;s statement.



But the government put out a warning to the media in a statement last week: &#8220;The government will continue to take irreversible measures on individuals involved in illegal activities who are planning and working to create havoc and chaos, also on those wearing a cloak of media outlets and journalists.&#8221;



Reporting by Nairobi Newsroom; Writing by George Obulutsa; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne

Ethiopian president

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ISTANBUL/BRUSSELS, May 27 (Reuters) &#8211; Russian businessman Andrey Melnichenko ceded control of two of the world&#8217;s largest coal and fertilizers companies to his wife the day before he was sanctioned by the European Union, according to three people familiar with the matter.



Melnichenko, who made his fortune in Russia&#8217;s energy industry in the years following the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union, gave up his stakes in the coal producer SUEK AO and fertilizer group EuroChem Group AG on March 8, the day of his 50th birthday, leaving his wife, Aleksandra Melnichenko, in control of the companies, the people said.



Until March 8, Melnichenko controlled the two companies through a chain of trusts and corporations stretching from Moscow and the Swiss town of Zug to Cyprus and Bermuda, according to legal filings reviewed by Reuters.



Since 2006, Melnichenko&#8217;s wife was second in line behind her husband on the list of beneficial owners of the two companies in trust documents, according to the three people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren&#8217;t allowed to speak publicly about the couple&#8217;s assets. That meant that she stood to inherit ownership of the companies in the event her husband died, the people said.



When the war in Ukraine began in February, however, Melnichenko grew concerned that he would be designated under the European Union&#8217;s Russia sanctions regime, the people familiar with the matter said. On March 8, Melnichenko notified trustees of his retirement as the beneficiary, the people said. That triggered the same chain of changes in trust records that would have happened if the businessman had passed away, and made his wife the beneficiary.



Reuters was unable to reach Melnichenko and his wife for comment.



A spokesman for Russia-based SUEK didn&#8217;t respond to messages seeking comment. Switzerland-based EuroChem confirmed that Aleksandra Melnichenko had replaced her husband as beneficial owner.



&#8220;Following the departure of its founder, the primary beneficial ownership of a trust holding a 90% stake in the global fertilizer company has automatically passed to his wife,&#8221; the company said in a statement to Reuters on Wednesday.



The role of Melnichenko&#8217;s wife at EuroChem was first reported by Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger. Her role at SUEK as well as the timing of ownership changes and other details are reported here for the first time.



Melnichenko, who founded SUEK and EuroChem two decades ago, was ranked as Russia&#8217;s eighth richest man last year by Forbes, with an estimated fortune of $18 billion.



The European Union sanctioned Melnichenko, citing his alleged proximity to the Kremlin, on March 9 as part of a Western attempt to punish Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. The sanctions &#8211; which include freezing his assets, banning him from entering the European Union and prohibiting EU entities from providing funds to him &#8211; do not apply to his wife nor the couple’s daughter and son.



Britain also put Melnichenko, who is Russian but was born in Belarus and has a Ukrainian mother, on its sanction list on March 15. Switzerland imposed sanctions against him the following day.



The businessman said in a statement to Reuters in March, after the EU sanctions were imposed, that the war in Ukraine was &#8220;truly tragic&#8221; and he appealed for peace. A spokesman for Melnichenko said at that time he had &#8220;no political affiliations&#8221;.



Western governments have imposed sweeping sanctions against Russian companies and individuals in an effort to force Moscow to withdraw.



But some sanctioned Russian businessmen, including Roman Abramovich and Vladimir Yevtushenkov, have transferred assets to friends and family members, fuelling doubts over the effectiveness of these attempts to pressure Moscow.



Melnichenko, whose residence was registered in the Swiss alpine resort town of St. Moritz until he was hit by sanctions, gave his instructions to change the ownership of his companies from a retreat near Mount Kilimanjaro where he was celebrating his birthday, according to a person familiar with the matter. A Boeing 737 emblazoned with the billionaire’s signature &#8220;A&#8221; on the fuselage had landed in Tanzania on March 5, arriving from Dubai, according to flight-tracking service Flightradar24.



A lawyer for Melnichenko didn&#8217;t respond to questions about the Kilimanjaro trip.



Melnichenko&#8217;s transfer of ownership at SUEK and EuroChem had far-reaching implications.



