Live from Toronto, Canada, it's theCUBE. Covering Blockchain Futurist Conference 2018. Brought to you by theCUBE. Live on, welcome back to theCUBE. Live coverage here in Toronto, Canada, Ontario for Untraceable Presents Blockchain Futurist Conference. Two days, we've been here on day two. Amazing event here, great community. I'm John Furrier, your host. Dave Vellante went back east, so he was here yesterday. Our next guest, Pablo Gonzalez, is the founder and CEO of Genesis Blockchain Technologies. Welcome to theCUBE, thanks for joining me. Thank you for having me. So I'm glad to have you on. First of all, when Bradley Roder says, whoop, watch out for that guy, you must be smart because we trust Bradley. So yeah, but you're doing something really cool. Thank you. The future of trading and exchanges has been a topic that everyone's been talking about, but not a lot of people have been actually moving the needle on. You got some movement here, people doing here, but no one's actually had the full package. And they're running as fast as they can to do it. You guys have done it. We have. How? So take a minute, what have you guys done? What is the product, how did you do it, and what can people use today? Thank you. So it's no longer hot air, as you said. A lot of people are saying what they're going to do. We're here to say what we have done, which is very different. Yesterday, up at the main stage, we launched the world's first decentralized exchange on a mobile platform. We're fully licensed by the Costa Rican Commodities Exchange. We have a broker-giller license, a currency exchange license, and a money remittance license. We already possess the licenses. We're not in pursuit of the licenses. We have what we did. Obviously, we pursued an M&A strategy. We acquired companies that were over a decade in the business, and we just transformed them and kryptonized them as I use the term. And launched the exchange with those licenses and platforms. We listed the exchange with over 40 coins, over $4 billion of shared market cap, and over half a million dollars of daily trading and liquidity. And so this is right now going on in Costa Rica, mainly stable. Is it stable? How's the stability there? So the country is extremely stable. They haven't had an army for over 50 years. It's considered a world-class country for banking, for international businesses so much so. Amazon, HP, Intel, all these humongous companies have large operations in the country. And their posture to crypto is, they've come out formally to state, well, what's the posture from Costa Rica? So they consider cryptocurrencies a commodity and not a security. And that's why we went on to pursue a commodity exchange license. So that opens up doors for you to do this. Of course. And opens up the doors, think about it. So you can now trade Bitcoin with gold in our exchange. Not as of today, we're going to launch that in January. So now you can trade cryptocurrencies with commodities and cryptocurrencies with fiat currencies. So I'm just kind of speculating here in terms of my mind where I'm going with this. Almost imagine the shakeup that's coming. Yes. It's like a blender. I mean, trading gold in Bitcoin, it's just like, who would have thought that was possible a year ago? That's correct. People compare Bitcoin, the new digital gold, but actually comparing them, this is going to shake up like a blender. That's correct. Blend up the commodities market. Disruptive. What's your vision? What do you see happening? I just think that a lot of people are focusing on, you know, they say one of the interviews earlier today, one of the presenters, one of the interviewers was asking me, so is that to the moon, is that Bitcoin to the moon? And I'm like, guys, we need to stop. If we want this industry to really grow and develop, stop using those analogies. We need to create a community that's larger. We need mass adoption. And I think that by including the commodities into the equation, you're catering to the traditional investors that are a little bit uncomfortable with cryptocurrencies because they don't know about them, but they know about gold. And if all of a sudden, now you compare gold with Bitcoin. It brings retail into it. Yes. It brings a real, real retail market. That's correct. You know, I just want to say something. I agree with you 100%. These news outlets out there and other people, they tend to focus on the price of Bitcoin. Yeah. And it's almost like, okay, can we get over that? Yeah, it's got to go up and down. Exactly. If you're in the long game, it should be 20,000. Okay, I can buy that, but let's talk about what people are doing. Yes. Who's building something? Yes. That's the focus. That's correct. So if I ask you now that question, hey, Bob, look, what have you built and what are you going to continue to build if this is a foundational product? Yes. What are you guys going to do on top of it? What's the build plan? Thank you. So yesterday we launched the decentralized exchange with 40 coins. We're going to add probably between now and December, another 110 different tokens. We're doing ERC 20 for now. And in January, we're launching the centralized exchange. So that's where we're going to add the fiat currencies and the commodities. And when, what date is it? End of January. Okay, got it. We're going to make an announcement in November, one of the conferences in Malta. Got it, okay. And so that we were serving the date and everything else for that. But in May of next year, we're launching over the counter trading desk with full KYC, AML, counterterrorism, finance and all of the world-class policies. And by this time next year, we're going to be launching our institutional platform. So we want to be a one-stop shop via the currency exchange that we own. We already have the ability from the central bank of Costa Rica, which is amazing to issue visa cards. So now our users, besides trading, they can take their crypto with them from their mobile phone, convert it to fiat and pay for gasoline by socials. So I'm an entrepreneur, I got my own cube coin coming out, cube token, security token, or utility. So what's in it for me? If I ask you, what's in it for me? What do I get out of it as a business? What do I, you know, are people going to start trading my coins? Am I instantly going to have it over the counter? So as a business, what do I have to worry about? What's the benefits? What matters to me? What's the impact? So if you were to be a coin to list in our exchange, you mean? Well, first of all, you know, we all know exchange is now to list on them. You know, they charge you to, some of them, I'm not going to say the name. They charge you a lot of money. You have 400 BTC and crazy amounts like this. We are going to charge. It's a business at the end of the day. But what we're looking for with the coins that we're going to list is partnerships. And seeing in what ways we can do more and more entrepreneurial projects to change the landscape of the industry together as an exchange and a coin, because potentially what coin is, is a company. You know, what's behind the coin is what's important to us, another coin itself. And so as the company develops and progresses, so will the coin's price appreciated value or depreciated value. And so, yes, besides facilitating trading fees and lowering that up listing and so forth, what we're bringing to the table wants to be much more dynamic. You got to balance, you know, business that you got to do with infrastructure build out.  