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Zeepay's Takyi-Appiah: "The concept of WhatsApp is not proprietary anymore"
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Andrew Takyi-Appiah, managing director and co-founder of Zeepay, discussed efforts around promoting financial inclusion through his venture Zeepay, the only currently existing non-telco fintech player to receive an Electronic Money Issuer (EMI) or mobile money license in Ghana.
He described an average African user as highly dependent on a mobile device for accessing financial services. Takyi-Appiah also talked about how an innovative yet simple platform built on the over-the-top (OTT) instant messaging service players such as WhatsApp could offer the scale to penetrate millions who do not have access to formal financial services across the African sub-continent and help transform its payment ecosystem.
In this RadioFinance session, emphasis was given to Africa's status as leading continent for money-mobile services, and a pre-existing and well-established interoperable financial system infrastructure in Ghana could usher an all-inclusive growth in payments.
The following key points were discussed during the interview:
The African payment and remittance ecosystem is worth $250 billion and comprises more than 80 wallet service providers, 20 million Visa Direct bank cards and high penetration and usage of mobile all of which present a huge opportunity for Zeepay.
As a fintech with interoperability at both back-end and front-end, Zeepay binds different parts of the ecosystem together into one single platform to transact and enable remittances to be paid into mobile wallets in Ghana.
Zeepay is building its own ecosystem on the OTT messaging players like WhatsApp and Facebook through addition of multi-layer protocols such as two-factor authentication (2FA) and security to run payments on their instant messaging platforms.
Wallets are filling the void through provision of mobile financial services to the population in Africa.
Zeepay's multi-layered open interoperable platform is able to cross every key player's network in Ghana and has made receiving remittances convenient for its customers.
The company does not do price discovery and makes margins on wholesale.
Zeepay's partnership with Visa enables it access to all bank accounts through Visa Direct.
It aims to become a financial services supermarket with a multi-layer product focus which complements growth through monetisation of payments.
Zeepay is building an immigrant-focused bank that will channel remittances in the African diaspora.
There is an urgent need for the participants in the wallet ecosystem to work together to drive e-money into capital markets.
The following is the edited transcript of the session:
Emmanuel Daniel (ED): Andrew Takyi-Appiah, thank you very much for joining me in this conversation. And it's good to see you again. I'm very excited about the work you're doing, Andrew, because you are an entrepreneur, putting in place a payment infrastructure on an existing ecosystem that is probably not very well understood outside of Africa.
And when people outside of Africa think about payments in Africa, we only think M-Pesa and the various banking payment networks. This is going to be an interesting and long conversation partially to help people outside of Africa to understand Zeepay and the landscape in which you operate, but also to explore some of the business decisions that you've been able to make or you're making in order to grow your business and to work closer with the banks and with the telcos. So as a start, give us a sense of Zeepay.
Andrew Takyi-Appiah (ATA): I actually liked the comments you made, which is the fact that we're trying to build on to an existing ecosystem. So that's exactly where we came into market. Zeepay is an inclusive platform designed in such a way that we'll be able to bring all the different parts of the ecosystem together into one single platform to transact. What we do as a fintech originally is to enable remittances to be paid in to mobile wallets, across all wallets in Ghana, going through our standard, which is our Zeepay wallets. What we also do is to aggregate the bulk payments to make it possible for government and aid agencies to reach everybody in the country where they need to make payments to them. Then we also make it possible for peer-to-peer payments across multi network.
African payment and remittance ecosystem is worth $250 billion and has more than 80 wallet service providers
Now, let me also talk about the African ecosystem slightly in a different way which will give you a better understanding of the ecosystem in Ghana. Globally, everybody wants to transact using just only card rail on just including Visa, MasterCard or Kenya Pay. The African ecosystem is a lot more robust, as we have omnichannel rails. When it comes to wallets, we have about 80 angel wallet providers in the continent. Zeepay, MTN, Orange Money, Move, Africash, Airtel Money, AirtelTigo and Tigo etc. So we have multi players in the market and these wallet are instruments. So now and I have web legislative instruments that I set up for payments, its wallet, cards, cheques and cash. So these are the only four instruments that the law recognises to be used for payments. These instruments we build ourselves. So today, our rails are not just card rails, but they are all these four rails plus a bank account.
So all of a sudden, when you're on a platform like Zeepay, you have access to wallets across 23 markets in Africa. You have access to about 20 million bank cards on the continent using Visa Direct. You have access to bank accounts, either through the Visa Direct annual, or switch by switch across markets. Now this is what really a payment ecosystem should be like and that's the robustness of our ecosystem. It's just unfortunate that a lot of time, everybody just talks about the card rails and M-Pesa. The African payments ecosystem is estimated to be $181 billion. Add remittance, which is about $70 billion. So it's a very big ecosystem. And the key players of the ecosystem include the likes of Ghana, Kenya, and Uganda. Ivory Coast is picking up significantly and has started to look quite exciting. Mozambique is beginning to look exciting as well. So these are the key market players in the ecosystem.
ED: Let me tell you what the ecosystem looks like from outside of Africa. The first thing that is very interesting is the number of wallets that already are in Africa.
ATA: There are around 50 million wallets globally and Africa's wallets closer to 90% of the global wallets.
ED: I'm very curious to drill down on what we mean by wallets. I'm sure that each of the wallets want to dominate their own little ecosystem. It may be loyalty. It may be spending. It may be retail locked into specific relationships and so on. And the fact that there are still players who think that they can play the wallet game. The second dimension is the fact that regulators like in Ghana have been imposing interoperability from the beginning. So you actually operate in an environment where there is incredible interoperability. And when there is interoperability, am I right to imagine that Zeepay sits on top of the wallets? The values that you provide, are they on top of what the other wallets do?
ATA: So Zeepay is actually the only licensed wallet at the moment in Ghana. We are a full wallet with a full complement service and we sit on interoperability. It's interesting, that we are the only platform that has both the back-end and the front-end of interoperability. So with our back-end, we can move money to all networks or wallets or bank accounts, etc. But on the front-end, our consumers can do the same as well. Because we have one simple belief, that is, financial inclusion will only be attained through an inclusive approach. So let's first be inclusive and give the consumer the choice. That brings the efficiency to the ecosystem, and the consumer will stay with us.
ED: Can you place wallets in terms of where it operates from something like M-Pesa? For example, M-Pesa operates on a device and it's not necessarily a wallet. And there's another dimension that people outside of Africa would find very interesting is the role of the telco players. It seems to be that in Africa, the telcos are successful. They are players in the payments space. They have successfully monetised the relationships they have. There are many countries around the world where telcos tried to get into payments, and never get off the ground.
ATA: When we talk about wallets now, possibly EMI wallets, it's basically a digital wallet attached to your phone number, which allows you to do cash-in, which means receive money into your wallet, allows you to cash out, which means taking money out of your wallet, allows you to do a peer-to-peer transfer, which is to move money from one point to another point, and then allows you to receive your remittance in your wallet. So these are sort of the basic, then on the back of the basic will be airtime. So you can purchase airtime, you can actually send people airtime. Then you can start to do other things like micro-insurance, lending and buy micro loans etc. So that's a full complement of a wallet. M-Pesa does the same thing. Zeepay does the same thing.
In the banking ecosystem, what we have in the ecosystem, from a retail perspective, is your traditional retail bank. Then, in your traditional retail bank, you have math, you have the HR lines or wealth management, then after HMA, you have your mix segment, which is usually premium. Then after that you have your mass market. So after the mass market business, which has failed considerably, especially in all African continent, because the African banks could just not reach the critical mass, they could only reach up to the middle premium. So you find that every customer will be multi banked by five banks, a common practice which is wrong. So then we had financial inclusion, which you could not integrate into banking. So in there, we ended up with mobile financial services which is basically what we providers of wallets do. We the providers of wallet become that critical mass platform that is enabling the bare bottom of the base to have access to funds in banking system, to access to financial instruments, which in this case will be a wallet. It's called mobile financial services (MFS).
