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Le fabricant de montres d'ultra-luxe Richard Mille vient d'ouvrir une seconde – et fastueuse – boutique à Singapour, épicentre de son développement en Asie. Au même moment, les articles du groupe se retrouvent au cœur d'un scandale de blanchiment qui ébranle la ville-État.

Le 6 octobre, les hommes d'affaires singapouriens Dave Tan et Eddie Tan, associés du fabricant de montres de luxe Richard Mille en Asie, inauguraient avec les deux enfants et héritiers désignés du fondateur, Alexandre Mille et sa sœur Amanda Mille, la seconde boutique de la marque dans la ville-État. Située dans le quartier d'Orchard Road, à proximité du nouveau cinq-étoiles de Singapour, l'hôtel Pan Pacific Orchard, la boutique est conçue comme un appartement privé. Elle dispose d'une salle à manger, d'un bar, d'une bibliothèque et d'un patio pour fumer le cigare.

Singapour est un pôle de développement important pour Richard Mille : la filiale Asie du groupe est enregistrée dans la ville-État et ses associés sur place, les Tan, sont des célébrités locales (Mae Tan, la fille de Dave, a participé à une émission de téléréalité sur Netflix, Singapore Social). Richard Mille est présent à Singapour depuis 2010 et opère une première boutique située dans le palace Marina Bay Sands. L'espace, plus petit que la seconde boutique ouverte la semaine dernière, avait été inauguré par l'actrice malaisienne Michelle Yeoh, par ailleurs ambassadrice de la marque et dont une partie de la famille vit à Singapour.

Contre-publicité

Mais au moment où Richard Mille ouvrait sa seconde boutique à Singapour, ses montres figuraient de manière proéminente dans un dossier nettement moins glamour. Depuis le 15 août, la police locale enquête sur un réseau qui blanchissait, dans la ville-État, les profits d'opérateurs de cercles de jeux illégaux en Chine. Les autorités ont saisi des appartements, des comptes en banque, mais aussi des sacs et des montres, en particulier des modèles Richard Mille, comme l'a confirmé le porte-parole de la Singapore Police Force à Glitz.paris.

La valeur totale des biens saisis atteint 2,8 milliards de dollars singapouriens (1,9 milliard d'euros). Lors de leurs perquisitions, les enquêteurs ont recensé 294 sacs griffés, 546 bijoux et 164 montres, soigneusement rangés dans des présentoirs en cuir fabriqués sur mesure par Orient Crown. Richard Mille n'est pas la seule marque concernée – les suspects arrêtés possédaient aussi de nombreuses Nautilus de Patek Philippe, notamment des modèles 5712 –, mais les articles de la maison franco-suisse figuraient en grande quantité dans les collections saisies par la police.

Absence de contrôle

L'enquête tétanise les autorités de la péninsule, qui ont consacré la séance de questions parlementaires du 3 octobre à ce sujet, mais également tout le secteur du luxe, pour lequel Singapour et sa population d'exilés fiscaux privilégiés constituent un marché clé. D'ores et déjà, le gouvernement de la ville-État a mis en place un groupe de travail ministériel, dirigé par la ministre adjointe des finances Indranee Rajah, pour plancher sur un éventuel renforcement des contrôles anti-blanchiment, en particulier dans le commerce de détail d'articles de luxe.

À ce jour, ceux-ci sont quasi inexistants : l'achat de bijoux et de montres en cash n'est régulé que depuis 2019. Les marques et les revendeurs d'article "contenant des métaux précieux et des diamants" sont tenus de solliciter une accréditation auprès du ministère de la justice, et d'effectuer des vérifications sur leurs clients lorsque ceux-ci achètent, en liquide, pour plus de 20 000 $ de Singapour (13 860 €). Dans les faits, ces contrôles n'ont jamais lieu : le prix du moindre article Richard Mille, qui a sollicité et obtenu une accréditation, est nettement supérieur au plafond fixé par la loi. Le laisser-faire est encore plus évident dans le commerce de sacs, chaussures et vêtements, qui ne font l'objet d'aucune régulation particulière.