You got to build this entire retail global fabric. How does community play in for you? Obviously, community's very important. I agree with you. That's big time. How are you guys building your community, tapping into anything else? Obviously, Untraceable's got a great community. How are you going to grow your community? So, as an exchange, there could be a conflict of interest. We have to be really careful how we get involved in the community. But what we want to do is buy selected partnerships with projects and coins. The coins are already doing their work. They are appealing to a community. They're raising the money from that community. What we want to do is we want to partner up with those coins. The coins that they're worth partnering up with and that way our reach automatically will multiply. On top of that, of course, we want to work with governments and banks and institutions. We believe, it may not be popular what I'm about to say, but the good old honor guests that came to the hardcore, crypto forget about central banks and centralization, I don't think that that's ever going to happen. I think that the more we cooperate with governments, the more we work with them, we together can shape the industry and the landscape for good. I do believe in that. That's a collaboration, a cooperation with governments and banks to us is pivotal. I mean, you could be a coach to the regulatory. Absolutely. You could be an advocate and partner, not an enemy. We are being in Costa Rica. So before they considered, and they took a position on whether it was a commodity or not, they approached us and we were teaching them. So much so that a congressman that was going to be at the conference and was going to make it, he's the founder of the Libertarian Movement in Costa Rica. He created a think tank of crypto because of us that know has Latin American reach. Think about it, there are 1.3 billion people in Latin America. They all have mobile phones. Exactly. They can now learn about crypto and so we're going to capitalize on it. It's a real democratization. What you do is change the society. If you get this, continue to get this right. This is really key. Congratulations. Thank you. I want to ask you a personal question. For sure. Love the hat. You look great. Thank you. You scratching an itch that was around this. Was it, how did you get to the point where you said, hey, I'm going to go out and build the first exchange and roll up the companies, wire them together, cryptotize them and go nuts and build an exchange. I mean, how do you get here? What's the story? Thank you. Well, it's a story. I began entrepreneurial projects over 10 years ago. Been in the private sector. Because Costa Rica is a services company, we put together a call center that took it from like four people to 4,000 people in four years. I went on to like building my own sports brand in over 10 countries. But then about two years ago, a few companies from Canada, they called me, from here, they called me to help them go public in the Canadian Securities Exchange. I took to companies public last year. And after that, you know, we were saying to myself in the crew, guys, what do we do next? How can we really disrupt the industry? And one of the things we were talking about was, man, we're in a decentralized community that brags about decentralization, trading at centralized exchanges. How ironic is that? Yeah, it's got to change. So we said, you know what? Let's be the pioneers that set out on the quest to build the world's first mobile decentralized exchange. And we achieved that. It's unbelievable. Now you hear the big guys, the whales, talking about we're going to come up with a decentralized exchange because that's what people want at the end of the day. And we were able to be the first ones ever to give that. And it's stability is critical. I mean, I was just at a bank starting up a new account for a new startup that we're doing. And they're like, is this a blockchain company? And I'm like, no, no, God, no, no, no, no, no, no. We're an immediate business. Yeah, those are bad guys. So you can't even open a bank account in some places. So this has really got to get fixed. I get liquid, I got to get fiat currency out. I got to make new things around. The retail market, whether it's trading, investing, it's got to be converted over to the world. Yes.  That's correct. Obviously, I think that it'll be a transition process. It'll take some time. There are some banks that are already getting more involved into the process. What's interesting in our case is we even got the central bank, the Costa Rican central bank to be our bank. Think about it. There's no banking with any private bank or a public bank, but the Costa Rican central bank. And I think that more and more banks will follow suit as they see good use cases. The ICO craze of last year, I don't think that it did any good to the greater good of the community. If anything, it brought a lot of prejudice.  There'll be a hangover on that, but that's like a dot-com bubble. All those things in the dot-com bubble actually happen. So I think you're going to just see that get digested out of the system. Inevitable. And a focus on quality. That's what's happening now. Inevitable. Pablo, thanks for coming on. Pablo Gonzalez, who is the founder and CEO of Genesis Blockchains Technologies. First ever exchange, bringing all new magic to the marketplace. It's the Cube bringing you the content magic here. Here in Toronto, Canada. I'll be right back with more. Stay with us. Live coverage after this short break.


Welcome. This is Melissa Armo with the Stock Swoosh, and I wanted to go over here tracking if you were a beginner trader and traded my system using options for the gap options newsletter in the last week. It was a 93% win ratio. This is an average risk of $600. We're going to go over all the trades for the last week. You would have made $6,640 as a beginner trader and beginner meaning you're new and again with a lower end risk of around $600. So again, you don't have to risk $600 for trade. You can risk less. You can risk more. It has to do with how much money you have in your account. Options are not based on margin though. So it is based on the cost of the position based on the cash cost, which we're going to go over here. Anyways, you can watch me in Fox Business and Fox News. And if you'd like more information and you're interested in signing up for my course, you can email me at Melissa at thestockswoosh.com. And you can call me if you have questions at 929-3200 Gap. Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Skype. It's really about making money whether you're doing the day trading or the options trading using this one strategy, which is the only thing that I use for all the trade calls, everything, all of them, the way I read the market too. It's based on my Golden Gap rating system. That is how I know. So anyways, going back here, beginning of this past week was the Apple Puts 17750. And again, just showing you here, you could still be in this trade to be honest with you. But if you took it, cost three, two contracts risk $600, sold for $20, you would have made $240. Again, it's about chunking it out, chunking it out, chunk it, chunk it, chunk it, okay? So you take it one day and you get out.  You get out when you're up, when you have a small account. I think that's the most important thing. When you have a small trading account, I don't care if it's options, I don't care if it's day trades, you need to book profits. And you need to book profits faster than if you have a larger account. Anyways, then the next one here was also the 28th, another beautiful cost by Puts 282. This one expired Friday. Nice move in here. Follow through, gap down, cost was less, $175, you could have taken three, risk $525, sold for $20, profit $735. So that's a nice profit, a nice profit for a risk of $525. That's more than a hundred percent, almost 150% profit again within a 24 hour period. Also called the diamonds, 255 Puts. These are all shorts, okay? So you're buying the put. This is an option. You put the order in. Again, market gap down. This was through Friday, $525, cost $175, three contracts, sold for $50, $855 profit again. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful trade, more than 150% return on investment. Again, very quickly. QQQ's again called the Puts, $177, expired Friday, risk $648, contracts, these were cheap. This is a beautiful, beautiful trade. Sold $230, $1,200. So 200% return on investment in one trade that only costs you $640. If you did it, you could have made $1,200.  