Australia

Alleged torturer during Pinochet regime in Chile arrested in Australia

Feb. 20 (UPI) -- Australian authorities arrested a woman for her alleged involvement in kidnappings and killings in Chile during the Pinochet regime from 1973 to 1990.

Adriana Rivas faces possible extradition to Chile after her Tuesday arrest. Authorities took her to a police station in Surrey Hills, a suburb of Melbourne, and she participated in a hearing in Sydney's Central Local Court by video conferencing.

Her arrest was "pursuant to a request from the Republic of Chile for her extradition" a spokesperson for Australia's attorney general, Christian Porter, said in a statement. "This individual is wanted to face prosecution in the Republic of Chile for aggravated kidnapping offences."

The judge adjourned her case until March 1.

Rivas was an intelligence officer in Chile during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, during which thousands of his Chilean opponents were kidnapped, tortured and slain. A lower-level employee at the notorious Simon Bolivar Barracks in Santiago, Chile, told Australian prosecutors that Rivas was involved in tortures and killings.

Rivas arrived in Australia in 1978 and worked as a nanny and house cleaner, and was detained by police when she returned to Chile for a visit in 2006. While out on bail she returned to Australia. She was charged in Chile on seven counts of aggravated kidnapping.

In a 2013 interview Rivas said she was innocent of the charges, but defended the torture of the Pinochet regime.

"They had to break the people. It has happened all over the world, not only in Chile," she said.

Thousands of expatriate Chileans in Australia, many of whom escaped the Pinochet regime, have encouraged Australian authorities to begin extradition proceedings against Rivas.

"We congratulate each other for this fact [the arrest], but we also feel sadness for families, children and grandchildren and for people who have lost their loved ones because they were killed by the armed forces and Chilean security," Adriana Navarro, a lawyer representing families of Pinochet's victims, said.

Navarro added that relatives in Australia have provided information to Chilean authorities about the tortures and killings for the past five years.

Rivas can give her consent for extradition to Chile, or use a variety of review procedures to remain in Australia as long as possible.

Democracy was restored to Chile in 1990. Pinochet died in 2006.

Toyota Australia says no customer data taken in attempted cyber attack

Toyota Australia has been the victim of an attempted cyber attack, but believes no employee or customer data was taken.

The carmaker said it had no details about the origin of the attack and the threat was being managed by its IT department.

“Toyota Australia can confirm it has been the victim of an attempted cyber attack,” a company spokesman said in a statement on Thursday.

“At this stage, we believe no private employee or customer data has been accessed.”

The spokesman said the company is working with international cybersecurity experts to get its systems up and running again as soon as possible.

“We apologise for an inconvenience caused and thank customers for their patience.”

On Thursday the Age reported that hackers had broke into the medical files of Melbourne’s Cabrini hospital and demanded a ransom after scrambling the data of about 15,000 patients.

The hospital has been unable to access the files for weeks after the cybercrime syndicate used malware to cripple its server and demanded a cryptocurrency payment to decrypt the data, the report said.

The malware used to penetrate the unit’s security network is believed to be from North Korea or Russia, while the origin of the perpetrators has not been revealed.

UPDATE 1-Australia's Westpac sued for making loans consumers could not repay

* Class action lawsuit focused on irresponsible lending

* Follows bank settling similar case with corporate regulator (Adds background of previous lawsuit)

SYDNEY, Feb 21 (Reuters) - Australia’s Westpac Banking Corp was sued on Thursday by consumers who said the bank made them loans they could not afford to repay and in violation of banking regulations.

The case comes with Australia’s financial services sector under great pressure to reform after a public inquiry uncovered widespread misconduct, including charging customers fees for no service, irresponsible lending and deception of regulators.

Westpac had already agreed to pay a A$35 million ($25 million) fine for wrongly approving thousands of mortgages in a similar case filed by Australia’s corporate regulator last year.

Under Australian law, banks must check that loans are suitable for borrowers.

“This case will seek to prove that Westpac failed to comply with these obligations and that this failure caused substantial losses for many consumers,” said Ben Slade, a lawyer at Maurice Blackburn, the firm that filed the class-action lawsuit.

Funding for the case will come from UK-based Harbour Litigation Funding and covers borrowers who took loans from the bank after 2011.

Westpac, the country’s oldest bank and the largest by assets, did not have an immediate response.

A powerful inquiry into Australia’s finance sector excoriated the nation’s lenders and said that poor treatment of customers was driven by greed, although it has not recommended major structural changes to the industry.

In its case against the regulator, Westpac accepted that it had breached consumer lending law when its automated loan approval system failed to consider borrowers’ living expenses when deciding if they could repay a home loan.

Of 260,000 loans approved over a three-and-a-half-year period from 2011 to 2015, Westpac ignored living expenses for 50,000 and miscalculated another 50,000 borrowers’ ability to repay their debts. ($1 = 1.3961 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Tom Westbrook in Sydney Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Matthew Lewis)