The Role of
Politics in Contemporary Anti-Semitism.
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. September 15, 1999
"That Jews control a disproportionately large share of the Russian
economy and Russian media certainly has some basis in fact. Between 50
and 80 percent of the Russian economy is said to be in Jewish hands,
with the influence of the five Jews among the eight individuals
commonly referred to as 'oligarchs' particularly conspicuous. (An
oligarch is understood to be a member of a small group that exercises
control in a government. The five oligarchs of Jewish descent are
Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Friedman, Vladimir Gusinsky,
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Alexander Smolensky. The other
oligarchs are Vagit Alekperov, Vladimir Potanin, and Rem Vyakhirev.)
Perhaps the most famous (and simultaneously the most infamous) of the
oligarchs is Boris Berezovsky. In common with most of the other Jewish
oligarchs, Berezovsky controls industries in three critical areas: the
extraction and sale of a major natural resource, such as oil, as a
source of great wealth; a large bank (useful in influencing industry
and transferring assets abroad); and several major media outlets
(useful for exerting influence and attacking rivals). He also controls
a significant share of the Aeroflot airline and the Moscow automobile
industry."
Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America.
New York Review of Books, November 16, 2000 [book review,
posted at Center for Defense Information/Johnson's Russia List]
"Whatever the American laws, a successful campaign against Russian
mobsters will require the cooperation of other governments,
particularly those of Russia and Israel, the two countries that are
now the principal residences of most Russian crime bosses ...'Of all
the nations where the Russian mob has established a presence, none has
been more deeply compromised than the State of Israel,' [Robert]
Friedman writes, adding that the Russian mafia has 'become a
grave threat to the stability of Israel.' Although this may be a bit
hyperbolic, the Russian mafia does have a strong, safe base in Israel
-- a story that American and Israeli journalists have largely
overlooked. One FBI report observes, for example, that most members of
Mogilevich's criminal organization have Israeli passports. And
Jonathan Winer told Friedman (when Winer was still the State
Department's crime expert), 'There is not a
major Russian organized crime figure whom we are tracking who does not
also carry an Israeli passport.'"
'Jews Are Fighting and the Whole Country Has To Watch' Jews in Power
or Jewish Power? The Captains of Russia's Post-Communist Economy
Invited Uneasy Questions,
[Jewish] Forward, September 13, 2002
[Review of: The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in
the New Russia, by David E. Hoffman],
"Sometime during the autumn of 1996, a small group of the most
powerful men in Russia gathered in a villa on Moscow's Sparrow Hills
district and worried aloud about antisemitism. They were Russia's
famous 'oligarchs,' men who, in the aftermath of communism's fall, ran
banks, oil companies, television stations and, increasingly, the
country, and they had reason to worry: Most of them were Jews. 'In
earlier years, when the moguls gathered to talk or make deals, when
they dined in the villa on Sparrow Hills, or when they entered the
Kremlin to warn Yeltsin, they were largely hidden from public view,'
writes former Washington Post Moscow correspondent David E.
Hoffman in his recent book, 'The Oligarchs: Wealth and Power in
the New Russia.' But in the autumn of 1996, it was no longer possible
to conceal their ambition and their presence in the highest councils
of the state. They worried, among themselves, about a backlash. The
threat of an antisemitic uprising never materialized. The oligarchs,
and Jews in general, are frequent targets of the nationalist press,
and extremist firebrands still occasionally call out their names in
public, but the Russian street has yet to take up calls for their
blood ... If the book has a flaw, however, it is in not answering one
of the central questions it raises: Why is it, and what does it mean,
that so many of these men - men who ruthlessly acquired and
manipulated Russia's resources and, for a time, its government - are
Jewish? Of the six main characters in the book,
four are Jews: Boris Berezovsky, now exiled and wanted
at home for corruption, who at one point owned everything from
auto-makers and airlines to banks and a TV network and earned the
moniker 'Godfather of the Kremlin'; Vladimir Gusinsky, banker
turned media-magnate whose quarrels with President Vladimir Putin sent
him into exile; Alexander Smolensky, perhaps Russia's most
notorious banker, the collapse of whose bank in 1998 wiped out
thousands of people's savings, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, leader
of Russia's second-biggest oil company, who survived political
scandals and the collapse of his own bank. The other two - Moscow
Mayor Yury Luzhkov and reformist-politician-turned-energy-czar Anatoly
Chubais - are not Jewish, though that hasn't stopped nationalists from
making accusations about Jewish heritage. (The
book's index, meanwhile, contains at least another 25 prominent
Russian Jews, including tycoons Roman Abramovich,
Pyotr Aven and Mikhail Friedman and politicians Yegor
Gaidar, Boris Nemtsov, Yury Skuratov and Bella
Zlatkis.) They were, by and large, men who learned early how to
manipulate the system. Gusinsky bought copper wire on the black
market to make the bracelets that funded his first fortune.
Berezovsky did a brisk shuttle trade in German cars and Italian
computers. Khodorkovsky used connections in the Communist Youth
League to finagle lucrative software contracts ... . But by 1996, some
of the oligarchs were beginning to worry. Nationalist politicians on
the left and right were decrying what they called the theft of
Russia's industry and the 'oligarch Yids' who engineered it ...
Between them, Berezovsky and Gusinsky controlled the
country's two biggest television stations, the leading news radio
station and several of the largest newspapers and magazines. The fact
was that the media in Russia was controlled by Jews; antisemites
didn't really care which Jews in particular. Even mainstream
politicians such as former Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin didn't
really like the idea; when Berezovsky and Gusinsky were
embroiled in one of their public quarrels, broadcast for all to see on
their respective television stations, Chernomyrdin said, 'Two Jews are
fighting and the whole country has to watch." For anyone familiar with
Russian history, the road from scandal to pogrom would have seemed
perilously short. Awareness of that history led the oligarchs in
contradictory directions. On that fall evening in Sparrow Hills, the
attendees - Berezovsky, Friedman, Gusinsky,
Khodorkovsky and Smolensky - collectively decided that
masking their Jewish identities would be the best option. A non-Jewish
oligarch, Vladimir Potanin, was chosen to be their public liaison to
government. Berezovsky was soon seen wearing a cross and
attending Russian Orthodox churches. Still, no matter how hard they
tried to distance themselves from Judaism, until very recently a
glance at their passports would have given them away [i.e., Israeli
passports]. And yet less than a year earlier Friedman had
joined Gusinsky and a handful of other prominent Jewish
businessman in organizing the Russian Jewish Congress. Outwardly, the
congress's aim was that of any Jewish group anywhere - to support
synagogues, schools and other religious and cultural activities. But,
according to Boris Usherenko, a Russian actor turned Jewish
activist and journalist who documents his stint as the first executive
secretary of the Russian Jewish Congress in his self-published book,
'My Jewish Fate,' fear of antisemitism also played a part. At one of
the congress's early planning sessions in late 1995, Usherenko
writes, the founders' purposes were bluntly, if awkwardly, put. 'Fiery
speeches were made. [Chief Rabbi Adolf Shayevich] inspiringly
contrasted the depressing past with the shining future. [Gusinsky]
expressed his nostalgia for the old rusty pipe he used as a boy to
beat antisemites. I remember [one attendee's] fierce defense of his
ideal - Jews with machine guns.' It was not, however, the first time
Jews were attacked for being at the vanguard of a tumultuous
revolution. Before and after 1917, nationalists pointed to the heavy
Jewish presence in the Bolshevik leadership, from Trotsky on
down. Even today, Lenin's guttural 'r' - the key element of what
Russians refer to as 'the Jewish accent' - is a running joke among
Russian satirists; at least one of Lenin's grandparents was Jewish,
which, as the satirists point out, would have made him eligible for
aliya [immigration to Israel]."
More information on the "Russian mafia"
here and
here.
Russia's Oil Czar Looks West,
Bloomberg Markets Magazine, July 2002
[Article about Jewish Russian mogul Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in
pdf form]
"With 3.5 billion barrels of oil reserves, Priobskoye is a black
gold mine for Mikhail Khodorkovsky, chief executive and main
shareholder of AO Yukos Oil Co., Russia's second- largest oil producer
... Khodorkovsky is one of the so-called oligarchs who took control of
state assets after the collapse of the Soviet Union and oversaw some
of Russia’s worst violations of shareholder rights. Amid the country's
financial crisis in 1998 and 1999, Khodorkovsky transferred
stakes in Yukos subsidiaries to off-shore tax havens like the Isle of
Man and Cyprus."
Open
Russia Foundation,
[At least three of the posted four Board Members of this
organization are members of international Jewry: Mikhail B.
Khodorkovsky, Dr. Henry A. Kissinger, and Lord Jacob
Rothschild
THE MEN WHO REALLY RULE RUSSIA,
New Statesman, 08/28/98
"Boris Yeltsin's quixotic decision this week to bring back the prime
minister he so ignominiously dismissed just five months ago makes him
look like a modern-day tsar. But Kremlin omnipotence is a myth and its
governments a constitutional facade -- the outgoing one has been aptly
described as 'a virtual government'. The truth about Russia is that it
is ruled, not by Yeltsin or any of his ministers, but by a handful of
men with almost no formal political role: the half-dozen businessmen
who call themselves 'the oligarchs' ... Their elder statesman is
Boris Berezovsky, a mysterious
mathematician-turned-car-salesman-turned-financier, who is the only
one to occupy a state post, albeit a rather minor one. Three others
head conglomerates with businesses ranging from banking to oil:
Vladimir Potanin [of the 'oligarchs' here noted, only Potanin isn't
Jewish], head of the Interros group, Mikhail Khodorkovsky
of the Rosprom empire, and Mikhail Friedman of the Alfa group.
Vladimir Gussinsky has a bank, too, but his strength is his
vast media kingdom. Aleksandr Smolensky, the weakest of the
gang, controls the huge but struggling SBSAgro retail bank. With the
exception of Berezovsky, who seems to relish the limelight, all
these men insist that they are humble businessmen, with diverging
interests and no direct purchase on the Kremlin. This has a grain of
truth: the oligarchs are not always united (indeed, their quarrels
have gone so far as to include allegations that two of them once tried
to have one another assassinated) and their influence over the
government waxes and wanes. But even with these qualifications, it is
striking to what extent Russia's oligarchs have grouped themselves
into a capitalist cabal beyond the wildest imaginings of the most
fevered Soviet propagandist. In times of crisis, like the current
financial meltdown, the oligarchs are ever at the state's elbow. Late
in the night on Sunday 16 August, as cabinet ministers put the frantic
final touches on the devaluation and default they would announce the
next day, the oligarchs flocked back from their Mediterranean holiday
homes to keep vigil in the White House, the seat of the Russian
government. A few days later, as I waited all afternoon for an
interview that never happened, I watched the oligarchs, en masse,
troop from a meeting with one deputy prime minister, to a meeting with
another, to a meeting with the prime minister himself. Collectively,
they have been conferring almost daily with the Central Bank chairman.
And while the financial turmoil has highlighted differences of opinion
and of economic interest among the oligarchs, they seem to have taken
a conscious decision to present the world with a common front ... This
week three of the most powerful corporate empires -- Interros, Rosprom
and Most -- announced they would consolidate their troubled banking
arms into a single bank, to be owned and controlled equally by each
member of the troika. Certainly, the oligarchs carry all the visible
symbols of their quasi-ministerial status. Their sleek Mercedes and
Land Cruisers all sport the blue flashing lights and special licence
plates that the state issues to its highest officials, granting
immunity from the traffic laws and traffic jams which hem in lesser
Muscovites. Russia's corporate politburo had its economic genesis in
1995, with the loans-for-shares privatisation scheme, a bizarre
programme that transferred control of some of Russia's choicest
companies to a handful of corporate insiders at knockdown prices. But
it took the 1996 presidential elections to elevate these barons into
the nation's kingmakers. Less than six months before the ballot,
Yeltsin's campaign was being run by feuding and corrupt Kremlin
courtiers, and a communist victory seemed assured. But then, after a
late-night meeting in an Alpine restaurant during the "businessmen's
summit" -- the World Economic Forum conference in Davos, Switzerland
-- the oligarchs stepped in. They masterminded and bankrolled
Yeltsin's political comeback; they seconded their smartest executives
to work flailhme on the elections; and they transformed their
television stations into presidential propaganda machines. Their
weekly meetings which included a rollcall detailing who had spent what
on the president's behalf became the guiding force of Yeltsin's
reelection drive. By the time Yeltsin had beaten the odds and
triumphed over his communist opponent, the oligarchs had been born ...
By choosing to surrender the electoral process to the oligarchs in
1996, the Kremlin created their political power."