So you're taking your money and you're using it and you're getting out. That you're taking another trade and you're making the money, then you're using it, then you're getting out. And that's really the way to do it, to grow your account, if that's what you want to do. I have a lot of beginners now on the options letter. And in the trading room too, people are just on the class and they're doing very well because they are booking the profits. I have one lady that has basically taken a $2,500 account and she made more than $2,000 and she made $2,100 or $2,200 last week. She did not do all the trades. She did a couple of the trades, but she literally almost doubled her account in one week's time. And that's fantastic. And that's, that's what I want to see people doing. I want to see people getting involved, taking the trades of following the system. So then I called on Wednesday the 29th. Again, another put. Diamond puts $2,5067 expiration. You could still be in this. The market looks lower even Friday into the close, cost $2,203 contracts with $660 risk, sold $3. But again, if you have a small account, you take it, book it, take it, book it, take it, book it, profit 240. Another nice move. $2,7867. Again, you could still be in this too. Cost $2,253 contracts cost you $675. If you haven't a beginner risk, sold $360 profit, $405. Again, really nice move. Really nice move. And it's fast and it's quick. B.A. puts was another good one. Expired Friday, $560 cost the contracts $280, two contracts, sold $5. This was a really nice trade too. $440 profit. Again, risk $560 bucks and make $440. That's a nice trade. It's not like these trades are on for weeks and months and years. They're on for a day or two days. These things all move this week. Call to move this week. Q puts $175,67. Could still be in it. $150 cost, four contracts, risk $600, sold $250. Again, risk $600, sell it for what? $400. That's funny. Do you see how you chunk it, chunk it, chunk it, chunk it, chunk it? It's not about taking a trade and holding it forever and ever and ever and you certainly don't have to hold it out till close to the expiration. You take it and you make money. And even if you have a big account, I think it's important to make money. Constantly, constantly, constantly booking money. That's your goal as an active trader. Okay? Whether you have a big account or a small account. You're not a long-term investor if you're an active trader. And the way I'm calling these trades, boom, boom, boom, I mean, I'm like a machine lately calling trades and they're all working too. These are all, these are all winners. The Google Puts strike $1120. This worked too. $531 expired Friday, risk $550, one contract, gonna sold it for $15 profit $1,000. These Google's Amazon Z stocks can move. Netflix, another nice one, you could still be in it, $350 puts, risk $525, one contract $525, sold it for $820, $295. That's a good trade. One contract you could have made almost $300. Amazon puts was $1,800, $531, risk for one was $700, sold 12 profit $500. Again, one trade in, out, in, out. Then the Google puts $1097.50, this gap down the following morning, I've just had such a good eye for all these calls. Here's the chart, you can see where it gap down. One contract was $700, sold 1250, profit $550. And Ulta, this one, $310 expired Friday. I could have called this out longer. This one just did not work out right. It fell quick here. I'm just showing you here. This is a daily chart. This was a loser this past week. Fell, dropped, had the tail, didn't fall through lower, flipped around, never went back down. When you, if you took it, you saw it right away as it wasn't following through.  It just didn't go back down around. So the Ulta was a loser this week. And then cost $235, this did work as a day trade. And here this tail, but this tail had room to play it out, fell, boom, fast, and had a really big move in here. Enough time to could have done the trading gotten out with profit. And if we're still in this actually, this could continue lower if the market's lower next week. But anyways, this was one where it was just a really big move really quick and really fast into the open. $350 costs, $490, two contracts, again, $280 bucks. If that's your risk, $700, $280 is a good trade if it happens and you book the money in five minutes. So here's all the trades. Beginner, beginner risk this is, okay. Apple spied diamonds queues.  So 13 winners, one loser, 90% win ratio. So average risk per trade was 600 because some were a little bit less than 600, some were 700. It depends on the cost of the option. Again, you have to have a range, but I wouldn't stray outside the range like don't double your risk. Tilt-up profits with this risk, if you had to begin a risk in this past week, a 93% win ratio, if you did all the trades, 13 winners and one loser, you could have made $6,640 bucks. Okay, that's fantastic. Fantastic. And that's one week of taking my calls in a gap options newsletter. It's really important to be at your desk in the morning. I call the trades in the pre-market, you don't take them until the morning. I could call them in the afternoon. I could call them in the late morning. The trades go to your emails. Okay, so you have to go to your email, check your email during the day. It's really important though, if I call a trade and you do a trade on, if you take it on a Thursday and you have to get up on a Friday morning to see where your trade is at, where this chart is at, where the stock is at, because some of these moves, in fact, a lot of these moves then gapped into the move. So then they were profitable in a big way right into the open. So you had to be at your desk to make sure you watch the trade then or got out into the open. So it's important to be able to focus in the morning, I think. Okay, if you're doing these, but the trades could come any time of the day, but that beginning part of the day, the first part of the day is important in what I do. If you want to learn the system, you would take the Golden Gap course. Okay. And you would take the Golden Gap course and learn my system from me. It's a rating system. That is how I'm calling the trades. I get up in the morning, my processes, I rate the gap, and then I call the trades, day trades, options, whatever we're doing that particular day. So if you want to learn my method, you'd learn it in the Golden Gap course. The class for June is June 8th and 9th, 9 to 5 Eastern Time. Cost of the class is $59.99 US dollars. Class is online. It could be anywhere in the world and take it. Email me at Melissa at thestockswish.com if you want to sign up. Again, it is very, very important to understand what to do if you want to trade. I had some woman that called me the other day. She's taking just, you know, horrible trades based on things she's seen online, following aimless people, doing ridiculous things, and she has a decent amount of money in her account. She's gonna lose it. She's gonna lose it all because she doesn't have a strategy, doesn't have a system, isn't following anyone. Quite frankly, think she's gonna learn how to trade by watching YouTube videos. You will never learn how to trade watching YouTube videos. You won't even learn how to trade watching all my YouTube videos and I have over a thousand online. If you watched them all, you wouldn't learn what I know. The only way to learn what I know and my system and my method to be consistently profitable is by taking my class. Period end of story. And the golden dot course is the class you're gonna learn it. Now, if you want to join the line trading room, you have to do the class in order to join. If you want to take uh if you want to do the options, the options letter is $49.99 a year. It's for one year you get all the trades. There's no prerequisites for that but you're not gonna learn the system. You want to learn this system and understand it and be in the day trading room. You have to do the class. Okay? So, I do the class once a month. It is so important before you risk money in the market to learn what to do. I am shocked how people don't understand that and people think they can make money just watching videos and that I'm never surprised when people whine about how much money they've lost in the market and the crazy thing is people will take $50 $100 $200 $300 $50 but it all adds up a lot better to take one quality trade and make $1200. Okay?  One of the reasons I've called the market so accurately and this past week was no exception uh because all of these puts except for one worked and that had nothing to do with the market. That altar had absolutely nothing to do with the market. That was an earnings gap that just didn't work but all the other trades worked because I accurately read the market. I read it so well that the market gap down after the day after I called many of these trades was a really really really nice week and I know how to read the market well which is challenging and difficult for people even that have been trading for a hundred years because I read gaps and so this system is very useful. It's very useful no matter what you do. Anything that gaps you can utilize the system but specifically the US stock market. So hopefully everyone had a great week too and if you're interested in signing up for the class again it's June 8th and 9th. Evaluate Melissa at the stockswish.com. Have a great day.


