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South Carolina has $1.8 billion in a bank account — and doesn’t know where the money came from

IRS has $1B in unclaimed tax refunds

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South Carolina has collected about $1.8 billion in a bank account over the past decade — and doesn’t know where the money came from or where it was supposed to go.

“It’s like going into your bank and the bank president tells you we have a lot of money in our vault but we just don’t know who it belongs to,” said Republican Sen. Larry Grooms, who is leading a Senate panel investigating the problem.

The bank account, which is now being examined by state and private accountants, is the latest trouble with the state’s books and comes after South Carolina’s top accountant resigned last year. In that case, elected Republican comptroller general Richard Eckstrom stepped down after his agency started double posting money in higher education accounts, leading to a $3.5 billion error that was all on paper.

The paper error started during a decade-long transition to a new accounting system, which began in 2007, according to the South Carolina Daily Gazette.

But the $1.8 billion involves actual cash placed in a bank account. Now, lawmakers are asking why the money was parked there in first place and why officials never fixed the problem,

“This is one of the things that was swept under the rug for years,” Grooms told the Daily Gazette.

Looking for answers

Investigative accountants are still trying to untangle the mess, but it appears that every time the state’s books were out of whack, money was shifted from somewhere into an account that helped balance it out, state Senate leaders have said.

“Politics really shouldn’t come into play. People prefer their accountants not be crusaders,” Grooms said Tuesday, just after the Senate approved putting a constitutional amendment before voters to make the comptroller general an appointed position. The proposal now goes to the House.

Grooms suggested that an amendment to make the treasurer also appointed might be next unless he can provide some satisfactory answers.

Whatever caused the bank account errors has not been rectified, and if there are records showing where the $1.8 billion came from, they have not been shared with state leaders.

“It does not inspire confidence. But the good news is no money was lost,” Republican Gov. Henry McMaster said.

$200 million in interest

Elected Republican Treasurer Curtis Loftis, whose job is to write checks for the state, has said he invested the money in the mystery account and made nearly $200 million in interest for the state, which led to questions about why he didn’t let the General Assembly know money they either set aside for state agencies or that might have been in a trust fund was just sitting around.

Loftis said that wasn’t the job of his office.

The comptroller general “is attempting to shift responsibility to clean up its mess to the Treasurer,” Loftis wrote in a March 14 letter to Grooms that also said a timeline to answer questions in just a few weeks was impossible.

Loftis said his staff spent thousands of hours researching the account, and that the Comptroller General’s Office has refused to meet with them or share information. In one Facebook comment earlier this month, he asked his followers to “pray for my staff as they are working tremendous hours due to this situation.”

An audit of how the Treasurer’s Office and the Comptroller General’s Office communicate found they don’t do it well.

The treasurer hasn’t answered detailed questions from lawmakers but has posted statements on social media where he said he was being attacked politically and was having blame shifted on him by Comptroller General Brian Gaines, a well-respected career government worker who took over the office after Richard Eckstrom resigned during his sixth term.

A long history of accounting issues

Gaines and Loftis have been called before Grooms’ committee next week. Grooms said Gaines has answered every question his subcommittee has asked and that he has confidence in his work.

Grooms said he thinks Loftis’ office should have found the mistake, but it was reported by the Comptroller General’s Office.

South Carolina has had a long history of accounting issues.

The Treasurer’s Office was created when the state’s first constitution was written in 1776. Back then, the General Assembly selected the treasurer. But by the early 1800s, the state’s finances were in “a state of bewildering confusion” and no one could “tell the amounts of debts or of the credit of the State,” according to History of South Carolina, a book edited in 1920 by Yates Snowden and Howard Cutler.

The first comptroller general determined the state was due about $750,000, which would be worth about $20 million today considering inflation.

Meanwhile, plenty of lawmakers and others are aware there is $1.8 billion sitting around potentially unspent and not appropriated at a time when $3 billion in requests from state agencies went unfulfilled in next year’s budget just passed by the South Carolina House.

Legislative leaders and the governor want to wait for some definitive report before tapping into the account.

“That’s a lot of money and there is no need to hurry up and try to spend it,” McMaster said.