[The Jewish Lobby's social engineering to veil popular recognition of
what is happening in Russia:]
ADL, Russian Law Enforcement Exchange Information,
Anti-Defamation League,
November 13, 2002
"The Anti-Defamation League has established a
partnership with Russian militia officers, government officials,
educators and non-profit leaders through 'Climate of Trust' (COT), a
program aimed at fighting intolerance in the former Soviet Union
through hate and bias crime training. In August of this year, ADL
leaders and educators met with a Russian delegation during a weeklong
visit to San Francisco. The in-depth training included visits to
police stations, government buildings, courts, and non-profit
agencies, where trainers from the San Francisco Police Department, as
well as the San Francisco District Attorney's Office and ADL, spoke to
participants about United States law and the structure of our justice
system. Following that presentation, ADL shared its expertise and
materials on combating hate groups and extremists, and trainers from
the A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE ™ Institute demonstrated the need to educate
children about bias and encourage adults to look at their own
prejudice. In turn, the Russian delegation shared its efforts to
combat and respond to acts of xenophobia and intolerance ... COT is
organized by the Bay Area Council for Jewish Rescue and Renewal,
BACJRR, and operates in cooperation with the United States Department
of State and the Russian Federation government. Partners in this
program include the Anti-Defamation League, The San Francisco Police
Department, the San Francisco District attorney's office, as well as a
San Francisco Superior Court Judge and an Administrative Law Judge
from the California Department of Fair Employment & Housing. As a
result of COT, new programs adapted from the hate crimes and tolerance
curriculum were established in a number of Russian police academies
and schools."
"World On Fire" by Amy Chua. A new book argues that when Third World
countries embrace democracy and free markets too quickly, ethnic
hatred and even genocide can result, by Michelle Goldberg,
Salon.com, Jan. 13, 2003
"The case Amy Chua makes in 'World On Fire: How Exporting Free
Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability' is
so clear and persuasive it almost seems as if it had been obvious all
along. Yet her argument, that rapid switches to majoritarian rule and
free-market democracy in many Third World countries benefit certain
ethnic groups over others and lead to vicious sectarian strife, is
quite new, if occasionally overstated ... 'World On Fire' is about a
phenomenon Chua calls 'market-dominant
minorities,' groups like the Chinese in Southeast Asia,
Jews in Russia, whites in Zimbabwe and
Indians in East Africa and Fiji. Market-dominant minorities control
hugely disproportionate percentages of their countries' resources ...
Jews make up a similarly tiny proportion of
Russia's population, but of the seven 'oligarchs' who control
virtually all of the country's business, six are Jewish ...
It's enormously touchy to talk about the economic element of communal
violence, especially regarding Jews, since rhetoric about one ethnic
group exploiting another is so often a precursor to atrocity. But
that's exactly why Chua's book feels so urgent. No matter how
politically incorrect it is to talk about, her book makes clear that
minority market domination is a reality in much of the world, one
that's tied up in many ways with smoldering group hatreds and
explosions of mass slaughter, and one that's made worse by Western
policies. Chua, a professor at Yale Law School, is a careful, precise
writer, and she makes it very clear that she's not blaming prosperous
ethnic groups for violence directed against them, or blaming
capitalism alone for fomenting genocide ... 'The point, rather, is
this,' she writes. 'In the numerous countries around the world that
have pervasive poverty and a market-dominant minority, democracy and
markets -- at least in the form in which they are currently being
promoted -- can proceed only in deep tension with each other. In such
conditions, the combined pursuit of free markets and democratization
has repeatedly catalyzed ethnic conflict in highly predictable ways.
This has been the sobering lesson of globalization in the last twenty
years' ... The reasons for Jewish economic success are more mysterious
-- especially in Russia, where they've been repeatedly subjected to
vicious pogroms -- and 'World On Fire' does little to illuminate them.
Chua is less interested in how minority groups come to dominate than
what happens when they do. She argues that when economic
liberalization and democracy are rapidly introduced to countries with
market-dominant minorities, the two forces necessarily come into
conflict. 'Markets concentrate enormous wealth in the hands of an
'outsider' minority, fomenting ethnic envy and hatred among often
chronically poor majorities,' she writes. 'Introducing democracy in
these circumstances does not transform voters into open-minded
cocitizens in a national community. Rather, the competition for votes
fosters the emergence of demagogues who scapegoat the resented
minority and foment active ethnonationalist movements demanding that
the country's wealth and identity be reclaimed by the 'true owners of
the nation.'"
Mark Rich Helped KGB Create Hidden Government,
Newsmax, Saturday, March 31, 2001
"Mark Rich, the most-wanted fugitive pardoned by former
President Clinton, was a key figure in the Communist Party and the
KGB's creation of an underground government that survived the break-up
of the Soviet Union and still rules Russia today behind the scenes. As
previously reported by NewsMax.com., in 1983, the year Rich
fled the U.S. to avoid prosecution, he took advantage of the grain
embargo imposed on the USSR by the United States because of their war
in Afghanistan. Rich ignored the embargo and imported grain
into the Soviet Union, winning friends in the Soviet hierarchy with
whom he would ally himself when the Communist government collapsed.
According to NewsMax.com sources, from then on Rich was
guided in his business dealings 'by the Communist Party and KGB senior
figures. Everybody in that carousel, commie and KGB got personal
benefits ... commissions in Western accounts.' Thanks to the influence
he gained from sharing his profits with Party and KGB officials,
Rich was drawn into the inner reaches of the hierarchy that ruled
the Soviet union and was included in the creation of the sinister,
behind-the-scenes government that was designed to outlive the
deliberate dismantling of the Soviet Union. According to Dr. Joseph D.
Douglas, an expert in national security matters and a former official
of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the
Defense Department, Rich played an important part in the deception
that allowed the old Communist apparatus to maintain its grip on
Russia and the rest of the old Soviet Union after the so-called
collapse of communist rule. In an interview with the current New
American magazine, Dr. Douglas, an expert on international organized
crime and its role in long-term Soviet/Russian strategy, made the
startling revelation that "No revolution took place in Russia or the
other Soviet "republics" that would account for the sudden dismantling
of the Soviet state. Nothing forced the Communist Party of the Soviet
Union [CPSU] to relinquish its monopoly on power. In fact, what the
CPSU did was diversify its holdings, rather than dispense with its
monopoly.' Douglas said that Communist Party bosses surreptitiously
'either created new parties, or took over the leadership of existing
ones.' He said that years before the 'end' of the Soviet Union the
CPSU and the KGB 'set up all of the structures of what they call the
'invisible party economy.' This was already going on in the early
1980s, even before Gorbachev came along with his 'reforms.'' Because
of the hidden superstructure Rich and his KGB colleagues
created, members of the Communist nomenklatura had put themselves in a
position to become the masters of the new, "privatized" economy."
[Another apolegetic for Jewish wealth and power and Russia. These
many Jewish billionaires are just "fronts," you see, for the real bad
guys. As always, even the fabulously wealthy Jews -- most with ties to
the Jewish "Russian" mafia -- who have shaped post-commuist Russia are
depicted as victims,]
The
Jews and The Bicycle Riders,
by Dr. Gary K. Busch,
Pravda (Russia), July 26, 2003
"My grandmother, from Kovno, had a standard response to weighty matters
of social and political policy. She would say ?I suspect it's all the
fault of the Jews and the bicycle riders.' When people would ask 'Why
the bicycle riders?' she would reply 'Why the Jews?' In the current
discussion about the deteriorating fate of the 'oligarchs' in Russia the
unspoken question is not about the bicycle riders. The question, to put
it as a Russian euphemism, is a line five question. This refers to line
five of the internal passport which deals with nationality; e.g. 'Jew'.
There are a number of very good reasons why it is the Jewish oligarchs
that are feeling the cool breeze from St. Petersburg and Moscow. First
it was Gusinsky and Berezovsky and now the pressure is
spreading to Khodorkovsky, and Abramovitch. The answer, in
short, is the real powers behind the process of capital accumulation,
the KGB and the 'Old Guard', no longer think they need to use them as an
acceptable front. The elevation of Putin and many of those who have
accompanied him have convinced them that there is no longer any need to
mask who really has power, both economic and political, in Russia. There
are many in Russia, let alone abroad, who may not understand why so many
of today's oligarchs are Jews. This is to use the Russian line five
classification of Jew which has nothing to do with faith or observance
but is an inherited ethnic and nationality distinction. These Jews are
oligarchs because they were chosen to be oligarchs and set up in
business by the Chekists and the boys from the Aquarium for this
purpose. I can only extrapolate from my own experiences in Russia in the
early 1990's, helping to set up the trade in non-ferrous metals with the
West ... The KGB and its allies, under Silayev and Kryuchkov, set up a
system in which loyal and trusted members of the Komsomol system and
friendly businessmen could form their own banks v Russian banks. Men
like Khodorkovsky, Aven, Fridman and others were
chosen and set up in the money business. They used the banks to channel
the returning Mafia money into long-term businesses. With few
exceptions, those chosen for this were all Jews. When Western pioneers
like Marc Rich, David Reuben, Gerry Lennard or
Jerry Cligman agreed to work within this system by creating the
-tolling business, they were given a kick start of roubles to help pay
for the initial costs of the tolling system, They, too, were mainly
Jews, albeit foreign Jews. Between these two groups there was another
layer of 'facilitators'; people who knew the parallel system. They set
up the deals. They traded the hard earned cash from aluminium into
cigarettes and vodka which could be brought back into Russia and sold
for cash, providing liquidity to the system. These facilitators were
among the first private businessmen in Russia. They had ties to the very
independent private sector who had access to the raw materials and the
internal organizations which could deliver on the agreements made; the
Izmailova (the late Anton Malevksy), Soltsnevo, Long Pond groups to name
but a few. The facilitators included the Chernoy brothers (Mischa
and Lev), Sam Kislin, and the 'institutionals' Gregory
Luchansky, Semyon Mogilevich (Lyubarsky and Long Pond) or
Vadim Rabinovich in the Ukraine. Most of these, too, were Jews.
Without these men the Russification of Russia couldn-t have taken place.
They provided the only working system in Russia."
Jewish capital is good for Russia, Jewish politics less so,
By Eliahu Salpeter, Haaretz
(Israel), August 17, 2003
"Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the wealthiest man in Russia, is under
investigation. It's Anti-Semitism again, say Jewish sources It is
doubtful whether there are many Jews in the world the value of whose
assets reach $5 billion. Certainly, there is no other Jew who can afford
to lose a billion dollars and still be the richest man in Russia.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 39, looks in photographs (depending on the
angle) like a young Shas politico or like a successful Wall Street
investment consultant. According to Fortune magazine, Khodorkovsky
controls 16 percent of the shares in the company Yukos and owns more
than half of them personally. Yukos is said to be worth $15-20 billion,
and with the completion of the deal to acquire the Sibneft, which was
signed about three months ago, it will become the third-largest oil
company in the world, and the largest in Russia. The troubles started
for Yukos (and Khodorkovsky) at the beginning of July, when the
police arrested his aide and chief ally, Platon Lebedev, and accused him
of fraud, forgery and tax violations and also interrogated (but did not
arrest) Khodorkovsky himself. About two weeks ago, the General
Prosecutor's Office announced that it had also opened an investigation
of five murders or attempted murders of officials and businessmen at
odds with the company. In Moscow, it's said, the police are
investigating Khodorkovsky's aides but are aiming at him; the
authorization for the investigation was given by President Vladimir
Putin. The burning question in Moscow is what lies behind the
investigation? Maybe the Kremlin is embarking on a new hunt of the
"oligarchs," the very wealthy Russians who made their fortunes during
the Nineties' privatization ... The Jews in Russia are, of course,
concerned about whether there are anti-Semitic elements in the affair.
Of the dozen or so Russian billionaires who made their fortunes during
the past decade, seven were Jewish. Three of them have already been
deposed from heading their companies and pushed out of Russia as well -
Aleksandr Smolensky, the crash of whose bank in 1998 led to the
worst financial crash in the post-Communist era; Boris Berezovsky,
"the Kremlin godfather," whose demonstrative conversion to Christianity
proved to be of no avail; and Vladimir Gusinsky, who was not
helped by his demonstrative Jewishness as chairman of the Jewish
Congress in Russia. Four remain: Khodorkovsky, bankers Pyotr
Aven and Mikhai Fridman and the current media star of the
oligarchs, Roman Abramovich - among other things, the main owner
of Sibneft - who is considered the richest man in Russia after
Khodorkovsky. ... Aleksandr Osovtsov, former vice president
of the Jewish Congress in Russia says the anti-Semitism in the affair is
clear. The same team from the Prosecutor General's Office that in its
day forced Gusinsky to leave Russia is active now and by chance
or not, Gusinsky was one of the financial supporters of the
Jewish Congress and Khodorkovsky is also among its supporters.
Chelsea's new owner In recent weeks international attention has been
accorded to the seventh of the Jewish oligarchs, Roman Abramovich,
who purchased the English soccer team Chelsea for about $200 million ...
