Firms are raising capital, buying Ether, and betting their share prices will rise.
But as the momentum builds, one question looms: is there a lasting investor appetite for Ethereum treasuries?
Not among institutions, reckons Matthew Sigel, head of digital assets at VanEck.
“Not yet, but maybe that’s where the opportunity is,” he said on a recent episode of The Mining Pod.
What began with Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin-hodling firm, Strategy, has now spread to Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies.
The most aggressive entrant so far is SharpLink Gaming, an online casino platform that is betting its balance sheet on Ether.
Over the last few weeks, the company has amassed more than $1.3 billion worth of Ether as it buys “tens of millions of dollars” daily, according to Joe Lubin, the CEO of Consensys and Ethereum co-founder,who recently became the firm’s chairman.
SharpLink and BitMine Immersion Technologies — a little known Bitcoin miner turned Ethereum treasury — are trading at nearly double the value of their Ether holdings.
They’re not alone. More than 60 companies now hold Ethereum as a reserve asset, collectively owning over 1.8 million Ether or about $6.2 billion.
For Bitwise CIO Matt Hougan, this Ether accumulation is creating a structural imbalance in the market that will spur big gains.
“Since mid-May, exchange-traded products and public companies have bought 2.83 million Ether — 32 times more than what’s been newly issued,” Hougan said in a July 22 note to investors.
“No wonder the price of [Ethereum] has soared.”
Ethereum has rallied 60%, to about $3,600, in the past 30 days.
Ethereum treasury companies have two things going for them, according to market watchers.
For one, the space has fewer players than the Bitcoin treasury sector.
“It’s less crowded,” said Sigel, which might lure more companies into deploying capital to an Ethereum treasury company.
“Ethereum is a useful asset,” head of Alpha Strategies at Bitwise Jeff Park said in a July 8 interview on the Wolf of All Streets podcast.
“Bitcoin stores value. But Ethereum is productive — it earns yield.”
Cash flow is something traditional investors know, and look for.
Still, analysts are not just cautious, but actively sounding the alarm.
Even though Ethereum treasuries are a newer phenomenon, they carry echoes of the same concerns that have dogged the Bitcoin playbook: aggressive “promote” structures that reward insiders, speculative valuations, and frothy markets driven more by narrative than fundamentals.
An advert by Marks & Spencer (M&S) has been banned because the model appeared to be “unhealthily thin”.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said the pose of the model and the choice of clothing – including “large pointed shoes” which emphasised “the slenderness of her legs” – made the advert “irresponsible”.
The watchdog ruled that the advert must not appear again in its current form and M&S must ensure all the images it uses do not portray models as unhealthy thin.
The retailer has stopped using the advert but said in its response to the advertising regulator that its women’s clothing range is inclusive and that it “responsibly promoted aspirational fashion”.
The now-banned image previously on the retailer’s app and showed a model wearing a white off the shoulder top and slim-fit trousers as well as the pointed shoes in question.
The ASA also said the model’s head appeared out of proportion with the rest of her body which further highlighted her small frame.
M&S said the model’s pose was chosen to portray confidence and ease and not to convey slimness.
It also said the shoes selected were for “stylistic and fashion” purposes only.
The ASA acknowledged that three other M&S adverts were also investigated but were not banned. Although M&S chose to amended and removed the specific images.
M&S said that all its models are “selected not only for their professional suitability but also for their health and wellbeing”.
It said it ensures all models are in good health and complied with industry standards to avoid promoting unhealthy body images.
‘Toned physique’
Earlier this year, fellow retailer Next also had an advert for blue skinny jeans banned because the model’s pose made her look “unhealthily thin”.
The ASA said the advert emphasised the thinness of the model’s legs using camera angles, and deemed it “irresponsible”.
Next said it disagreed with the advertising watchdog’s decision and said the model, while slim, had a “healthy and toned physique”.
It is not just fashion adverts that have been banned by the ASA recently.
Earlier this month, an Instagram post by TV personality Gemma Collins which showcased a weight-loss drug and app was banned.
It is illegal to advertise prescription-only weight-loss drugs and Ms Collins’ was one of nine adverts banned in a crackdown on this content by the ASA.
Ms Collins told the ASA’s investigation she accepted her posts had promoted the Yazen weight-loss service and app and she would follow guidance in future.
The Trump administration unveiled Wednesday a framework for its artificial intelligence (AI) policy, placing a heavy emphasis on boosting U.S. innovation, building out data center infrastructure and promoting American technology abroad.
The 28-page AI Action Plan lays out the administration’s approach to the rapidly developing technology, putting forward more than 90 policy actions for “near-term execution” by the federal government.
“We believe we’re in an AI race,” White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks told reporters on a call Wednesday morning. “There’s a global competition now to lead on artificial intelligence, and we want the United States to win that race.”
“AI is a revolutionary technology that’s going to have profound ramifications for both the economy and for national security,” he continued. “So, it is very important that that American continue to be the dominant power in AI.”
