Sunday, 23 February 2014

Illicit trade: Tea smuggling shaves Rs8.7b off potential tax revenues

Manufacturer terms anti-smuggling measures short-lived with little impact . PHOTO: FILE
KARACHI: 
One in every three cups of tea consumed in the country is tax-evaded and a product of illicit trade, which doesn’t only benefit smugglers with higher profit margins against legitimate brands but also costs the national exchequer more than Rs8.7 billion or $84 million a year in tax revenues.
Being one of the world’s largest importers and consumers of tea, Pakistan is a big market for tea traders. The country’s estimated total consumption stands at approximately $610 million as of calendar year 2013, according to Pakistan Tea Association (PTA).
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In what can be described as a major strain on the cash-strapped economy and the profits of legal brands, illicit tea business accounts for more than a third, half by some estimates, of the total market.
According to data compiled by Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, the country imported 122,000 tons or Rs35.6 billion worth of tea in fiscal year (FY) 2012-13 – the number did not include 112,000 tons of tea smuggled and consumed in the country.
“Through repeated market research, we know that per capita consumption of tea in Pakistan is 1.17 kgs per year,” Unilever Pakistan Limited, one of the major players in the market and a member of PTA, said in response to queries.
“Based on an approximate population of 200 million, this amounts to 234,000 tons [234 million kg]. Thus, almost half the tea is smuggled in mainly through misuse of the Afghan Transit Treaty,” the company said quoting PTA. Based on their findings, the illicit tea business comes to about 48% of the total market. Explaining the challenges facing the legitimate industry, the maker of Lipton Yellow Label Tea said anti-smuggling measures taken so far have been short-lived and have a negligible impact.
“Business operations and profitability of legitimate commercial importers and packers have been severely curtailed,” it said, adding, “smugglers enjoy an unfair advantage of approximately Rs70 per kg.”
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Due to high taxes, the lower-income groups are sold tea adulterated with harmful dyes, pigeon’s blood, sawdust to name a few, it said.
While the smugglers are benefiting at the cost of legitimate industry, the damage to the national exchequer in terms of revenue loss is equally significant.
The import duty levied on tea has remained unchanged at 10% for the past several years while general sales tax (GST) was raised from 16% to 17% in the last budget. If the tax rate is applied to 112,000 tons of smuggled tea, it translates to a potential revenue loss of Rs8.7 billion for FY2013.
Moreover, an estimated 100,000 tons were imported through non-duty-paid channels in 2013, resulting in a total revenue loss of Rs11 billion, Unilever said quoting PTA.
The government’s version on the subject has been covered in a separate report of the same edition. The industry, however, suggested what can be done to curb this menace.
Quantitative limits, lower tax
The Pakistani arm of the Anglo-Dutch foods and consumer goods giant said the government should improve procedures for Afghan transit trade and place quantitative limits on the volume of tea that is allowed access through Pakistan.
Afghanistan is a nation of only 25 million – predominantly green tea drinkers – but they are importing nearly the same quantity of black tea as Pakistan, a nation of nearly 200 million, it said.
The government’s support via policy decisions or reduced taxation can create a more level playing field by reducing the cost of branded tea for consumers, Unilever said. “In June 2012, sales tax on black tea was reduced from 16% to 5% to create a more level playing field. However, the decision was reversed in nine months due to revenue pressure,” it said.
However, the window in that case was too small for any significant impact on the infrastructure and modus operandi of the informal sector, the consumer goods giant said.
“Policy decisions must be given due time to demonstrate impact on tea smuggling, which has been a practice for decades. Smuggling can be eliminated gradually and with patience through mutual cooperation between the government and tea manufacturers,” it said.

Desperate Manchester United have paid over the odds to keep 'selfish' Rooney

The striker held the Red Devils to ransom for the second time in his career and has been rewarded with a club record £300,000-a-week (€360,000) deal
COMMENT
By Greg Stobart

It says everything about the nature of Wayne Rooney’s relationship with Manchester United that the striker’s new five-and-a-half-year contract feels like a 'victory' for the player rather than a mutually beneficial agreement that reflects his importance to the club.

Rooney has challenged United to a high stakes game of cat and mouse and for the second time in his career come out on top, with an extortionate £300,000-a-week (€363,000) contract that will end a few months before his 34th birthday.