The patronage of Berezovsky (who at the time still enjoyed the
support of the Kremlin) helped him acquire, for the paltry sum of about
$100 million, dozens of local oil companies and to build from them the
huge Sibneft company. In 2002, the profits of Sibneft came to $1.1
billio ... The Khodorkovsky affair gives rise to a more realistic
question: Is there a likelihood that influential Jews in Moscow,
oligarchs and politicians, will be able in the foreseeable future to
help Israel in the Kremlin? Their relative weight is no less than the
weight of Jews in the upper reaches of the American economy."
St. Petersburg Jews jolted by stiff sentence for local leader,
By Lev Krichevsky, Jewish Telegraphic
Agency, August 21, 2003
"The stiff prison sentence handed down to Russian businessman and Jewish
leader Mikhail Mirilashvili is sending shock waves through
Russia’s second-largest Jewish community. On Aug. 1, the Leningrad
District Military Court in St. Petersburg sentenced the local business
magnate and Jewish philanthropist to 12 years in a high-security prison.
Mirilashvili, 43, has spent the last 30 months in jail on charges
of creating a criminal gang, kidnapping and attempted murder. The
verdict, handed down the same day as the sentencing, cleared the
businessman of the attempted murder charge but found him guilty of
trespassing, kidnapping and detaining persons against their will ...
Mirilashvili has served as president of the [Russian Jewish Congress]
RJC’s St. Petersburg branch since the group’s founding in 1996. He
retained his post after he was imprisoned in January of 2001. The group
says that despite his imprisonment, Mirilashvili still remains
the largest local supporter of the Jewish community. Last year, the RJC
raised $350,000 in St. Petersburg, according to the group’s 2002 annual
report. RJC president Yevgeny Satanovsky said most of the money
had been a donation from Mirilashvili. “Despite his imprisonment,
he remains one of the most affluent people in St. Petersburg,”
Satanovsky said. A native of the former Soviet republic of Georgia,
Mirilashvili is said to have a wide range of business interests
in St. Petersburg, including casinos, real estate, retail, entertainment
and hotel businesses. The businessman, who has never been shy about his
Jewish background, holds Russian and Israeli
citizenship and used to divide his time between St. Petersburg and Tel
Aviv. His 18-year-old son, Slava, recently graduated from
an English-language high school in Israel and will attend Tufts
University near Boston this fall ... A week before his sentencing,
Mirilashvili became embroiled in a public argument with another
powerful Russian Jew, exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky — who in the
mid-1990s unsuccessfully tried to take over a local television station
Mirilashvili ran. In an open letter published July 24 in the
Moscow newspaper Kommersant Daily, Berezovsky accused
Mirilashvili of being involved in an underhanded deal in the early
1990´s to privatize a St. Petersburg-based alcohol producer ,,, He also
denied accusations by Berezovsky and others that he has ties to
the criminal underworld. In the same letter, Mirilashvili accused
Berezovsky of changing his religion to Orthodox Christianity
after Berezovsky failed in an alleged attempt to become a leader
of the Russian Jewish community."
[Gusinksky is just one of the Jewish Russian "oligarchs" who
looted Russia. Boris Berezovsky is another Jewish media billionaire,
also with Israeli citizenship, who fled that country.]
Ex-Russia Media Mogul Arrested in Greece,
By THEODORA TONGAS, Asbury Park Press (From
Associated Press) August 24, 2003
"A former Russian media mogul who clashed with the Kremlin and fled
under fraud accusations three years ago was in Greek custody after being
arrested at the Athens airport. Vladimir Gusinsky, whose former
empire included the independent NTV television station, was detained
Thursday after arriving from Tel Aviv, Israel, where he has lived since
April 2001. His name appeared on an Interpol wanted list for fraud in
excess of $250 million, airport authorities said Saturday. Gusinsky,
who became one of Russia's best-known oligarchs after the fall of
communism, is scheduled to appear before a Greek prosecutor Monday.
Russia initially sought Gusinsky on charges of misrepresenting
the assets of his company Media-Most to obtain a $262 million loan from
the government-controlled gas giant Gazprom. It later added allegations
of money laundering ... Gusinsky, who holds Russian and Israeli
passports, claims the charges against him are politically motivated. He
was arrested in December 2000 at his home in Spain, but a Spanish court
refused to extradite him, saying the grounds for the case wouldn't
amount to a crime in Spain. Gusinsky then moved to Israel."
[More about the oppressed Jews of "antisemitic" Russia:]
ALONG THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILROAD. Thanks to prominent locals, city sees
revival in Jewish expression,
By Adam B. Ellick, Jewish Telegraphic
Agency
"Simon Spector has thick, expressive eyebrows and a heavily
wrinkled forehead. But the 67-year-old’s portrait won’t be gracing the
cover of any fund-raising brochures depicting elderly, impoverished
Russian Jews slurping borsht at a soup kitchen. The dapperly dressed
Spector is the antithesis of a needy Russian Jew. He is a man in
power, representative of a disproportionately high
number of prominent local Jews who are revealing their ethnic
roots and transforming the face of Russian Jewry — though it’s not clear
how willing they are to use their clout in support of local Jewish life.
Spector is the deputy governor for the Sverdlovsk region, an
influential area of 4.5 million in Russia’s Ural Mountains, where Europe
and Asia meet. Yekaterinburg, the regional center and Russia’s third
largest city, is home to just 13,000 Jews, or 0.05 percent of the
population. “There’s a myth in Israel that Russian
Jews cannot be powerful people. Israeli doctors come here and
cannot believe I’m Jewish,” says Spector, who heads the local veterans
hospital. “The governor tells me to go to Israel, recruit 30,000 Jews
and bring them here, because we’re such good leaders.”
Three other Jews also serve as deputy governors,
including the health and property ministers. There are 10 Jewish
cultural directors in the region, including the head of the
Yekaterinburg Philharmonic Orchestra and Russia’s Motion Picture Union.
Other prominent local Jews include the head coach of the Russian chess
team, the dean of the local university, Yekaterinburg’s chief
cardiologist, the region’s chief doctor, who oversees 33 hospitals, and
dozens of businessmen, including a bank president. Indeed, Yekaterinburg
can be seen as a microcosm of Russia, where five of 12 owners or
majority stockholders of the largest industrial or financial
institutions are Jewish — a considerable number for Russia, where Jews
make up less than 2 percent of the population ... Domnich and
Yekaterinburg’s Hillel director cannot cite any specific support, but
the government gave the ambitious Ashkenazi — a Chabad rabbi who enjoys
close ties with the Kremlin — a free, 45,000-square-foot plot of land in
the city center to build a $1.6 million community center and synagogue.
They currently are under construction after four years of delays. What’s
more, the separate Jewish day school that Ashkenazi runs is tax- and
rent-free. The new complex will be Russia’s largest Jewish center
outside of Moscow and will house two mikvahs, a gym, a weight room, a
pool, a medical center, a library, a computer lab, a music studio and
study rooms."
[The two richest Russians today, Roman Abramovich and
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, are Jewish. So are the below mentioned
Russian billionaire fugitives Boris Berezovsky and
Vladimir Gusinsky. All looters of Russia. All "gangster
capitalists." All with dual citizenship: Russian and Israeli.]
Boyish Billionaire Turns His Sights Outside Russia As Others Face
Probes, Abramovich Sells Assets,
By Peter Baker, Washington Post,
September 5, 2003; Page A12
"One sits in prison, another just got out on bail, a third awaits
extradition hearings. But while many Russian tycoons face legal
pressure from their government, Roman Abramovich passes time in
the director's boxes at British stadiums, leaping to his feet in
triumph, burying his face in disappointment, relishing each kick by
the London soccer team he has just bought. Life as a British sports
magnate seems to agree with Abramovich, a boyish
orphan-turned-billionaire with designer stubble on his chin. Between
soccer matches, he retires to his 450-acre English country estate and
considers which British schools his children should attend while
accountants back in Moscow unload more of his assets. Abramovich,
Russia's second-richest man and the quietest of the men known as
oligarchs who once seemed to run the country, appears to be
extricating himself from the tangled and untamed business-political
world in his home country, where many of his peers find themselves the
target of criminal investigations. With Russian parliamentary
elections scheduled for December and a presidential election next
March, Abramovich hopes to avoid the fate of other business
leaders who play the role of villain in many campaigns .. Now 36, he
is worth $5.7 billion, according to Forbes magazine, making him one of
the world's 50 richest people. President Vladimir Putin's government
seems to be renewing a campaign against the oligarchs as the elections
draw nearer. Prosecutors this summer opened eight investigations into
the Yukos oil company and associates of its chief executive,
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the only Russian with more money than
Abramovich. Khodorkovsky's adviser and fellow billionaire,
Platon Lebedev, was arrested on fraud charges and was ordered held
until Oct. 30. Khodorkovsky was called in for questioning.
Abramovich's estranged partner, Boris Berezovsky, who had fled
Russia, faces an extradition hearing in Britain in October. And
another self-exiled tycoon, Vladimir Gusinsky, was detained in
Greece and released on bond pending a Russian extradition request. For
a time, rumors swirled that Abramovich was next, but nothing
has come of it. Abramovich eschews public talk of political
maneuvering and instead focuses with childlike delight on the joys of
buying virtually any soccer player he likes and soaking up the novelty
of part-time life in the West ... Abramovich recently said he
would not seek a second term as governor of Chukotka, a barren Arctic
region across the Bering Strait from Alaska and home to more reindeer
than people. Abramovich won the governorship in 2000 promising to
transform the destitute wasteland where winter lasts nine months.
Since then, he has put $200 million of his own money into reviving
Chukotka ... "It's not going to be better up here without him, that's
for sure," Alexander Adelshtein, a spokesman for the district
government, said by telephone. "It's natural to keep hoping to the end
that he will change his mind." His recent transactions are yielding a
massive cash windfall, much of it kept abroad. Last year Sibneft,
which Abramovich and Berezovsky acquired from the state
for $250 million in 1995, paid $1 billion in dividends to
Abramovich and his remaining partners. Sibneft recently promised
another $1 billion dividend this year. The sale to Yukos will bring in
$3 billion more and his Russian Aluminum holdings are on the block for
yet another $3 billion ... Abramovich bought the storied
Chelsea soccer club in July, paying the equivalent of $94 million and
assuming debt of $141 million. Since then he has gone on a spending
spree, shelling out $150 million to secure some of the most talented
players in the country in pursuit of the team's first league
championship since 1955. Britain reacted to the purchase with a
mixture of awe and dread. A member of Parliament questioned whether
Abramovich was a "fit and proper person" to own a soccer club,
given his emergence from Russia's gangster
capitalism ... He already owns a Boeing Business Jet, the
equivalent of a 737 airliner, and recently bought a 355-foot yacht. He
has a 100-acre estate outside Moscow, a luxury apartment in St. Tropez
and the estate in West Sussex south of London, with stables for 100
horses, two polo pitches, a swimming pool, tennis court, rifle ranges
and go-kart track. He's selling a $7.9 million London apartment so he
can get a bigger place."
Russian Jewry’s Point Man Feliks Frenkel is widely regarded as the
chief liaison between his community and the Jewish establishment,
by Walter Ruby, The Jewish Week,
September 19, 2003
"If any Russian Jew can claim to be an essential bridge between the
Russian-speaking community of New York and the world of American
Jewish philanthropy, Feliks Frenkel may be that person. Having
risen in less than 25 years from a penniless immigrant from Kiev
to a wealthy arbitrageur and considerable power within the world of
Jewish philanthropy, the engaging 48-year-old Frenkel is widely
seen as the Russian Jewish layperson who is best able to explain the
needs and the general gestalt of the Russian community to the top
leaders of UJA-Federation, and vice versa. Unlike
other Russian Jewish millionaires in New York
who tend to live and work in a largely Russian-speaking environment,
Frenkel, who speaks fluent, lightly accented English, divides his time
between his office in a thoroughly American corporate environment in
Westchester County and a condominium on the Upper East Side he shares
with his wife, Marina, and their two children. Yet Frenkel, who mainly
socializes with fellow Russian Jews and has undertaken his
philanthropic work within a specifically Russian Jewish context, says
he sees his role as “not only bringing the message and expertise of
UJA-Federation to the Russian community, but also bringing the soul of
Russian Jewry to the mainstream community.” ... Frenkel says he has
never had a problem relating to the lay leaders of the American Jewish
establishment, in part because he is every bit
as wealthy and powerful as they are ... Frenkel says he
imbibes his strong ethic of responsibility to the Jewish community in
his mother’s milk, noting that both of his parents considered it their
responsibility to help fellow Jews in need back in Kiev ... After
graduating in 1980, he submitted 100 resumes to Wall Street firms,
including Bear Stearns, where someone showed his resume to the firm’s
legendary CEO Alan “Ace” Greenberg. According to Frenkel,
“Greenberg looked at my resume and noticed that I had studied
at the University of Siberia. So he said, ‘I’ve hired people from all
walks of life. I’ve had geniuses and embezzlers, undergraduates and
PhDs. But I have never had anybody from the University of Siberia.
