Blogs
on November 20, 2025
Financial records appear to show shipments of laptops, mobile phones and microchips have been repeatedly sent from a business registered at the unassuming property in Enfield, North London, since Vladimir Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine began last year.
They show that a large volume of high-end microchips, telecoms equipment and servers, which have the potential to support Russian infrastructure, have been shipped through other countries, largely China, avoiding sanctions.
Merlion is owned by three Russian oligarchs who appear in Forbes' list of 200 wealthiest Russians with a combined net worth of £1.6 billion. Two of them have been sanctioned by Ukraine for ‘material or financial support' for the war.
Daniel Kebede (centre) has been outspoken on his political stances - including a statement after threats from Russian president Vladimir Putin against Ukraine where he criticised Nato involvement in the conflict
The shock wasn't because a prominent fighter had been found with drugs in his system — that is common enough. It's what we've come to expect from a sport that doesn't give much of a damn. But the progression from finding to sanction and the testing agency that administered it?
That was less typical.
If we look at the sanctioning list on their website, it shows 39 athletes currently serving a ban. Of them, 12 play rugby league. They are guys like Rob Oakley, who played a few games for London Broncos in the second tier. And Russell Spiers, Midlands Hurricanes.
Third tier.
'I realise I hadn't had an education, and I tried some side jobs, 9-5 jobs and none of it worked. So I did a bit of study on how to work in something you love. That was social media, and it's really started to take off in the last year.'
Asked if South Korea planned to lodge a protest or demand an explanation from the United States, the official, who declined to be identified, said the government would review precedents and cases involving other countries.
The other semifinal match was suspended due to rain one hour and 56 minutes in, with No.
4 seed Belinda Bencic of Switzerland leading No. 1 seed Jessica Pegula of the U.S. 7-5, 6-6. Pegula was leading the tiebreaker 4-2. That match will resume Sunday before the final.
SEOUL, April 9 (Reuters) - South Korea is aware of news reports about a leak of several classified U.S.
military documents and it plans to discuss "issues raised" as a result of the leak with the United States, a South Korean presidential official said on Sunday.
The newspaper said that South Korea had agreed to sell artillery shells to help the United States replenish its stockpiles, insisting that the "end user" should be the U.S.
military. But internally, top South Korean officials were worried that the United States would divert them to Ukraine.
What they must not do is sit by idly and let it go away, as seemingly happened when this newspaper brought them the extraordinary claims in 2020 of a farmer who alleged he had been bribed into giving Tyson Fury a boar-based alibi for doping a few years earlier.
They were sanctioned a week apart last month and there was no great risk of a killer bite if the cases took a wrong turn — to go by the estimates from an agent in that area, the average second-tier player might earn £30,000 a year.
That might just about work with a retired fighter. And no doubt Khan can live with it, especially as my understanding is he has not been asked to pay back his purse, which is not the obligatory process it would be in sensible sports.
They need to show it in pursuing this matter, whether that means establishing Benn's claim to innocence or his guilt.
They need to do it before he finds his way to another ring via some creative paperwork.
That is what makes Khan's two-year ban quite interesting, because he earned about £5million on the night of February 19, 2022, when he lost to Kell Brook and then gave a post-fight sample that was positive for ostarine.
Pay of that scale makes Khan a shark. Just like Conor Benn is a shark, which we will revisit shortly. You lose to a shark and the damage can be severe, especially when you have a budget of £11m a year to cover all sports and sharks have expensive lawyers.
They were not the testing authority who twice found clomifene in Benn's system — that was the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association, which thereby introduced more loopholes for resourceful lawyers and a promoter in Hearn who famously sang VADA's praises when it suited him, but is now dancing in the grey areas of conflicting jurisdictions.
If whispers are accurate, Eddie Hearn will confirm in the near future that the fight between Benn and Chris Eubank Jnr is on. Not with a British Boxing Board of Control licence in Benn's pocket, because they want a resolution to the inconvenient truth of Benn's two failed drugs tests, first revealed in the Daily Mail six months ago.
But what would a similar timeline mean if they were weighing the case of someone active? Someone like Benn. This is when we look to UKAD again and with the added question of whether they are fit for purpose, because that is what they must prove.