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00:00:11latest news, interviews, results results and goals as we follow every
00:00:14every twist of the Premier League
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00:00:32Being able. To inspire someone
00:00:34is always the greatest joy. I. I
00:00:37I saw Souza one time at the Grammys Grammys and she said that she studied
00:00:40studied some of my songs for their their songwriting and I thought that that that was the biggest compliment
00:00:43compliment ever. My support for Ukraine
00:00:47Ukraine is unwavering. It is 100%
00:00:50100% when the big names talk, they
00:00:52they talk to us.
00:01:04Hello. You're with BBC News. I'm Geeta Guru-Murthy. Let's return
00:01:08return now to the news that Houthi Houthi fighters in Yemen have continued
00:01:12continued to fire missiles towards towards Saudi Arabia after three
00:01:15three deadly attacks on Riyadh airport airport in the last few days. Our
00:01:19Our security correspondent Frank
00:01:20Frank Gardner told us more. I think
00:01:23think it is a surprise at how poor poor or ineffective their air defences
00:01:26defences are. Saudi Arabia has spent spent billions and billions of dollars
00:01:30dollars over the last few decades
00:01:33decades in buying state of the art
00:01:36art defences equipment from mostly mostly from the US but also from
00:01:39from the UK and other countries. countries. And yet they seem unable
00:01:42unable to stop these very damaging damaging strikes that are hitting
00:01:46hitting not just King Khalid International International Airport in Riyadh,
00:01:49Riyadh, but smaller airports like like Abha, Jizan, Mushait but also
00:01:53also their oil and petrochemical petrochemical facilities at Yanbu
00:01:56Yanbu and Kiribati and Dammam. So
00:02:00So the Houthis, who I think have have perhaps been dismissed by some
00:02:03some in the region as being just
00:02:05just a bunch of sort of mountain
00:02:08mountain brigands with very antiquated antiquated weapons. They turn out
00:02:11out to be far more dangerous, I think, think, than people expected. The
00:02:15The Houthis survived seven years
00:02:16years of warfare with the Saudis
00:02:20Saudis from 2015 to 2022. There was was then a UN brokered truce and
00:02:23and four years of relative calm. calm. Some there were some unconfirmed
00:02:27unconfirmed reports of payouts by
00:02:29by the Saudis affectionately, effectively
00:02:32effectively kind of almost danegeld danegeld kind of protection money.
00:02:35money. But then that the war reignited
00:02:38reignited this summer when Saudi
00:02:39Saudi Arabia bombed Sanaa airport airport and the Houthis responded
00:02:43responded with a barrage of missiles.
00:02:45missiles. The Houthis then advanced
00:02:48advanced rapidly down the Red Sea Sea coast of Yemen, threatening the
00:02:52the Bab al-Mandab choke point at at the southern end of the Red Sea
00:02:55Sea so that they could control what
00:02:57what shipping goes from. From the the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean.
00:03:01Ocean. So that's a huge geostrategic geostrategic win for them. If they
00:03:04they can do that. And they're now
00:03:07now locked in a battle, the Saudis Saudis that it's difficult to see
00:03:10see how they can win this, they're they're not necessarily going to
00:03:12to lose it. But the Houthis are puncturing
00:03:16puncturing Saudi Arabia's image of
00:03:18of this great safe place to invest.
00:03:21invest. Frank Gardner there, a BBC BBC investigation has revealed that
00:03:24that the world's biggest accountancy accountancy firm helped falsify documents
00:03:27documents that allowed the former former Chelsea Football Club owner
00:03:30owner Roman Abramovich to hide his
00:03:32his wealth and evade tax. BBC Panorama
00:03:34Panorama has uncovered hundreds of of documents that were backdated backdated by the Russian billionaires
00:03:38billionaires advisers. Many were were drawn up with the help of Deloitte.
00:03:42Deloitte. Roman Abramovich denies denies any wrongdoing. Deloitte says
00:03:44says it complies with applicable
00:03:46applicable laws. Richard Bilton reports.
00:03:51reports. Things have. Changed for.
00:03:53for. Roman Abramovich. He has been. been. Sanctioned because of his links
00:03:56links to Vladimir Putin. He's been
00:03:58been forced to sell his beloved Chelsea
00:04:01Chelsea and now revelations from from inside his financial empire.
00:04:05empire. If you want to understand understand Roman Abramovich, follow
00:04:09follow the money. This is Cyprus,
00:04:11Cyprus, home to a web of companies
00:04:13companies that were holding his wealth
00:04:17wealth working with the Bureau of
00:04:19of Investigative Journalism. Panorama Panorama has been investigating a
00:04:22a data leak which shows the lengths
00:04:25lengths some of his Cypriot advisers advisers went to hide his billions.
00:04:29billions. They falsified and backdated
00:04:33backdated hundreds of documents. documents. It is trying to cover
00:04:35cover up something. And what we appear
00:04:38appear to have here is a fiddle factory
00:04:40factory in a fiddle factory you fiddle
00:04:42fiddle the transactions, you backdate
00:04:45backdate them and that is what appears appears to have been happening here
00:04:49here regularly. In 2003, one of Roman
00:04:52Roman Abramovich's Cypriot companies
00:04:54companies called Kravin Investments, Investments, had almost $2 billion
00:04:58billion of his money in the bank. bank. Deloitte confirmed certain
00:05:02certain changes will have to be made
00:05:04made to the accounts. That's Deloitte
00:05:06Deloitte apparently advising on falsifying
00:05:09falsifying financial records by backdating
00:05:11backdating them. The evidence suggests
00:05:13suggests it allowed Mr Abramovich
00:05:15Abramovich to evade millions in tax.