Hi, good morning. As you saw from the program, my name is Amelia Santos Paulino, I am from UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and for me it's very symbolic to be here. I was a fellow at UNEY there for six years before joining UNCTAD and since then we have managed to keep a good partnership and thanks to Kunal support who has been basically backing up and giving us the space and also supporting our policy and academic work. Today we have a different panel from all the academic panels you have. I will be presenting the main results of the World Investment Report, the Think Chapter which is the International Taxation and Development. Then we will have the best possible policy and academic mix panel. First we will have the Discussant, Professor Yucca Pirtala from UNEY there and also from the University of Helsinki. Also I am very pleased to have today and thank you so much for supporting us. Luis Ignacio Lozano from the Central Bank, the Bank of the Republic is the Director of Research and finally we have Kunal Sen wrapping up with the Development Discussions. Yesterday somebody asked me, we were having coffee and asked me, what are you from, what are you doing here and when I said I am from UNCTAD the person asked, what is your link with inequality then and then I thought to myself, well if by now we don't know that trade and investment have direct links within and between countries in equality we are in trouble. So without further ado, I would like to say that my presentation today will not cover all the report, the World Investment Report is the flagship publication of the United Nations Systems on Investment and Development. It has the usual trends chapter that looks at investment trends, different types of cross border investment trends, also policy trends and since 2019 the United Nations General Assembly through a resolution designed on to also analyze the impact of international investment both upstream and downstream on sustainable development. And then every year we have a theme, a theme related to investment and development and this year we work on the theme of the impact of the international tax reform that is the OECD G20 Pillar II BEPS II which calls for the introduction of a minimum tax on multinational enterprises of 25%. So the core of my discussion and then the panelists will focus on this aspect of the report. Before we go into the topic, if you give me three minutes, I would like to present to some important trends on foreign direct investment because I think that will help to contextualize why this reform matters and what are the possible developmental implications. I have a declaration, a disclaimer to make the report and the reason why ONTAC goes into this topic is because of the implications that we have on developing countries and on investment policies. We do not do distributional assessment, we do not do distributional impact. We look at the impact of foreign direct investment and what might be the implications for developing countries' investment policies. So just quickly here, this is our standard opening figure of the World Investment Report. We saw that the pandemic hit foreign direct investment flows as other important economic variables. In 2020, 2021 was a year of recovery, FDI recovered 64% from the pre-pandemic level, sorry from the post-pandemic level in 2020. This recovery happens across the world, both development and developing countries, but the growth was higher in developing countries due to the loose financial conditions that multinational benefit from the support during the period of pandemic and also through high reported retained benefits. And what happens, these high report benefits were not invested in productive sectors. There was an increase in intra-firm, financial transaction, mostly mergers and acquisitions. So yes, positive developments, but not necessarily it implied more productive investment for developing countries. Before the global environment changed with the war in Ukraine, that also was reflected in investor sentiments. We do analysis of expected profits of multinational and all revised expected profits downward, except for those operating in the oil and gas sector, again with important implications on top of the food and fuel crisis. Because the world, we saw that developing countries had a positive recovery from the impact of the pandemic. Here we see that developing countries benefit, especially because of strong performance in Asia, a partial recovery in Latin America and a rebound in Africa. So this is, again, welcoming. Just quickly, and I will not go into this because we will need another conference for this. As I said, we are mandated to analyze the impact of foreign direct investment or all cross investment on sustainable development. This is just an analysis we do, looking at cross border, what is called Greenfield investment, the intentions of investors and project finance, which is a very important mechanism because basically it is investment into big projects that developing countries cannot afford to undertake alone. So basically there was a decline on investment across all SDG sectors. These are not the 17 SDGs, these are investment-related sectors of the sustainable development goals. The only increase that we observed was in renewable energy. This is a boom that we also saw within regions, especially Latin America, but also in Europe and developed countries. And in education there was a rebound, but not necessarily in the all aspects of education of the goal. It was basically big infrastructure projects in some countries. So yes, FDI increased mostly financial transactions between enterprise, high return earnings and then the discussion on why taxation matters becomes relevant. So now we move to the core, the theme chapter of the report and the discussions that we are going to have today. So what is the impact of the BEPS, this new reform to international taxation on global FDI? Some of you that are expert, I am not an expert in taxation, I am part, I am the chief of investment research and I am part of the core team of the World Investment Report. We had a team of experts working with us. We had Michael King, ex-IMF and also from the Institute of Fiscal Studies in London. We had some experts from the Vienna Taxi Institute. So it was a team of scholars working with us doing this analysis and again our entry point is the impact of FDI and what will be the impact on policy. So just quickly, what do we need to worry? Why I am here at the development conference talking about the global minimum tax? There are three many aspects that we cover in the report and yesterday we had a fantastic policy panel that touched on some issues related to the development input. One the reform is transformational. It will reshape the international investment landscape because it affects the larger multinationals which invest in developing countries through their foreign affiliates. And it is pervasive, it involves more FDI than countries that it seems. And finally it is concrete, already signed. Implementation is expected for the end of 2023-2024, Switzerland the country where I am posted already called for a referendum, but other countries that signed are a bit concerned about what it will imply for their fiscal promotion, for the tools for fiscal and for investment attraction. So what we did while we were preparing the report, we did a survey of investment promotion agencies which are our focal point in tandem with the ministries of trade to see what was the level of awareness among developing countries. 141 countries signed already, mostly of the G20 plus developing countries. So surprisingly ministries of trade or ministries of finance knew because processes through the OECD but the level of awareness in the institutions that facilitate investment, promote investment was very low. So that is an issue when we think about technical assistance and technical cooperation and the level of preparedness of developing countries to implement this reform. And then the big question to the panel, especially to Kunal, what are the development implications and we will come back to that. So as I said, I mean we live in a global economy that is characterized by, you know, by EECON 101, by mobile capital, mobile trade and in this war we have to be realistic. Corporate tax policies can affect multiple aspects of the global investment. It affects the location, it affects the distribution and it and also affects how countries design their tax system. So these are the aspects that we look into the report. So the core of this reform affects what is called large multinational defined not by the number of employment but by the capital, the annual revenue. So the cut of point was 750 million. This leaves small multinational out of the scope of the reform. I invite you to look at the first chapter of the report where we started to look at internationalization of SMEs via FDI, not only export and investment by small enterprises is still small and is in decline. So this is mostly large M&E's investing in developing countries. The scope is 15%, there is potential downward pressure on new investment by multinationals after this coming into place. And then the issue for many countries is the special economic zones regime, again it was discussed last night, what it will imply four countries that depend on these special areas of production that relied on corporate tax incentives. So these are the issues that we look into the report. So in terms of the, I will not go into the technicality because it will take a long time but the unit of analysis what we analyze is the effective tax rate paid by foreign affiliates of large M&E's. And what we see that on average effective tax rate is 19%, six points below the average statutory tax rate. So M&E's pay effectively less tax than