Let’s give him the job.’ ” Just over a year later, however, Frenkel
left Bear Stearns and joined the predecessor of OTA Limited
Partnerships, a trading firm that specializes in corporate takeovers,
as a research analyst in risk arbitrage ... Frenkel has always made it
a point to live in Manhattan, which he calls “a
lemon from which my wife and I try to squeeze as much juice as we can.”
[The Jewish
Telegraph Agency noted that "Chubais is not ... open about his
Jewish roots." [KRICHEVSKY, L., 5-23-99] You'll note that the
blueprint for economic destruction and looting of Russia seems to have
been a largely Jewish job. Chubais, Sachs, Lipton, Summers, Soros,
etc. etc. etc.]
The Harvard Boys Do Russia,
by Janine R. Wedel, The Nation, May 14,
1998
"After seven years of economic "reform" financed by billions of
dollars in U.S. and other Western aid, subsidized loans and
rescheduled debt, the majority of Russian people find themselves worse
off economically. The privatization drive that was supposed to reap
the fruits of the free market instead helped to create a system of
tycoon capitalism run for the benefit of a corrupt political oligarchy
that has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars of Western aid
and plundered Russia's wealth. The architect of privatization was
former First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, a darling
of the U.S. and Western financial establishments. Chubais's
drastic and corrupt stewardship made him extremely unpopular.
According to The New York Times, he "may be the most despised
man in Russia." Essential to the implementation of Chubais's
policies was the enthusiastic support of the Clinton Administration
and its key representative for economic assistance in Moscow, the
Harvard Institute for International Development. Using the prestige of
Harvard's name and connections in the Administration, H.I.I.D.
officials acquired virtual carte blanche over the U.S. economic aid
program to Russia, with minimal oversight by the government agencies
involved. With this access and their close alliance with Chubais
and his circle, they allegedly profited on the side.
Yet few Americans are aware of H.I.I.D.'s role
in Russian privatization, and its suspected misuse of taxpayers' funds.
At the recent U.S.-Russian Investment Symposium at Harvard's John F.
Kennedy School of Government, Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow, made
what might have seemed to many an impolite reference to his hosts.
After castigating Chubais and his monetarist policies, Luzhkov,
according to a report of the event, "singled out Harvard for the harm
inflicted on the Russian economy by its advisers, who encouraged
Chubais's misguided approach to privatization and monetarism."
Luzhkov was referring to H.I.I.D. Chubais, who was delegated
vast powers over the economy by Boris Yeltsin, was ousted in Yeltsin's
March purge, but in May he was given an immensely lucrative post as
head of Unified Energy System, the country's electricity monopoly.
Some of the main actors with Harvard's Russia project have yet to face
a reckoning, but this may change if a current investigation by the
U.S. government results in prosecutions. The activities of H.I.I.D. in
Russia provide some cautionary lessons on abuse of trust by supposedly
disinterested foreign advisers, on U.S. arrogance and on the entire
policy of support for a single Russian group of so-called reformers.
The H.I.I.D. story is a familiar one in the ongoing saga of U.S.
foreign policy disasters created by those said to be our "best and
brightest." Through the late summer and fall of 1991, as the Soviet
state fell apart, Harvard Professor Jeffrey Sachs and other
Western economists participated in meetings at a dacha outside Moscow
where young, pro-Yeltsin reformers planned Russia's economic and
political future. Sachs teamed up with Yegor Gaidar,
Yeltsin's first architect of economic reform, to promote a plan of
"shock therapy" to swiftly eliminate most of the price controls and
subsidies that had underpinned life for Soviet citizens for decades.
Shock therapy produced more shock--not least, hyperinflation that hit
2,500 percent--than therapy. One result was the
evaporation of much potential investment capital: the substantial
savings of Russians. By November 1992, Gaidar was under
attack for his failed policies and was soon pushed aside ... Print
this article E-mail this article Write to the editors .I.I.D. had
supporters high in the Administration. One was Lawrence Summers,
himself a former Harvard economics professor, whom Clinton named Under
Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs in 1993.
Summers, now Deputy Treasury Secretary, had longstanding ties to
the principals of Harvard's project in Russia and its later project in
Ukraine. Summers hired a Harvard Ph.D., David Lipton
(who had been vice president of Jeffrey D. Sachs and
Associates, a consulting firm), to be Deputy Assistant Treasury
Secretary for Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. After
Summers was promoted to Deputy Secretary, Lipton moved into
Summers's old job, assuming "broad responsibility" for all
aspects of international economic policy development. Lipton
co-wrote numerous papers with Sachs and served with him on
consulting missions in Poland and Russia. "Jeff and David
always came [to Russia] together," said a Russian representative
at the International Monetary Fund. "They were like an inseparable
couple." Sachs, who was named director of H.I.I.D. in 1995, lobbied
for and received U.S.A.I.D. grants for the institute to work in
Ukraine in 1996 and 1997 ... Andrei Shleifer, a Russian-born
émigré and already a tenured professor of economics at Harvard in his
early 30s, became director of H.I.I.D.'s Russia project. Shleifer
was also a protégé of Summers, with whom he received at
least one foundation grant ... Another Harvard player was a former
World Bank consultant named Jonathan Hay, a Rhodes scholar who
had attended Moscow's Pushkin Institute for Russian Language. In 1991,
while still at Harvard Law School, he had become a senior legal
adviser to the G.K.I., the Russian state's new privatization
committee; the following year he was made H.I.I.D.'s general director
in Moscow. The youthful Hay assumed vast powers over
contractors, policies and program specifics; he not only controlled
access to the Chubais circle but served as its mouthpiece ...
With help from his H.I.I.D. advisers and other Westerners, Chubais
and his cronies set up a network of aid-funded "private" organizations
that enabled them to bypass legitimate government agencies and
circumvent the new parliament of the Russian Federation, the Duma.
Through this network, two of Chubais's associates, Maxim Boycko
(who co-wrote Privatizing Russia with Shleifer) and Dmitry Vasiliev,
oversaw almost a third of a billion dollars in aid money and millions
more in loans from international financial institutions ... The device
of setting up private organizations backed by the power of the Yeltsin
government and maintaining close ties to H.I.I.D. was a way of
insuring deniability. Shleifer, Hay and other Harvard
principals, all U.S. citizens, were "Russian" when convenient. Hay,
for example, served alternately and sometimes simultaneously as aid
contractor, manager of other contractors and representative of the
Russian government ... Against the backdrop of Russia's Klondike
capitalism, which they were helping create and Chubais and his team
were supposedly regulating, the H.I.I.D. advisers exploited their
intimate ties with Chubais and the government and were allegedly able
to conduct business activities for their own enrichment. According to
sources close to the U.S. government's investigation, Hay used his
influence, as well as U.S.A.I.D.-financed resources, to help his
girlfriend, Elizabeth Hebert, set up a mutual fund, Pallada Asset
Management, in Russia ... After Pallada was set up, Hebert, Hay,
Shleifer and Vasiliev looked for ways to continue their activities as
aid funds dwindled. Using I.L.B.E. resources and funding, they
established a private consulting firm with taxpayer money. One of the
firm's first clients was Shleifer's wife, Nancy Zimmerman,
who operated a Boston-based hedge fund that traded heavily in Russian
bonds. According to Russian registration documents, Zimmerman's
company set up a Russian firm with Sergei Shishkin, the
I.L.B.E. chief, as general director. Corporate documents on file in
Moscow showed that the address and phone number of the company and the
I.L.B.E. were the same. Then there is the First Russian Specialized
Depository, which holds the records and assets of mutual fund
investors. This institution, funded by a World Bank loan, also worked
to the benefit of Hay, Vasiliev, Hebert and another associate, Julia
Zagachin. According to sources close to the U.S. government's
investigation, Zagachin, an American married to a Russian, was
selected to run the depository even though she lacked the required
capital ... Anne Williamson, a journalist who specializes in Soviet
and Russian affairs, details these and other conflicts of interest
between H.I.I.D.'s advisers and their supposed clients--the Russian
people--in her forthcoming book, How America Built the New Russian
Oligarchy. For example, in 1995, in Chubais-organized insider
auctions of prime national properties, known as loans-for-shares, the
Harvard Management Company (H.M.C.), which invests the university's
endowment, and billionaire speculator George Soros were the
only foreign entities allowed to participate. H.M.C. and Soros
became significant shareholders in Novolipetsk, Russia's
second-largest steel mill, and Sidanko Oil, whose reserves exceed
those of Mobil. H.M.C. and Soros also invested in Russia's
high-yielding, I.M.F.-subsidized domestic bond market. Even more
dubious, according to Williamson, was Soros's July 1997
purchase of 24 percent of Sviazinvest, the telecommunications giant,
in partnership with Uneximbank's Vladimir Potanin. It was later
learned that shortly before this purchase Soros had tided over
Yeltsin's government with a backdoor loan of hundreds of millions of
dollars while the government was awaiting proceeds of a Eurobond
issue; the loan now appears to have been used by Uneximbank to
purchase Norilsk Nickel in August 1997. According to Williamson, the
U.S. assistance program in Russia was rife with such conflicts of
interest involving H.I.I.D. advisers and their U.S.A.I.D.-funded
Chubais allies, H.M.C. managers, favored Russian bankers, Soros
and insider expatriates working in Russia's nascent markets ...
Despite exposure of this corruption in the Russian media (and, far
more hesitantly, in the U.S. media), the H.I.I.D.-Chubais clique
remained until recently the major instrument of U.S. economic aid
policy to Russia. It even used the high-level Gore-Chernomyrdin
Commission, which helped orchestrate the cooperation of U.S.-Russian
oil deals and the Mir space station. The commission's now-defunct
Capital Markets Forum was chaired on the Russian side by Chubais
and Vasiliev, and on the U.S. side by S.E.C. chairman Arthur Levitt
Jr. and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Andrei Shleifer
was named special coordinator to all four of the Capital Markets
Forum's working subgroups. Hebert, Hay's girlfriend, served on
two of the subgroups, as did the C.E.O.s of Salomon Brothers, Merrill
Lynch and other powerful Wall Street investment houses. When The
Nation contacted the S.E.C. for information about Capital Markets, we
were told to call Shleifer for comment. Shleifer, who is under
investigation by U.S.A.I.D.'s inspector general for misuse of funds,
declined to be interviewed for this article. A U.S. Treasury spokesman
said Shleifer and Hebert were appointed to Capital Markets by
the Chubais group--specifically, according to other sources, by Dmitry
Vasiliev."
Greek Court Rejects Russian Extradition,
Yahoo! News (from Associated Press),
October 14, 2003
"A Greek appeals court on Tuesday rejected a Russian extradition
request for media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky, accused in his
country of fraud and money laundering. In a hearing that lasted one
minute, an appellate court judge threw out the Russian request after
ruling that under Greek law the accusations did not constitute a crime
as he had no outstanding debts to the Russian state. "I am satisfied
with the court's decision," Gusinsky said without further
comment. Gusinsky left the downtown Athens court in a jeep.
He was expected to return to Israel, where he
lives, later Tuesday, lawyers said. One of his lawyers, Antonis
Vgontzas, said the court decision saved Greece from "an insane
adventure." Gusinsky claimed the Russian accusations were part
of a politically motivated vendetta for criticizing Moscow's leaders
and their policies. He was arrested on Aug. 21 on his arrival from
Israel. He was released on bail a week later and had since been
staying at a luxury hotel in Athens. His $117,000 was returned. Last
week Russian prosecutors — acting on the Greek court's request — sent
additional documentation to bolster the extradition bid for
Gusinsky, who once controlled Russia's influential NTV television
network. Gusinsky contended the charges were engineered in
retaliation for NTV's critical coverage of Russian President Vladimir
Putin and the war in Chechnya. During a Sept. 29 hearing, a Greek
prosecutor had described the extradition request as "unclear." Russia
initially sought Gusinsky on charges of misrepresenting the assets of
his company Media-Most to obtain a $262 million loan from the
state-owned gas company Gazprom. It later added allegations of money
laundering."
[Khodorkovsky -- along with Berezovsky, Gusinsky and other
billionaire Jewish Russian robber barons wanted by Russian police --
is Jewish.]
Russia Arrests Head of Largest Oil Co.,
By DEBORAH SEWARD, Daily News, October
25, 2003
"Camouflaged special forces arrested Russia's richest man, Mikhail
Khodorkovsky, at a Siberian airport on Saturday, and he was
ordered jailed on charges of tax evasion and fraud. The dramatic
arrest of the head of Russia's largest oil producer alarmed the
country's business and political elite, with many analysts saying the
actions against the oil company, Yukos, are a Kremlin-directed
campaign to keep him out of politics. Khodorkovsky, who has
openly funded opposition parties, is the latest of Russia's superrich
oligarchs to be pursued by President Vladimir Putin's government.