BUMPER DEAL
ROONEY'S MANCHESTER UNITED CAREER
APPEARANCES
GOALS
PREMIER LEAGUE TITLES WON
CHAMPIONS LEAGUE WINS
CLUB WORLD CUP WINS
LEAGUE CUP WINS
430
208
5
1
1
2
The 28-year-old held all the cards, as his existing £250,000-a-week (€302,000) deal ran into its final 18 months and the player and his agent Paul Stretford have once again played their hand perfectly.

Twice Rooney has threatened to leave or refused to commit to United, twice he has walked away with a lucrative contract that makes him the club’s highest paid player.

United had little choice but to bow to Rooney’s demands as his value in the transfer market dropped by the day, with the looming threat of one of their few remaining stellar talents walking away for nothing at the end of next season.

United probably felt that, with the stock price tumbling and the team clearly still in a state of flux after Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement, they simply had to tie Rooney down to a new deal.

David Moyes will be relieved to have secured Rooney's services given he has looked to build the team around the Liverpudlian, while United can claim that the contract reaffirms the club’s ambition, despite what has thus far been a disastrous season for the Premier League champions.

Indeed, along with the signing of Juan Mata in January, Rooney's new deal represents the highlight of the post-Ferguson era. There’s certainly been very little to celebrate on the pitch.

Moyes has found himself under increasing pressure as he gets to grips with the unique standards expected of a Manchester United manager, but on the Rooney issue has shown himself willing to step out of  Ferguson’s shadow and be his own man.

The Scot was ready to sell Rooney and confirmed in his autobiography that the former Everton striker asked to leave the club for the second time in his career last season, although the player stopped short of submitting a formal transfer request. The Scot has suggested that money - namely the potential loss of signing-on fees - was the reason Rooney did not lodge a written request.

Sir Alex warned in his book that Rooney had already “lost some of his old thrust” that made him such a precocious teenager and added that the forward “needs to be careful” about his condition as he can be “swallowed up by a lack of fitness”.

The 72-year-old's judgement on players was rarely wrong during 26 years at Old Trafford, so perhaps United fans should be wary that Ferguson wrote that “with that kind of physique it was hard to imagine him playing into his 30s”. If he is right again, a contract worth £70m (€85m) in wages alone over five years could well turn out to be more burden than blessing. 

Without doubt, Rooney has improved this season under Moyes, scoring nine league goals in 21 appearances, but he is not worth £300,000-a-week and does not deserve his ranking as the main man ahead of Robin van Persie or the club's record signing Mata.

MAN UTD LATEST
11/2Man Utd are 11/2 with Bet365 to beat Crystal Palace 1-0 on Saturday
He has been granted access to privileged information about transfer targets - allegedly impressive enough to convince him of the club’s ambition - while he is likely to be made captain after Nemanja Vidic departs in the summer.

A captain who has twice attempted to engineer a move, demanded to be played in certain positions and spoken of having to be “a bit selfish” hardly seems like the right man to captain a side going through an extensive rebuild.

Rooney’s form has also dipped since he returned from a groin strain while his on-pitch partnership with Van Persie - himself understood to be dissatisfied at Old Trafford - has been virtually non-existent this term.

Rooney, who joined United from Everton in 2004, will talk a good game about being convinced by the club’s ambition but would no doubt have taken a different view had his move to Chelsea last summer materialised.

He has scored 208 times for United is now almost certain to break the legendary Sir Bobby Charlton's record of 249 goals for the club.

When Rooney stunned United by submitting his infamous transfer request in 2010, Sir Alex told him: "Just remember one thing: respect this club. I don't want any nonsense from you; respect your club".

He never got the message. And whatever happens now, Rooney will never become a United legend.