00:05:19tax. It's a straightforward and blatant
00:05:26blatant move to protect from legitimate
00:05:30legitimate taxation assets which which should otherwise have been
00:05:33been subject to tax. So it's tax tax evasion? Yeah. Straightforward.
00:05:37Straightforward. And how serious serious is that? Well, again, if
00:05:39if it happened in England and it it was in the millions His Majesty's
00:05:43Majesty's Revenue and Customs would
00:05:45would be thinking about a prosecution.
00:05:48prosecution. Roman Abramovich's lawyers
00:05:49lawyers say he denies he evaded tax
00:05:52tax or concealed his fortune. They
00:05:55They say he was not involved in the the day to day operation of the companies,
00:05:59companies, and Panorama has provided provided no evidence that he knew
00:06:03knew of authorised or directed the
00:06:06the falsification or backdating of
00:06:08of any documents. Deloitte Cyprus
00:06:10Cyprus says it's unable to comment comment because the documents are
00:06:13are more than 20 years old and no
00:06:16no longer accessible. Richard
00:06:28Bilton, BBC News. In. Africa enterprise
00:06:30enterprise sponsored by upstart group.
00:06:35group. MUSIC
00:06:44I've come to Cassava
00:06:45Technologies data Factory in Johannesburg
00:06:48Johannesburg a next generation data
00:06:49data centre built to process AI.
00:06:53AI. It plugs into a 110,000km fibre
00:06:58fibre optic network stretching from
00:06:59from Cairo to Cape Town. For decades,
00:07:04decades, much of Africa's digital digital traffic has bounced through
00:07:08through Europe. Infrastructure like
00:07:09like this gives the continent digital
00:07:12digital control. But as the world
00:07:15world enters the AI revolution, what
00:07:17what will give Africa the competitive
00:07:20competitive edge? The ambition for
00:07:26for us is to build a digital infrastructure
00:07:30infrastructure and AI compute platform.
00:07:32platform. We are focused on five
00:07:34five of Africa's biggest markets,
00:07:36markets, South Africa being one.
00:07:39one. Kenya is the other one. Nigeria.
00:07:44Nigeria. Egypt and Morocco. And each
00:07:47each of these countries act as regional
00:07:50regional hubs on which satellite satellite countries around them can
00:07:53can be able to hook on to the AI AI factories that we're building.
00:07:57building. What is missing that you you are trying to build? Africa still
00:08:01still accounts for only 1% of the
00:08:03the global data centre population.
00:08:06population. And when you look at
00:08:07at our GDP of $3.5 trillion, that's
00:08:12that's a very small number. You've You've been a champion of keeping
00:08:15keeping African data inside African
00:08:18African data centres as a way to
00:08:20to achieve digital sovereignty. Why
00:08:23Why is that important? If we don't
00:08:26don't have our own AI compute solutions solutions in our own digital infrastructure
00:08:30infrastructure on the continent, continent, we are repeating exactly
00:08:33exactly the same pattern that we've
00:08:34we've seen over the years. You know,
00:08:37know, produce coffee, sell the green
00:08:40green beans, go and put others to
00:08:42to work. We've done it with cocoa.
00:08:44cocoa. We've done it with minerals. minerals. The data sits here with
00:08:48with us. It doesn't have to be exported.
00:08:52exported. The opportunity is hiding hiding in plain sight. The models
00:08:56models that we're using today, they they have scrapped every piece of
00:08:59of information that's available on on the internet. But what they don't
00:09:03don't have is the information that that sits inside a mining company
00:09:07company in South Africa who have
00:09:09have been mining platinum or gold
00:09:12gold for the last 30 years. You know,
00:09:14know, those models don't have the
00:09:16the information. One of the biggest biggest referral hospital in South
00:09:19South Africa or in Uganda or in Kenya
00:09:21Kenya or in Zimbabwe, all of that
00:09:24that data that we own is the
00:09:28opportunity. Do you think that the the AI revolution and what will come
00:09:31come out of Africa's AI factories factories is going to be as significant
00:09:34significant as the mobile money revolution?
00:09:37revolution? AI is is in my view,
00:09:39view, about amplifying human capacity
00:09:42capacity and amplifying what we can
00:09:43can do as long as we're imaginative.
00:09:46imaginative. So so where the mobile
00:09:48mobile money revolution was about
00:09:51about bringing the previously excluded
00:09:54excluded into the financial ecosystem,
00:09:57ecosystem, AI is about bringing everybody
00:10:00everybody else who was excluded by
00:10:03by virtue of language. If you think think about the challenges around
00:10:06around Stem education, you're asking
00:10:08asking a child to first learn a foreign
00:10:11foreign language in order for them
00:10:13them to understand a subject. Why
00:10:16Why not cut that piece out? That
00:10:20That is now possible with AI. I think
00:10:23think we're talking about
00:10:36money did. Africa Enterprise sponsored sponsored by
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00:14:16Before Asia s business world wakes
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00:14:27Europe opens, we connect the headlines headlines and the events driving
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00:15:08MUSIC
00:15:11Live from London. This is BBC News.
00:15:17News. President Zelensky says Washington Washington has to make Russia respect.
00:15:20respect. An energy cease fire announced
00:15:22announced by Donald Trump after Russian
00:15:24Russian strikes hit Ukrainian infrastructure
00:15:26infrastructure overnight. It was
00:15:29was clear that Putin does not read
00:15:34read through social. And he is cheeky.
00:15:36cheeky. Drones follow a different different set of instructions. These
00:15:40These are live pictures from the the Warsaw Security Conference. Donald
00:15:43Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, Minister, speaking there and we're
00:15:47we're due to hear from the Supreme Supreme Allied commander of forces
00:15:50forces in Europe from Nato due to to speak shortly. We'll bring you
00:15:53you that speech live. Saudi officials
00:15:56officials say one person has been been killed and nearly a dozen others