Tycoons Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky have gone
into self-imposed exile to avoid criminal prosecution. For months,
Russian prosecutors have been investigating officials and shareholders
at Yukos, looking for evidence of tax evasion and theft of state
property. With the pressure against him intesifying since the summer,
Khodorkovsky has vowed that he would not be driven out of Russia like
Berezovsky and Gusinsky, who also allege the Kremlin
targeted their companies for political reasons."
Hard-labor sentence for Jewish tycoon,
by the Foreign Staff, Jewish Chronicle
(UK, paper copy), August 8, 2003, p. 9
"The Deputy Head of the Russian Jewish Congress, Mikhail
Mirilashvili, has been sentenced to 12 years in a hard-labor
colony for kidnapping. He was found guilty by a military court in St.
Petersbourg of organising the abduction of two Georgian businessmen
alleged to have been involved in the August 2000 kidnapping of his
father. Miralashvili's father was freed unharmed after one day.
The Georgian's mutiliated bodies were found a year lter on the
outskirts of the city ... The 12-year sentence came at the end of a
two-and-a-half-year trial -- during which Mr. Mirilashvili,
who also has Israeli citizenship, has run
extensive local gambling, hotel and construction interests, and
continued to help fund a variety of Jewish charities, from a jail
cell."
[Here we have it clearly: Jewish international tribalism at its
ugliest. Jewish power in the Pentagon/Washington translates into world
defense of Jewish corruption, and punishment for countries that dare
to notice Jewish criminals. Perle, as any reader of this web site
knows is Jewish. As is the Russian oligarch he defends, Khodorkovsky.
The anti-American world in all corners grows because the U.S. has been
so deeply poisoned by Zionism and Judeocentism.]
Throw Russia out of G8: US defence advisor,
" Senior Pentagon advisor Richard Perle said Russia "should be
excluded" from the Group of Eight (G8) industrial nations for its
arrest at gunpoint of its top oil baron, it was reported. "Not one of
the G8 countries would allow itself to behave in such a way with one
of its leading businessmen," the US Defence Department advisor said of
the arrest last Saturday of the head of the Yukos oil giant Mikhail
Khodorkovsky in an interview published Thursday in the business
daily Kommersant, warning that Russia was "heading in the wrong
direction." Khodorkovsky, whose oil group is the centre of a
wide-ranging fraud investigation, was surrounded by armed security
forces in a dawn raid at an airport in Siberia while he was on a
business trip and flown back to Moscow. He was charged on seven counts
of fraud, including one of embezzling the state of more than one
billion dollars, and imprisoned. The arrest has been widely seen in
Moscow as politically motivated, with Khodorkovsky having
financed opposition parties ahead of December 7th parliamentary
elections. As quoted by Kommersant, Perle said he hoped "the US
administration will not allow Russian companies to return" to Iraq,
noting that Washington had "liberated the Iraqis from the monstrous
regime of Saddam Hussein with which Russian had fruitfully cooperated
for a long time."
[Apologetics for the Jewish oligarchy/capitalists' rape of
Russia.]
Kremlin Targets Jewish Tycoons In War on Critics,
By S.A. GREENE, [Jewish] FORWARD,
October 31, 2003
"Oil titan Mikhail Khodorkovsky is not the first Jew who has
risen to become Russia's richest citizen. Before him Roman
Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky had their stints, while
Vladimir Gusinsky got close. In Russia, however, life at the top
is not all that it's cracked up to be. Berezovsky and
Gusinsky are now in exile, facing prosecution if they ever return
to Russia, while Abramovich, having cashed in much of his
Russian oil and metals empire and bought a British soccer team, is a
frequent guest of Berezovsky in London. As for Khodorkovsky,
he's in jail. Russian authorities arrested Khodorkovsky at
gunpoint October 25 on a snowy Siberian runway. He is being held on
charges ranging from tax evasion to fraud. The charges concern
post-communist privatization deals for the companies that went on to
become Yukos, the oil behemoth that Khodorkovsky founded and
recently merged with Sibneft, another firm that he bought from
Abramovich. If a court so decides, both companies could end up
back in state hands. The crackdown caused a sharp drop in Russia's
stock market this week and has prompted warnings that foreign
investors might back away. It's not only the economy that took a hit,
though. Russian antisemites are in trouble, too.
Their favorite bogeymen, the Jewish "oligarchs," as the country's
tycoons are called, are becoming an endangered species. In the eyes of
most Russians, the oligarchs are clearly guilty, of theft and
corruption in the best case, and probably a lot worse. That much of
their wealth is ill-gotten, no one really doubts. And what is to be
done? Most Russians would answer: Lock 'em up, ship 'em out. There's
plenty of room in Siberia. This, of course, is not what's
happening. As Khodorkovsky sits in Moscow's most notoriously
disease-ridden prison, most non-Jewish oligarchs are still riding
high, even if a few are not likely to step foot in Russia again. The
metals empire of Vladimir Potanin — who, along with Berezovsky,
most brazenly boasted of his influence over Boris Yeltsin's Kremlin —
is thriving, as are Vagit Alekperov's oil wells. The list of safe
oligarchs goes on, but there are only a few Jews still on it:
Mikhail Fridman of Alfa Bank, for example.
What are we to make of the fact that almost all of the major oligarchs
in jail or exile are Jews, while almost all of those still in business
are not? The answer is not as obvious as it may seem." [Oh,
yes it is.]
[Khororkovsky, Rothchild, Nevslin: Jews all.]
Stockholders may take government to human rights court,
By Andrew Jack, Financial Times, Nov 2
2003
"Key Yukos shareholders are considering launching high-profile
international and domestic challenges in the coming days to the
actions brought by the Russian authorities against Mikhail
Khodorkovsky, according to advisers to the company. Lawyers are
studying the possibility of appealing abroad as well as within Russia
over the validity of the freeze brought by prosecutors last Thursday
on more than 42 per cent of Yukos' shares, which they claim are
controlled by Mr Khodorkovsky. Another specialist legal team,
which includes attorneys from North America, is examining options for
seeking an emergency ruling from the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg in relation to procedural violations in the criminal cases
brought against Mr Khodorkovsky, who was arrested last month,
and other key Yukos shareholders. Russian lawyers are nervous about
taking their legal battle abroad, as it is likely to irritate the
Kremlin. Such a move could escalate diplomatic tensions between the
Russian authorities and foreign countries, which have already openly
criticised the conduct of the investigation and argued that it may be
political. It could also make any attempts to reach a negotiated
settlement with Mr Khodorkovsky still more difficult. Advisers
to Mr Khodorkovsky say that ownership of his shares, including
voting rights and the possibility of selling them to third parties,
was transferred after his arrest, in accordance with a trust document
that he made public last year. One of his advisers firmly denied
reports that control of his shares had passed to the influential
British financier Jacob Rothschild, and indicated that it was
instead held by Leonid Nevzlin, Yukos's second-largest
shareholder and a long-standing partner of Mr Khodorkovsky
who is now based in Israel. Mr
Rothschild may play an intermediary role in the legal and lobbying
battle in the weeks and months to come. He is a trustee of the British
branch of Mr Khodorkovsky's Open Russia philanthropic
organisation, and has got to know him over several years"
[When one reads this headline below, the natural response is to
wonder: "Well, which corrupt Jewish Russian tycoon does this refer to,
of the Jewish Russian oligarchy criminal pack? Berezovsky, Gussinsky,
et al already HAVE Israel citizenship, after looting Russia as Russian
citizens. Get in trouble in Russia? Play the "I'm a persecuted Jew"
card and look to get to Israel.]
Israel Grants Russian Tycoon Citizenship,
Earthlink (from Associated Press),
November 5, 2003 10:01
"Israel has granted citizenship to a Russian tycoon who could be
targeted in Russia's tax evasion and fraud investigation of oil giant
Yukos, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday. Israeli authorities said
becoming an Israeli would not automatically shield Leonid Nevzlin
from possible extradition to Moscow. Nevzlin is the top aide of
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who resigned earlier this week as head of
Yukos, the world's fifth-largest oil company. Khodorkovsky,
Russia's richest man, has been in a Russian prison since Oct. 25 on
charges of tax evasion and fraud. Critics say Khodorkovsky is
being targeted because of his growing financial and political clout
and his funding of opposition parties. Russian media have reported
that Khodorkovsky assigned to Nevzlin "beneficiary
rights" to 50 percent of shares in Yukos holding company, Group
Menatep. That would make Nevzlin a key figure in protecting the
company's multibillion-dollar assets from the authorities who might
try to seize them. Nevzlin, who is Jewish and as such entitled
to citizenship in the Jewish state, was questioned by Russian police
in July, but no criminal charges have been brought against him. He
arrived in Israel on a tourist visa two months ago and was granted
citizenship on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said.
Israeli opposition legislator Colette Avital said it appeared
the process was unusually quick. "Suddenly, overnight he became a
dedicated Zionist and he got citizenship in a speedy manner and we
have to ask why?" Avital told The Associated Press.
The ministry said Nevzlin went through the proper procedures and was
not given preferential treatment. Nevzlin is No. 386 on
Forbes magazine's list of the world's richest people, with an
estimated wealth at $1.1 billion. Forbes ranks him as the 11th richest
Russian. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, brought up his
concern about recent arrests of Jewish businessmen in Russia during a
meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday. "He
said that as a Jew and as prime minister he is worried that there is
persecution" of Jews, said Sharon adviser Raanan Gissin.
Sharon fears the arrests could lead to greater anti-Semitism,
Gissin said. Putin assured Sharon that
the cases were purely criminal, according
to Gissin. Neither leader mentioned Khodorkovsky or
Nevzlin by name. Khodorkovsky has said his father is
Jewish. Nevzlin was formerly head of the Russian Jewish
Congress - the group once headed by Vladimir Gusinsky, another
oligarch who found refuge in Israel. According to the Israeli
newspaper Maariv, another Yukos
shareholder, Vladmir Dubov, was in Israel until recently and
stayed in the same Tel Aviv hotel as Nevzlin."
[Ho! Surprise! Kukes is ALSO Jewish.(See The Economist,
August 21, 1999) Jewish billionaire George Soros steps in to suggest
(Jewish-led) pressure on the U.S. to pressure Russia to lay off its
criminal Jewish billionaires.]
Yukos names Kukes as new CEO,
By FT Reporters, Financial Times,
November 3, 2003
"Simon Kukes, a US citizen and former head of Russian oil
company TNK, was on Tuesday named as the new chief executive of Yukos.
Russia's largest oil company moved swiftly to reassure investors after
its former chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, resigned on
Monday only a week after being arrested on charges of tax evasion,
embezzlement and theft. Mr Kukes said shortly after his
appointment that he would not change Yukos's strategy. "We will keep
everything the way it is, we will continue merging with Sibneft and we
will keep our obligations to shareholders," he said. His appointment
may help revive negotiations with US oil companies ExxonMobil and
ChevronTexaco over the purchase of a strategic stake in Yukos. "Kukes
has two competitive advantages: he is a US citizen which makes it
harder for Russian prosecutors to touch him and he led TNK through a
merger with BP," one person close to the company said... Mr Putin also
said that the Yukos affair had played a "catalysing role" in changes
at the top of his administration. Alexander Voloshin, the former chief
of staff, was replaced last week by Dmitry Medvedev as the head
of the presidential administration in a move seen as reinforcing Mr
Putin's powerbase. ... . Speaking in London on Monday, George Soros,
the US financier whose Open Society Institute has been deeply involved
in Russia, said that "the crackdown by [Russian President Vladimir]
Putin sends an unmistakable message that independence of action will
not be tolerated. It's the end of an era, the end of the era of robber
capitalism and the beginning of that of state capitalism. "The only
chance of stopping this trend taking root is pressure, especially from
Europe. Unfortunately, the US is too wedded to its Russian alliance to
protest. The price of strengthening democracy in Iraq is weakening
democracy in Russia. If there is popular pressure from the west
against this, we could see Russia being forced out of the Group of
Eight [industrialised nations]." Lawyers representing Mr
Khodorkovsky on Monday stepped up their diplomatic and political
offensive in European capitals ahead of Thursday's summit between the
EU and Russia."
Arrested oil tycoon passed shares to banker,
Washington Times (from Agence
France-Presse), Novebmer 3, 2003
"Control of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's shares in the Russian oil
giant Yukos have passed to renowned banker Jacob Rothschild,
under a deal they concluded prior to Mr. Khodorkovsky's arrest,
the Sunday Times reported. Voting rights to the shares passed
to Mr. Rothschild, 67, under a "previously unknown arrangement"
designed to take effect in the event that Mr. Khodorkovsky
could no longer "act as a beneficiary" of the shares, it said. Mr.
Khodorkovsky, 40, whom Russian authorities arrested at gunpoint
and jailed pending further investigation last week, was said by the
Sunday Times to have made the arrangement with Mr. Rothschild
when he realized he was facing arrest. Mr. Rothschild now
controls the voting rights on a stake in Yukos worth almost $13.5
billion, the newspaper said in a dispatch from Moscow. Mr.