World's most-wanted drug lord captured from Mexico's beach resort -

Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, was captured with help from US agencies in a major victory for the government in a long, brutal drugs war (Reuters photo)
Mexico's most wanted man, drug cartel kingpin Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman, was captured on Saturday with help from US agencies in a major victory for the government in a long, grisly war.
Guzman, known as "El Chapo" (Shorty) in Spanish, has long run Mexico's infamous Sinaloa Cartel and over the past decade he emerged as one of the world's most powerful organized crime bosses, even making it onto Forbes' list of billionaires.
He was caught in his native northwestern state of Sinaloa in an early morning operation without a shot being fired, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said.
It is a political triumph for President Enrique Pena Nieto, who took office in late 2012. Pena Nieto confirmed the capture via Twitter earlier on Saturday and congratulated his security forces. The US government also applauded the arrest.
Guzman's cartel has smuggled billions of dollars worth of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines into the United States, and fought vicious turf wars with other Mexican gangs.
He pioneered the use of sophisticated underground tunnels to smuggle drug shipments across the border and also became a major narcotics exporter to Europe and Asia in recent years.
Nearly 80,000 people have been killed in the last seven years with much of the violence in western and northern regions that have long been key smuggling routes.
Many of the victims are tortured and beheaded and their bodies dumped in a public place or in mass graves. The violence has ravaged border cities and even beach resorts such as Acapulco.
Known as "El Chapo" (Shorty) in Spanish, Guzman has long run Mexico's infamous Sinaloa Cartel and over the past decade emerged as one of the world's most powerful organized crime bosses (Reuters photo)
Guzman, 56, was captured in a pre-dawn raid on a seaside condominium in the northwestern tourist resort and fishing and shrimp-processing center of Mazatlan, around 135 miles (220 km) from Guzman's suspected base in Culiacan.
He was then flown to Mexico City. Wearing a cream shirt and dark jeans and with a black moustache, he was frog-marched in front of reporters on live TV, bound for prison.
It was the first public glimpse of the elusive kingpin since he escaped from prison in 2001.
The 5-foot, 6-inch (1.7-metre) Guzman looked briefly toward TV crews on the tarmac at the Marines' hangar at Mexico City's airport. His head was shoved back down by a soldier wearing a face mask.
Murillo Karam said security forces had nearly caught Guzman days earlier, but he gave them the slip.
"The doors of the house ... were reinforced with steel and so in the minutes it took us to open them, it allowed for an escape through tunnels," he said.
They then tracked him down again and waited for the right moment to strike, Murillo Karam said, adding that some US agencies had helped in the capture.
He gave no more details but a US Homeland Security source said Mexican forces worked jointly with agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Marshals Service.
It was not clear whether Guzman would now face trial in Mexico or be extradited to the United States.
Quick operation
Alberto Islas, a security expert with Risk Evaluation, said Pena Nieto ordered his cabinet to capture Guzman immediately after taking office in December 2012, and handed the job to the Marines, widely seen as less corrupt than other security forces.
Citing people involved in the operation, he said 25 Marines entered the condominium where Guzman was staying and evaded two security teams there to protect the drug lord. Guzman and three other people, including a woman, were asleep at the time.
The whole operation took around 7-1/2 minutes and neighbors only realized it had taken place when they heard the helicopter whisking Guzman away, Islas said.
Mexican TV channel Foro TV broadcast footage of the inside of the relatively modest condominium, where the door to the apartment where Guzman was sleeping had been kicked in.
A swimming pool was in the yard below, and just across the road, a beach. The apartments have views over the sea.
After the raid, clothes and bed sheets were left strewn over the tiled floor of the austere dwelling. Short-term lets for a two bedroom apartment in the complex run at around $1,200 a month, according to rental websites.
Traffic snarled outside the property on Saturday evening as motorists stopped to snap photos. Colored lights lined the road ahead of carnival celebrations due next week.
Local builder Arturo Ramos, 35, drove with his family to see the site. He said there had been no extortion since Guzman took control of the area in around 2009, and now fears another cartel will try to move in.