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Colombia threatens to break ties with Israel if it doesn’t comply with a UN cease-fire resolution

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Colombian President Gustavo Petro on Tuesday threatened to break off diplomatic ties with Israel if the country doesn’t comply with a U.N. Security Council resolution that calls for an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip.

Petro made the announcement on X, formerly known as Twitter. On Monday, he published another message in which he celebrated the resolution’s approval and urged other nations to suspend ties with Israel if it doesn’t cease its military offensive in the Gaza Strip, which has resulted in the deaths of more than 32,000 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry replied to Petro’s threat on Tuesday with a tweet, which said that the Middle Eastern nation will “continue to protect its people and will not give in to any pressures and threats.”

The foreign ministry accused Petro of being a “supporter of Hamas terrorists” who massacred children and women during an Oct. 7 raid on Israeli communities that unleashed the current invasion of Gaza, and said that Petro’s stance is a “disgrace to the Colombian people.”

The confrontation on X signals a growing deterioration in the relations between both nations, which have gone from being military and commercial partners, to becoming bitter ideological rivals.

For decades, Colombia used Israeli-built warplanes and machine guns to fight drug cartels and rebel groups, and both countries signed a free trade agreement in 2020.

But relations began to cool in 2022, when Petro was elected to office.

Petro, a leftist and longtime supporter of the Palestinian cause, has described Israel’s military offensive in Gaza as “genocide.” In February, he suspended military purchases from Israel, after the country’s troops fired on Palestinians who gathered around aid trucks, in a tragedy in which more than 100 people were killed.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry had suspended defense cooperation with Colombia in October, after Petro had failed to condemn the Hamas raid on villages in southern Israel, and instead compared Israel’s military to Nazi troops.

Military analysts in Colombia have said that the deterioration of relations with Israel jeopardizes the South American nation’s defense capabilities.

Colombia depends on Israeli companies for the maintenance of its fleet of more than 20 Israeli-built Kfir jets, which are the only planes in Colombia’s arsenal that are capable of launching laser-guided bombs.

Colombia has also made multiple contracts with Israel for the provision of military communications equipment, and produces assault rifles for its troops under a license from an Israeli manufacturer.

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Colombia threatens to break ties with Israel if it doesn’t comply with a UN cease-fire resolution

The confrontation on X signals a growing deterioration in the relations between both nations, which have gone from being military and commercial partners, to becoming bitter ideological rivals.

For decades, Colombia used Israeli-built warplanes and machine guns to fight drug cartels and rebel groups, and both countries signed a free trade agreement in 2020.

But relations began to cool in 2022, when Petro was elected to office.

Military analysts in Colombia have said that the deterioration of relations with Israel jeopardizes the South American nation’s defense capabilities.

Colombia has also made multiple contracts with Israel for the provision of military communications equipment, and produces assault rifles for its troops under a license from an Israeli manufacturer.

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Kremlin says Russia ‘theoretically’ doesn’t need to hold elections next year because it’s ‘obvious’ Putin will win

Russian President Vladimir Putin standing in front of a Russian flag while wearing a black suit with a patterned tie. — Russian President Vladimir Putin.GAVRIIL GRIGOROV/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images

The Kremlin’s spokesperson said Russia “theoretically” doesn’t need to hold presidential elections next year.
The elections don’t need to happen because “it’s obvious that Putin will be reelected,” Dmitry Peskov said.
Putin has maintained a tight grip on power, making his 2024 re-election all but certain.

A spokesperson for the Kremlin said this week that Russia “theoretically” doesn’t need to hold presidential elections next year because it’s “obvious” that Vladimir Putin will win.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s chief spokesperson, described Russia’s presidential election as “not really democracy” but “costly bureaucracy” in an interview with The New York Times over the weekend.

“Mr, Putin will be reelected next year with more than 90 percent of the vote,” he added.

After the article was published, Peskov claimed he was misquoted by The Times and tried to clarify his comments, telling Russia’s RBK news outlet that the 2024 election “theoretically” doesn’t need to happen because “it’s obvious that Putin will be reelected.”

