{"id":77103,"date":"2026-04-22T00:00:53","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T15:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/apr\/21\/timor-leste-parliament-questions-president-resort-scam-empire-links"},"modified":"2026-04-22T00:00:53","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T15:00:53","slug":"timor-leste-parliament-questions-president-over-proposed-resorts-links-to-scam-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=77103","title":{"rendered":"Timor-Leste parliament questions president over proposed resort\u2019s links to \u2018scam\u2019 empire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Jose Ramos-Horta urged by opposition to explain diplomatic passport given to businessman behind resort project, who denies any involvement with organised crime<\/p>\n<p>Timor-Leste\u2019s opposition has questioned how foreign investors in a proposed cryptocurrency resort obtained prime beachfront real estate in the country\u2019s capital, and has called on the president to explain why he issued a diplomatic passport to a Chinese businessman involved in the project.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in parliament in Dili on Monday, Fretilin opposition party MP Florentino Ximenes da Costa \u201cSinarai\u201d raised concerns about the proposed AB Digital Technology Resort, which was the subject of a months-long investigation by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/ng-interactive\/2026\/apr\/06\/prince-group-timor-leste-links-to-alleged-scam-empire\">Guardian and Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP)<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/apr\/21\/timor-leste-parliament-questions-president-resort-scam-empire-links\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jose Ramos-Horta urged by opposition to explain diplomatic passport given to businessman behind resort project, who denies any involvement with organised crimeTimor-Leste\u2019s opposition has questioned how foreign investors in a proposed cryptocurrency re&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5245,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[41,987,3265,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-cybercrime","category-scams","category-timor-leste"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5245"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77103"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77104,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77103\/revisions\/77104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}