Why few markets don't have a wallet, or they failed on it, could be because of the three reasons. The first reason I think is maybe they do not have a strong critical mass, they have a need because their card business is strong. Some markets are card markets. If you go to Latin America, that's a strong card market. Or if you go to United States of America, this is a strong trade market. That's why you find prepaid cards being sold on the streets. If you come to our part of the world, because we're not card people, we're mobile people. An average African has a mobile phone, it's easier for this to grow faster. In the continent. When it comes to mobile financial services, we have Zeepay which is the only independent, non-telco led MFS. Then you have Airtel Money which is obviously telco-led. There's MTN Mobile Money which is telco-led. Vodafone Cash which is also telco-led. What makes us powerful is that our platform, all you need is an active phone number. You don't need a SIM card to be onboarded. So all of a sudden, every telco customer is my customer. So I'm able to onboard more wallets than they all would ever be able to onboard, which is probably what the future of mobile financial services looks like.
ED: Now, what you've just described is incredibly amazing and incredibly sensitive, because it's not necessarily a formula that can work in every country. The countries which are well banked do not need this layer. And yet in Africa, you have the telcos which perfected the wallet model dominating, especially countries which are in the lower end of the per capita GDP, and then having different rates of success when they move into countries with a higher level of GDP. So something that might work in Kenya may not working in Ghana or may not work in South Africa. You're actually talking about a very incremental difference in the space that you're in. So for Zeepay, what's your critical success factor? Is it functionality? Is it interoperability given the fact that you actually serve in micro finance, the small ticket value customers?
Zeepay's multi-layered open interoperable platform has made receiving remittances convenient
ATA: What we did is we identified the gap in the market. Now the gap in the market at the time was a bridge between the diaspora and the locals and the distance. So before we came into disrupt bank your average remittance receiver would have to travel 50 to 100 miles to be able to pick up their cash in the hinterland and more money went to the hinterland than it came into the cities and urban areas. We said we're going to build a bridge between the diasporas and these guys on the local end by making it possible for them to be able to receive their money, and collect it from the agent network. And then we build an interoperable platform that is able to cross every single network without being on board. So what makes us powerful than others is your average MoneyGram customer can send money straight into a Zeepay wallet. The MoneyGram receiver will then walk into any agent network including Airtel, Zeepay, Vodaphone or MTN and withdraw their money. So all of us adding on a layer, on a layer, on a layer above the ecosystem. And therefore we built an invisible bridge, with the help of some form of artificial intelligence, to be able to reach everybody. So that's really the edge we have. In terms of functionality, we're also a single source. So on our network, you can buy airtime for everybody else. So it just makes sense to be on our network and be able to do everything than to be only on MTN and only have to buy MTN airtime only.
ED: Is that a function of marketing? Or is that a function of technology?
ATA: It's a function of both marketing intel and market penetration, which is all one, and then also technology. I don't think it's a function of robustness of technology rather it is a function of agility of technology. The more agile the technology is, the better it is. You see, a lot of time people think that single loops are the answers, but no, single loop is only a monopoly. When you have an open platform, you're more likely to sustain the game, which is what we've done, basically. So we're just an open platform that allows everybody to come on board and you give the consumer a lot more choices.
ED: Everyone would come on board, if it's free. What's the revenue model for what you do? Because the moment you start charging a fee, you need to pay a cost. Each customer that comes on board is a cost to you. So, how do you amortise your costs?
ATA: First of all, I've seen networks that charge fee, and have not seen any uptake. All they've seen is volume. When you're working with the bottom of base, that's where the money is, and the money is at the bottom of the barrel. But at the same time, that is why it's perceived to be the most difficult. And we don't offer the service for free. We actually charge from 5% to be able to transact on our network. We're 1.5% cheaper than everybody, we also charge for termination. So every time the NGOs terminate onto our platform, they pay us for that. Then we also make settlement margins.
So in essence, we got a mixture of revenue including airtime, loans, etc. And that's really the model you want to run. What you now want to do is once you've got the model, you go to the critical mass. Today, we have about 2 million users and we're growing. I mean, this year alone, year to date, we have done about 400 to $401 million which represents about 11% of the total remittance to Ghana alone. We do 23 markets in Africa and out of the 23, we have nine very strong and active markets. Ivory Coast is our second active market, shot up significantly, looking very exciting for about the last eight weeks.
ED: One thing I noticed about remittance and payments in Africa is how they discover, I call them, invisible rivers, from Ghana to Tanzania and so on, that nobody would have imagined existed in the past. So I'm actually curious like when you say pan African how did you choose your markets? What's common about these markets? Are they the more developed ones where the regulation maybe is a lot more developed? And is FX a source of income as well?
ATA: FX would always be a source of income. We call them settlement gains because we're wholesaler. We don't do price discovery, but we settle in wholesale. So we make margins on wholesale. And to take the two steps back to your question, you cannot almost get a right. That's not a science per se to choose the market. But definitely one of the things I make as move is where remittance is going. So we follow the money. According to the SME, remittance is the fastest way to grow mobile money. As we follow the money, sometimes we get it right, sometimes we got to wait.
Then the last thing you do is regulations because regulations in Africa are not homogeneous. What Ghana will be flexible about, Nigeria will not be flexible about at all. So what you do is you first focus on wiring patterns where there's a mobile money optic, then you also focus on where there's a lot more diaspora outside. When you've got this model, right, then you open up the ecosystem. When you open up the ecosystem, sometimes you win. Sometimes you will not. I'll give you an example. We opened Uganda before Zimbabwe. We thought Uganda would be the next bright market for us at a time of opening Uganda two years ago. We didn't see the way we wanted to see things. We expected 40K to 100,000 transactions a month, Ghana will only do about 30 to 40,000 transactions. Then we immediately opened Zimbabwe. And gosh, Zimbabwe crashed overnight. Then we did Ivory Coast. Then we went into Mozambique. We went into Mozambique, because there are a lot of Southern Africans who move out of Mozambique into the southern part of Africa to work. A lot of Mozambiquans are in Portugal, even in the United Kingdom, there are lots of Mozambiquans in South Africa. Then we also uncovered that the Mozambiquans youth tend to be a lot more upwardly mobile, using mobile money, needs, they tend to be the bulk of the population. So we hit the data as well. And guess what? It's been a success overnight. So it's really a very subjective conversation. But sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we don't. But what matters is that you have active business, then you grow the ecosystem.
ED: Coming back to your income source, which of the income source is the most important to you? Are you a deposit-taking institution, so that in itself would be an income source for you? And the loan business, for example, and its potential for being an important source of income.
ATA: So the top line income comes from commissions and fees. The second top line is settlement, then the last would be all other income which includes funded income. Now, back to the lending model. Obviously, lending in our part of the world is by algorithm. So how many who does most receipts, who does most transactions, and a few other things go into the algorithm? But we have a slightly unique approach to doing this. An approach we use is that you don't want to just lend to anybody. You want to be able to lend and collect back. So the best approach is partnerships. So we have a partnership with a few sort of authorised players that we can work with to do that. Then you asked, are we deposit-taking? We are deposit-taking to an extent when we have an instrument as the consumer is the one who decides how he wants to retain that instrument.
ED: I'm actually trying to place you exactly in that dimension. You're not a neo-bank in the European sense and you're not a micro finance outlet in the Asian sense. And when you say that you use an algorithm, how close is that to maybe the peer-to-peer lenders in China who have had relationships with supply chain networks, for example, and they actually use data such as who you have in your mobile phone as friends? Is the credit scoring model, something that you've been able to play around with?
ATA: For the credit scoring model, there are many types of algorithms that are on the plate. And for us, today, it's locked down on the remittance, the receiver, and how often they receive and which networks they receive and their behaviours. But I think it goes beyond that. And I then like the Chinese model, it's a very good one, the ones that ultimately we would want to adopt. What I've come to realise, it's about finding the right partnership, because when you are able to find the right partner so you can build the right future and the value chain, and be able to upgrade it.
ED: How much of a co-founder were you with Zeepay? Did you start it yourself or were you investing into an existing platform? Just that relationship part of it, what's your role in Zeepay?