The plan seeks to remove what the Trump administration deems as “onerous” regulations at both the federal and state level. This includes limiting funding to states over their AI rules, as well as tasking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with evaluating whether certain state AI regulations interfere with its mandate.
The framework also calls for a review of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) investigations launched under the Biden administration “to ensure that they do not advance theories of liability that unduly burden AI innovation.”
“We cannot afford to go down Europe’s innovation-killing regulatory path,” said Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
“Federal agencies will now review their rules on the books and repeal those that injure AI development and deployment across industries from financial services and agriculture to health and transportation,” he added, noting they will seek input from industry as well.
The AI Action Plan also directs the Commerce Department to revise an AI risk framework to remove references to misinformation, climate change and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and calls for an update to federal procurement guidelines limiting contracts to AI systems deemed “objective and free from top-down ideological bias.”
The framework separately focuses on boosting the development of AI data center and energy infrastructure. It seeks to provide data centers with wide-ranging exclusions from or permits for federal environment regulations, in addition to generally expediting permitting efforts.
It also calls for making federal land available to build data centers and the necessary power generation infrastructure.
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“The GENIUS Act is expected to transform stablecoins from speculative assets into regulated digital dollars,” said Daniel M. Wagner, CEO of Rezolve AI. “Tether’s commitment to compliance is a milestone, and Rezolve believes it is ready to connect this new liquidity to the real economy.”
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Kalyn Kahler is a senior NFL writer at ESPN. Kalyn reports on a range of NFL topics. She reported about the influence of coaching agents on NFL hiring and found out what current and former Cowboys players really think about the tour groups of fans that roam about The Star every day. Before joining ESPN in July of 2024, Kalyn wrote for The Athletic, Defector, Bleacher Report and Sports Illustrated. She began her career at Sports Illustrated as NFL columnist Peter King’s assistant. She is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she was a varsity cheerleader. In her free time, Kalyn takes Spanish classes and teaches Irish dance. You can reach out to Kalyn via email.
Jul 23, 2025, 07:57 AM ET
ON FRIDAY NIGHT, less than a day after Lloyd Howell Jr. abruptly resigned as the embattled boss of the NFL Players Association, dozens of union representatives and alternates met during a two-hour Zoom call to try to make sense of what had just happened and find a pathway to fresh leadership.
Patrick Mahomes, the Kansas City Chiefs‘ MVP quarterback and second alternate player rep, spoke up to rally a group that was grappling with the worst crisis in the NFLPA’s 68-year history.
“We need to get our choice for leader right,” Mahomes said, according to four people briefed on his comments.
Mahomes’ words came during a chaotic four days for the NFLPA, including nightly conference calls of up to four hours long.
Sources familiar with the calls told ESPN that player reps expressed fear, frustration and worry about the NFLPA’s future. Those concerns deepened when JC Tretter, a retired Cleveland Browns offensive lineman and ex-NFLPA president, resigned Sunday as director of strategy. And the player reps struggled to agree on an appropriate process to find a leader qualified to navigate a crisis that includes an outside legal inquiry and an FBI investigation.
But as expressed by Mahomes, the players’ biggest priority was a need to learn from the mistakes that led them to this moment.
Howell had won his job on a platform promising greater transparency, but his hiring followed the union’s most secretive election. And his tenure was marked by a failure, again and again, to level with players, even in Howell’s final hours as executive director, according to multiple sources with direct knowledge who spoke to ESPN on the condition of anonymity.
During a conference call Thursday night, Howell announced his resignation to the executive committee, days after ESPN reports that he was working as a consultant for a private equity firm seeking to invest in NFL franchises and that he also had struck a confidentiality agreement with the NFL to hide the details of a January collusion arbitration decision.
Executive committee members were stunned by Howell’s resignation and nearly unanimous in their reaction.
“The EC said, ‘No, you’re f—ing not,'” a player with knowledge of the call told ESPN. Since elevating Howell to be a finalist for the job in 2023, the executive committee had stood by him throughout the series of revelations about his conduct and side jobs. Less than 24 hours before Howell resigned, one executive committee member had said, “We felt great about the process. We back Lloyd 100 percent.”
Committee members repeatedly pressed Howell to remain as their leader, three sources with firsthand knowledge said. “They tried to talk him out of it for three hours,” one of the sources said. “Howell repeatedly said no.”
During the call, Howell mentioned he had visited strip clubs while on the job but offered no details, saying he had paid for car service to a club with his own money, several of the sources said.
But Howell never wavered about his decision to resign. At 10:38 p.m., he released a public statement announcing he had become “a distraction” to the union’s work and was quitting.
The next day, the sources said, executive committee members were astonished to read the strip club details, as reported by ESPN. The report cited internal union documents showing Howell charged the union $738.82 for transportation to a Miami strip club and $2,426 for an Atlanta strip club visit with two employees during a union retreat in February.
Some of the executive committee members concluded that Howell had not told them the whole truth.
