Introducing the 39th edition of The PEP Weekly Digest, where we present to you the most recent updates and news on the global political stage.

Recent and upcoming elections influence the worldwide political landscape in eight nations, slated between February 14, 2024 and March 23, 2024. These elections hold significant importance, as they will determine the direction and governance of each respective country’s future.

One noteworthy event has occurred in Azerbaijan, President Ilham Aliyev signed an order appointing Farid Turab oglu Akhmedov as Minister of Justice. So far (since 2022), Akhmedov served as Deputy Minister of Digital Development and Transport. Akhmedov was born in 1979 in Baku. He graduated from the bachelor’s and master’s degrees of the law faculty of Baku State University. Received a master’s degree in the international human rights from the University of Essex in the United Kingdom under the Chevening scholarship program. He completed his doctoral studies under the Weidenfeld scholarship program at the University of Oxford. Holds a PhD in law. Akhmedov worked in the Parliament’s office, in 2015-2017 he was the rector of the private university “Azerbaijan”, held the position of director of the Baku International Commercial Sea Port CJSC.

Shifting our focus to China, Former foreign minister Qin Gang, who has been missing from public view since June last year, has resigned as a member of the national legislature ahead of a key political set piece event, according to an official statement. The statement, issued after a meeting of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress, said Qin has not been dismissed or expelled from the NPC. His resignation as a deputy has been accepted by the Tianjin People’s Congress. The announcement coincides with the removal of Li Shangfu from the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, the key military command body, according to the defence ministry’s website. Li had previously been dismissed as defence minister and as a state councillor in October without any official explanation. The announcements help tie up some loose ends ahead of next week’s “two sessions”, when the National People’s Congress and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the country’s top political advisory body, meet in Beijing. The leadership may want to use the gathering to focus on efforts to get the country’s economy back on track.

In Hungary, the new president of the country will be the current president of the Constitutional Court, Tamás Sulyok, after parliament elected the 67-year-old as expected with 134 votes. Five members of parliament voted against Sulyok’s election, and several opposition groups stayed away from the vote. Sulyok, who was put forward by the Fidesz party of right-wing populist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, was the only candidate for the post. His predecessor, Katalin Novák, resigned just over a fortnight ago due to the uproar caused by her pardon of a man convicted of being an accomplice to child sex abuse. The term of office for Hungarian presidents is five years and their role is largely representative. Sulyok takes office on March 5, until when Parliamentary Speaker László Kövér will be acting head of state. Sulyok is known as a supporter of Orbán’s policies. In 2023, the Constitutional Court under his leadership passed a judgement to the detriment of the Central European University (CEU), which had been operating in Budapest for years and had to relocate most of its operations to Vienna from 2019 due to harassment by Orbán’s government. The Constitutional Court ruled that the university had not been the victim of a breach of the law as a result. Orbán, who is a proponent of what he calls an “illiberal” form of government, was a thorn in the side of the university because it represented liberal values and was also founded and financed by US-Hungarian philanthropist George Soros. Novák had announced her resignation after it became known that she had pardoned a man who had been convicted of aiding and abetting child sexual abuse. This caused widespread outrage in Hungary and forced the government to withdraw its support.
In the realm of regulatory affairs, Authorities in Italy, Latvia and Lithuania on Tuesday arrested 18 people suspected of helping launder €2 billion from a range of crimes through an electronic money institution, or EMI, in the Baltics. Eurojust, which facilitates cross-border legal cooperation in the EU, said in a statement that the EMI in question offered “money laundering as a service” to thousands of drug traffickers, fraudsters and other criminals by routing their proceeds into and through accounts they controlled through a network of shell companies. Eurojust did not name the platform involved, but all indications point to Trustcom Financial, an EMI previously based in Vilnius, Lithuania, that lost its license to operate in the Baltic nation two years ago after two of its directors became the subject of a money laundering-related investigation. An Italian crime syndicate allegedly established the EMI, which advertised its purported “consultancy services” online and laundered some of the funds linked to the scheme into real estate and luxury cars. Authorities have frozen €11.5 million worth of assets as part of the case, including funds in bank accounts.

Shifting our attention to legal advancements, the Lithuanian Court of Appeal sentenced Vilius Siliauskas, a former city administration director in Lithuania’s second-largest city of Kaunas, to three years and four months in prison for bribery. The panel of judges thus reversed a lower court’s verdict that imposed a fine of 70,000 euros on the former Kaunas municipality official. Šiliauskas was found guilty of directly demanding and accepting a total of 260,000 euros in bribes from Autokausta CEO Juozas Kriaučiunas between 2021 and 2022 when he held the office of administration director. Judge Virginija Liudvinavičienė of the Court of Appeal said the lower court’s sentence was too light, given “the seriousness of the crime, the purpose of the penalty, and its preventive objectives”.