"We're worried this will mean war here," he said. "All of us who have businesses here are worried about his capture. No one will be able to protect us, not the federal government, no one."
"There was stability under him," he added. "There were no robberies, no kidnappings. Now there will be chaos."
Guzman's exploits have made him a legend in many impoverished communities of northern Mexico, where he has been immortalized in dozens of ballads and low-budget movies.
The United States had placed a $5 million bounty on Guzman's head and authorities in Chicago last year dubbed him the city's first Public Enemy No. 1 since gangster Al Capone.
US Attorney General Eric Holder described the arrest as a landmark achievement. "The criminal activity Guzman allegedly directed contributed to the death and destruction of millions of lives across the globe through drug addiction, violence and corruption."
The Homeland Security source said US agents assisted on the ground near the arrest site, and that the operation was the result of connecting many dots, not a single tip.
"I don't think either the Mexicans or our guys could have done this by themselves," he said. "We've been searching for years and wouldn't have been in this position without leveraging and combining assets from Mexico, the DEA, ICE and the Marshals."
Drugs violence in Mexico exploded after conservative former President Felipe Calderon sent in the army in early 2007 to try to quell powerful cartel bosses.
Some were captured or killed but the campaign triggered turf wars and countless atrocities. While the centrist Pena Nieto has criticized Calderon's policy, he also found it tough to break with.
Calderon congratulated Pena Nieto's government in a message on Twitter on Saturday, describing the arrest as a "great blow."
There was some concern in the United States that Pena Nieto might not be as aggressive in pursuing cartel leaders as Calderon had been, but Guzman's capture will ease those fears.
However, his capture is seen unlikely to interrupt the flow northward of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and crystal meth.
"This is indeed a very significant development and will no doubt have a huge ... symbolic value for the Mexican government and for U.S.-Mexico cooperation," said David Shirk, an expert on drug trafficking at the Wilson Center in Washington.
"The one thing that is clear is that this is not the end of the war. There's, unfortunately, many other players involved in moving illicit drugs into the United States."
From humble roots to billionaire
From humble beginnings in a ramshackle village, Guzman rose up in the 1980s under the tutelage of Sinaloan kingpin Miguel Angel Felix Gallardo, alias "The Boss of Bosses," who pioneered cocaine smuggling routes into the United States.
He came to prominence in 1993, when assassins who shot dead Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas claimed they had been gunning for Guzman but got the wrong target.
Guzman is the latest in a series of high-profile capos to be caught or killed.
Last July, Pena Nieto's government caught the leader of the Zetas drug cartel, Miguel Angel Trevino, also known as Z-40.
The Zetas have been blamed for many of the worst atrocities of Mexico's drugs war, acts that have sullied the country's reputation and put fear into tourists and investors alike.
Analysts were divided on whether Guzman's lieutenant Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada would take the helm of the Sinaloa Cartel.
Alejandro Hope, security director at the Mexican Competitiveness Institute think tank, said Guzman's downfall represented the end of a 30-year era of high-profile drug lords running riot across Mexico.
"There will be very few figures of this caliber," he said.
Pena Nieto has sought to play down the drug fight, seeking to focus public attention on a series of economic reforms spanning energy to telecoms, which he has pushed through Congress aiming to boost long-lagging economic growth.
He has also tried an unorthodox strategy, co-opting vigilantes in western Mexico in the fight against the feared Knights Templar Cartel. Security experts say this is potentially playing with fire.
Guzman has been caught before, and famously gave his jailers the slip. In 2001, he escaped from prison, reportedly in a laundry cart, to become Mexico's most high-profile trafficker. He is believed to command groups of hitmen from the U.S. border into Central America.
He was indicted in the United States on dozens of charges of racketeering and conspiracy to import illegal drugs.
Forbes dropped Guzman from its list of billionaires last year, because it was impossible to verify his wealth.
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The Nuclear graveyard: To 'light up' our homes, some lives are falling into 'darkness'