“The guys were very disappointed,” one of the sources said. “They backed Howell through everything … If he failed, their process failed, and they didn’t want to face that.”
Howell has not responded to multiple attempts by ESPN to reach him over the past several weeks.
A senior union executive said Tuesday night that Howell’s “failings were human failings and errors of judgment.”
“Lloyd is a good man. He’s not a villain,” the executive said. “He is culpable for the things he’s culpable for. From the beginning, he was never accepted in the office nor did he really make an effort to build some important relationships that could have been useful.
“If he was guilty of anything, he was not as discerning as he should have been.”
UNION LEADERS NOW left to reckon with the crisis are focused on the 16-month process that led them to Howell as a replacement for DeMaurice Smith, who headed the union from 2009 until he stepped aside in 2023.
The union paid about $500,000 to search firm Russell Reynolds Associates to work with the executive committee in vetting dozens of hopefuls, but the committee wanted to select only two finalists to present to the player reps. All the candidate names would remain secret.
Tretter, at that time the NFLPA president, told ESPN on Monday he made confidentiality a priority when selecting finalists because candidates’ names had leaked to the media in past elections.
“The previous two versions of the search process were gross,” said Tretter, who spearheaded changes to the bylaws to implement election confidentiality. “They were far below the level that our union should be operating at.”
Multiple players who spoke to ESPN agreed that if the union wanted to recruit the best candidates from outside, it needed to promise and safeguard secrecy.
But some of the candidates themselves felt otherwise. Former quarterback Matt Schaub, Hall of Famer Kellen Winslow and Domonique Foxworth, a former player and ESPN commentator who was the NFLPA president from 2012 to 2014, were among those interviewed for the position in early 2023. Even though Russell Reynolds Associates told the candidates it wanted a union or business person and a former athlete among the finalists, no ex-player made it to the final six. Gene Upshaw, the Raiders‘ legend who died in 2008, was the last former player to lead the NFLPA.
Schaub, a former player rep, said he was disappointed he didn’t make it past his first 90-minute interview with a Russell Reynolds representative. But even more, he was frustrated that he was not allowed to make his case directly to the executive committee or the player reps.
“When you go to NFL locker rooms and ask guys about union leadership, they want to hear from someone who was in their shoes and played the game,” Schaub said. “The fact that not a single player even got to the semifinals of a process that wasn’t transparent is a slap in the face of every player rep who might like to hear a final argument from someone who wore a helmet.”
Foxworth was granted two interviews with the executive committee, but Tretter called him in February 2023 to say he wouldn’t make it to the next round or get a chance to address player reps.
“I was stunned,” Foxworth said. “I had been spending quite a bit of my free time perfecting the finer points of plans and options for the players. I was upset and disappointed.”
Of the final six, at least three were veteran union insiders, and one was an ex-player, multiple union sources said. They included George Atallah, the longtime chief external affairs officer who left the NFLPA in 2024 after 15 years. The other two — chief player officer Don Davis, who had an 11-year career as an NFL linebacker, and chief operating officer Teri Patterson Smith — remain at the union today and are among the candidates for interim executive director. The identity of one finalist remains unknown.
The last two of the final six were David White, former head of SAG-AFTRA, the union for screen actors and others in the entertainment industry, and Howell, who told a senior union executive that he was recruited by Russell Reynolds and applied “on a whim.”
Howell had six months earlier resigned from a 34-year executive career at consulting firm Booz Allen, which at the time faced whistleblower allegations of overbilling the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars.
The complaint was among the red flags found by Russell Reynolds in Howell’s background check, multiple union sources told ESPN. Two executive committee members said the search firm told them about the case and also that Howell had been sued for sexual discrimination and retaliation by a Booz Allen subordinate in 2011, a complaint settled for an undisclosed sum in 2015.
Overwhelmingly, the committee favored White, and two members said no major issues arose in White’s background.
But in hours of interviews, Howell persuaded the committee members to consider him. As for his departure from Booz Allen, one recalled Howell said he “wanted a new challenge.”
“To be clear, no one told us, hey, [Howell] is good, you can let him through the doors now,” a veteran player on the executive committee told ESPN. “We as a group made that decision, and we did our due diligence.”
ON JUNE 27, 2023, player reps gathered at the Salamander Resort in Middleburg, Virginia, and learned the identities of the two finalists: Howell and White. Not lost on some union officials was the irony that Tretter’s secretive election process was ostensibly to protect the candidates’ anonymity in their current corporate roles, but neither White nor Howell was employed at the time.
Over the course of two days, the player reps quizzed the two candidates in full session and in smaller groups. White emphasized his long history running a 160,000-person union. Howell, meanwhile, argued that his lack of union experience was an asset. One player rep said he told them, “I have been the guy fighting against unions for the corporation. So, I know exactly how they think and how they do things.”
Players who supported Howell said they became convinced his financial acumen was what they needed.