what the country's statutory tax rate implies, which comes into the discussion the issue of profit shifting. I mean what happens is that this foreign affiliate, they don't reinvest their needs, they shift the profits of short financial center back to the home country or other mechanisms that might be in place. So we cannot be naive, I mean we have to look beyond the statutory tax rate. We know that countries offer other fiscal incentives, especially those related to their corporate tax bill. Some of the things that we look at were the tax holidays, the deductions and credits. We sometimes are used and abused by multinationals to sort of an effect, this effective rate, that's why this effective rate is lower. So what we did was we used country by country reporting, it's very, as we know those that work with micro data, it's very difficult to find firm level data, so we use country by country reporting data. And then we computed at the country level what is this effective tax rate and then we did some grouping average for the sake of looking at developing country impact. Our analysis covers 208 countries of which 53 are developed countries and 155 developing and also we look at what we call offshore financial centers because they are the one that stand to lose when the reforms come in. I mean this is what this reform is about, to avoid profit shifting and to redistribute this income into the host country. It's easier saying that Donna's, Yuka will be telling us later. So also something important that came out from our analysis is that differences, differences in statutory rates remain one of the most important factors in explaining the variation in this effective tax rate. So we have to be very careful when we generalize but we try to have a sort of clean analysis and try to normalize as much as possible for these variations. But in general key message is that this statutory rate is way below, sorry the effective rate is way below the statutory rates. Then before we went into the analytical framework we also tried to understand what is the corporate investment and the fiscal tools used and as we can see here most of the instruments are based on corporate income tax. This is many of the countries rely on corporate income tax over the last decade and that represents over 49% of all incentives granted to multinational. So the bulk of the reform is this corporate income tax. There are other instruments that will have to become part of the financial incentive package once this reform comes into place especially those related to royalties, innovation and other non-financial incentives. There are two issues also important here that we consider during the analysis. One is the analysis based on expenditure or capital investment base and the other what they call the investment allowance, depreciation, another type of very boring financial analysis but again that there is where multinational can mask some of these profit shifting numbers. But all in all the bulk of the reform falls into this CIT, this corporate income tax base. It doesn't matter if we look at capital, losses, profit, at the end of the day the impact will be significant at the time. Then I mean this is sort of complement to what I said earlier as I show the effective rates are lower than the statutory rates and less, I mean our main concern is developing countries and here we can see that less than a third of developing economies report an average effective tax rate below 15%. So this is the rate that we are very, I mean we are trying to see what will be the shifting mechanism of pillar two. So pillar two is here, so we have that around 37% of countries, the chair of developing countries with higher effective staff rate that we have to adjust to that reduced taxes is I mean we have between 37% and 20%. And again this is an issue that we have to be put on the table when the inclusive framework committee comes to the table and discuss how this is going to be implemented. So in this case what we did also, I mean this figure what we tried to do was not to look just ratios of taxes paid but also how they compare to the FDIS stock in developing countries because at the end of the day this is the outcome that we are concerned about. So here there are two aspects, one is what is going to be the impact on FDI and then what is the how it will impact the profit shifting which is the main channel of concern. So again we saw that there is a difference between developing and developed countries in terms of the effective tax rate and we incorporate this profit shifting dynamic because basically this is what overstates the actual taxes paid. So in general we see that the chair of developing countries as we saw before with rates below 15% if we look at what is the profit shifting increases. So basically this is the part that we are concerned about. What is the, I mean how is this profit shifting is going to be curved and is going to return to the countries. In general we see as I said before this is what are worried, I mean this is the countries that fall below or above the reform and what will be the adjustment level and when we look at the incentives granted what we call this curve out this is mostly the area of concern especially countries that rely on special economic zones and so on. So when we consider this profit shifting then this is the best distribution that we can have. So again this is the core of the pillar too, these countries that pay these taxes and M&E's with this revenues. So what is the implication of all this? This is sort of summarized what we saw in the figures. So we see that M&E's pay more, average increase in the corporate income tax on FDI globally lies between 15% and 20%, Latin America the range is between 12% and 22% and most of the increase in this will be due to the profit shifting mechanism. So this is what we want to tackle, 65% globally and in Latin America the profit shifting mechanism is 90% and again it's because of the nature of most of the productive system. According to our analysis the conservative range of the impact of FDI will be FDI during the period of adjustment will increase between 2% and 3%. This is on top of any structural variables or chalk that might be experimented. Then this will affect the locations decisions of M&E's. Now the competition will not be based on taxes, there will be other criteria especially when it comes to investing in developing countries. There will be diversion from low to high tax countries and we see that the tax rate differential will decrease between 15% and 30%. This differential between these two types of countries. And we expect that in terms of fiscal revenues developing countries are expected to gain between 1%, 1.5% and 3% of FDI and Latin America this lies between 1% and 2%. So there will be an adjustment, negative adjustment through FDI but possibly a positive through government revenues. We expect that government revenues are expected to increase. The analysis that according to our data we see that the increase will be around 20% of corporate income tax but developed economies will gain more around 30% than developing countries. And of course the idea is that of short financial centers will lose. I don't have the number from the top of my head, I'm still jet lag but the OECD calculated what is called the fiscal sacrifice, the loss of all countries because this profit shifting mechanism and it was in the billion. So this is a welcome news, this can be tackable. Again the question that remains through my presentation is that how this will be redistributed to developing countries. So as I said before, I mean this transformation, this reform is pervasive because it involves more FDI and country that it seems. We know that it affects large multinational center, foreign affiliates leaving SMEs before but it's not here we cannot think about frames, the FDI by large SMEs and I will show you later how important it is in the range of over 60% of green field investment. Apparently it affects only the 141 jurisdiction but we have to remember that we live in a GBC war where MNEs have foreign affiliates in countries that have signed and countries that have not signed the reform. So it will affect all the countries. I mean some countries will not be able to avoid it. And as we saw it will not affect only the low tax country, it will affect also the countries above the threshold because they will have to adjust to lower the tax rates and so basically this is a global, a general equilibrium and a global impact. So I earlier mentioned that we focus on analysis on effective tax rate measure through different weights and the most important is FDI stock. So basically these are the three channels that we look. The volume of FDI what will be the input of the volume, the distribution and the route whether it's profit shifting or not. So here I mean this is basically summarized more or less what we say and these three are the three core outcomes that we look at the analysis. So basically the aim is to host countries will, I mean we look at the host country effective tax rate and the aim is to reduce profit shifting. I mean this is the core of the analysis. And then there are concerns also what will imply to the cost and also the volume of productive investment in the medium term. Then we look at the other aspects of the differentials of what I already explained. I mean the chapter has all the technicality in boxes and there are references to the work of others like King that were used as background for this study. So in terms of the input I already mentioned that the profit shifting is the main concern, is the critical driver of the reform. This is why the G20 came to the OECD. Some of us might remember that BEPS 1, the original BEPS, the aim was to tackle the digital M&E's because they have a completely different