By 2032, India hopes to generate 63 gigawatts of nuclear power that will reduce its dependence on energy and make it self-reliant. Jadugoda, a small township in Jharkhand, where the Uranium Corporation of India Ltd (UCIL) is mining uranium, may be paying the price for that ambition.
Photojournalist Chinky Shukla, 27, found her interest  piqued by newspaper articles on the effects of uranium mining on the Jadugoda population.
“I read reports by scientists and environmentalists who had been tracking the Jadugoda issue.
 I also read about the increasing number of deaths among nuclear scientists in India.

The authorities were dismissing them as suicides,” Shukla recalls.

She decided to follow the Jadugoda story and went there in 2012.
The project that took three weeks, yielded the photofeature, ‘Jadugoda: The Nuclear Graveyard’ that won the Picture of the Year award in the National Press Photo contest of the Media Foundation of India, 2013.

It also won first prize in the All India Environmental Journalism Contest that year.



Right : Lung cancer
Mohan, 19, has six toe-fingers. His father, a miner in the uranium mines at Jadugoda, died of lung cancer  

Left :  Radioactive waste
The pipe that the little girls are sitting on carries radioactive waste from the mines to the tailing pond. UCIL has erected signboards to warn people
Awards, however, didn’t allow Shukla to forget the horror. She remembers taking pictures of a toddler’s burial in Jadugoda.

“The mother kept saying that unlike other children, he had no physical or mental deformity. But sudden death is also caused by continued exposure to radioactive substances,” says Shukla.
“The government is in denial. It is citing poverty and malnutrition as reasons for the tribals’ health issues,” she says.
Shukla also got in touch with an NGO, JOAR, that has been working to build awareness about the plight of the people in Jadugoda.
“The UCIL has been smart. It has built roads, the mine-workers are paid well. They know what the uranium mine is doing to themselves and their children.

But without alternative sources of income, they choose to remain quiet,” says the photojournalist.
The houses are equipped with dosimeters to measure the level of radioactivity in the area.

But the readings are never shared with the residents.

The main problem, Shukla believes, is the careless
transportation and disposal of the radioactive waste.

“The government must wake up to the threat,” she say

School cricket in India taught me valuable leadership lessons: Satya Nadella

When Microsoft tapped Satya Nadella as its third CEO, it turned to an engineering executive and company insider. He takes over at a critical time, as Microsoft grapples with both strategic and cultural challenges. In his first interview as CEO, Nadella spoke to The New York Times about leadership lessons and fostering innovation. Excerpts.
It happened two or three annual reviews ago. I asked him: “What do you think? How am I doing?” He said: “Look, you will know it, I will know it, and it will be in the air. So you don’t have to ask me. At your level, it’s going to be fairly implicit.”What leadership lessons have you learned from Steve Ballmer?
I went on to ask, “How do I compare to the people who had my role before me?” And Steve said: “Who cares? The context is so different. I want you to stay focused on that, versus trying to do this comparative benchmark.” The lesson was that you have to stay grounded and be brutally honest with yourself on where you stand.

Read: Satya Nadella named Microsoft CEO, India raise toast
And what about Bill Gates?
Bill is the most analytically rigorous person. In the first five seconds of a meeting he’ll find some logical flaw in something I’ve shown him. But he’s quite grounded. You can push back on him. He’ll argue with you, and then he’ll be the first person to say, “Oh, you’re right.”
There’s lot of curiosity around what kind of role Bill will play.
We’ve worked closely for nine years now. So I’m very comfortable with this. One of the fantastic things that only Bill can do is to get everybody energised to bring their A-game.

Read: Indian-origin academicians lead top global institutes
What were some early leadership lessons for you?
I played on my school’s cricket team. I was a bowler and was throwing very ordinary stuff one day. So the captain took over from me and got the team a breakthrough, and then he let me take over again. I went on to take more wickets after that. It was an important leadership lesson. Leaders have to bolster the confidence of the people they are leading.
Tell me about your management approach in your new role.
It is about getting people to commit and engage in an authentic way, and for us to feel that energy as a team.
Microsoft has said that it needs to create much more of a unified “one Microsoft” culture. How are you going to do that?
Culturally, I think we have operated as if we had the formula figured out, and it was all about optimising the formula. Now it is about discovering the new formula. Leadership has to lean in and not let things die on the vine. When you have a $70-billion business, something that’s $1 million can feel irrelevant. But that $1 million business might be the most relevant thing we are doing.
To me, that is the big culture change — recognising innovation and fostering its growth.

Read: Microsoft needs to get back to innovation roots, says CEO Satya Nadella
How are you going to approach your new role?

Longevity in this business is about being able to reinvent yourself or invent the future. In our case, given 39 years of success, it’s more about reinvention. We’ve had great successes, but our future is not about our past success. Whether we will invent things is what is going to drive our future

How Mumbai underworld became India's most dreaded mafia

In January this year, police officers monitoring a murder case stumbled upon a gangster's phone conversation. He was sorting out a family dispute over a multi-crore property in the central suburbs.