Putin’s reelection in March 2024 is indeed almost certain; but the Russian leader has largely maintained his grip on power by cracking down on the independent press, reportedly approving the assassinations and imprisonment of dissidents and political rivals; and approving a sweeping change to Russia’s constitution that allows him to stay in power until 2036.

Next year’s presidential election — if it happens — will also come amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Putin, who described the invasion as a “special military operation,” has characterized it as being essential to Russia’s survival as a nation, but the war is increasingly unpopular among Russian citizens and even within the Russian military.

One Russian inmate told The New York Times in June that he believed he was signing up to become an army construction worker when a government official recruited him from prison. Instead, he was sent to the frontlines in eastern Ukraine and captured by Ukrainian forces a few days later.

Other Russian soldiers said that they were “fucking fooled like little kids” and had no clue they were being sent to a war zone. In one audio recording previously obtained by The Times, a Russian soldier told his mother during a phone conversation that “no one told us we were going to war. They warned us one day before we left.”

Read the original article on Business Insider

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China’s Viral Rebuke of Russia Doesn’t Mean Xi Is Ditching Putin

(Bloomberg) — China last week unleashed some of its strongest criticism against Russia since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Yet any suggestion that Xi Jinping is shifting his view on the war amounts to wishful thinking.

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The rare admonition took place on Friday over an incident involving Chinese citizens — including a popular video blogger — who were denied entry from Kazakhstan into Russia at a border checkpoint. Video footage widely circulated on Chinese social media platforms over the weekend showed Russian border officials going through suitcases, with one of the travelers saying he felt like he was being treated as a criminal.

“Russia’s brutal and excessive law-enforcement activities in this incident have seriously violated the legitimate rights and interests of the Chinese citizens,” the Chinese Embassy in Moscow said in a post on the social media platform WeChat.

Yet while the language was unusually harsh, it hardly signals a broader shift from Beijing. Since Russia’s invasion, China has repeatedly sought to create some space with Moscow on issues such as the use of nuclear weapons and attacks on civilians, even as Xi consistently backs Putin’s reasons for going to war — not least because Beijing sees the US and its allies strengthening ties with Taiwan.

The incident shows the world that relations between China and Russia are more layered and nuanced than understood by many in the West, according to Henry Wang Huiyao, founder of the Center for China and Globalization research group based in Beijing.

“China needs to maintain good relations with Russia,” he said. “It doesn’t mean they’re in favor of everything Russia does.”

Xi, who signed up to a “no limits” friendship with Putin shortly before his invasion, has sought to portray China as a neutral broker on Ukraine, releasing a 12-point blueprint for bringing peace that included calls to respect sovereignty, facilitate grain exports and halt all hostilities. While the roadmap has been widely panned by the US and its allies, it has bought Xi credibility among the so-called Global South and won China a seat at Ukraine talks hosted by Saudi Arabia over the weekend.

‘Unpredictability’

China sent a delegation led by veteran diplomat Li Hui to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to join more than 40 countries including the US and European nations — but not Russia. While the discussions brought little in the way of concrete steps to stop the war or reverse Russia’s territorial gains, they showed Xi’s success in countering US efforts to isolate Beijing due to its relationship with Russia.

Still, China has several reasons to be irked with Putin, including his move to end a deal that allowed grain exports through the Black Sea, leading to food supply problems that also impact China. And that’s only part of the problem, according to Raffaello Pantucci, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

“The main issue remains the unpredictability of the long-term nature of the conflict,” he said. “The war destabilizes the world, and this is bad from Beijing’s perspective as much as they might like the distracting effect it has toward the West’s focus on China.”

China has also made some economic overtures to Ukraine, although not to a degree that comes anywhere close to its trade ties with Russia.

Last month, China’s deputy commerce minister met with Ukraine’s deputy economy minister in Beijing, pledging to import more products from Ukraine and develop mutually beneficial economic and trade cooperation with the country, according to a Chinese readout from the meeting. China’s exports to Ukraine totaled nearly $233 million in June, down from a high of $1.2 billion from January last year.

By contrast, China’s exports to Russia reached a new historical monthly high of 69 billion yuan ($9.6 billion) in June. Its crude imports from Russia rose 8.2% month-on-month to a record 10.50 million tons in June, according to customs data.