footprint that normal multinational, their development in Paris zero sometimes negative. So BEPS 2 went beyond the digital M&E's to look at all the enterprises. So here these trends confirm what I already said and for this exposition what we did was the composition was made assumption of full reversal of profit shifting. I mean there was the main assumption full reversal of the profits in the upper bound. All profits shifted, pre-pillar 2 are then simply reassigned to the host country where they are generated. So hopefully these profits will come to the developing countries. The mechanism is not clear yet. Again we try to see how this is going to be applied and again we look at the importance of this mechanism. If you see in Africa, in all developing countries, 91% Latin American, 96% so this profit shifting mechanism is really an important issue for policy makers. Again in terms of another level of impact that we looked at, it was that we look at how the corporate income tax rate on FDI will be affected and the increase will be more or less by 2% on average. So BEPS pillar 2 will increase the corporate income tax face by M&E's on the foreign profits as we already have said many times. The estimated increase in defective tax rates by M&E's is conservatively estimated because as I said there are many variations in statutory rates and other intrinsic characteristics of the countries and then this will imply an increase by the tax paid by M&E's in developing countries by 15% and those will be directly affected by the reform. So this is the growth that we expect on the rates, the adjustment after pillar 2 is implemented. I mean our baseline scenario places the potential downward as I said on minus 2%, the downward pressure on FDI but this refers to productive investment only. This does not account what is equity or the financial transactions between multi-nationals and this is another story. And I mean this is important because as we saw there is a long history of a very important financial component of FDI but in our case we are concerned about productive investment. The flip side of this as we said is that the potential downward pressure on investment, the negative impact of FDI but there will also be a reduction in the tax differences between countries reducing tax competition. However, all the benefits will not be automatic and this is where the big question to scholars and policy makers lie. I mean in a war where we have a smaller tax base and smaller tax improvements in other investments determined is important. Here we are going to compete about fundamentals, country fundamentals including those related to the infrastructure, the governance, the institutional environment of the countries. I mean this complements what we said before. Again, this is what we call the curve out effect. The foreign affiliates of the multi-nationals affected because this is, I mean this is what developing country grants. I mean it's a tax break within this range. So the diversity of tax incentives in the system implies that the impact of the report will fall unevenly across developing countries and firms. And again, here this is a sort of ideal, ideal world and we try to see how other incentives could be affected but the impact is minimal. I mean we said because basically all the exemptions, reduced rate, deductions are less important than the actual tax break and any holidays. So any realistic distribution curve that implies some variance of effective tax rate will lead to greater impact than the assumption of a uniform country level affected tax rate. So this is how it might look. And I would say 100 times again, this is the concern we see with the finance ministers and policy makers how to make up for this with other incentives. Just quickly wrapping up, so again this relates to the, I mean here the orange is what you say the highly affected and the green not much affected. So basically this is the part that will be more affected in the reform. Many developing countries don't use that much just that incentive. So when the reforms are discussed, these are the issues that they will have to consider. So in terms of the impact on national investment policy and then how that might overlap to development, investment promotion agencies will have to rethink the standard policy tool kills alongside the trade ministries, labor ministries and so on. So again, the main constituency of concern for many developing countries, especially in Africa and Latin America is the presence of special economic zones. That relied on this type of investment package. In the report we tried to do a sort of guide of what policy makers could do to plan for a fiscal reform in this setting. Something that I mentioned earlier is that this analysis and the bulk, I mean the core of the reform is foreign investment, productive investment. So what we did, we tried to look at what share of Greenfield investment will be affected by this reform and Greenfield undertaken by these large M&E's and in developing countries will be set with the percent of productive investment. Africa 73%, 72 Latin America, 68 in Asia Pacific. And this is an issue for discussion in terms of what it will imply for the financing of developing productive capacities and sustainable development goals in developing countries. Then when we think about the fiscal reform adjusting the toolkit, what are the key insights that we can give to developing countries? I mean this is, we try to see what is the core of this inclusive framework? What is outside, what is inside? So we need to look at the investment that needs to be thinking in countries not endorsing pillar two because they will be affected indirectly. So we know that countries affected that signed agreement have to reform the fiscal regimes. Those that did not side do not have that pressure but through the issue of foreign affiliates and intra firms relationship they will be affected. So the most obviously will be those that are part of the inclusive framework agreement and they find that many host countries will be subject to this adjustment even if they don't sign the agreement. So countries that have not endorsed agreement they think that the reform will not buy them because they are outside of the reform but as I said, due to the relationships between intra firms that will be affected partially. Also the effects of such countries are indirect. We cannot measure them directly because they don't fall into the reform and we cannot look how that would affect the profit shifting. So that is also another complication of the analysis that it will have to be solved in addition to the policies. So tax competition is blunted but not ended because some countries did not sign and they will likely take new forms. The tax competition will take new forms and new shape. So these are the main concerns how to adjust this fiscal investment policy. I mean this is an issue that we try to do some work on regional tax cooperation and also the complication that international investment agreement bring to these landscapes. Countries have already signed bilateral and international investment treaties that contradicted some of the experts of the reform so that is an issue that is not clearly articulated and some countries will have to look at what to do what to do with that. So what are the key recommendations that we can make to the international community as a knowledge base but as a policy institution is that we need to scale up technical assistance to developing countries and not only from the UN side but also from the BEPS G20 inclusive framework side. We need to adopt a multilateral solution because as I said, this investment dispute settlement mechanism is complicated in a world where you have on top of free trade agreements you have investment bilateral investment treaty that might complicate the application of the reform. And finally what we call a stopgap measure we need to establish a mechanism that will return those revenues raised by developed countries, the home countries of M&E's to go back to the host country of the M&E's and especially countries that were not able to raise those taxes because of technical capacity. So this is a stopgap measure is also one of the issues that is under discussion in terms of the inclusive framework with the G20 and the OECD. So general message before we open the panel discussion. Both develop and develop in economies are expected to benefit. Substantially for increased revenue collection. For developing countries it will be more complicated. Of short financial centers are stand to lose especially part, substantial part of the corporate income tax collected. And for smaller developing countries we generally have lower statutory and effective tax rates. The application of these top tax could make a major difference in revenue collection but again we go back to the first point of the technical capacity to do this. So all in all FDI the impact will not be, the conservative will be 2% decrease in FDI. The adjustment will be of income will be between 15, 30%. Developing countries stand to benefit but developed countries as we stand today the status quo is that they will benefit more and then the impact of development this is the question that I post to the panel now. With this I stop I come back with the discussion and thank you very much for your attention.


I've always been really interested in how we can try to get at the same content using different forms or even different materials because I also work do installation art and I think, you know, what is the form and what are the materials that give something meaning? Right now, honestly, I write columns a lot more than I write poetry. It's always been a way of moving into what I don't understand. I think that poetry allows that more. It allows me to try to discover something.