His intervention would earn him a considerable amount of money, and ensure that he doesn't have resort to extortion or bloodshed.
"If a gangster manages to solve a Rs100-crore dispute, he gets a minimum 10% of the property value. This way he does not need to indulge in petty crime," said a police officer.
After a bloody decade in the '90s, the fabric of the underworld changed. The ruthless and brash gangsters who had replaced the old dons and their ‘work ethics', toned down their activities. Instead of contract killings and extortion, they got involved in the corporate sector, especially real estate.
The new generation of gangsters took over the reins in the 1990s from the likes of Karim Lala, Haji Mastan and Vardharajan Mudaliar, who had built their empires based on trust and mutual respect.
This marked an end of an era of the ‘sophisticated dons', and the beginning of a ruthless and brash brand of gangsters who had to be cut to size with equal ruthlessness.
If the Pathan gang was blood thirsty, they met their match in Dawood Ibrahim, son of a constable. The first blow was struck by the Pathans when Samad Khan killed Dawood's brother Shabir.
But Dawood had the last laugh. He planned out strikes against Samad and Amirzada and killed them. Alamzeb was killed in a police encounter in Gujarat.
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This was the start of the change in the underworld. It was also the beginning of corporate underworld, where people would keep guns in their drawer and earn money through investments, said crime branch officials.
Dawood, unlike other gangsters, ensured that his men were carefully chosen. A trait his aide-turned-arch rival Chhota Rajan inherited. "The men they chose in the '80s and '90s showed unflinching loyalty, and were willing to die for them. Especially because these gangsters took care of their men and families," said a crime branch officer.
But the bloodbath on the streets of Mumbai in the 1990s with gangs wresting for control, the rivalry between Dawood and Rajan, saw the Mumbai police unleash the encounter squad.
One by one the sharpshooters were chased down and killed. The police's crackdown saw the gangsters call for peace, and even divide their area of operation.
This, however, didn't put an end to them targeting the rich and famous. In 1997, producer Gulshan Kumar was killed. Later in 1998, six Sena workers were killed in mafia attacks, and two attempts were made on the life of Mumbai's former mayor Milind Vaidya in 1998 and 1999.
From 1995, the incidents of gang-related violence rose four-fold by 1998. This made the state enact the stringent MCOCA, which helped the police decimate the underworld's control to a large extent.
The crackdown saw the gangs spill over to Thane and Navi Mumbai, and also to the districts of Pune and Nashik. Also, it forced gangsters to get into agreements to keep their activities alive.
A large part of the plot was given out with the arrest of gangster Santosh Shetty in 2011. He had bared Dawood's plot to cut Chhota Rajan to size.
Police now believes there would have been an understanding between Dawood and Ashwin Naik to control the realms of Arun Gawli, who has been in prison since 2008. "In the underworld, there are no permanent friends or enemies. They work on the belief that an enemy's enemy is a friend," said a senior police officer, monitoring the underworld.
Except for the strained Dawood–Chhota Rajan relationship, today the underworld thrives on such understandings. There are hardly any killings and the extortion rates have gone down, the police said. "Gangsters know that gunrunning and extortion will not help them sustain. They have trained their guns on the real estate market," said an officer.
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Vidal plays down Real Madrid link: I want to win more titles at Juventus

The midfielder says he remains fully committed to the Bianconeri - even though he said earlier this week that he is flattered by speculation linking him with the Santiago Bernabeu
Juventus midfielder Arturo Vidal insists he wants to stay at the club to win more trophies - despite the reported interest of Real Madrid in his services.

The Chile international has been in sensational form for the Bianconeri this season, scoring 16 goals in all competitions for the Serie A leaders.

Madrid boss Carlo Ancelotti is believed to have made a move for Vidal his priority in the summer transfer window but, despite admitting earlier this week that interest from los Blancos was "flattering", the 26-year-old has reiterated his desire to remain in Turin.

"I want to complete all my objectives, and to do so with Juventus," he told Radio Cooperativa. "I work day after day at Juve to give everything on the pitch. 

"Even if there is interest from Real Madrid, I continue to work hard here and hope to achieve all my goals.

"In Turin, my family and I feel at home. I still want to win so much with Juventus."

Despite the club season reaching a pivotal point as Juventus continue to challenge for both the Scudettoand Europa League, Vidal already has one eye on this summer's World Cup - a tournament in which he believes a youthful Chile side can pull off a few surprises.

"I'm preparing to be 100 per cent ready for Brazil. It will be a very difficult competition, but we are a good team with young players who dream of doing great things," he added. 

"It will be important to arrive in our best shape."