ATA: I'm actually the majority shareholder. I'm also the managing director. And I founded that six, seven years ago.
ED: It's not a model that you would have carried through a banking system, right at that point. And bankers were not interested in micro payments and small value payments at that point.
ATA: There is always a problem with bankers in our part of the world. A lot of time we don't see. There's a high sense of obligation thinking that everything tied to financial services belongs to banks. But let me tell you the scariest thing. We all thought that retail banking will die maybe 20 years down the lane. But in COVID I can tell you for free. I mean, this is nothing. But retail banking, will not survive in 2021. And all banks will have to change their model in our parts of the world, especially Ghana, Nigeria, and Uganda. I mean, Kenya is gone. Let me tell you why I'm saying this. Today, we do micro payments, we do remittances, and we do nano loans. We do peer-to-peer transfers, we do SME payments. We do micro insurance. We do some amount of form of pensions. That is all retail banking. And we do it at a lower cost overhead.
I have a total of about 32 staff across the world. Seven close to 2.5 million consumers. My gross profit margin is consistent 86% year on year, even in the dark days. The simple reason is why we have a lower and cheaper cost overlay compared to the banks, compared to all the robots platforms that they put together, which never work. By the time they finish building all these demilitarised zones, that's so light, that's so heavy, and they are not able to do much. Whereas I can come into market and outsource my security to CrowdStrike, which is what I do. And when I finish outsourcing my security to CrowdStrike, I've peace of mind then I can focus on innovation. And I'd like to host my services in cloud with DigitalOcean, which is one of the best platforms you can find, very agile. I'm just saying that the cost efficiency is so high. My cost margin to serve a single customer is just about 10 cents.
ED: Give us a sense of the technology investments that you do. How much of the functionality is done in-house and how fast is it and therefore who is your competitor? Because the barrier for entry will therefore be quite low.
ATA: The barrier to entry is very high. Regulatory capital alone is about $5 million. One makes you successful as a fintech, if you can build a back-end with the right framework. If you build a framework that is like a proper real switch, then you can put your agile so you're able to pile on to it. But if you build a very rigid, single handed, single line framework, then you have to patch or rebuild again. So what we did from day one is learn from the mistakes of everybody. We just built a multi framework, multilayer back-end, which allows us to play on to the real easier, then we built a simple front-end to be able to carry it. Today, we run payments via WhatsApp. We're looking to become the biggest player on that side.
ED: Is that a WhatsApp platform or is it you using WhatsApp platform?
Zeepay runs payments on instant messaging platforms like WhatsApp
ATA: We are using WhatsApp rail to call up transactions, which is really what it is. It's a lookup feature. USSD, WhatsApp, other apps, these are lookup features. You're using these to call up transactions. NFC is also a lookup feature and so is QR code is a lookup feature is that being received what the world is not smart at? It's finding the simplest way to call up a transaction.
I'd say it's about how you can innovate a simple platform. So we use two factor authentication, one time passwords as part of the security control. Then we have the encryption and decryption protocols. So it's about allowing a multilayer protocol on your platform. Financial inclusion will come through an inclusive approach, not a single loop. So if they make a mistake and go for a single loop, it's going to bite them in time. At the end of the day, the concept of WhatsApp is not proprietary anymore.
Today, anybody can come up with their chat platform. WeChat is not a WhatsApp platform. If you do that, and you're not careful, what you find is, you find markets adapted to their own channels. But I think that they are smart, and I think you'll get it. Maybe these are sort of localised demonstrations they're doing. Everybody does demonstrations, but I think in time, they will realise that it makes more sense to drive critical with players like ourselves who just drive it in for you. The concept of Visa Direct, Visa Bill, who gave it us and we populated it in the world.
ED: Now why are you doing that, because Visa, as far as it can, wants to preserve its original intermediation model with being an interchange? You are an interchange to some extent, but less of an interchange than Visa and Visa is expensive on top of that. The universe that you are creating, Visa never had that universe because they were expensive. And here you are going out and collecting the mass market?
ATA: It's an interesting point you've made. In financial inclusion, you need an inclusive model. Rails will differ, people will try different rails for different reasons. What I think is happening and will ultimately happen is that you'll find that Visa will eventually acquire a wallet provider and play the wallet game with that provider. Or build their own wallet which they've done through their virtual card system. But for what I see, Visa would always be a partner.
ED: What do they provide you because Visa as a model just does not have a wallet? In fact, every proposition that Visa creates is basically reimagining the physical card in the digital space and that's it. And it just can't imagine another universe and doesn't want to in fact. The whole idea of Visa is to destroy the wallet model that you have. Because yours is a very incremental ecosystem, just one step outside the ecosystem and your model doesn't work. So you're in a very sweet spot. Visa needs you, don't they?
ATA: Visa needing us is pretty clear which is why they open up Visa Direct to us. Let me tell you the benefit of our Visa Direct. Unfortunately, apart from our wallet system which can take you to all wallets across the continent, Visa is the only player that can take you to all bank accounts via Visa Direct on the continent from a single source. So I see it more of a collaborative effort. I think they have a lot of respect for us, and we definitely have a lot of respect for them. And we'll see how the partnerships will pan out. But as it stands today, we are the key player if you want to grow the model, you come to us we grow with you.
ED: What about the other remittance players? Everyone from Western Union to the new models of the old game, which is TransferWise, for example, who's trying to revolutionise, but at the end of the day, they're no different from MoneyGram, and so on. In your original relationship with MoneyGram, what was the value that you were providing? And how do you view the remittance players, the ones that desperately need to revolutionise and the new guys like TransferWise?
ATA: What we do, which is beautiful, is that we give everybody digital distribution. So, in the money transfer business, you have three players. That's what I call the traditional MTOs, without mentioning names. Then there are the middle players who have come in, by virtue of providing an app which is free, etc. Then we have the mom and pops or what we call the corridor specialist. They are small players, as a single family, they've been doing this for 30 years, every month, people will leave them checks, and then they do the cash and transfer on their behalf, etc. All of these guys are exposed to one thing - distribution. They need to fly into Africa, and go and see everywhere good data and every single bank to be regulated, and to push traffic through. Yet when they come on my platform, they have a single access point to a single API, which gives them multiple markets. I've done the regulatory work, and I build distribution for them. So, all of a sudden, the mom and pop has the same leverage as the big player or the app player. And that's the magic we bring to the microsystem. We make distribution very efficient for them, and very easy. And these guys love it. So for us, the game is this digital distribution, helping to build and expand an ecosystem that existed but nobody knew about.
But at the same time, you need to run faster because the rules are running after you. Being that ubiquitous platform and the ease with which you created it, it can easily be created by other players. So how do you keep the barrier of entry higher for your competitors? If you look, one of the things we do is efficiency in service delivery while available 24 hours and our wallets are agile and affordable, so consumers love it. We have a lot of retail promo we spend back into the ecosystem. Every year, we process two to three million dollars in revenue. You can be sure that a good one million dollars will be spent on ecosystem. We give free airtime. We do things that make the consumer happy and comfortable. Because for us, we didn't come into this space to be rich. We came into this space to solve a problem and in solving the problem we will become wealthy. We actually just finished putting up our corporate building, a state of the art corporate building right in the heart of Accra cantonment.
We're just not changing payments. We're changing our lifestyle. So we raised $250,000 few years ago. We bootstrapped it, today everything's internally generated funds. We've grown. We are a classic model or classic story of a local company that can grow in an enabling environment. And thanks to this present administration of Ghana, the governor, they've been put in very enabling policies and have allowed local companies to grow and thrive.
ED: How sensitive are you to interest margins like if the interest rates start to decrease dramatically? In Africa, the interest margins are much wider that in itself is a differentiator. And why certain models work better in Africa than in markets where the interest margins have collapsed completely. So does that work in your favour?