Croissance à deux chiffres

Ce non-interventionnisme fait depuis des années les affaires des groupes de luxe, qui disposent tous de boutiques, certaines fastueuses, à Singapour. Elles sont pour la plupart regroupées dans le centre commercial de Marina Bay Sands, où est installé Richard Mille. Dans cet espace, Louis Vuitton (LVMH) opère depuis dix ans une boutique flottante de 4 300 m2. Presque toutes les marques de LVMH, Kering, Richemont, ainsi que Chanel, sont également présentes à Marina Bay Sands, opéré par Las Vegas Sands et qui compte aussi un hôtel cinq-étoiles et un casino. Aucun conglomérat ne détaille les chiffres des ventes de ses maisons à Singapour. Seul Richemont indique, dans son dernier rapport annuel, que les résultats de ses marques dans la ville-État ont été "à deux chiffres" en 2022 (l'Asie représente 40 % des ventes de Richemont).

Ceci sans compter les boutiques duty-free dans l'aéroport de Changi, qui voit passer chaque année près de 90 millions de passagers. DFS, la filiale duty-free de LVMH, dispose de pas moins de trois centres commerciaux à Changi : T-Galleria by DFS, Singapore at Scotts Road et le Singapore Cruise Centre. DFS a par ailleurs détenu pendant vingt ans les concessions de vente de cigarettes et d'alcool à Changi, avant de passer la main en 2019 au groupe sud-coréen Lotte.

La mise en place de contrôles anti-blanchiment sur le commerce de détail d'articles de luxe à Singapour serait un coup très dur pour le secteur. Mais, pour les autorités de la ville-État, le luxe constitue une cible plus commode que le secteur financier. Également impliquées – plusieurs établissements ont ouvert des comptes et fourni des prêts aux suspects –, les banques disposent d'un poids politique et économique sans commune mesure avec le luxe à Singapour, qui est un centre financier d'envergure mondiale.

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Man was charged with making a threat against Palestinian-Americans in Dearborn, Mich.; ‘we’re pretty tight here,’ residents say

DEARBORN, Mich.—This Arab American enclave outside Detroit is attracting online vitriol in the wake of the Hamas-Israel conflict, putting people on edge, but many residents say they trust the strength of their community.

“It’s not causing problems here. Everybody is doing their jobs and even at protests, they’re mad, but they say what they’re going to say and go home,” said Sadiq Musleh, a 47-year-old auto worker of Yemeni descent, as he got a haircut on a rainy Saturday morning at a barbershop tucked between an Arab meat market and a halal pizza shop.

He said the post-9/11-era was a scary one for many Arab Americans as they faced discrimination and threats, but that the atmosphere isn’t nearly as hostile now. “After 9/11, it was really tough, but after that, no,” he said.

Last Thursday, Dearborn police said they arrested a man in the nearby suburb of Farmington Hills, after he made what they called a credible threat on social media against Palestinian-Americans in Dearborn. The man, identified as Carl Mintz, has been charged with threatening terrorism, a felony, and misdemeanor malicious use of a telecommunications device. He was arraigned on Saturday and bail was set at $500,000 in cash. As of Sunday, he was still being held, a police spokesman said. It wasn’t immediately clear whether he had an attorney.

“The police are awesome here in Dearborn, they protect people. They actually hunted him down and caught him,” said Shorouq Hayek, 36, a Palestinian-American schoolteacher, attending an “All Out for Palestine” rally Saturday afternoon in a city park with her three children. Hundreds attended the rally, waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Resistance is justified, when people are occupied.”

“We’re pretty tight here in Dearborn, we’re a very diverse city and people usually stand with each other,” Hayek said.

Police said they have beefed up patrols at schools and houses of worship in the city and are continuing to monitor and investigate social media threats. On Sunday, the FBI said it has seen a rise in threats against Jews and Muslims in the U.S. since the war began and that it was concerned about the possibility of attacks as the war intensifies. On Sunday a 6-year-old was killed and his mother injured in a stabbing attack near Chicago that authorities said was a hate crime.

“For over a century, Metro Detroit has been home to a strong interfaith tapestry formed by decades of fellowship among neighbors of Jewish, Islamic, Christian, and other faiths,” said Dearborn Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud in a statement. He recently went on paternity leave and wasn’t available for an interview. “We will not allow the disheartening actions of one individual to break the bonds of our longstanding relationships with one another,” he said in the statement.