During the election session with the player reps, Howell fielded pointed questions about his Booz Allen tenure. Tretter, who in interviews referred to his notes from the meetings, said he asked Howell: “Earlier in your career… you were involved in a [sexual] discrimination suit. Can you tell us more about that situation and the outcome?” Tretter said he doesn’t remember how Howell responded.
Two members of the executive committee backed up Tretter’s account that Howell was asked about the suit during the session, but two player reps told ESPN the subject never came up before they voted.
Player reps interviewed by ESPN said they were far more impressed by Howell’s presentation and answers and that they could see him going toe-to-toe with NFL owners across a bargaining table, with billions at stake.
“We’re not looking for a mom-and-pop guy to run our union,” one executive committee member told ESPN. “We’re looking for a top, top guy. Owners and people on the league side are on prestigious boards. We don’t want a guy who is not in those types of boardrooms.”
Tretter said the players elected Howell by a wide margin on June 28.
JUST THREE WEEKS later, Howell’s ex-employer Booz Allen struck a settlement with the U.S. government on the whistleblower complaint. Prosecutors announced that the $377 million agreement was one of the largest ever for that type of fraud case.
In August 2023, The Washington Post profiled the Booz Allen whistleblower, who was quoted saying she had raised the firm’s alleged overbilling with Howell, who rejected her concerns.
A senior union lawyer read these accounts and asked Tom DePaso, the union general counsel, to inform the 32 player reps about Howell’s alleged ties to the Booz Allen overbilling case, sources with firsthand knowledge told ESPN.
DePaso said the players were aware of the Booz Allen matter when they considered Howell’s election so there was no need to raise it again, a union source said, but union lawyers were angry that the players were not told about Howell’s failure to act on the whistleblower’s complaints.
“It was a bad precedent,” a former union employee with firsthand knowledge of the matter said.
Additionally, a former union employee said that shortly after Howell’s election, women staffers were surprised to learn that their new executive director had been sued for sexual discrimination and retaliation by a female former employee in 2011 while at Booz Allen.
“We just couldn’t believe it,” the former employee said. “If you are running for a head of a union, you should be blemish-free.”
One player said the membership liked Howell because he got them to think of the union as “a cooperative business” with the NFL instead of “a thorn in the side” of ownership.
“‘How can we get more money for everyone? Instead of, oh, we want to practice less and smoke more weed, let’s get into [revenue] percentage points,'” the player said. “That’s where [Howell] earned a lot of good respect from players.”
A year into the job, Howell, who was paid $3.6 million in 2024, was sounding to some like the cooperative business partner he had told players he wanted to be with the league.
In 2024, Howell said the union and the league had discussions “at a very high level” about commissioner Roger Goodell’s public desire for the NFL to expand to an 18-game regular season.
“It sounds attractive,” Howell told The Athletic in July 2024. “Who doesn’t want to see more football — myself included?”
In the months afterward, two NFL owners independently told ESPN they believed 18 games was a near certainty.
But at the NFLPA’s Super Bowl news conference this year in New Orleans, Howell reversed course.
“Right now when I have talked to players over the last two seasons, no one wants to play an 18th game,” he said. “No one. Seventeen games, for many of the guys, is too long.”
During that same news conference, Howell mentioned in passing he was moonlighting at The Carlyle Group, a private equity firm. Last August, the NFL named a handful of firms, including Carlyle, to a list of approved funds that can invest in minority franchise stakes not to exceed 10%.
“I am an operating executive,” Howell said about his role. “I do understand enough to be dangerous when it comes to private equity. It is intriguing that today’s professional football player has more of an equity mindset. They want to put their money to work.”
At the time, the comments made no news.
However, current union employees were angered by other comments Howell made that day, including that recent staff turnover was because he and other leaders were looking for “a level of sophistication that they felt they weren’t getting.”
Recent buyouts he had offered, Howell said, were “to make room for these highly in-demand capabilities that we don’t currently have.”
As one former union employee said, “That riled a lot of people up.”
According to multiple employees, Howell also engendered ire through some of his behavior at the union’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.
Multiple union employees talked openly about how little they’d seen Howell in the office — sometimes only two or three days in a month — and that he often didn’t respond to calls and texts as pressing matters loomed.
Howell ordered the union facilities department to merge two spaces in the parking garage to avoid door dings on his Porsche Cayenne Turbo, the sources said. He asked workers to change the number of the two spaces, 10 and 11, to 32, as an homage to the jersey number worn by O.J. Simpson, according to Craig Jones, the union’s longtime director of security chief. A second source familiar with the matter confirmed the Simpson inspiration.
“I don’t know why O.J.,” Jones said. “Everyone has their preferences, perhaps.”
ON JAN. 14, an arbitrator ruled on the union’s 2-year-old collusion grievance, filed when three quarterbacks failed to get fully guaranteed contracts with their teams after Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson received a record $230 million deal.
The NFLPA, still led by Smith, alleged in the October 2022 grievance that team owners were colluding to restrict guaranteed contracts.