ATA: Any way the market goes will always work in our favour because we make a margin on top of price. So whatever the price, we will make a margin. Now the beauty is that because we have a multi-layer product focus, we're able to survive. Because if one will have one product on this side, might not have another product on that side, and you complement together to grow. And we've just scratched the surface. So there's so much to be done. We are the payment partner for MasterCard for government of Ghana, for the COVID-19 payments in Ghana. Absolutely phenomenal and it's exciting to see all these initiatives going through our platform. Everyday there's a different initiative and there's a different conversation.
ED: Yours is a model that originated in Ghana, which is arguably a middle income country in Africa and stable with the regulatory aspects. At the same time, you meeting a need where the banks haven't gone into. So if Ghana was a little bit more developed, maybe, the business model that you have may not have taken off because the banks would have met that. So would you say that you might be on your way to becoming a bank yourself?
ATA: I think the one thing that we will become is a financial services supermarket. Whether it will be a full capital adequacy bank, or a sub tier bank like a neo-bank, I don't know. But one thing I know is that we're going to be a financial services supermarket.
ED: When we talk about the neo banks in Europe, the one thing they do well is they onboard very quickly, doing 60,000 new customers a month. The thing they don't do very well is that the balance sheet doesn't look profitable, because it's the onboarding aspect of it. And in the end, they find themselves competing with traditional banks.
ATA: I'll tell you why - because they are only running on the Visa or MasterCard rails. They don't have a multiple layer socket which would give them that agility. That's one. Secondly, when it comes to onboarding, it takes me less than five minutes to onboard a customer. We're the only platform that does self-onboarding. You don't even need to go to an agent, you can onboard yourself. We've got a full compliance, proprietary platform we built ourselves right from scratch, which does everything. By the time you finish entering the info in our platform, we have your ID details and we have your storage in our system. But that doesn't answer them. The reason why their balance sheets are weak is because they don't understand the balance sheet in the first place.
In financial services, the money is made on the balance sheet and not on the P&L. So if you can onboard and it's not on the balance sheet, then you don't make money. If you can onboard and transact, and it's not on the balance sheet, you've not made money. You need to be able to move liability. You need to be able to move assets. So if you bring in remittance or if you bring in payment, you need to be able to monetise the payment as it goes through ecosystem. How do you monetise it? You monetise it by commission. You monetise it by wholesaling so that you make a margin on it. And then also, don't forget that there are negative interest rate regime. These are markets where you can't make funded income. So they have to be innovative. We are licensed by FCA. And we're just waiting for a few approvals. We've done an acquisition. Once approvals come through, the next thing we're doing is going in there to set up an immigrant focus bank that's focused on immigrants and running that channel through the diaspora right through to Africa. And we teach them banking.
ED: And are you funding it organically?
ATA: I don't know if that will be funded organically. But right now we're waiting for regulatory approvals. But yes, acquisition was funded organically. We've grown. We've had a phenomenal growth. We have an exciting balance sheet. The last I checked, our balance sheet has moved from last year, about 11 million to about 33 million balance sheet size. So it's a functional growth and we got to keep growing. You can only keep walking.
ED: How much of your motivation and inspiration is Chinese? The wallet platforms here are really super developed. Although it's a very highly localised platform. How much of what you've achieved, can I say, is original? And how much of that is something that you've either copied or you open sourced it from what's out there?
ATA: Everything we've built so far is proprietary. I'm actually the designer, my company. So I design and other people build. And what we are about to do is definitely layer it on and we're looking at a few things. I'm also one firm believer in modular systems. I don't believe in hardcore and everything. So I think that we've reached a point of scale. This is the point where we're going to do a lot of partnerships. This is the point where we're going to layer it on with a few modular platforms. One of the things I'm eyeing is WeChat, and the concept of WeChat is pretty simple. But sometimes it's best to partner and just grow it faster. Now you asked what part of us is Chinese. I think everything about us is African.
You made a point at the beginning of this call, which I like, is the fact that there's so much happening in our ecosystem and the world doesn't know about it. If you come into the Ghanaian ecosystem, you'll be amazed at the amount of development the wealth that is sitting here, that is proprietary. Hard thinking and a lot of hard coding, although I am not a big fan of hard coding. What I think is that the disruptors will come to the gate. I think we're invincible force for disruptors. We're moving and we'll move right a heartbeat. We're going to get persistent intelligence onto our platforms. We're going to get artificial intelligence onto another layer. So we're going to make it a lot more agile. And we're not just going to be the disruptive gate of the banks. We're going to go into other markets, bigger market. I think that the next layer of dominance will come from Africa and that can be driven by the fintech ecosystem.
ED: A lot of your evolution has been on the top of the mobile device. And what is your sense of how the platform industry will evolve and what game you want to play in it?
ATA: I think that there's going to be an explosion over the next 10 years. Based on what knowledge when we launch into 5G. When that explosion happens, IoT might change the game. Because what it is today is you need to be able to do notification. So you need an active phone number, but maybe 5G and data and the likes of WhatsApp will bring a new realm. The whole idea of over the top (OTT) will bring another realm where you can still be able to push it up. In WhatsApp messages, some form of messages enable you to transact because the power or the force behind the star wallet is a fight that you can receive a message or a notification. But if IoT can be stronger, then IoT gives a lot of competition to the networks. And it changes the game. And it's how enabling regulations would also help that transformer ecosystems. But one thing I can assure you about Africa is, we will leapfrog everything. So when we do 5G, I think things will change. When they change, will we be there? Yes. And that's why largely we're building our platforms towards OTT. So that we are able to be a layer above the existing sockets.
ED: Some people looking at what you're doing might say that your volume is still, by national size, I think is good, but by the kind of scale that you have in countries like China or some parts of the West, it's a proof of concept. Would you submit that what you're doing is actually a proof of concept?
ATA: I want to wish them well and now I'll tell them to keep watching us. Our first year, we did 385 transactions. So even in 2016 I can do 385 transactions and come to what I'm today, then it's only a function of time. Time is a semblance of many things. But one thing I know is we're going for global dominance. One day I know, we will control this market, and possibly a good part of Africa.
ED: Do you even bother with areas like blockchain, for example? Is that your area of interest?
ATA: Let me tell you that blockchain is a big hype. And open ledgers for document management, I think, it's a wonderful thing. But to say that you're going to use an underlining asset called crypto to change the world, it's around. It's around as a dark realm and it won't take over the world. If anything will take over the world are the wallets. If your card could not dominate the world, you want to dominate the world in the latter end of the 21st century is with wallets. Because we move with our phones. Today, with my phone, I never have cash. I just need an invite. The scary thing about Zeepay is that I can even fund my wallet with a Visa card. So if I'm stuck somewhere, I just have to find my wallet and I transact on it any merchant ecosystem.
ED: What happens if the Ghanaian Central Bank invests in central bank digital currency? Would that wipe out your business?
ATA: I think it's a good idea and I'm waiting for that because that will be the last push to interoperability. We need a digital currency, which is not a mask, not a mirror, but the same as a currency in the market. So if you issue 200 million in circulation, maybe 10 million will be digital and the remaining 190 will be cash, whatever format is. What it means, all of a sudden, is that electronic money will come into the capital market. And so all of a sudden, if I have 20 million excesses in my wallet overnight, I can trade it, especially because I'm a licensed intermediation player. So I think it's a necessary thing. And if the government is looking at it, I think it's a wonderful thing. I can also assure you is that in the history of Ghana, this is probably the most innovative, forward thinking, forward looking government regime we've got. We've got the best governance you can ever find. They're always five steps ahead of the game.
Okay, it's scary when a regulator can think into the game. It's scary for a player because then they can control you. But at the same time, if you look at them, on the flip side of it, they actually enable the market to grow. We have about $35 billion going through electronic wallets, we need to bring it into the capital markets. It's a critical conversation. When it comes into the capital market, you also play, make it another playing field. This is economics 101. So that's my view on it. Good for business, not bad for business.
ED: How has the pandemic changed things for you? And how is that influenced any of the thinking that you're going through and the decisions you're making after the pandemic is over?