Dearborn has long been a magnet for Arab Americans, starting in the 1920s when they came to the city to work at the massive Ford River Rouge complex. Today, the majority of the city is Arab American, including many people of Lebanese, Yemeni and Iraqi descent, and Hammoud is the city’s first Arab American mayor. It is represented in Congress by Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Detroit, the only Palestinian-American in Congress and a liberal firebrand who often clashes with her own party’s pro-Israel policies.

On Friday, she issued a statement calling on President Biden to do more to save Palestinian lives as they face what she called an impossible evacuation order and threat of a ground war.

The investment delivers significant diversification for PATRIZIA’s infrastructure platform, marking its entry into the EV charging sector as well as the first investment in Germany for its European Infrastructure Fund series - Source TradeTheNews.com

JPMorgan is predicting that the euro will fall to parity with the US dollar by the end of this year, as the war in the Middle East threatens to push up the price of Europe’s imported energy and higher borrowing costs weigh on eurozone growth.

The call puts Wall Street’s biggest bank at the forefront of a growing group of lenders predicting that the common currency’s steady decline since the summer has further to run.

The euro, which is at present trading at $1.0530, has already fallen about 6 per cent against the greenback since its peak in mid-July, as the unexpected strength of the US economy has pushed the dollar higher while the eurozone braces itself for a downturn.

Despite recent weakness, the euro is “still not incorporating a discount for the myriad of uncertainties the currency faces”, said Meera Chandan, co-head of the global FX strategy research team at JPMorgan, citing “tighter financial conditions and potential geopolitical spillover risks, all of which come amid stagnant growth”.

“We now expect EUR/USD to test parity, down from our previous target of 1.05,” she added.

The US’s surprisingly resilient economy in recent months has helped push the dollar higher, while mounting recession fears in Germany, the eurozone’s traditional growth engine, have pulled the euro lower.

The German government last week slashed its own forecast for economic growth, warning that its economy would shrink by 0.4 per cent this year, while the IMF predicted it would be the worst-performing major advanced economy this year.

A fall to parity would bring the euro back to levels not seen since the second half of last year, when the single currency fell below $1 for the first time since 2002 after the war in Ukraine cut off much of Europe’s gas supply.

A recent resurgence in energy prices sparked by the Israel-Hamas war has added to the pressure on an already slowing economy. The price of benchmark European gas futures has risen 26 per cent since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7.

Prices were trading at about €50 per megawatt hour on Monday, still far below a peak of more than €300/MWh hit in August 2022. Europe has largely filled its gas stocks in preparation for winter, cushioning it from further disruption.

In a research note on Friday, analysts at Goldman Sachs said the bearish case for the euro has been growing, exacerbated by bond investors’ concerns over Italy’s bigger than expected budget deficit.

“First, activity data disappointed expectations over the summer. Second . . . fiscal concerns have re-emerged in Italy that will likely drive upward pressure on BTP [Italian government bond] yields . . . Third, the risks to oil and natural gas prices look skewed to the upside,” Goldman said.

The spread — or gap — between yields on benchmark Italian debt and that of Germany was 2.01 percentage points on Monday, breaching the key level of 2 percentage points. Bond market strains could increase pressure on the European Central Bank to stop increasing, or begin cutting, interest rates. The governor of Spain’s central bank said on Monday that the rout in global debt markets meant the ECB had probably done enough to get inflation under control.

Currency speculators have also been removing bullish wagers on the euro in recent weeks. Although they remain net long — betting on a rising price — analysts said the currency could move lower as positions continue to be unwound.

Net long positions were about 75,000 contracts among leveraged funds for the week to October 10, according to data from the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, down from more than 170,000 in August.

“Normally to prevent the euro from falling lower you like to see the market extremely short already but it’s still long,” said Chris Turner, global head of research at ING, who said that euro-dollar parity was “possible”. Shorting means betting on a falling price.

While some banks still expect the euro to strengthen by the end of the year, a number including Rabobank, Nomura and RBC Capital Markets have lowered their forecasts in recent weeks, forecasting the euro will fall to $1.02 by the end of the year or early in 2024.

“On many fronts Europe is faced with a lot of hurdles and this is totally independent of the higher for longer and safe haven narratives which are promoting the dollar right now,” said Jane Foley, head of FX strategy at Rabobank, who expects the euro to fall to $1.02 by the end of the year.

“Parity is certainly something that we see as possible and we think it will be talked about increasingly in the months ahead,” she added.

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