Arbitrator Christopher Droney ruled there wasn’t sufficient evidence of collusion by owners, and he awarded no damages. But he did find the union had proved that the league’s management council, “with the blessing of commissioner Roger Goodell,” encouraged owners to reduce guaranteed money in veterans’ contracts.
Again, Howell and union lawyers chose confidentiality over transparency. ESPN reported last month that the union had struck a confidentiality agreement with the league to hide details of the ruling from the executive committee and the player reps. The ruling itself was shared only with a select group of union and league executives.
Howell told top player leaders only that the union had lost the grievance case and blamed Smith, his predecessor, for wasting union time and money on a lost cause, sources with knowledge of the call said.
Even Tretter, the union’s chief strategy officer, said he did not receive a copy of the grievance decision. He also insisted he had no knowledge of the confidentiality agreement until a meeting this summer.
On June 24, the “Pablo Torre Finds Out” podcast published the 61-page arbitration decision. In the wake of the release and ESPN reporting on the confidentiality agreement, Howell and the union said they would appeal the decision.
A cascade of revelations about Howell followed, including his Carlyle work and his strip club expenses. ESPN also had reported in May that the FBI is investigating financial dealings involving OneTeam Partners, a $2 billion group-licensing firm co-founded by the NFLPA and the Major League Baseball Players Association in 2019. Howell and MLBPA head Tony Clark held board seats at OneTeam.
Union sources told ESPN that as Howell tried to find a pathway to remain at the union, he tendered his resignation to The Carlyle Group. But he changed his mind and withdrew his Carlyle resignation after discovering ESPN was preparing a story about his strip club expenditures, the sources said.
At that point, a close friend of Howell’s told ESPN, he decided to quit the union and “spend more time with his family.”
“He’s worth nine figures,” the friend said. “He wanted to just move on.”
IN THE FALLOUT from his union departure, Howell also resigned from his part-time role with The Carlyle Group and his board seat at ratings firm Moody’s Corp., which said in a government filing his departure “was not a result of any disagreement with the company’s operations, policies or practices.”
The union’s leadership vacuum is now being navigated by a handful of veteran union lawyers and the 32 players representatives, who must select an interim director, perhaps as early as this week.
Multiple people working at the union and former executives said it could take months or longer to repair a broken NFLPA.
“The NFLPA takes seriously the concerns raised in recent reports and is committed to the values it was founded on, including transparency and progress,” a union spokesperson said in a statement to ESPN. “Our union is holding firm to those pillars going forward as we do the necessary work in the best interest of our player members.”
In a separate statement, NFLPA president Jalen Reeves-Maybin said, “While our union has been tested of late, we remain committed to the values of integrity, accountability, and progress in serving the best interests of our membership. … I am in close contact with the NFLPA Executive Leadership Team to ensure good governance practices and continued union business until an interim executive director is elected.”
White, who lost the finalist vote to Howell in 2023, told ESPN he is rooting for the union.
“What I want is for these men to be protected in one of the most exploitative industries on Earth, and my hope is that whoever they choose has the experience and the strategic wisdom to accomplish that,” said White, who is now the CEO of executive coaching firm 3CG Ventures.
Cyrus Mehri, a civil rights lawyer who failed to unseat Smith as NFLPA executive director in 2017, said he feels bad for the players who were failed both by Howell and a lack of transparency that has “become part of the union’s culture — deny the players’ choices, deny them information.”
“Guess what happens when you close off the process to them? You don’t get diversity of ideas … And then you get caught up with a guy like Lloyd Howell, who has never spent one day in his life helping workers.”
Foxworth said he is more optimistic than ever that the leadership crisis will lead players to get it right this time.
“This obviously was embarrassing, but it got everybody’s attention, and the players are more engaged,” Foxworth said. “This is not a business. It’s a union. The strength of the union doesn’t come from some fast-talking lawyers or CFOs. It comes from an engaged and activated body.”
Ukraine’s government is facing a growing backlash after President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law limiting the independence of two anti-corruption agencies.
The contentious bill grants control of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (Nabu) and Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (Sap) to the prosecutor general, who is appointed by the president.
Zelensky argued provisions needed to be taken as Nabu and Sap were letting criminal proceedings stagnate for years and insisted they had to be “cleansed from Russian influence”.
He signed the bill into law late on Tuesday after it received the backing of 263 MPs out of 324.
Many Ukrainians outside parliament – the Rada – disagree with the decision. Critics say the law will severely undermine the Nabu and Sap’s authority and effectiveness.
On Tuesday night thousands gathered outside the president’s office in Kyiv to protest.
Smaller rallies were also held in Odesa, Dnipro, Lviv and Sumy – despite the continued threat from nightly Russian aerial attacks. The gatherings were the first anti-government demonstrations since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The fight against corruption is seen as closely tied to Kyiv’s prospects for integration within the EU – a path that started in 2014, when anti-government protests ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yankuovych in favour of closer ties with the West.