After 200 days the Nigerian government lifts the ban on Twitter and another INEC official resigns and embraces the all-progressive Congress APC as he joins the governorship race. This is plus politics, I am Mary Anacol. The Nigerian government has lifted the suspension of Twitter's operations in the country. The ban was placed on the social media platform in June of 2021 after it deleted a controversial tweet by the president, Mohammed Bahari. The government had also accused Twitter of working against Nigeria's interest. The director general of the National Information Technology Development Agency, Kashifu Abdilahi, announced that the lifting of the suspension, he announced the lifting of the suspension in a statement. The federal government on June the 4th of 2021 announced the suspension of the platform in Nigeria through the Minister of Information and Culture like Mohammed. Well, joining us to discuss this is Ini Baraifiyong and Ayodhiji Awobi Yide. Both of them are legal practitioners. Thank you very much gentlemen for joining us. Thank you Baba. Great. Thank you. Great, Ini. You and I have had this conversation over and over again the past few months since Twitter had been banned and now all of a sudden I think I got wind of it sometime late last night. I think before I went to bed, I just saw the post about Twitter being lifted, the suspension being lifted. Many people have reacted to it. Some people are relieved. I hear some people are overjoyed. But a group of other people seem to be a bit more curious as to why government is lifting the ban now. But what are your thoughts? Well, eventually the so-called ban was going to be lifted because there was no reason for the suspension or the ban to have been imposed in the first place. And I have consistently maintained that the decision that was not warranted, that the decision that was taken in perfect, that the decision that was taken on accounts of vengeance in post-induence of vain data by a regime that fell slighted by what was rightfully perceived by a large section of the population as a genocidal and irresponsible tweet by the president was deleted. That accounted for the so-called ban that the government imposed. So eventually the government had to reverse the abnormality that they had forced on the country. But the government is saying something different from what you're saying. The government is saying that Twitter was suspended in the country as a result of the fact that it was used to cause an uprising of sorts and to try to topple government. But you're here saying that this suspension was as a result of a vendetta by the federal government. I'm trying to understand what the government said and what you're saying. Well, does that make sense to you? If that's supposed to make sense to any reasonable person. One can rightly describe that as that. And also that was used to undermine the corporate existence of the country. What exactly does that include? What does it mean? In what way, specifics? Where is the evidence of that? Nothing was pointed out except a veiled reference to Nnamdi Kandu. And I'm in court. I'm still in court with them on this. So I don't want to go into the details of the matter in court. But I can also tell you for free that even in court, as I argued before, Honorable Justice Faji, you know, today they're not single tweets of Nnamdi Kandu was exhibited in court. Not even one, a evidence of inciting the public. And in any event, you cannot apply collective punishments to say that because one person has wrongly used Twitter, just as Bwari himself did, because he abused Twitter, used Twitter in the wrong manner by that particular tweet that he put out, you will now suspend the entire platform at the nine million of Nigeria's access to it. The regulatory issues that they have raised matters pertaining to registration with CSC, with having a representative in Nigeria, compliance with so-called Nigerian laws that they haven't really specifically cited, and other issues, issues of taxation, did a matter that could have been resolved without the very responsible ban that was placed on that platform. In any event, these conditions, these requirements have not been imposed in like manner on other platforms. We still have Facebook. We have Instagram. We have Snapchat. Another social media app that Nigeria has still using. Why is it that Twitter was isolated? Why is it that this ban was targeted specifically at Twitter? I have told you the reason. And I made a point clear to the court that the court should go beyond the best-selling statement that they have made about the corporate revisions of Nigeria being challenged, which I said is hanging in the hay and probe the real intent, the real purpose, because the intent is important in determining the propriety of the action. If this was about regulatory requirements, and I have also said that as I speak to you, nobody has been able to convince me, no lawyer in this country has been able to convince me that there is any law, any enactment, any act of parliament in this country that enables the government to take the sort of measure that they took. None. It was after this, a bit right decision was taken, the LEM went before the National Assembly to promote a bill to amend the NBC Act to allow for them to regulate social media. And they also tried to introduce a social media bill that was wrongly rejected at public hearing. What that shows you is that the government started regulation through sanction, which as I argued previously, cannot be done, should not be tolerated. You cannot start regulation through sanction. You must set the necessary legislative framework in place. That has not been done till date. Okay, interesting. Let me go to our next guest. Now it's very interesting, Barrister. I'll pick up from where Barrister and I just stopped. The government, in his words, were high handed. He talked about the fact that in courts, they've not been able to present any evidence as to the case that they made or the reasons they gave Nigerians for putting Twitter on hold or suspending the services of Twitter in Nigeria. Now, they ignored the law. That's number one. Secondly, there was an Echoes court judgment that said that the government did not have a right to suspend Twitter and that Twitter should be brought back. Well, we've not really heard anything about that. Media houses had to comply. We were given an order. In fact, that order was much, much more like if you were still on social media, you might get sanctioned by the NBC. And that's also for the telecommunications companies across the country. So why exactly do you think that the government is this high handed in terms of issues such as this? Well, thank you. I think it's very evident that the ban or so-called suspension of Twitter in Nigeria is largely borne out of number one, the end source protest and number two, and I think that was the green of rice that tilted the scale. The removal or taking down of President Bawari Street. Now, the initial reaction of the government was to just ban it. And the government needs to realize that this is not 1963. This is a democratic government, which means that freedom of speech and how you censure it needs to go through their public channel. And like Imi said, all of this things about introducing a bill came after the occurrence of the event. In other words, there's nothing that has been done now that the government could not have done before it proceeded with the suspension. In other words, engaging Twitter, they could have been able to proceed with Twitter to engage them actively and effectively to ensure that all of these their concerns are actively met. And if you look at the statement that was issued by the DG of that Mr. Abdulai, the concerns that the government raised where Twitter was being used to propagate fake news and polarizing Nigeria and also amounted to a threat to our national security. Now, there's nothing in the statement issued detailing the conditions that the Twitter needs to meet that identifies to us or to any reasonable Nigerian that all of these concerns that led to the banning in the first place have been met. So you see what you have at number one, we can agree that the ban was very, I am dead was ill advised, was esteem. Now this lifting of the ban also, I mean, we all know that the listing of the ban is in good time for the political season. So a lot of the political activities that I'm sorry, let me comment. Why do you think that this is, I mean, because I've heard people, we've seen comments on social media and people are saying, well, this is just because they need to use the social media for political reasons. But why? I mean, just like he said, there are other social platforms that they can use. Why Twitter? If Twitter was that important to Mr. President and his cohorts, why did they have to ban it for so long and now want to use it when it's convenient? I'm just, you know, pushing the argument. Exactly. So just buttressing my point. Now you would realize that a lot of Nigerian youths use Twitter more than they use Instagram and Facebook and the rest. So Twitter is actually the most used social media platform in Nigeria. Yes, close book, Facebook comes a close second for Twitter is largely used by, I mean, the enlightened populace. And if you notice yesterday when the ban was lifted, a lot of these politicians and their courts were pretty messages, announcing their resumption of activities on Twitter. You have the presidential aid also did the same as well. Announcing that they are back on Twitter and now it all ties in to the fact that we are now in a system where they need to get a message across. They need to find a way of pushing their candidates and ensuring that the people, the enlightened people who use Twitter have an idea of who and who is running for office or who desires to take control of our destiny as the people. So because if you look at the statement that was issued by Mr. Abdullah, ask yourself the question, has Twitter registered in Nigeria? Of course not. Has Twitter paid taxes to Nigeria? Of course not. Has Twitter appointed a country of the city for Nigeria? Of course not. So why exactly is the government in the hurry to lift the ban on Twitter when Twitter has also made the conditions that they themselves have put forward? I'm also curious as to why Twitter is quiet about it because if you're saying that Twitter has not met these conditions, they seem very tight-lipped about it, meaning that they're just going with it because they just want to continue to have Nigerians on Twitter. I mean I'm saying if the record needs to be set straight, if the government is saying Twitter has done this and Twitter hasn't really complied why they are tight-lipped about it? Well I think that after we get to the engagement that they had with Twitter, don't forget that there was the Presidential Committee that was set up, and then the Presidential Committee that was set up. So they've had several months to deal and engage with Twitter and its employees and its people. So there would be some sort of understanding. I mean I don't have it but I would believe that there's some sort of understanding between the government and Twitter. And I don't think that Twitter would want to rub the boat now. I haven't gotten this far because don't forget that a lot of Nigerians who actually use Twitter every day use the VPNs, they use the Virtual Private Networks to continue the activities. And I mean it was it went on as smoothly as... Oh I think that we lost audio with... Oh man. Okay, Ayaneji are you still there? Yeah I'm here. Can you hear me? Yes, we lost your audio for a second. Oh I'm too sorry about that.  