Khodorkovsky owns 4 percent of Yukos directly and 22 percent
through a trust of which he is the sole beneficiary, according to
Russian analysts. From the figures reported in the Sunday Times, it
appeared Mr. Rothschild had received control of all Mr.
Khodorkovsky's shares. The two have known each other for years "through
their mutual love of the arts" and their positions as directors
of the Open Russia Foundation, Yukos' philanthropic branch, it said.
Russian authorities Thursday froze billions of dollars of shares held
by Mr. Khodorkovsky and his top lieutenants in Yukos — throwing
control of the country's largest oil company into limbo and causing
frenzied selling on financial markets. Russian prosecutors said owners
of the shares are still entitled to dividends and retain voting
rights, but can no longer sell their stakes. They said the freeze was
necessary as collateral for the $1 billion that Mr. Khodorkovsky
and his associates are accused of misappropriating during the 1990s.
Mr. Rothschild is the British head of Europe's wealthy and
influential Rothschild family, and runs his own investment
empire."
[Interesting article in juxtaposition with the ones above, no?]
Israeli Pipeline to Move Russian Oil,
Earthlink, November 5, 2003
"Russian oil will begin flowing through an Israeli pipeline in late
November, the pipeline's director said Wednesday, signaling a new
chapter in rapidly improving relations with Moscow. The announcement
came on the same day Prime Minister Ariel Sharon returned from
a three day visit to Moscow, where he discussed political and trade
ties, and the Middle East peace process with President Vladimir Putin.
The Russian oil will move through the Eilat-Ashkelon Oil Pipeline Co.,
according to its director, Emmanuel Sakal. He said the oil was
earmarked for markets in the Far East, a major focus of Russia's
developing export strategy. Sakal would not say how large the
shipments would be, which companies were providing them, or give a
dollar value on the deal. Oil analyst Valery Nesterov of Troika Dialog
in Moscow said Lukoil and Rosneft, which have production facilities in
southern Russia, would be the likeliest candidates to exploit the
facility."
[Khodorkovsky is of course Jewish, he is a billionaire criminal,
and the international Jewish Lobby is currently trying to save him
from the arm of Russian justice. The door to Congress and the White
House is through the Jewish/Zionist Network. Jewish money and Jewish
crooks, everywhere.]
How Russian Oil Tycoon Courted Friends in U.S.,
By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN, New York Times
(International Edition), November 5, 2003
"In early 2001, as George W. Bush's administration moved into the
White House, one of Russia's wealthiest men, Mikhail B.
Khodorkovsky, sought a meeting with the new national security
adviser, Condoleezza Rice. According to a former staff member,
National Security Council analysts were asked to perform a background
check. Mr. Khodorkovsky did not get the meeting — part of the
tycoon's efforts to secure approval from the American establishment —
because of "allegations of past business
improprieties," the former staff member said, also noting that
Mr. Khodorkovsky
spent heavily in Washington to court the Capitol's inner circle. But
Mr. Khodorkovsky's steady efforts to win access to other influential
Americans have paid off. Last July, he met with Energy
Secretary Spencer Abraham to discuss America's oil policy. Former
President George H. W. Bush traveled to Russia in September and spoke
at a dinner attended by Mr. Khodorkovsky. That event prompted
Moscow newspapers to speculate that the visit was part of an effort by
American companies to secure a merger with Yukos Oil, where Mr.
Khodorkovsky was chief executive until he
quit on Monday in a swirl of fraud and embezzlement charges.
His replacement, a Russian-born American [who the times discretely
neglects to mention is also Jewish, Simon Kukes], was confirmed
yesterday. The Carlyle Group, an investment bank that retained the
elder Mr. Bush as an adviser until a few weeks ago, has a close
business relationship with Mr. Khodorkovsky. Although Mr. Bush
was in Russia as a Carlyle representative, the bank said, his visit
had nothing to do with oil deals and he did not meet privately with
Mr. Khodorkovsky. Last summer, too, Mr. Khodorkovsky
traveled to a meeting of business leaders in Sun Valley, Idaho, as a
guest of a former senator, Bill Bradley, a New Jersey Democrat. Mr.
Bradley also advises the Open Russia Foundation, a Russian
philanthropy based in Britain that is bankrolled by Mr.
Khodorkovsky. Henry Kissinger, secretary of state in the
Nixon administration, is on the foundation's board, a position he said
he accepted at the invitation of Lord Rothschild, another board
member. Mr. Kissinger said he had only met Mr. Khodorkovsky
twice, briefly and in a group. "It is in no sense an endorsement of
Mr. Khodorkovsky's business practices," Mr. Kissinger
said of his board seat, adding that Mr. Khodorkovsky exercised
"no particular influence" over the foundation's grants. He declined to
comment further on Mr. Khodorkovsky. In his efforts to carve
out contacts and make his name, Mr. Khodorkovsky has also
donated substantially to philanthropies in Russia and to American
think tanks. People close to him said he had three motives: improving
his own reputation after surviving Russia's scandal-plagued
privatizations; refashioning operations and perceptions of Yukos Oil
in preparation for a merger with a Western company; and the
furtherance of economic and political changes in Russia. "He wanted to
have ties to the United States and he had a goal of exporting oil to
the United States," said Sarah Carey, a Washington lawyer who
sits on Yukos's board and is a close adviser to Mr. Khodorkovsky.
"In order to do that you need to develop constituencies here in
Washington." Philanthropy, she added, "is what smart guys do when they
get rich." Foreigners are not allowed to donate money to American
politicians or political parties, and most of Mr. Khodorkovsky's
charitable giving has centered in Russia, where Yukos reports
philanthropic donations of more than $50 million annually across a
broad range of causes. Through Yukos, however, Mr. Khodorkovsky
has given handsome sums to American organizations, including a $1
million donation to the Library of Congress and a $500,000 pledge to
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank that is
home to some of the most often quoted analysts of Russian affairs ...
The American Enterprise Institute, another Washington think tank that
has weighed in on Mr. Khodorkovsky's behalf, declined to
address financial dealings with Yukos, citing the institute's policy
not to comment on such matters. Fiona Hill, a Russia analyst at the
Brookings Institution, said many think tanks, needing money for Russia
studies programs, had courted Mr. Khodorkovsky zealously. She
said that Brookings, however, decided not to accept his donations.
"The think tanks were all joking about who wanted to take money to
fund the Mikhail Khodorkovsky chair of good corporate governance," Ms.
Hill said. "There were still questions about his business dealings and
whether he really made the transition from being
a robber baron and now wore a white hat." Others in Washington
said that influence is not so easily purchased and that Mr.
Khodorkovsky had traction in the United States because of an
authentic commitment to corporate and political change in Russia."
[This is false. Khodorkovsky has "traction" because he is the richest
man in Russia, he is a powerful swindler, and he is Jewish with the
attendant tie to the international Jewish Lobby.]
[A comment from a critic in cyberspace: "Laura Silber of course
is responsible for the BBC documentary 'The Death of Yugoslavia' which
has become the 'official' version of history with respect to the
Balkan wars. I wasn't aware of the Silber-Soros link till I read
this." The person who forwarded this to JTR titled it: "The
Jew-Jew connection." (Both Soros and Silber are Jewish, as well as
Khodorkovsky.)]
Soros offices shut down in Moscow George Soros: Campaigning for rule
of law in eastern Europe,
BBC News (UK), November 7, 2003
"Camouflage-clad men have forced staff to leave the Moscow offices of
the Open Society Institute founded by the US billionaire George
Soros. At least 30 men stormed the offices and seized computers
and documents in the raid, which began late on Thursday, the
foundation's lawyer Pavel Kuzmin said. Mr Soros' senior
policy adviser Laura Silber told BBC News Online that the
foundation had responded by filing criminal charges. She said the 100
staff were locked out and "it is impossible to work in Russia now"...
Mr Soros, whose institute aims to promote a civil society in
post-communist Russia, sharply criticised the recent jailing of Yukos
chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky. On Tuesday he warned that
Russia "may now be entering a phase of state capitalism, where all the
owners of capital realise that they are dependent on the state". His
comments came in an interview with the weekly Moskovskiye Novosti,
recently acquired by Mr Khodorkovsky.
He denounced the 25 October arrest of the oil tycoon as "persecution".
[Russia is apparently cleaning house on the many corrupt Jewish
capitalists who have looted that country.]
Soros building in Moscow raided,
By Andrew Jack, Financial Times, November
7 2003
"Up to 40 armed men in camouflage last night took control of the
national headquarters of the Soros Foundation in central Moscow,
damaging the interior and taking away documents. The action, by a
private security company while police looked on but refused to
interfere, appeared to be the latest escalation in a two-year
commercial dispute over control of the building. It is set to disrupt
work by several charities active in Russia, including the country's
recipient organisation for the Global Fund for Aids. Senior Soros
Foundation officials in New York played down any link with the action
by the Russian authorities against the oil tycoon Mikhail
Khodorkovsky, although George Soros, the US financier, has
been outspoken in his criticism of the Yukos crisis as politically
motivated ... Mr Soros has announced that he is winding down
his philanthropic activities in Russia, shifting his priorities to
other parts of the world. But he has established 11 regional groups,
which receive support as they move towards self-sufficiency and which
were using the headquarters. The Soros Foundation had a lease on the
building and a sale and purchase agreement to buy it for about $4m,
but Mr Paperin said a Russian and a Canadian-British businessman then
attempted to seize the property."
[JTR contributor's commentary: "Jewish commentary on a
Jew -- what's new?" No Jewish Russian capitalist billionaire
oligarch/robber baron can be elected President of Russia. Poor things!
"Anti-Semitism!" I don't think I'll be elected President of anywhere
either, but who cares?]
The Struggle for Russia,
by Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation, November 6, 2003
"The arrest last month of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the principal
owner of Russia's biggest oil company, Yukos, and the richest of the
country's seventeen state-anointed billionaire oligarchs, on charges
of fraud and tax evasion has put Russia back in the forefront of US
media attention. But is the story being reported the full, or
essential, one? It's being told as follows. Although Khodorkovsky,
like all of Russia's "wealthy businessmen," acquired his company
(currently valued at roughly $45 billion) at little if any cost to
himself through "murky" insider dealings in the 1990s, when the
enormous natural resources of the former Soviet state were being
privatized under then-President Boris Yeltsin, he has since
transformed Yukos into a model for a new capitalist, democratic
Russia--"transparent," exceedingly profitable, even philanthropic. So
much so that it has helped fuel a Russian "economic rebound" while
becoming a potential source of oil for the United States. Unlike
other, less "clean" oligarchs, the story continues, Khodorkovsky
is being persecuted by President Vladimir Putin chiefly because the
oil baron became active in Russia's democratic politics, funding
opposition parties in next month's parliamentary elections and even
aspiring to the presidency. To crush Khodorkovsky and make an
example of him, Putin is relying on a Kremlin faction he has recruited
largely from the KGB, where he began his own career, which wants
Yukos's wealth for itself. The result will therefore be a grievous
blow to Russia's "booming economy" and democracy, replacing
free-market-oriented "liberal oligarchs" with much worse and less
efficient ones and driving away needed foreign investment. Some
elements of this story, which relies very heavily on Moscow sources
associated with the "liberal oligarchs," are plausible, but others are
not. Democracy in Russia has been failing ever since Yeltsin made
oligarchical privatization possible by destroying an elected
parliament in 1993, and neither side is interested in truly reviving
it; the oligarchs are zealous monopolists, not free-market reformers,
and Western investors interested in Russia's huge oil reserves have
already indicated that they care about official guarantees of the
contracts, not who signs them; Putin now controls elections
sufficiently to get substantially the legislature he wants; and
no one of Jewish origin, as are Khodorkovsky and
most of the other oligarchs, can be elected president of Russia.
Above all, however, the prevailing media account omits the essential
background and context. Privatization--or "piratization," as it is
often called in Russia--did not take place in an economic or social
vacuum. It was accompanied in the 1990s by the worst economic
depression of modern times and the impoverishment of a great many
Russians, probably the majority of them. In the process, it created
the oligarchical economic system that exists today."
[Khodorkovsky, and most of the arrested or fugitive
billionaire Russian oligarch "crooks" (Boris Berezovsky, "the
Godfather of the Kremlin" (fugitive);Vladimir Gussinsky
(fugitive); Mikhail Mirilashvili (Deputy Head of the Russian
Jewish Congress, now in jail; Arkady Angelevich, who heads
Moscow's Montazhspetsbank and is a member of the presidium of
the Russian Jewish Congress, imprisoned for embezzlement) are
Jewish, as are many of their American advisors/networks (Mark
Rich -- pardoned by President Clinton, et al). Note also, per the
below piece, that the New York Times and Boston Globe
are controlled by the Jewish Sulzberger family and that journalistic
"blowjob" expert Leon Aron is also a member of the tribe.]