The creation of Nabu and Sap was one of the requirements set by the European Commission and International Monetary Fund more than a decade ago in order to move towards a relaxation of visa restrictions between Ukraine and the EU.
In 2022, Kyiv was granted the coveted status of EU candidate – a significant development that boosted spirits and strengthened ties between Ukraine and its European backers.
Now, there is concern Zelensky’s move may undermine Kyiv’s growing proximity to the West – a cause for which many Ukrainians feel their country continues to pay the price of the Russian onslaught. “Corruption lives – the future dies,” one placard at the Kyiv protest read.
Getty Images
Ukrainians turned out in big numbers – with placards calling on Zelensky to “veto” the bill
Graft in Ukraine is endemic and the country currently ranks 105 out of 180 in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. The rating may be low – but it nonetheless marks an improvement of 39 points since Nabu and Sap were created in 2014.
Since then the two bodies have been involved in far-reaching investigations into the misappropriation of millions of dollars’ worth of assets and bribes across various ministries and sectors.
In 2023 a joint investigation resulted in the arrest of the head of Ukraine’s Supreme Court, Vsevolod Kniaziev, in connection with a $3m (£2.4m; €2.9m) bribe. Earlier this month, it also emerged Nabu was conducting searches at the residence of former defence minister Oleksii Reznikov.
Now Nabu and Sap will have to operate under presidential oversight, leading some to wonder whether high-profile figures close to the government will eschew scrutiny. By curtailing the bodies’ independence the government had “destroyed everything that has been worked on for years,” one protester in Kyiv told Radio Liberty.
Despite a nationwide ban on mass gatherings under martial law, more protests were expected in an even greater number of cities across Ukraine on Wednesday evening.
The “scandalous” law passed on Tuesday “dealt a critical blow to Ukraine’s European integration process,” the Ukrainska Pravda website said, while another outlet, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, warned that Zelensky had taken a “step towards authoritarianism”.
Prominent war veteran Masi Nayem told his 54,000 Facebook followers that he had joined the protests in Kyiv as a “duty” to the victims of Russia’s war. “I fought for the nation, for the people and the democratic system,” he added.
European allies have also sounded alarm bells. The legislation “hampered Ukraine’s way towards the EU,” said Germany’s foreign minister Johann Wadephul, and France’s European affairs minister Benjamin Haddad urged Kyiv to reverse its decision.
But on Wednesday, following a meeting with representatives of Nabu and Sap, Zelensky doubled down. He acknowledged the protests and promised the creation of a joint plan to fight corruption within two weeks – but also emphasised the need for unity against “Russian occupiers”.
In a joint statement the two agencies pushed back and said they had been deprived of the guarantees that allowed them to combat corruption effectively. They also thanked Ukrainians for their “principled position, active support and concern”.
Wednesday saw the beginning of the third round of talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul. But the attention of many Ukrainians was firmly on the new bill – and not just because there was little concrete hope of progress in either Moscow or Kyiv.
“This is government lawlessness,” a Lviv resident called Liza told Radio Liberty. “We don’t want to have to fight both Russia and our own government.”
Ian Maxwell, the brother of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s charged co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, said he was “grateful” for the “positive” statement President Trump made about his sister in 2020.
He was first asked on “Piers Morgan Uncensored,” if Maxwell, who was arrested in 2020 and convicted on sex trafficking charges in 2022 and sentenced to 20 years in prison, “pulled the wool over your eyes” related to her involvement in Epstein’s alleged crimes.
“No, I believe my sister. I’ve known her 60 years, Piers. You know, I’m not going to suddenly say she started pulling the wool. I don’t think so,” he told host Piers Morgan on Tuesday. “I don’t believe so. Not for a second.”
Ian Maxwell in his remarks said Trump showed “humanity” after offering the “positive” statement about his sister.
“And I don’t think that anyone else showed the slightest piece of humanity, not anybody at that time, and yet he did. He didn’t need to. He’s the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world,” Maxwell said on Tuesday. “He could’ve just sloughed it off. He didn’t. He made a positive statement. I am very grateful to that and I know Ghislaine was too.”
Trump was asked during a press briefing about the embattled socialite in July 2020, who was at the time awaiting trial, if she is “going to turn in powerful men.”
“I haven’t really been following it too much. I just wish her well, frankly. I’ve met her numerous times over the years, especially since I lived in Palm Beach. And I guess they lived in Palm Beach. But I wish her well,” Trump said at the time.
The Trump administration is working to tamp down the controversy around the Epstein case, particularly after the FBI and the Justice Department (DOJ) said in a joint, unsigned memo that the disgraced financier did not keep the so-called “client list” and that he died by suicide in his jail cell in 2019.
DOJ, after being ordered by Trump, asked the federal courrt last week to unseal grand jury testimony from prosecutions of both Epstein and Maxwell. Attorney General Pam Bondi said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche “communicated” with Maxwell’s attorney to figure out if she would be willing to talk to DOJ prosecutors.