ATA: I'm sad to say but the pandemic, I haven't seen it as a drawback. I've only seen it as an opportunity for good. We've grown phenomenal. Our growth on top of traditional growth has been about 76% join the spirit, which is phenomenal. We've done the most acquisitions, the most strategic moves, and we've been able to do it in 2020. So it's really been a wonderful year. The lockdown effect and the post lockdown has only improved business, which is a shame, though. But what I've always told everybody is that the essential workers were never going to hit. And they were the core when it comes to remittance. And that group of people have always mattered. We've just never seen them that way. And so they have grown my business. And I reward them every year.
ED: Actually, just give us some big numbers again. How many customers do you have? What is the average transaction size?
ATA: We have about two million users. The average transaction size is in the range $120 to $150. We are looking to close the year at about $500 million total process volume. In number of transactions, we're probably closer to about 2.8 million. 2020 was a year of sprint for us. And 2021 the sprint two and sprint two is just finishing what we started.
ED: Are there any regulations that you're looking forward to in Ghana? If you were to influence regulation, what would you pay most attention to?
ATA: I would have asked every ministry, every municipal to have an open API. That's all we need for the uptake. Once they have open API's with their bank accounts integrated onto these open API's then anybody can process any form of payments on their behalf. And then you open up the ecosystem and it becomes more efficient. At that point you have efficiency.
ED: The questions I've asked you are questions that I've been asking all around the world. And to be able to get the answers from you in Ghana, it just thrills me and helps me put in perspective my own understanding of how payments is evolving, how financial services is shaping up, and where the disruption will come from. And it's very interesting that you are creating that disruption while in the market. Thank you very much, Andrew.
Keywords: Wallet, Platform, Payments, Ecosystem, Remittance, Money, Bank, Markets, Model, Build, Players, Visa, WhatsApp, Financial Services, Single, Grow, Year
wallet, platform, Payments, ecosystem, remittance, money, bank, markets, model, build, players, Visa, WhatsApp, financial services, single, grow, year
Institutions: Zeepay
People : Andrew Takyi-Appiah, Emmanuel Daniel
Adinata Widia
Ahmed Tabaqchali
Aishwarya Srinivasan
Ajit Kanagasundram
Alain Falys
Alan Huse
Alasdair Rambaud
Ala'a Eraiqat
Alexander Honchar
Alexander Tsigutkin
Alfian Sharifuddin
Alicia Garcia Herrero
Amrish Rau
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Ana Chubinidze
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text:
namespace blink {

class Image;
class BackgroundColorPaintDefinition;

class MODULES_EXPORT BackgroundColorPaintImageGeneratorImpl final
    : public BackgroundColorPaintImageGenerator {
 public:
  static BackgroundColorPaintImageGenerator* Create(LocalFrame&);

  explicit BackgroundColorPaintImageGeneratorImpl(
      BackgroundColorPaintDefinition*);
  ~BackgroundColorPaintImageGeneratorImpl() override = default;

  // The |container_size| is without subpixel snapping.
  scoped_refptr<Image> Paint(const gfx::SizeF& container_size,
                             const Node*,
                             const Vector<Color>& animated_colors,
                             const Vector<double>& offsets,
                             const absl::optional<double>& progress) final;

  bool GetBGColorPaintWorkletParams(Node* node,
                                    Vector<Color>* animated_colors,
                                    Vector<double>* offsets,
                                    absl::optional<double>* progress) final;

  Animation* GetAnimationIfCompositable(const Element* element) final;

  void Shutdown() final;

  void Trace(Visitor*) const override;

 private:
  Member<BackgroundColorPaintDefinition> background_color_paint_definition_;
};

}  // namespace blink

#endif  // THIRD_PARTY_BLINK_RENDERER_MODULES_CSSPAINT_NATIVEPAINT_BACKGROUND_COLOR_PAINT_IMAGE_GENERATOR_IMPL_H_

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Helping color Kurt Cobain's world for 'Montage of Heck'
Company 3's Shane Harris works with director Brett Morgen on this new documentary
Director Brett Morgen spent eight years putting together the documentary Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck, which tells the fascinating and tragic story of the Nirvana front man in a very intimate way via never-before-heard recordings and animations based on his mostly unseen drawings. There are also very personal home movies and interviews Morgen did with the artist's mother, band mates, friends and wife, Courtney Love. The film played at the Tribeca Film Festival, had a limited theatrical release and is currently on HBO.
For Company 3 (@company3) colorist Shane Harris, who also worked with Morgen on the director's Rolling Stones doc, Crossfire Hurricane, the sessions were particularly fascinating and rewarding both because of his longtime interest in Nirvana's music and because of Morgen's strong appreciation of the role color can play in telling a story, even in a documentary.
L-R: Director Brett Morgen and colorist Shane
There are so many elements to the film — interviews, the animations, Cobain's personal audio diary. As a fan of the music, what did you think when you first saw the film?
I knew from working with Brett Morgen on Crossfire Hurricane that he wouldn't approach anything about the film in a standard documentary fashion. When I saw the film, I found it fascinating like so many people who've seen it have. It's very powerful the way he uses the audio and the animations and all the elements to tell the story.
I think it's fair to say that people generally don't think about color grading documentaries the way they do about narrative features. In a narrative the director and DP might have developed different looks based on the script but a documentary seems more straightforward. Brett is really into the look and the color of every shot. I can't speak for every documentary filmmaker but Brett is pretty rare in that way. A lot of times I'll work with the clients and set looks for different scenes and then match everything to that. We worked very differently.
He's interested in the flow of music, the cut and color. We played the music much louder than we normally would. He wanted to hear it the way it would be heard in the theater and then we'd try different approaches for every shot, whether it went from old VHS to animation to a recent interview. The idea was to tell the story. It was almost like painting.
Which of the elements was the most challenging to work with?
Probably the new material: the interviews. The story of Kurt Cobain obviously gets darker, in a figurative sense, as it goes into his addiction. He had already shot the interviews, especially with Courtney Love and Kurt's mother, in a way that they got darker and darker as they talk about more painful aspects of the story. In the grading theater, we tried all kinds of different looks to help this idea. He shot Courtney in a plain white room and let the images go darker and darker. I built a window around her to knock down the walls and make it seem as if her environment was getting darker and darker. He shot the mom in a room with daylight coming through windows.
It looks pretty straightforward. But by the end, Brett referenced the films of Vittorio Storaro, ASC, AIC, and we made the room dark, her face has a saturated orange-y look and it's really about the only thing in the frame that you can see. We could have brightened it up if Brett wanted to but this is much more effective for telling the story.
Did you take the same approach with the animations?
Yes. You might think that in animation, the way the shots come in is the way they're going to look. But that wasn't the case. The animation (by artists Hisko Hulsing and Stefan Nadelman) was beautiful but we still went through and built some windows and made some corrections, primarily to guide the viewer's attention to a particular portion of the frame.
What did you use for color grading, and how did that help get the looks you were after?
We use DaVinci Resolve for everything at Company 3. This was version 11. It's not unique to this show by any means but I used a lot of Power Windows throughout the movie to track in changes — bring walls or windows down, drive your eye to one part of the frame, etc. A lot of times we'd track faces or just eyes, even within a lot of the material that wasn't professionally shot like in home movies. There's a super 8 movie of young Kurt riding in a little toy car and we wanted to give the whole shot an overall color to help tell the story but then I went back and tracked his face to pull back some of the more natural looking skin tone. These are things we do as colorists a lot but there was definitely quite a bit of it here. And it can be a little more challenging to keep it all organic looking when the original footage is Super 8 or VHS.
Was there one scene more challenging than others, or anything that you are most proud of on the piece?
I'm really very proud of the way we used color in the whole piece and that's due in great part to Brett's approach to every facet of the film. From a purely technical standpoint, I'd say the most challenging part was the interview with Krist Novoselic.
He wanted to do it in his house, and there's glass everywhere. It was impossible to avoid catching a lot of distracting reflections. So I made a huge number of windows to keep it all natural looking while controlling the reflections. It's not something you'd ever notice, but it was actually the biggest technical issue on the project.
It seems like this was a dream job for a colorist?
