Binance Claims It Helped Crash Chinese Scam App in India • The Register

ASIA IN BRIEF This is not often Register writes about a cryptocurrency company being on the right side of a fraud or crime, but last week cryptocurrency exchange Binance claimed to have helped Indian authorities investigate fraudulent gaming apps.

In August, India’s Enforcement Directorate announced (PDF) that it had arrested four people – one of them named “Joseph Stalin” – for helping Chinese nationals run a fraudulent gaming app called Fiewin.

The app provided players with the opportunity to play for real money, but was allegedly a front for a money laundering operation.

The alleged perpetrators operated accounts on Binance, and the crypto group wrote that it was offering “deep cooperation” to help Indian authorities find out that “the app was part of a cross-border criminal network.” He apparently “used various methods to obfuscate the origins and flow of illicit funds by using ‘mule’ bank accounts and cryptocurrency wallets, creating a complex web of transactions that made it difficult to detect and track.”

– Simon Sharwood

SpaceX wants to invest 1.5 million in Vietnam

Last Wednesday, the Vietnamese government revealed that SpaceX wants to invest $1.5 billion in various projects in the country. The government said it was analyzing the investment proposal that was raised at a meeting between Vietnamese President To Lam and SpaceX weep Tim Hughes. SpaceX and Vietnam have previously been unable to agree on regulatory hurdles and investment timelines, particularly around satellite Internet deployment and compliance with local regulations.

Lam also met with Google Vice President Karan Bhatia to discuss expanding Google’s investments in Vietnam – particularly in artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and cloud services.

Singapore launches submarines to defend cables

Last week, Singapore launched a pair of Invincible-class submarines to defend local waters – including underwater communications cables connecting the island to the world.

Prime Minister and Finance Minister Lawrence Wong boasted that the submarines would “perform a wide range of operations to protect Singapore’s waters, protect sea lines of communication and contribute to regional peace and security.”

Singapore plans to deploy another two submarines for the same missions.

This island nation is the landing site for at least 18 undersea cables. – Simon Sharwood

Ola’s electric scooter business is collapsing

Indian tech company Ola’s electric scooter unit is in trouble after reports surfaced that many of its two-wheelers are struggling with hardware malfunctions and software glitches, leading to a backlog of customers waiting for repairs.

At one of the company’s over 500 repair centers, 3,500-4,000 Ola Electric scooters were reportedly waiting for repairs due to lack of spare parts and skilled labor.

One of the scooter owners was so fed up that he set fire to one of Ola’s showrooms. He was later arrested.

Founder and staunch supporter of the 70-hour workweek, Bhavish Aggarwal, took to his LinkedIn account on Friday to promise that Ola will double the number of service centers by the end of the year and train an additional 100,000 mechanics.

He further promised that service issues would be resolved within a day and spare scooters, as well as taxi vouchers, would be made available to the owners of the repaired vehicles.

Aggarwal also promised that Ola will implement artificial intelligence to detect vehicle problems before they occur – starting in October.

Qoo10’s e-commerce problems are getting worse

Singaporean e-commerce site Qoo10 – already in trouble after South Korean regulators were forced to step in and intervene in a bailout over two of its subsidiaries’ failure to pay suppliers last month – has been forced by the Monetary Commission to suspend its payment services Singapore authorities ( MAS).

The order was placed in response to persistent customer complaints about late payments. MAS alleged that Qoo10 failed to resolve a significant number of payment delays reported by merchants between April and August 2024.

“This suspension does not prohibit Qoo10 from operating an e-commerce platform, but it may be necessary to engage a third-party payment service provider to process transactions on the platform,” the regulator said.

Peasant! Japan trumpets its content moderation rates

Peasant! Japan has published detailed information on its content moderation efforts. The site uses both a 24/7 dedicated patrol team and internal artificial intelligence for content moderation. In fiscal year 2023, approximately 115,000 posts (1.2 percent) were removed out of Yahoo’s average 9.27 million posts per month! News comment section in Japan, 59,000 posts (1.3 percent) of 4.69 million posts per month on Yahoo’s Quora-style question and answer platform! Chiebukuro and 38,000 posts (1.7%) of the 2.29 million posts on Yahoo! Financial bulletin board. For the LINE Open Chat public chat and the LINE VOOM social media platform, launched in late 2023, 799,000 (0.2%) and 233,000 (1.3%) posts were removed from their millions of monthly posts, respectively.

APAC Deal Book

Recent alliances and deals spotted by Register across the region last week included:

Samsung Display announced a $1.8 billion investment to build an OLED display factory in Vietnam to expand its global manufacturing capabilities. Meanwhile, Samsung Electronics will supply (PDF) 4G and 5G equipment worth 1 trillion won ($762 million) to Vodafone Idea’s Indian unit.
LG Display announced the sale of a 51 percent stake in the Chinese large LCD panel maker to TCL. The sales value is approximately $1.5 billion.
Indonesian group GoTo announced on Tuesday a collaboration with Google Cloud to launch Dira, an artificial intelligence-based voice assistant integrated with the GoPay app.
South Korean company Naver Corporation – known for its flagship messaging app LINE – is set to open its Middle East headquarters in Saudi Arabia by the end of the year.