Oligarchs R Us. Deep politics swirl behind the arrest of Mikhail
Khodorkovsky,
by Matt Taibbi, New York Press, Volume
16, Issue 45
"There is big news brewing in Russia this week, and America is being
sold a line of goods about what’s happening there. The coverage of the
arrest by the Vladimir Putin administration of "businessman"
Mikhail Khodorkovsky has featured such grossly, shockingly
transparent propaganda that it could hardly have been worse during the
Cold War. What’s more, some of my old friends—they know who they
are—are participating in it. This story, about the politically
motivated arrest of Khodorkovsky, the Croseus-rich tycoon who
heads the oil company Yukos, is in fact an important story for the
ordinary American. The clash between two of the world’s baddest
gangsters—Putin and Khodorkovsky—is also a great symbolic
battle, each side representing one of the two great remaining
pretenders to global rule. Putin represents the past, which also
happens to be the American present: the fictional democracy, in fact a
ruthless oligarchy of corporate interests, with the state as the
castrated referee. Khodorkovsky represents the future: no
referee. Which is why our media establishment has chosen to take up
arms for him. They are making his case into an open referendum on the
neo-con revolution that until now has been fought in a largely
clandestine manner here at home. The backstory to this scandal is far
too involved to get into in any detail here, but the outlines are as
follows. Khodorkovsky
is one of about a dozen major "entrepreneurs" who emerged from the
collapse of the Soviet Union to dominate the Russian economy. A series
of corrupt privatization deals organized and overseen by American
advisors basically ensured that ownership of the assets of the Russian
state would go to this small handful of crooks. The basic story is
that the U.S., in conjunction with the Yeltsin administration, decided
to create a super-wealthy class of oligarchs who would ruthlessly
defend their assets against any attempt to renationalize the economy.
In return—and this is the key point—they were to support, financially,
the ruling, Western-friendly "democratic" government. It is through
such machinations that we were able to bring about a compliant Russian
state, wholly dependent on corporate support, that would answer the
bell whenever we needed something ugly out of them—for instance their
assistance in our bombing of their traditional allies, the Serbs.
The key moment in this story was the winter of 1996. Polls showed that
Yeltsin was certain to lose a reelection bid against the idiot
communist Gennady Zyuganov. So the state, in conjunction with U.S.
advisors, sold off the crown jewels of the Russian economy to these
crooks for pennies on the dollar. In return, these beneficiaries
massively funded Yeltsin’s reelection campaign. This is how
Khodorkovsky, then the chief of a bank called Menatep, came to
control the precious Yukos empire that is now under siege. It was
given to him. His bank was put in charge of the auction for 78 percent
of the company, and he actually excluded other bidders at will. He
"paid" around $300 million (whether or not he ever paid even that
money is still a matter of dispute) for his controlling 78- percent
stake. The company is now valued at about $15 billion. That doesn’t
begin to tell the Khodorkovsky story.
Even in the group of fantastic individuals who participated in this
mass robbery, he stands out. He is the Bad Bad Leroy Brown of Russia.
You know that opening scene in Goodfellas where Ray Liotta says, "All
my life, I wanted to be a gangster"? Just imagine the fleshy,
bespectacled Khodorkovsky slamming that trunk shut. In a nation
of mobsters, he is king, a stone-cold ruthless genius. It would
take a hundred thousand pages to detail all of his schemes, but they
make the work of Professor Moriarty seem like a game of Chinese
checkers. I’ll set down one example, from a story I did many years ago
about Russian minerals company called Avisma, which eventually filed
suit against its owners here in the States, naming Khodorkovsky’s
Menatep as the chief villain. Menatep (allegedly, I have to say in
America) bought the company, then forced its directors to sell its
commodities to a Menatep shell company called TMC at pennies on the
dollar. TMC then sold the goods (mainly titanium) to Western investors
at cost. To make matters worse, TMC then (allegedly) induced Avisma to
buy materials from them above cost. Readers are invited to imagine
what words like "forced" and "induced" mean in this context. In the
end, nothing was left but a skeletonized carcass. Any Brooklyn
restaurant owner who has been taken over by the Lucchese or Gambino
families will recognize this technique. This was what was described as
"the encouraging emergence of market capitalism" in the new Russia,
and for many years it was cool with everybody—the press, the Russian
state, the American diplomatic effort. Until this year, that is, when
Khodorkovsky broke the rules of the gangster-arrangement
implicit in the new Russian state. He decided he no longer wanted to
pay the piper—Putin. Instead of ponying up the agreed-upon tribute, he
started making noise about wanting to be president himself in 2008,
and then, even worse, he started to fund opposition parties ... How
anyone can find morality in any of this is beyond me. But it is not
beyond the New York Times, and it is not even beyond the Boston
Globe. These papers, along with the vast majority of Western media
outlets around the world, have cast this smarmy fight over assets long
ago stolen from the Russian people as a battle between the evil forces
of nationalization and the good, industrious representatives (Khodorkovsky)
of the people-friendly market economy. Here is how Steven Lee Myers
of the Times described the resignation of Kremlin chief of
staff Alexander Voloshin, who has apparently thrown in his lot with
Khodorkovsky: "On Mr. Voloshin’s side is a coterie of aides who favor
greater freedom for the economy. On the other are those advisors who,
like Mr. Putin himself, served in the K.G.B. or other security
services and favor a stronger role for the state…"
Myers leaves out here the fact that
Khodorkovsky himself, like most of the tycoons, is a creature of
the security services, having once been a chief of the Komsomol in
Moscow. He goes on: "That faction, known collectively as the
siloviki—or as Chekists after the old Soviet-era word for intelligence
operatives—is widely believed to have initiated or supported the
prosecutorial assault on Yukos, though exactly why remains unclear."
This is outright bullshit. Everyone in Russia knows why. It’s because
Yukos didn’t pay the piper. This is typical of the Times, casting
mafia disagreements in the garb of an ideological dispute ...
Alongside the Myers piece, the Times ran an editorial entitled,
"Crime and Punishment for Capitalists." The piece was written by
Leon Aron, the author of one of the most shameless blowjobs in the
history of biographical art: Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life. In
the piece, Aron actually details many of the same facts I’ve
set down here, but he argues, against all available fact, that the
tycoons are actually wonderfully productive people who are doing their
darndest to lift Russia to its feet ... Many of us who spent the 90s
in Russia became aware over time that the aim of the United States was
to create a rump state that would allow economic interests to strip
assets at will. The population in this scheme was to be good for
consuming foreign goods produced abroad with Russia’s own cheaply sold
raw materials. The aim was a castrated state, anarchy, a vast,
confused territory of captive consumers, cheap labor and unguarded oil
and aluminum. Some of us who came home after seeing this began to
realize that the same process is underway in the United States: the
erosion of the tax base, the gradual appropriation of the tools of
government by economic interests, a massive, disorganized population
useless to everybody except as shoppers. That is their revolution:
smashing states everywhere and creating a scattered global nation of
villas and tax shelters, as inaccessible as Olympus, forbidding entry
even to mighty dictators. That’s what this Khodorkovsky
business is all about—preserving that dream. Ask yourself what other
reason there could be for the American press to defend a thief with
eight billion dollars."
PUTTIN' PUTIN
ON THE SPOT OVER ANTI-SEMITISM,
By URI DAN, New York Post,
November 7, 2003
"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon used part of his
three-hour Kremlin meeting with Vladimir Putin this week to ask if
anti-Semitism is coming back strong in Russia.
Sharon told the
Russian president there's an impression that his arrest of oil
oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky is part of a crackdown on
Russia's new class of Jewish billionaires. Although
Khodorkovsky doesn't regard himself as Jewish - only his father is
Jewish - his arrest follows the persecution of other oligarchs such as
Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, who are Jews.
And there are media reports that Putin's next target may be another
Jewish Russian expatriate - Roman Abramovich, the London-based
billionaire and soccer club owner who was a partner in Khodorkovsky's
oil empire. Putin vehemently rejected the accusations of
anti-Semitism. "I am a great friend of the Jewish people," he told
Sharon. In fact, he said, the head of Russia's still-significant
Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, "just lately published a book about
me in which he accuses me of 'Zionizing' my leadership with Jews and
Zionists." Meanwhile, two of Khodorkovsky's chief deputies
are already in Israel. Leonid Nevzlin,
the 11th-richest Russian according to Forbes, with an estimated wealth
of $1.1 billion, has already been granted citizenship, and Vladimir
Dubov, is awaiting his papers."
Nevzlin Wins Israeli Citizenship,
By Caroline McGregor, Moscow Times,
Novembrer 6, 2003
"Leonid Nevzlin, the biggest Yukos shareholder who is not in
jail, has been granted Israeli citizenship, the Israeli Interior
Ministry said Wednesday, raising eyebrows in Jerusalem over the haste
in which it was done. Although no charges have been filed against
Nevzlin, at least one opposition member of Israel's parliament,
the Knesset, wanted to know why someone implicated in financial
wrongdoing should be given what may amount to de facto political
asylum. Russia's probe into fraud among Yukos' owners began with the
July 2 arrest of the company's No. 3 billionaire, Platon Lebedev. The
No. 1 shareholder, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was arrested at
gunpoint on Oct. 25. As the probe widens,
Nevzlin's request for a passport from a country that is highly
reluctant to extradite its citizens gives the appearance of a quick
attempt to keep from joining his two partners behind bars.
Already Yukos' No. 2 shareholder, Nevzlin has also taken over
control of the bulk of Khodorkovsky's shares.
Other top Yukos shareholders were also reported
to be in Israel ... Nevzlin, who in 2001 briefly
succeeded Vladimir Gusinsky as the head of the Russian Jewish
Congress, has well-placed friends among Israel's political elite.
Natan Sharansky, a deputy prime minister and a former Soviet
dissident, may have helped Nevzlin obtain citizenship,
Gazeta and Kommersant reported. Israeli media reports in
October also linked Nevzlin with Finance Minister Benyamin
Netanyahu, whom Nevzlin has hosted for speaking engagements
in Moscow. Nevzlin has endeared himself to many in Israel
through generous philanthropy. The Leonid Nevzlin Research Center for
Russian and East European Jewry was opened at the Hebrew University in
Jerusalem on May 28. Sharansky has asked Nevzlin to help
support Jerusalem's financially strapped Beit Hatefutzot diaspora
museum ... A fourth Yukos billionaire, Vladmir Dubov, was in
Israel until recently and stayed in the same Tel Aviv hotel as
Nevzlin, Israel's Ma'ariv daily said. Dubov, a State
Duma deputy, has denied plans to emigrate. "I have not emigrated from
Russia, I've simply gone away," he was quoted as saying in last
Friday's Nezavisimaya Gazeta. The clarification came after
Union of Right Forces leader Irina Khakamada, citing Dubov
associates, told news agencies that Dubov had decided to
emigrate to Israel after being excluded from the United Russia ballot.
On Wednesday, the BBC and others picked up a report by Israeli
news agency Globes that cited unnamed sources
as saying a number of Yukos executives had
gathered under assumed names "at a hotel in the center of the country."
[Yet ANOTHER shady rich media mogul Jewish businessman
from the former Soviet Union. And it's a lateral pass: Jewish owner to
Jewish owner, Weinberg to Rabinovich. Where does one escape Jewish
dominance of the mass media in the West, when it can even strangle the
ethnic media?]
Ukraine Tycoon Creating a Stir With Purchase Of U.S. Media,
By NATHANIEL POPPER, FORWARD, November 7,
2003
"Ukraine's most prominent and controversial Jewish businessman,
Vadim Rabinovich, said he has bought a "controlling stake" in
America's oldest Russian-language daily newspaper, Novoe Russkoe
Slovo, and its sister radio station, Narodnya Volna. Rabinovich,
the first overseas owner of NRS, holds a number of Ukrainian media
properties, which are known for journalistic standards that are "far
from high," in the words of one observer. His
media holdings are one part of a business empire that has been
investigated a number of times by American and Ukrainian authorities
for alleged links to illegal arms trading and the Russian mafia.