I feel very privileged to have worked with Brett on this as he is an amazing talent. It was an incredible opportunity to work on such a powerful film that blended so many different elements together so successfully.
Images Courtesy of HBO
This entry was posted in Uncategorized and tagged color grading, Company 3, documentary, Kurt Cobain, Montage of Heck on May 12, 2015 by Randi Altman.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
CRIMEA: UN call to halt Cathedral eviction
Felix Corley, Forum 18
The United Nations Human Rights Committee is considering an appeal by 62 parishioners of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine's Sts Volodymyr and Olga Cathedral in the Crimean capital Simferopol. Russian courts ordered the eviction of the community from the building it has rented since 1995. The UN Committee warned Russia not to evict the community while it considers the appeal.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee has called on the Russian government not to evict the Orthodox Church of Ukraine congregation from its rented accommodation in the Crimean capital Simferopol while it considers an appeal by 62 parishioners. The premises have served since 1995 as the Crimean Diocese's Sts Volodymyr and Olga Cathedral. A court decision to evict the community has now gone into force, though the Diocese is now challenging it in Russia's Supreme Court in Moscow.
Sts Volodymyr and Olga Cathedral, Simferopol
Alina Smutko/krymr.org (RFE/RL)
"The additional information received from the authors suggests that the State party authorities are still proceeding to the eviction of the authors despite the Committee's request," the UN Human Rights Committee wrote on 20 September in a letter seen by Forum 18.
The Human Rights Committee bluntly repeated its request to the Russian authorities not to evict the community from its Simferopol cathedral while it considered the appeal. "The Committee reminds the State party, that a failure to implement the interim measures is incompatible with the obligation to respect in good faith the procedure of individual communications established under the Optional Protocol [to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights]" (see below).
The community's lawyer Sergei Zayets insisted to Forum 18 that Russia should heed the UN request and not evict the community, despite an 18 November Russian arbitration court ruling against it.
Russia's March 2014 annexation of Crimea is not recognised by Ukraine or internationally.
Ukrainian journalist Oleksandra Yefymenko said Sts Volodymyr and Olga Cathedral is still functioning and services are continuing. "But unfortunately this won't last long," she told Forum 18 from Crimea on 3 December. "The Crimean Diocese has lost in all the courts and they will be evicted from the building. This is my prediction."
Following the Russian annexation of Crimea, the new authorities sharply increased the rent the community had to pay for the building in central Simferopol. In court proceedings, the authorities claimed the community owed tiny amounts of unpaid Ukrainian rent and also that – as an unregistered religious organisation under Russian law – the Diocese was not allowed to rent state-owned or municipally-owned property (see below).
The Russian authorities amended the law on renting state property in Crimea in July 2018 to require that any rental contract for state-owned or municipally-owned property with an organisation that had state registration under Ukrainian law but which failed to gain registration under Russian law after the 2014 annexation be cancelled through the courts (see below).
In his explanation presented to the Crimean State Council justifying the amendment, the head of Crimea's Russian-backed government Sergei Aksyonov noted several Ukrainian-owned companies in such a position, but made no mention of the Orthodox congregation in Simferopol.
The Orthodox Church of Ukraine also fears that the authorities in the western Crimean city of Yevpatoriya will demolish a small wooden chapel it built between two blocks of flats in 2013. The city court ruled on 6 November 2019 that the Church is using the site illegally and that the chapel should be demolished. The Church complains it learnt about the court hearing only on that day. Its lawyer said it is challenging the court decision.
Ukrainian journalist Yefymenko attended Sunday liturgy at the Yevpatoriya church on 1 December. "Representatives of the Russian special services may come to such liturgies under the guise of parishioners, and record those who visit places of worship of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine," she told Forum 18.
Obstructing, punishing worship
The Russian authorities in Crimea use the wide range of available laws and regulations to punish communities that meet for worship in places or in ways the authorities do not like.
On 8 November, a Magistrate's Court in Simferopol District fined Imam Aydar Islyamov one week's average local wages for leading Friday prayers in a home in the village of Ukrainka on 11 October.
The Crimean Justice Ministry has rejected the registration application from the Orthodox Church of Ukraine's Simferopol parish, most recently on 20 September. It claimed there were "violations" in the documents presented. A Justice Ministry official insisted to Forum 18 from Simferopol that "nothing in principle" obstructs the registration of communities of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
Another community which has been repeatedly denied Russian state registration is the Tavrida Muftiate, a body independent of the state-backed Crimean Muftiate. The Justice Ministry has registered ten of its mosque communities independently, but refuses to register the Tavrida Muftiate as a centralised religious organisation.
Massively increased rent
Archbishop Kliment of Simferopol and Crimea, baptism at Simferopol cathedral, 23 June 2019
Oleksandra Yefymenko [CC BY-NC-ND 4.0]
The Kyiv Patriarchate Ukrainian Orthodox Church, as it then was, has rented premises that earlier housed the Officers' Club in central Simferopol since 1995. It is there that its Simferopol and Crimea Diocesan Sts Volodymyr and Olga Cathedral and offices are located. The Diocese has three floors of the building, with the sanctuary on the middle floor.
Almost all the Kyiv Patriarchate's dioceses and parishes – including in Crimea – joined the Orthodox Church of Ukraine when it was recognised as canonical by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in January 2019.
In 1996 ultimate ownership of the Simferopol building was transferred from a disbanded military base to the Crimean Property Fund. In 1997, under a Crimean Supreme Council decree, rent was set at the symbolic level of 1 Ukrainian Hryvnia (0.5 Norwegian Kroner, 0.05 Euros or 0.08 US Dollars) a month.
Five of the Kyiv Patriarchate's churches in Crimea were forced to close within months of the March 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea.
The Sts Volodymyr and Olga Cathedral – which is next to the offices of the Property Fund - appears on a list of state-owned property in an attachment to a 15 March 2000 Crimean Supreme Council decree. A 16 May 2001 Supreme Council decree – seen by Forum 18 - governs the Church's use of the building, whose size it gives as 1,475.7 square metres (15,900 square feet).
However, on 18 April 2014, the State Council (which replaced the Supreme Council) adopted a new decree – which remains on the Russian-backed Crimean government website – amending the 2001 decree. It confirmed the Diocese's rental of the premises until 2050 but changed the basis on which rent is levied.
Archbishop Kliment (Kushch), head of the Diocese, told Forum 18 in June 2014 that the change would result in the Diocese having to pay about 160 Russian Roubles per square metre per month (236,112 Roubles, then equivalent to 42,990 Norwegian Kroner, 5,145 Euros, or 7,000 US Dollars a month). "We're a non-commercial organisation – how can we pay commercial rates? We live on donations."
No Russian registration, no rental
The Russian-controlled Crimean State Council amended the Crimean Law on the Particulars of Regulating Property and Land Issues in Crimea on 31 July 2018. This required that any rental contract for state-owned or municipally-owned property with an organisation that had state registration under Ukrainian law but which failed to gain registration under Russian law after the 2014 annexation be cancelled through the courts.
Courts order eviction
Service at Sts Volodymyr and Olga Cathedral, Simferopol
Ebazer Pinkhas/krymr.org (RFE/RL)
On 31 January 2019, the Crimean Property and Land Issues Ministry asked the Federal Tax Service and Justice Ministry in Crimea if the Diocese of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine had brought its documents into line with Russian law (i.e. if it had Russian registration). Finding that it had not, the Ministry wrote to the Diocese on 5 February cancelling the rental agreement and asking when Ministry inspectors could visit the premises to arrange the "return" of the building.
On 14 February the Ministry wrote to the Diocese demanding it pay what it said was unpaid rent and interest of 8.19 Ukrainian Hryvnia (then 2.6 Norwegian Kroner, 0.27 Euros or 0.30 US Dollars). The Ministry received no reply. However, on 26 February, the Diocese paid 40 Russian Roubles (16.50 Ukrainian Hryvnia, 5.25 Norwegian Kroner, 0.55 Euros or 0.60 US Dollars) to meet the rent and interest demanded by the Ministry.