Military Exercises

China and Russia are also deepening military cooperation.

Over the weekend, both countries sent 11 navy patrol ships near Alaska, according to a Wall Street Journal report, the seventh bilateral military exercise between the two nuclear-armed nations this year. It also set a new milestone in cooperation, marking the highest number of joint military exercises in the past two decades between the neighbors, according to data compiled by the US National Defense University and Bloomberg News.

At the same time, Xi isn’t afraid to hit back at Russia — particularly if its actions could pose a threat to his domestic standing or make him look weak. The border incident showed that many social-media users in China remain skeptical that Russia is worth all the grief Beijing is getting from the US and its allies.

A hashtag on China’s response to the incident saw nearly 50 million views on the Twitter-like Weibo platform, at one point ranking among the top ten most searched topics. Videos posted by social media accounts run by party-backed outlets such as Beijing Youth Daily primarily focused on the mistreatment of the travelers, echoing parts of the embassy statement that such behavior isn’t in line with China and Russia’s “current friendly situation” and “the trend of increasingly close exchanges between people.”

Online Outrage

Some of the most upvoted comments on Weibo questioned whether the travelers had failed to give a bribe, while others cautioned against having deep diplomatic relations with Moscow. “It goes without saying that one cannot have a deep friendship with Russia,” said Weibo user “Wall-E_22,” in a post that received almost 1,000 likes.

Russia is looking into the matter to avoid similar issues in the future, Tass reported Saturday, citing an unidentified person familiar with the matter. The incident won’t harm relations between Russia and China, the state news wire said, adding that Western media is using the issue to try and undermine ties between the countries.

While the relationship with Russia is “too important for China to throw Vladimir Putin under the bus,” Xi must also show his people that he will stand up for their interests, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

“The strongly worded statement is not a signal to the Russian authorities themselves, but rather a reaction and signal to Chinese domestic online public to say that Xi Jinping’s government and MOFA is vigorous in protecting the rights of Chinese regardless of who the violators are,” Gabuev said, referring to China’s Foreign Ministry. “Be it enemies like the West or friends like Russia.”

–With assistance from Kari Lindberg and Rebecca Choong Wilkins.

Barr says Trump prosecution is “legitimate case” and doesn’t “run afoul of the First Amendment”

Washington — Former Attorney General WIlliam Barr dismissed the argument that the election interference case against former President Donald Trump is not valid because his statements were protected by the First Amendment.

“It’s certainly a challenging case, but I don’t think it runs afoul of the First Amendment,” Barr told “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “From a prosecutor’s standpoint, I think it’s a legitimate case.”

Trump’s legal team argues he was indicted for political speech that was protected by the First Amendment. The indictment itself acknowledges that Trump “had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won.”

“If that was all it was about, I would be concerned on a First Amendment front,” Barr said.

But Trump’s alleged actions went beyond political speech, he said.

“This involved a situation where the states had already made the official and authoritative determination as to who won in those states and they sent the votes and certified them to Congress,” Barr said. “The allegation, essentially, by the government is that at that point, the president conspired, entered into a plan, a scheme, that involved a lot of deceit, the object of which was to erase those votes, to nullify those lawful votes.”

“The other elements were the substitution of bogus panels — that were not authorized panels — to claim that they had alternative votes,” he said. “And that was clearly wrong and the certifications they signed were false. But then pressuring the vice president to use that as a pretext to adopt the Trump votes and reject the Biden votes or even to delay it — it really doesn’t matter whether it’s to delay it or to adopt it or to send it to the House of Representatives. You have to remember a conspiracy crime is completed at the time it’s agreed to and the first steps are taken. That’s when the crime is complete.”

Special counsel Jack Smith brought four felony charges against Trump last week in the 2020 election interference case, including conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights. Trump has pleaded not guilty.

Barr declined to say whether he was interviewed by the special counsel during the investigation, but said he would “of course” appear as a witness if called.

The former attorney general, who resigned from the Trump administration in December 2020, said he told Trump on at least three occasions that “in no uncertain terms that there was no evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome.”

Caitlin Yilek

Caitlin Yilek is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital. Reach her at caitlin.yilek@cbsinteractive.com. Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/hausofcait

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