A House Oversight subcommittee on Tuesday also moved to subpoena Maxwell as pressure for the Trump administration to be more transparency intensifies.
If you’ve read your insurance contract, you might have come across the term “subrogation insurance.” Subrogation insurance is a process that enables insurers to recoup their financial losses after paying out a claim when the insured isn’t at fault.
Insurance companies normally handle subrogation in the background, and policyholders are usually left out of the process. However, it can still be helpful to understand what subrogation is in insurance and how it works.
Subrogation is an insurance company’s legal right to sue a third party responsible for a covered loss once the insurer has settled the claim with the policyholder. It allows the company to recover the money it paid out from the individual who was responsible.
To better understand insurance subrogation, it can be helpful to look at examples. Here are a few scenarios where an insurance company might file a subrogation claim against an at-fault party’s insurer.
You’re hit by another driver in a car accident, and your car is a total loss. Your car insurance company pays you a settlement of $10,000, which is what your car was worth after the crash. Because the other driver was fully responsible, your insurance company decides to file a subrogation claim against the at-fault driver’s insurance company to recoup the $10,000 it paid you.
A delivery truck is coming up your driveway on a snowy day and slides on a patch of ice. The truck hits the front of your house and causes $30,000 worth of damage. Your home insurance company covers the $30,000 to repair your house, then attempts to get their money back from the delivery driver’s insurance company through subrogation.
You encounter your neighbor’s dog when you’re out for a walk, and it bites you. You go to the emergency room and need several stitches. The final bill for your visit is $4,000. Your health insurance coverage takes care of the medical bills, but it decides to file a subrogation claim against your neighbor’s insurance company to recover the $4,000 it paid you.
If your insurance company decides to subrogate a claim, there’s not much you need to do. Typically, the insurance company will handle the entire subrogation process from start to finish, including all communication with the at-fault party’s insurance company.
When pursuing a claim, your insurance company must include the cost of your deductible (if you paid one) in the total amount it asks for. This doesn’t always mean you’ll get your deductible back, since it depends on what your insurer gets from the responsible party. But in many cases, you might recoup some or all of the deductible you paid.
Even though the subrogation claims process is mostly passive for the insured, your insurer still has to notify you, and you have to cooperate with their efforts. If a subrogation claim is successful, your insurance company will be reimbursed for the money it paid for your claim.
When insurance companies are constantly paying out expensive claims for policyholders, it can negatively impact their profitability and eventually lead to rate increases for customers. However, subrogation can prevent this from happening.
Through subrogation, insurance companies are able to get back some or all of the money paid out in claims, which helps them remain financially stable. Because the insurance company isn’t losing as much money, rates are typically kept lower than they would be otherwise.
Subrogation in insurance has pros and cons for the insurance company and the insured party. Here’s what to know about the benefits and limitations of subrogation in insurance:
Pros
Enables the insurance company to recoup its financial losses after paying out a claim
Subrogations can potentially help insurance companies keep rates low
In some cases, policyholders are able to recover the deductible paid out
Can sometimes expedite the insured’s claim payout
Cons
Complex subrogation claims can sometimes take a long time to settle
There’s no guarantee that the insurer will be able to get their money back
Can lead to litigation if the at-fault party’s insurance company doesn’t cooperate
If the insured and the responsible party know each other, subrogation could cause tension
Some insurance policies include a waiver of subrogation. As the term suggests, a waiver of subrogation prevents an insurance company from seeking compensation from an at-fault party’s insurance carrier after reimbursing a customer for a covered loss.
For an insurer, agreeing to waive its right to subrogate exposes the company to additional risk. Once your insurer pays out a claim, it can’t seek reimbursement from the responsible person’s insurance company. Because of that, insurance policies that include a waiver of subrogation often have higher rates.
Here are a few examples of where subrogation is typically waived to reduce the risk to third parties:
Ignoring a subrogation claim can have consequences. If you don’t respond, you could face fines and potential legal action. It could also delay your claim settlement.
Subrogation claims with shared responsibility can be complicated. It could prevent the insurance company from recovering all the money it paid out for the claim. The situation will mostly depend on the comparative negligence laws in the state where the loss occurred.
Insurance subrogation can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months — or even longer. Simple cases are usually resolved quickly, whereas complex claims can take much longer. The length of time also depends on the willingness of both insurance companies to cooperate and settle the claim.
Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo had their rate-rigging convictions overturned
Two former City traders, Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, have had their convictions for rate-rigging overturned by the UK’s Supreme Court.
They were convicted and jailed for manipulating the interest rates used for loans between banks, which dictate borrowing costs for the likes of mortgages and car finance deals.
So what is rate-rigging and what happens next?
Why were the Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo jailed?
Mr Hayes and Mr Palombo were among 37 City traders prosecuted for manipulating the rate benchmarks, Libor and Euribor.
These were used to track the cost of borrowing cash between banks and to set the interest rates on millions of mortgages and commercial loans.