On 20 March, the Ministry brought to Crimea's Arbitration Court a suit against the Diocese to oust it from the Simferopol premises it was renting. Judge Vadim Shkuro, who heard the case, issued an initial decision mostly in favour of the Ministry on 28 June 2019 and a full decision (seen by Forum 18) on 5 July.
The Ministry argued in court that the Diocese owed unpaid rent and interest on the rent for the period November 2016 to February 2019 of 8.19 Ukrainian Hryvnia. It called for the November 2002 rental agreement to be cancelled and for the Diocese to hand back the building to the Ministry.
The Ministry stressed in court that the "motivation" for the suit was the Diocese's failure to bring its documents into accord with Russian law, including the amended Crimean Law on the Particulars of Regulating Property and Land Issues in Crimea (see above).
The Diocese rejected the accusations, insisting that the Ukrainian Crimean Property Fund (which the Russian authorities liquidated in July 2014) was a party to the agreement, not the Russian-controlled Crimean Property and Land Issues Ministry. It also pointed to an April 2014 Crimean State Council awarding the rental of the property to the Diocese until 2050.
The Court ruled that the Ministry was a party to the 2002 rental agreement (even though it did not exist then). It claimed that under Ukrainian law, the Diocese still had to pay the rent in full and on time. However, it noted that the Diocese had made the February 2019 payments to meet this. It also found that the Diocese was using the premises not in accordance with the rental agreement, because as a Ukrainian legal entity but an unregistered Russian entity, the Diocese was since January 2016 restricted in what activity it could perform.
Judge Shkuro ruled to annul the 2002 rental agreement and oblige the Diocese to hand back the premises. He rejected the demand that the Diocese owed unpaid rent. He required the Diocese to pay in procedural fees 12,000 Russian Roubles (4,500 Ukrainian Hryvnia, 1,725 Norwegian Kroner, 170 Euros or 190 US Dollars).
The Diocese appealed against the decision to the 21st Arbitration Appeal Court in Sevastopol. However, in an initial decision on 29 August and a full decision on 5 September, a panel of three Judges chaired by Andrei Tarasenko rejected the appeal, according to the decision seen by Forum 18. The Diocese did not send a representative to the hearing. The court decision came into force on 29 August when the 21st Arbitration Appeal Court handed down its initial decision.
The Diocese appealed further, to the Central Region Arbitration Court, based in the Russian city of Kaluga. However, in an initial decision on 14 November and a full decision on 18 November, a panel of three Judges chaired by Lyudmila Leonova dismissed the appeal, according to the decision seen by Forum 18. Again, the Diocese did not send a representative to the hearing. The Diocese was given two months to make a final appeal to Russia's Supreme Court in Moscow.
The Diocese lodged a Supreme Court appeal on 28 November, Sergei Zayets of the Regional Centre for Human Rights, originally from Crimea but who now works from the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, told Forum 18 on 4 December.
"You are looking at this case from the wrong angle"
Yevgeniya Sheltik of the Property and Land Issues Ministry's Legal Department represented it in court both in Sevastopol and Kaluga.
"The Arbitration Court decision came into force on 29 August," Sheltik told Forum 18 from Simferopol on 2 December. "The court bailiffs are the service that enforces court decisions, not the Ministry."
Asked why the Orthodox Church of Ukraine's Cathedral should be evicted from the building it has been renting since 1995 and for which it had agreement to rent until 2050, Sheltik responded: "You are looking at this case from the wrong angle." She did nto explain what she meant. She then added: "My competence is to give policy advice to the Ministry. My job was only to appear in court in the case."
Asked why an agreement made with the Ukrainian authorities before the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 was no longer valid, Sheltik got angry, apparently over the reference to the annexation of Crimea. She then put the phone down.
Forum 18 was therefore unable to ask Sheltik if the Russian authorities will abide by the United Nations request that they not take action to evict the community while the Human Rights Committee considers the parishioners' appeal (see below).
UN Human Rights Committee calls to halt eviction
Meanwhile, on 28 August, 62 parishioners lodged an appeal to the United Nations Human Rights Committee. Sergei Zayets of the Regional Centre for Human Rights represents the applicants.
On 6 September the Human Rights Committee asked the Russian government as an interim measure "not to evict [the first applicant] and his congregation from the building of their Church in Simferopol, while their case is under consideration by the Committee", according to the Committee's 6 September letter to Zayets seen by Forum 18.
On 6 September the Human Rights Committee also asked the Russian government to provide its response to the appeal within the next six months.
Because of the court case and the Russian authorities' apparent determination to evict the community, the parishioners submitted further information to the Human Rights Committee.
"The additional information received from the authors suggests that the State party authorities are still proceeding to the eviction of the authors despite the Committee's request," the Committee wrote on 20 September in a letter seen by Forum 18.
The Committee bluntly repeated its request to the Russian authorities not to evict the community from its Simferopol cathedral. "The Committee reminds the State party, that a failure to implement the interim measures is incompatible with the obligation to respect in good faith the procedure of individual communications established under the Optional Protocol [to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights]."
The Committee also asked the Russian government not to make public the names of the parishioners who had submitted the appeal. (END)
Full reports on freedom of thought, conscience and belief in Crimea
For more background, see Forum 18's Crimea religious freedom survey
Forum 18's reports and analyses on freedom of thought, conscience and belief in Russia within its internationally-recognised territory
Forum 18's compilation of Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) freedom of religion or belief commitments
CRIMEA: Four months in Russian prison punishment cell
Prison officials in Russia's Kabardino-Balkariya Region will not say why they put Crimean prisoner of conscience Renat Suleimanov in a punishment cell in July, where he remains. Suleimanov was jailed as an "extremist" as an alleged adherent of the Tabligh Jamaat Muslim movement. Criminal trials of Jehovah's Witnesses Sergei Filatov and Artyom Gerasimov have begun. Imam Rustem Abilev was fined three months' average wages.
CRIMEA: Prisoner sent to Russia, more awaiting trial
Arrested in 2017, sentenced in January 2019, Muslim prisoner of conscience Renat Suleimanov has lost all his appeals. In May he was transferred from occupied Crimea to a labour camp in Russia, where he was placed in punishment cell. A court transferred Imam Rustem Abilev to house arrest as he awaits trial. Russian FSB officers raided Jehovah's Witnesses in Yevpatoriya and Sevastopol, bringing another criminal case.
CRIMEA: Residents "don't believe" FSB allegations against imam
Crimean Tatar imam Rustem Abilev is in two-month pre-trial detention as the Russian FSB investigates him on criminal charges of calling publicly for "extremism". Residents "don't believe the FSB allegations", says journalist Taras Ibragimov. Renat Suleimanov, a Muslim jailed for four years in January for alleged membership of Tabligh Jamaat, lost his appeal at Russia's Supreme Court.


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Fox News Rewards O'Reilly Minion Jesse Watters With Prime-Time Slot On The Five
Special Programs LGBTQ
Written by Matt Gertz, Zachary Pleat & Cristina López G.
Fox News is rewarding Jesse Watters with a prime-time slot on the panel show The Five as part of the shakeup caused by Bill O'Reilly's ouster. Watters, a former O'Reilly producer and longtime protégé, was widely condemned last year for a racist segment set in New York City's Chinatown. His ambush interviews have disparaged immigrants, women, African-Americans, the homeless, and members of the LGBTQ community, and he earned notoriety for an incident in which he "followed, harassed, and ambushed" a female journalist on camera.
