Articles – Page 14 – KCS Group Asia Ltd

Getting all your ducks in a row

Articles / compliance, Due Diligence, Know Your Customer, Russia, Sanctions / 03/2023

The environment for winning and retaining business has rarely been more challenging. Most prominently, in geo-political terms, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the knock-on effects on politics and economies worldwide. In addition, the rising tensions between China and Taiwan, an escalated war of words and ideology between various delineations of ‘East’ and ‘West’, and [...]

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The magic black money tree

Articles / black money, Corruption, Due Diligence, money-laundering, Russia, Sanctions / 02/2023

While walking through the edge of Utah’s Fishlake Forest, it is possible to cross over 100 acres and simultaneously pass forty thousand trees, and just one. This is because the colony of Pando Aspen trunks (‘I spread’) share a single underground root system, with each apparently individual tree simply being part of a larger, hidden,

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Does China really want to go to war with Taiwan?

Articles / Asia, China, Due Diligence, Geopolitics, Taiwan, United States of America / 02/2023

It is a certainty that China will invade Taiwan - if one believes the dystopian near future predicted by Western leaders today. After all, surely the blame for all current serious political problems and tensions in the world are to be placed solely at the feet of Chinese and Russian governments intransigence for not acquiescing

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The day after the balloon went up

Articles / 02/2023

Social media, intelligence services and diplomats alike are all currently poring over images (and debris) of suspected Chinese spy balloons shot down over the USA, with explanations ranging from the prosaic ‘weather balloon’ to ‘military surveillance drone’ – and it taking the White House eight days to formally rule out extra-terrestrial involvement. But while the

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Modi, Putin and the future of India: Does truth still triumph?

Articles / China, Corruption, Democracy, Due Diligence, India, President Modi, Putin, Russia / 02/2023

If great minds think alike, then so too must great dictators. As the world emerged from pandemic lockdowns in December 2021, Russia’s President Putin made Narenda Modi of India the subject of only his second international visit in almost two years, and the first in a subsequent line of appearances in autocracies across Central Asia,

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Exile on Silk Road: The rise of the near abroad

Articles / Afghanistan, Central Asia, China, Due Diligence, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, oil and gas, Russia / 01/2023

There is a case to be made among historians that the Silk Road was the eighth wonder of the world: not a monument in stone, but a monument to furthering the cause of humanity, allowing for the transmission of economic, cultural and political exchanges between East and West in a manner previously unthinkable and surviving

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Russia, Ukraine and Africa: Against the grain

Articles / Africa, China, Due Diligence, Global Threats, grain and wheat, humanitarian, Russia, Ukraine / 01/2023

Is Russia’s war in Ukraine a localised conflict, a regional war, or a global disaster? The military action concentrated on one country alone would suggest the first, the various nuclear- and cyber-threats against Europe the second, but global trends are increasingly confirming the third. It is possible to view the Russian invasion, and by extension

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Creating a Dictator

Articles / Corruption, Democracy, Due Diligence, Kremlin, Putin, Russia, Russian Business / 01/2023

The quagmire of a lengthy, painful, and ultimately unsuccessful campaign in Afghanistan in the 1980s is credited with hastening the demise of the Soviet Union. History could well be repeating, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stretches into an eleventh month and domestic discontent with Putin’s war continues to rise. Could this be the trigger that

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Russia’s second front

Articles / Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Due Diligence, Mexico, oil and gas, Putin, Russia, Venezuela / 01/2023

Vladimir Putin’s efforts to change the world’s balance of power requires not just a strong military, but serious influence over the world’s oil & gas markets, and to be really effective, he needs more than just Saudi Arabia and Iran on side – he needs control directly or indirectly of South America’s oil production as

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Yandex – The Moral Maze

Articles / Due Diligence, Putin, Russian Business, Technology, Yandex / 01/2023

Yandex, ‘The Russian Google’, was hit by sanctions after the EU decided it had played an active role in spreading propaganda at the start of Putin’s war in Ukraine. Yandex’s founder, Arkady Volozh, managed to avoid personal sanctions by leaving the board and selling his shares. For Russians, Yandex was more than just another tech-giant.

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