In part they were accused, by their actions, of adding to the 2008 financial crisis, which Mr Hayes said after his conviction was quashed that they had “literally nothing to do with”.
Libor has now been discontinued, while Euribor is being reformed.
Mr Hayes was accused of being the “ringmaster” of an international fraud conspiracy to influence these rates to benefit the banks’ trading.
He was the first banker to be jailed for rate-rigging in 2015, and was initially given a 14-year sentence, later reduced to 11 years, of which he served half.
Mr Palumbo was jailed for four years in 2019.
What did they argue?
Mr Hayes did not deny that while at UBS, and subsequently at Citibank, he attempted to manipulate the Libor rate.
However, he said that it was common practice at the banks where he worked and that his superiors were aware of what he was doing.
He argued he was being made the scapegoat for the actions of an industry.
Mr Palombo, a former Barclays trader, also argued that it was normal commercial practice.
How wide-spread were rate-rigging convictions?
In criminal trials on both sides of the Atlantic from 2015 to 2019, 19 people were convicted of conspiracy to defraud and nine were sent to jail.
As they served their time, evidence emerged that central bankers and government officials across the world, including a top adviser at Downing Street at the time, had pressured banks such as theirs to engage in very similar conduct to what they were jailed for – but on a much greater scale.
No central banker or government official was prosecuted.
Soon after they were released after serving their full jail terms, a US appeal court decided such conduct was not a crime after all; nor even against any rules.
The US Department of Justice revoked the charges against Tom Hayes, and the US courts then threw out all similar convictions.
But in the UK, they remained convicted criminals.
What did Supreme Court rule?
After a 10-year legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled that the trials of Mr Hayes and Mr Palombo were unfair and overturned their convictions.
In the UK, the traders’ cases had been blocked from reaching the Supreme Court by the Court of Appeal five times between 2015 and 2019.
But the Supreme Court exonerated Mr Hayes and Mr Palombo, ruling that directions given to the jury at the end of Mr Hayes and Mr Palombo’s trials were incorrect, meaning their convictions were found to be unsafe.
The Serious Fraud Office, which had brought the case against the traders, said it would not be in the public interest to seek a retrial.
What happens next?
Mr Hayes told a press conference he might be able to recoup the money confiscated from him. He said he will take advice over claiming compensation.
“I’ve lived for the last ten years on a 24-hour basis, because I’ve been unable to plan any aspect of my life,” he said. He was prosecuted, then jailed, then on licence.
“Now suddenly the vista of freedom and choice and what I might do has been opened up to me.”
Conservative MP David Davies said the “scape-goating exercise happened as a result of collusion between the banks and government agencies… and we’re not done with that – we’ll come back to that in Parliament in the autumn.”
Mr Hayes’ solicitor, Karen Todner, called for a full public inquiry into the convictions, and for the justice system to be reformed.
“Tom has missed out on formative years with his son, time with his family, and the loss of his career and his home,” she said. “Time he will never get back”.
She said the charge against Mr Hayes had been “hopelessly vague”, the case had taken too long to come to appeal.
She said the Serious Fraud Office, alongside bodies such as the Post Office and the RSPCA, should not be able to bring criminal prosecutions, because the “dual role of investigator and prosecutor creates a substantial conflict of interest, which creates miscarriages of justice”.
Ben Rose, the solicitor for Carlo Palombo, said other traders may now be able to “right the wrong done to them”.
Mark Epstein, the older brother of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, refuted the White House’s claims that President Trump never visited the convicted sex offender at his office.
“That’s just another blatant lie,” the older Epstein said during a Tuesday appearance on CNN’s “Erin Burnett OutFront.”
“Because he was there. People that worked for Jeffrey in his office, they could testify that they saw Trump in Jeffrey’s office on numerous occasions,” he continued, “So for him to say he wasn’t there, all I can say is that’s just just another lie.”
Later on the show, Epstein accuser Maria Farmer appeared giving her account of the president’s visit to the wealthy businessman’s office decades prior to his death.
Mark Epstein has repeatedly alleged that his brother was killed while in prison. A joint memo issued earlier this month from Trump’s Justice Department and the FBI concluded that there is no evidence to support allegations that Epstein was murdered and that he did not keep a so-called “client list.”
“Every time they say something or do something to try to quash the fact that he was most likely murdered, they just put their foot further down their mouth,” Epstein’s brother told NewsNation host Chris Cuomo earlier this month, when asked why he doesn’t believe the administration’s latest explanation.
The Trump administration in recent days has been roiled with speculation around its handling of the Epstein files, as calls grow for more transparency in the case.
The president has repeatedly attempted to deny closeness to Epstein, who was accused of leading a sex trafficking operation involving underage girls. Trump’s statements rejecting their relationship was befuddled last week by a Wall Street Journal article that unveiled an alleged correspondence between the two in 2003.
The Journal reported that a letter, which appears to bear Trump’s signature, was typed inside the outline of a naked woman and sent to Epstein.
“A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” the final line reads, the Journal reported.