Watters Gets Promoted To The Five As Part Of O'Reilly Shakeup
Watters Will Replace Eric Bolling When The Program Moves To 9 P.M. In light of O'Reilly's dismissal from Fox News after numerous allegations of sexual harassment triggered an advertiser boycott, the network announced that Tucker Carlson's program would move to O'Reilly's 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time slot and The Five would move to 9 p.m., with Watters replacing Eric Bolling, who will debut a new 5 p.m. show. [Fox News press release, 4/19/17, via Twitter]
Watters Is O'Reilly's "Designated Hit Man." According to The Associated Press, Watters is an O'Reilly "protégé" who "joined Fox News as a production assistant in 2002 and began working on O'Reilly a year later, eventually given an on-air role. He's often O'Reilly's designated hit man, going out on 'ambush' interviews to confront people whose views the host has judged questionable." [The Associated Press, 4/19/2017]
Watters' Despicable History At Fox
Fox News' Jesse Watters Was Responsible For Widely Condemned "Chinatown" Segment "Rife With Racist Stereotypes." During the October 3 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly ran a segment featuring Jesse Watters asking offensive, stereotype-laden questions to Asian-Americans in New York City's Chinatown such as, "Do you know karate?" and "Am I supposed to bow to say hello?" Lawmakers condemned Watters' segment as "vile" and "xenophobic," and the president of the Asian American Journalists Association described it as "rife with racist stereotypes."
[Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 10/3/16]
Watters Has Repeatedly Produced Dehumanizing Coverage Of New York's Homeless Population. As a correspondent of Fox's The O'Reilly Factor, Watters has repeatedly produced mocking, dehumanizing coverage of the homeless residents in New York. In one segment Watters asked a young girl, "Do you ever feel scared when you see homeless people?" Watters continued his dehumanizing coverage the following month, agreeing with host Bill O'Reilly that homeless people "shouldn't be allowed to destroy neighborhoods." [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 6/29/15; 7/27/15]
Watters: "Affirmative-Action ... Handouts, The Welfare State," And Obamacare Exist To Eradicate Sins Of Slavery. While guest-hosting the June 25 edition of Fox's The O'Reilly Factor, Watters asked whether "white supremacy causes African-American men to not get married to women that they have babies with," and suggested that "affirmative action ... handouts, the welfare state, Obamacare" all exist "to make sure that the sins of slavery have been eradicated." [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 6/25/15]
Watters Said Single Women "Depend On Government" Because They Don't Have Husbands To Depend On. On the July 1, 2014, edition of Fox's Outnumbered, Watters mocked Hillary Clinton's statements on reproductive rights and argued that Clinton was trying to get "the single lady's vote ... the Beyoncé voters" who "depend on government because they're not depending on their husbands." [Fox News, Outnumbered, 7/1/14]
Watters Made Both A Sexist Comment And Mocked Immigrants During A Segment About New York City Cab Drivers. The July 1, 2013, edition of The O'Reilly Factor aired a segment in which Watters interviewed New York city immigrant cab drivers, mocking their accents and referring to a female driver as a "babe, with the red dress ... the nicest dressed taxi cab driver I've ever seen." [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 7/1/13]
Watters Suggested Statutory Rape Of An Adolescent Boy Isn't As Bad If The Female Perpetrator Is Attractive. While appearing as a guest on Fox's Outnumbered, Watters suggested the statutory rape of a 16-year-old boy wasn't as bad if the female perpetrator is attractive, stating, "If you're a 16-year-old kid and you have sex with your best friend's mom, you usually get high fives." Watters continued, "She's not that attractive, so you might not have that kind of reception." When pressed, he went on to justify his comment by saying, "This is how regular guys think." [Fox News, Outnumbered, 6/11/14]
Watters Joined Bill O'Reilly In Laughter While Speculating On Interviewee's Gender Identity. During his "Watters' World" segment on the October 15 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Watters mockingly speculated on an interviewee's gender identity and joined host Bill O'Reilly in laughter:
BILL O'REILLY: Now, that person, she can't vote because she has felonies?
JESSE WATTERS: She has felonies, and I asked her which felonies and she couldn't remember.
O'REILLY: I don't know if that was a she, though.
WATTERS: He. He-she?
O'REILLY: It was -- right.
WATTERS: I don't make those types of judgments.
O'REILLY: You didn't get the resume?
WATTERS: No. I didn't want to.
O'REILLY: No? You didn't get --
WATTERS: It's OK.
O'REILLY: OK. We're not making fun, we're trying to define. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 10/15/15]
Watters Has Mocked Expressions Of LGBT Pride And Perpetuated Damaging Stereotypes About The LGBT Community. In 2014, Watters went to San Francisco's annual pride parade to interview attendees, producing a segment in which he played on tired and disparaging tropes by perpetuating false conservative stereotypes that depict gay people as promiscuous or predatory. After his segment, Watters told O'Reilly, "No one assaulted me." [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 7/8/14]
Watters Produced A Transphobic Segment About New York's Mermaid Parade. During the July 11, 2013, edition of The O'Reilly Factor, the "Watters World" segment followed Watters as he mockingly interviewed attendees to Brooklyn's historic Mermaid Parade, stigmatizing the transgender community with disparaging comments and including an inserted clip that featured a character vomiting into a toilet. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 7/11/13]
Watters Defended Trump's Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric, Saying He Wouldn't Let "Illegal Aliens" Come And "Murder Our Women." While appearing as a guest host on Fox's Outnumbered on July 15, 2015, Jesse Watters defended Donald Trump's disparaging rhetoric against immigrants, saying "President Trump" wouldn't "let illegal aliens come to the country and murder our women." [Fox News, Outnumbered, 7/15/15]
ThinkProgress: Watters "Followed, Harassed, And Ambushed" A Journalist Who Had Criticized Bill O'Reilly While She Was On Vacation. After highlighting Bill O'Reilly's track record of victim-blaming rape survivors in a March 2009 story for ThinkProgress, former managing editor Amanda Terkel reported that she herself had been "ambushed" and "accosted" by Watters while on vacation. As reported by Terkel:
This weekend, while on vacation, I was ambushed by O'Reilly's top hit man, producer Jesse Watters, who accosted me on the street and told me that because I highlighted O'Reilly's comments, I was causing "pain and suffering" to rape victims and their families. He of course offered no proof to back up this claim, instead choosing to shout questions at me.
I expect O'Reilly to air this "interview" at some point this week, possibly as early as tonight. I have no expectation that he will show the entire altercation or give the entire story about what happened, so here is the full account, offering a glimpse inside the O'Reilly harrassment machine:
-- The Stalking: Watters and his camera man accosted me at approximately 3:45 p.m. on Saturday, March 21, in Winchester, VA, which is a two-hour drive from Washington, DC. My friend and I were in this small town for a short weekend vacation and had told no one about where we were going. I can only infer that the two men staked out my apartment and then followed me for two hours. Looking back, my friend and I remember seeing their tan SUV following us for much of the trip.
-- The Ambush: Shortly after checking into our lodgings, we emerged and immediately saw two men walking toward us calling out my name. Watters said he was from Fox News, but never said his or his companion's name, nor did he say he was with The O'Reilly Factor.
-- The Surprise Attack: Watters immediately began asking me why I was causing "pain and suffering" to the Alexa Foundation. He never gave me the context for his questions. Confused, I repeatedly asked him what he was talking about and whether he could refresh my memory, but he just continued shouting his question.
-- The Evasion: I said that it was inappropriate for O'Reilly to imply that just because a woman may be drunk and/or dressed in a certain way, she should expect to be raped. Watters asked me whether I had listened to the interview (which I had) and claimed that O'Reilly had made the comments in the context of a commentary on Mel Gibson/drunkenness. When I tried to ascertain why he was attacking ThinkProgress in particular -- even though other sites had also covered the story -- he said that we were part of the "smear pipeline," which also included the "Soros-funded" Media Matters. He ignored my comments when I asked if Fox News also smears people.
-- Setting A Guilt Trap: Watters ended the charade by demanding that I look into the camera and apologize to the Alexa Foundation and rape victims. I told them that I don't speak through Fox News and if someone from the Alexa Foundation would like to personally call me, I'd be happy to speak with that person.
-- More Stalking: The camera man then continued to film me as I walked down the block. After a few minutes while I waited at the light to cross the street, Watters called him back and they left. [ThinkProgress, 3/23/09]
Sean Hannity downplays historic second impeachment of Trump: "To me, it's just an average day"
Sean Hannity calls for a special prosecutor to investigate bogus claims of election fraud
Sean Hannity complains that the election is corrupt, Bill O'Reilly says the FBI should be sent to states still counting


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