After reviews lasting several weeks, Swiss financial authorities concluded that the two companies could continue operating normally on the grounds that Melnichenko was no longer involved with them. SUEK and EuroChem said that British and German financial regulators have reached similar conclusions.



The British and German regulators didn&#8217;t respond to requests seeking comment.



Upon completion of the reviews in late April, SUEK and EuroChem &#8211; which had revenues last year of $9.7 billion and $10.2 billion respectively &#8211; were able to resume distribution of millions of dollars in interest payments to bondholders.



In recent weeks, SUEK and EuroChem have also approached Western clients, showing them documents with the new ownership structure in a bid to reassure them that they can continue doing business with Mr. Melnichenko&#8217;s former companies, two people familiar with the matter said.



<h2 class="wp-block-heading" id="h-no-more-payments">NO MORE PAYMENTS</h2>



In Switzerland, the Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) said neither SUEK nor EuroChem were under sanctions in the country.



SECO said that, as far as it was aware, Melnichenko was no longer a beneficiary of the trust to which EuroChem belonged at the time of his sanction by the EU and Switzerland.



SECO also said it sought confirmation from Eurochem that it would no longer provide funds to Melnichenko.



&#8220;The company and its management have guaranteed in writing to SECO that the Swiss sanction measures will be fully complied with and in particular that no funds or economic resources will be made available to sanctioned persons,&#8221; SECO said in response to a query.



Swiss authorities have defended their decision not to extend sanctions to Melnichenko&#8217;s wife or to his former companies, pointing to the fact that EU authorities had not sanctioned them either.



&#8220;In this case, we have done exactly what the EU has done,&#8221; Switzerland’s Economy Minister Guy Parmelin told Swiss television on Wednesday.



Parmelin added that Switzerland was also wary that sanctioning EuroChem at a time when fertilizer prices have soared in most parts of the world could have dire consequences on agriculture markets. EuroChem said it produced more than 19 million metric tons of fertilizer last year &#8211; roughly equivalent to 10% of the world&#8217;s output, according to U.N. data.



The European Commission, the EU&#8217;s executive arm, said it had no information about the transfer of Melnichenko&#8217;s assets to his wife. The commission has said it is willing to close loopholes allowing individuals and companies to elude its sanctions. Earlier this week, it unveiled proposals aimed at criminalising moves to bypass sanctions, including by transferring assets to family members, across the 27-nation bloc.



A mathematician who once dreamt of becoming a physicist, Melnichenko dropped out of university to dive into the chaotic &#8211; and sometimes deadly &#8211; world of post-Soviet business.



He founded MDM Bank but in the 1990s was still too minor to take part in the privatizations under President Boris Yeltsin that handed the choicest assets of a former superpower to a group of businessmen who would become known as the oligarchs due to their political and economic clout.



Melnichenko then began buying up often distressed coal and fertilizer assets, making him one of Europe&#8217;s richest men.



The EU said, when it announced its sanctions, that Melnichenko &#8220;belongs to the most influential circle of Russian business people with close connections to the Russian government&#8221;.



Melnichenko was among dozens of business leaders who met with Putin on the day Russia invaded Ukraine to discuss the impact of sanctions, showing his close ties to the Kremlin, the EU said in its March 9 sanction order.



At the time, a spokesman for Melnichenko denied that the businessman belonged to Putin&#8217;s inner circle and said he would dispute the sanctions in court. On May 17, Melnichenko challenged the sanctions by lodging an appeal with the EU’s General Court, which handles complaints against European institutions, court records show.



Russia calls its actions in Ukraine a &#8220;special operation&#8221; to disarm Ukraine and protect it from fascists. Ukraine and the West say the fascist allegation is baseless and that the war is an unprovoked act of aggression.



Italy seized Melnichenko&#8217;s superyacht &#8211; the 470-foot Sailing Yacht A, which has a price tag of 530 million euros &#8211; on March 12, three days after he was placed on an EU sanctions list.



SUEK and EuroChem said on March 10, a day after the EU announced sanctions against Melnichenko and 159 other individuals tied to Russia, that their founder had resigned from his board positions at the companies.



Reporting by David Gauthier-Villars and Gabriela Baczynska; Additional reporting by Chris Kirkham in Los Angeles, Andrew MacAskill in London, Michael Shields and Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi in Zurich Editing by Daniel Flynn

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