And that is because they want to use this season. I mean they have barely a few months to elections and they need Twitter to push the agenda. Because there's no, if you look at the statement that was issued there, there is nothing on paper that suggests that the visas for the ban have actually been complied with or addressed by Twitter. I mean how do you tell, how has Twitter been able to stop the spread of fake news or fake news by Nigerians? Has it been able to solve our tribal issues or differences? Has Twitter been able to improve our national security? Those are questions that need to be answered and I don't see any answer from the governments for now. Back to you Inie. Still talking about the issue of high-handedness. I mean they've talked about propagating fake news and propaganda and all of that as some of the reasons why Twitter was brought down. What has changed? What will change? Now that they brought Twitter back, is the government going to tell us, assure us that they will not also participate in these propaganda in this fake news or will they not necessarily have to come back to set the record straight on issues that will be put out on that same social media platform? Because Nigerians need to be sure that in the spirit of democracy and as we get ready for the election season, what they criticize they will not fall victim of it. If I could ask more questions. In addition to the ones my brother Ayodeji has asked, the claim Twitter existed in Nigeria illegally having not been cooperated by the Cooperator First Commission and that is the the full room, the substance of their case, their defense in court as that's speak to you today. Has Twitter been registered by CSE? The answer is no. Has Twitter paid a single tax to the Nigerian government as that today? The answer is no. So what does that put differently? Absolutely nothing. All there is all that they claim they got what they can I even call that the promising note. I can't call that a promissory note. They just got certain on their takings.  Oh I think that connection is lost. I'm going to come back to you Ayodeji. Let's look at the international community that mostly frowned at you know the federal government action at the time who kept calling on the government to do right. They also frowned at the issues of ensars and the you know but that's not our base you know that's not what we're talking about today. I've seen a couple of you know international community Twitter handles excited about the fact that Nigeria has restored Twitter. So I'm going to toss the same question I asked Ini back to you. Is how are we certain that the federal government will do as it says we should do and everybody else including the media house is the newspapers. The avid Nigerian who's tweeting how are we certain that they will not fall victim of the same crimes that they're alleging that Nigerians were committing using social media especially Twitter. Well a very straight answer there is no certainty that we can hold on to from the government. What this government has shown in the past six plus years is that they do things out of impulse because this Twitter ban itself was not well thought out. It was ill advised. Now if you recall this same government ruled to power on the basis of Twitter and at a point during 2014-2013 you could see a lot of criticisms leveled against the former president Kudo Jonathan at the time. Were those criticisms deserved at the time absolutely yes absolutely yes. The government at the time was not performing and the the APC government the APC at the party mechanically crystallized the government. Now so what has changed with this government why are they so not ready to receive criticism why are they so not receptive to criticism. That's a question they should answer because now that you if you're in government ready to serve the people and the people have questions to ask then they should genuinely ask you. Now if you if you looked at the statement issued by the staff of the light again he did say in the statement that the priority of the government is to adapt and not to ban Twitter. Now if that was the government's priority in the very first place then there was basically no reason to have suspended or to have banned Twitter in the very first place. You could have engaged Twitter the way that the presidential committee did and the presidential committee did without banning Twitter. Now that's why we as lawyers will ask the questions because if the reason for the action that's for the ban in the very first place has not been resolved the issues that you raised in the beginning have not been resolved. What is the guarantee or what led what instituted the lifting of the ban? We have not seen any evidence of any statement by Twitter. There's no statement by Twitter clearly agreeing to all of these conditions. We don't know where their office addresses even though the announcement says that Twitter should be registered in Nigeria in the first quarter. I would have thought that the first condition would be that Twitter would register with the CAC. It doesn't take long. You have the ease of doing business. That would have been a good example a prime time to use that ease of doing business platform to have Twitter registered swiftly. Then you would have an office address and then we can say that Twitter is taking Nigeria seriously but as it appears to us it seems that it's only political game that is well orchestrated and of course at the right time because the ordinary Nigerians are found a way around Twitter, around the Twitter ban. They use the VPNs and they use it effectively and if I may say some of some Nigerian Twitter are already complaining about the resumption of political activities on Twitter because what that did was effectively government and political party agents could not tweet. So there was little or no friction as it relates to engaging government. They couldn't tweet for about several months and there was a lot of peace on the timeline but now that they are back between yesterday and today I mean you've had a lot of issues going back and forth. So the government is the one that is coming back to Twitter not the people. The people have always been on Twitter and they found they were around it. So it's a government that should be welcome back to Twitter. Alright, we're in campaign season. I always keep reminding us you know everybody that campaign season is around the corner and looking at the God from what you and you have been saying it makes people really you know look twice at the government but how will this Twitter ban and of course the restoration or lifting of the suspension rob off on the government and the ruling party as the elections are coming. Well I see a situation where the government of course will try to relax a few of its iron deadness try and relax a little bit particularly knowing that it's an outgoing government that the government will be out of power in about 15 to 15 months they're about a maximum of 16 months. So I see that it's the point where the government will try and let down with God and allow the political gladiators to take over. And of course don't forget also that even the officials of government government agencies are also affected by this ban. I just saw recently a tweet by the federal fire service announcing that they are now back on Twitter. Now I mean something an agency as important as the federal fire service where people could easily reach them on Twitter how to suspend its activities for several months and small businesses have to do the same as well for several months. So the effects of the ban on on the people on businesses on even government agencies and government establishment I mean it was only felt by everyone. Okay but as it relates to this political season I believe that the government I do not see them banning Twitter till they leave I believe that they would you also use it to push forward their achievements their propaganda and their agenda for the next election. Ini thank you for coming back apologies for the connection issues um finally in closing what kind of I mean we know that the government has done this somewhat to save face or um you know for whatever reasons maybe for the election season but what you as a person who has been advocating for human rights and all of those things um what what message should the average Nigerian be going away with with all that has happened in the space and time that Twitter has been banned and restored what should we be going away with so lots of people have been saying so many things um for Nigerians to take heed of but for you um especially being in the forefront of fighting this Twitter ban what should we be going away with as we get ready for the elections Beyond counting this for this regime of burial to come to an end those who participated in the atrocities that have been committed against Nigerians the Dragunian measures the high hand leaders the party that is complicit the political party and the political actors who are complicit in these things that have happened who have endorsed these things who have been silent on the impunity of this regime must be punished in the next election Nigeria has more and that is the point that I made on I made on Twitter I said look as citizens we must imbibe the culture of punishing politicians and political parties that inflict pains on us the reason why people go into offices and do whatever they like is because of the absence of the policy of consequence they know nothing will happen they know they will still be voted for they will know they will still have people rally for them but when they do these things that they know that they will pay a heavy price people become circumspect people begin to think before they act so I am saying that it is for Nigerians the enlightened population to ensure that those who are implicit either by their act or mission or by their silence are punished during the 2023 election that is the only way that one can rightly say that indeed we have learned lessons of the country there has to be a price for this they should not get away with it there has to be a price those who were silent when this ban was implemented those who came out to support it we must identify them and we must punish them at the post that's my position well the internet never forget so those messages and those tweets will be found Inira Refiang Ayodeji Awobiide both are legal practitioners thank you so much gentlemen for speaking with us thank you for having us all right well thank you all for staying with us we'll take a short break now when we return we discuss the influx of INEC officials into partisan politics stay with us