Representatives of the New York-based NRS repeatedly hung up on
a reporter seeking comment, but Rabinovich, in an e-mail to the
Forward, confirmed reports that his Media International
Group has purchased the paper. "The main goal is to turn the
Novoe Russkoe Slovo into the Financial Times of the
Russian-speaking world," Rabinovich wrote in the e-mail. "The
paper will be sold in Moscow, Kiev, and all European capitals. At the
moment there is no newspaper that can be named as a connecting
bridge." NRS, which was founded in 1910 by anti-Bolshevik
czarist émigrés, has become a strong American voice in support of the
Kremlin since the end of the Soviet era. While it is a major source of
news for Russian-Jewish immigrants, it has had relatively little
coverage of Jewish issues. Among Ukrainian and American media
observers, most of whom were informed of the sale by the Forward,
the purchase of the paper has generated concern about how
Rabinovich, with his tangled political relationships, will alter
its content. Rabinovich's editorial staff plans to take over the paper
in January. The former owner and editor, Valery Weinberg, will
reportedly continue to own a small stake in the paper and occupy one
of four positions on the paper's board of directors, but he will not
retain editorial control. The purchase is
Rabinovich's first business acquisition in the United States,
where the State Department has banned him since 1995 because of links
to a company suspected of illegal weapons trading with North Korea and
Iran. Before this deal, Rabinovich's most notable
appearance on the American media scene came in 1997, when he placed a
full-page ad in The New York Times. The ad warned of a threat
of antisemitism in Ukraine, but praised the Ukrainian administration
and exhorted Jews to visit the country. At the time, Jewish critics
chastised Rabinovich for promoting a government that had taken few
positive steps to support its Jewish population, recently estimated at
more than 100,000. Observers said that under Rabinovich's leadership,
NRS and Narodnya Volna are likely to be similarly used for the
promotion of the Ukrainian government, because of Rabinovich's
close relationship with Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Natalia
Ligachova, editor-in-chief of Telekritika, a Ukrainian media watchdog
publication, said Rabinovich "is regarded as a person who is (and can
be) used by the presidential administration, thanks to his
not-quite-transparent businesses, arms sales and former links with the
KGB in the Soviet time." Vladimir Katzman, editorial director
of Rabinovich's media holdings, did not deflect these concerns
in a brief interview last Friday with the Ukrainian-based Jewish
News, a subsidiary of Rabinovich's Media International
Group. "In America their opinions about Ukraine are not based on
real sources of information," Katzman said in that interview.
"Starting next year not only the concept of [NRS] will be changed, but
also the strategy of development." The new editor, starting in
January, will be Larrissa Mudrak, currently the editor of a weekly
business newspaper in Ukraine that is a joint venture between
Rabinovich's Media International Group and the Financial Times.
Ligachova called that project a "symbiosis of low-standard Ukrainian
journalism and a quality British newspaper." According to the editor
of a leading Jewish newspaper in Russia who spoke on condition of
anonymity ... the paper could be a way for Rabinovich,
who is a dual citizen of Ukraine and Israel,
to clean up his own image abroad in case he falls out of favor with
his the Ukrainian government. That happened in 1999, when
Rabinovich was temporarily declared persona non grata by the
Ukrainian government, which led him to move his
family to Israel. Comparing the purchase of the NRS to
the recent purchase of the Chelsea soccer team in England by Russian
Jewish tycoon Roman Abramovich, the editor said, "In case
anything happens in the Ukraine, the world will start yelling that
there they are offending a Jew with an image; a righteous man with an
image." Rabinovich describes the purchase in strictly business
terms, as a part of a project to create a worldwide network of
Russian-language papers, building on the papers
he owns in Israel and Ukraine ... Earlier this year the German
news magazine Der Spiegel reported that Rabinovich and
his son had sold a cache of guns and tanks to the Taliban, a report
that complemented a media inquiry into suspected arms sales by
Rabinovich to Liberian guerillas in 1999 ... Though it came as a
great surprise to many when he burst onto the Ukrainian Jewish scene
in 1997, after being relatively uninvolved before, he quickly became a
central figure. He founded the All-Ukrainian
Jewish Congress, which was responsible for The New York Times ad, and
became the head of the United Jewish Community of Ukraine and the
National Israel Appeal. The executive director of the United Jewish
Community of Ukraine, Eduard Dolinsky, said, "He is a Jew, and
a devoted Jew."
Arrested Russian Businessman Is Carlyle Group Adviser,
By Greg Schneider, Washington Post,
November 10, 2003; Page E04
"The arrest of two of Russia's top businessmen in recent months was
more than a distant headline for Washington's well-connected private
equity firm, Carlyle Group. Carlyle, known for the glittering roster
of former statesmen among its partners and advisers, has ties to both
Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, the ailed Russian
tycoons. Khodorkovsky, 40, Russia's richest man and former
chief executive of Yukos Oil Co., serves as an adviser to Carlyle's
Energy Group. He is among 15 luminaries who help the firm sort through
investment opportunities in energy industries, along with former
secretary of state James A. Baker III, former British prime minister
John Major and Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin."
[Boris Berezovsky, the corrupt billionaire criminal, looter of
Russia, and well-documented "Godfather of the Kremlin," is one of
those many Jews who are destroying the "accusation of anti-Semitism"
tool. The credibility of calling someone an "anti-Semite" continues to
plummet. Any Jewish mafioso will claim "anti-Semitism," sooner
or later. Khodorkovsky is also Jewish.]
Tycoon accuses Swiss authorities of anti-Semitism,
The Russia Journal, November 18, 2003
Posted: 11:34 Moscow time (07:34 GMT) "Boris Berezovsky,
Russian tycoon who was granted refugee status in Britain after fleeing
Moscow, said the opening of a Swiss money-laundering investigation
against him was an "anti-Semitic act". The oligarch accused Swiss
authorities of applying double standards. "Swiss authorities try to
hide the crime of the Nazis in Swiss banks. I think it is just a
continuation of the same game," Mr. Berezovsky, who is Jewish,
told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from London.
He said he did not believe it was an independent decision of Swiss
prosecutors. According to Mr. Berezovsky, he has direct
evidence that the prosecutors got false information from Russian
intelligence agencies. The office of Swiss Federal Prosecutor Valentin
Roschacher confirmed Sunday that it had opened the investigation,
which is linked to Russian claims that Mr. Berezovsky and an
associate defrauded a Russian regional government of the equivalent of
$13m in the mid-1990s by stealing cars from Russia's largest automaker
AvtoVaz. On Sunday, Swiss authorities launched a formal investigation
into alleged money laundering and membership of a criminal
organization by Boris Berezovsky. According to Mr. Roschacher,
the probe is purely a criminal investigation and is unrelated to the
recent arrest in Russia of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the head of
the YUKOS oil company who resigned as the company’s CEO after the
arrest. "We are concerned with criminal justice, not politics," Mr.
Roschacher told AP. "We just want to know which of Mr. Berezovsky's
activities in Switzerland were legal and which ones might have been
illegal," he added. The businessman has been granted political asylum
and refugee status in Britain. In September, London’s Bow Street
Magistrates Court discharged the extradition proceedings against Mr.
Berezovsky, who faces money laundering and fraud charges in his
homeland."
[Khodorkovsky is of course also Jewish.]
Abramovich pulls out of $11bn merger with Yukos,
By Saeed Shah, The Independent (UK),
November 29, 2003
"Roman Abramovich, the Russian tycoon who bought Chelsea
Football Club, yesterday dramatically called a halt to the $11bn
(£6.4bn) takeover of his oil company in Russia. The merger of Mr
Abramovich's Sibneft with Yukos, to form Russia's leading oil
company, worth $45bn, was all but complete. An extraordinary general
meeting in Moscow yesterday, to tie up the final details of the deal,
was left in disarray after the Sibneft side declared it was pulling
out. The companies announced the merger in April but in October the
high-profile chief executive of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
was arrested on charges of fraud and tax evasion. He remains in jail.
Analysts believe Mr Abramovich's decision to cut ties with
Yukos is an attempt to insulate himself from an apparently politically
motivated campaign by the Kremlin against Mr Khodorkovsky and
Yukos. Stephen O'Sullivan, the head of research for United Financial
Group, a Moscow brokerage, said: "Yukos looks as if it has been left
standing at the altar but it is unclear how Sibneft can pull out at
this stage ... Abramovich must be pretty convinced he can do
it." Sibneft, majority owned by Mr Abramovich, has already
collected $3bn in cash and $8bn in Yukos shares from the deal. That
gave it a 26 per cent stake in the enlarged company."
[The Russian Jewish rapists of Russia head home. All the
Corrupt below are Jewish.]
Hounded
Russian oil barons meet in Israel,
By Dafna Maor, Haaretz (Israel),
Nobember 30, 2003
"Billionaire Roman Abramovich, Russia's second-richest man and
principal owner of oil producer Sibneft, visited Israel
secretly last week to meet with Leonid
Nevzlin, the deputy and partner of imprisoned oil baron Mikhail
Khodorkovsky. Nevzlin fled Russia for Israel last week
after Khodorkovsky's arrest. He is the second-biggest
shareholder in oil giant Yukos, and holds Khodorkovsky's voting
rights in the company, according to the Wall Street Journal. The
Washington Post broke the news of Abramovich's meeting with
Nevzlin, based on a telephone interview with Nevzlin. The
Russian authorities arrested oil baron Khodorkovsky in October,
on accusations of tax evasion and fraud. Some believe the arrest is
designed to seize control of the nation's key oil resources and to
oppress anti-government forces. Khodorkovsky holds his shares
in Yukos via a series of foundations registered in tax havens.
Meanwhile the Russian prosecution has frozen Khodorkovsky's
assets to guarantee payment of a billion dollars compensation he may
owe if found guilty of the charges. Last Friday, Sibneft withdrew from
plans to merge with Yukos. Their union would have created the world's
fourth biggest private oil producer, in terms of crude production,
with revenues of $15 billion a year. Sibneft's surprise reversal
reportedly shocked even top Yukos executives and aggravated the
sell-off triggered by Khodorkovsky's arrest on October 25. Some
Yukos sources blame Sibneft's withdrawal on from the Russia
government. Abramovich is one of the wealthiest persons in the
world, with a personal fortune estimated at $5.7 billion. He took over
Sibneft together with Boris Berezovsky, in Russia's biggest
privatization in the 1990s. Abramovich later bought out
Berezovsky's shares when the latter fled Russia in 2000 after
being charged with fraud. Abramovich
also owns half of Russia's biggest aluminum producer, and the
television network ORT, via a British holding company. He also
recently acquired control over the Chelsea soccer team, since redubbed
Chelsky by wags. He could also find himself on the other end of the
next Russian government probe, after a Russian parliament member
called for an investigation of suspicions that Abramovich and
his firm Sibneft committed fraud during the 1990s."
Top Russian security official said to be Israeli citizen,
by LEV KRICHEVSK, Jewish News Weekly
(from Jewish Telegraphic Agency), November 15, 1996
"A furor has erupted here over reports that one
of Russia's top security officials has Israeli citizenship. Two
Moscow newspapers reported last week that Jewish business tycoon
Boris Berezovsky received Israeli
citizenship during a visit to the Jewish state three years ago.
Berezovsky, who in the early 1990s made a fortune in the
automobile business, was appointed deputy secretary of Russia's
National Security Council three weeks ago. His appointment came after
Russian President Boris Yeltsin fired former National Security Chief
Alexander Lebed and replaced him with Ivan Rybkin, former speaker of
the Duma, the lower house of Parliament. Berezovsky, 50, is
also chairman of Russian public television, a post that makes him
one of the most influential media figures here.
Unlike other wealthy Russian Jewish entrepreneurs, he has never been
involved in organized Jewish life. In the wake of the reports,
Berezovsky denied that he had dual citizenship and said he would sue
the newspapers for libel. The decision to appoint Berezovsky to the
security council prompted outrage from some members of the Russian
Parliament, including Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov and liberal
economist Grigory Yavlinsky. Many of his critics
charged that Berezovsky had no previous experience as a politician and
had been selected because of his influence in the corridors of power.
Russia's four leading television channels took Berezovsky's
side. One popular television host called the two newspaper articles
anti-Semitic. Leading members of the Jewish community defended
Berezovsky. "Russian laws do not ban dual citizenship," said
Mikhail Chlenov, president of the Va'ad, the Jewish confederation
of Russia. "The fact of dual citizenship cannot serve as a ground for
career limitations." "I don't know if Berezovsky did receive Israeli
citizenship," said Chlenov. But "this is
a very typical situation" for Russian Jewish businesspeople, he added.
One Jewish businessman from Moscow who preferred to remain anonymous
agreed with Chlenov. "Most of my
colleagues have obtained second passports, some of them for the sake
of their business, others to take advantage of their dual citizenship
in case of emergency." He said it was "quite natural" for
Jewish businessmen "to seek Israeli citizenship" to facilitate
emigration in case the political situation deteriorated here. One
Jewish leader disagreed. "A political career, especially one in the
National Security Council, implies that a person has only one
passport."
[Chasing down the above-ground Russian Jewish mafia.]
Prosecutors search for ten more suspects,
Russian Journal, January 27, 2004
"Russian prosecutors have announced that an international search
warrant has been issued for ten suspects in
Yukos case. The list includes company shareholders Leonid
Nevzlin and Vladimir Dubov, as well as refining and sales
affiliate Yukos PM head Mikhail Brudno. This was announced by the
Deputy General Prosecutor Yuri Biryukov, Izvestia reports. “An
international search warrant is issued for all of them in accordance
with the court sanctions, the charges in tax evasion are set against
them, as well as in other crimes”, Biryukov said. As reported earlier,
at present two major Yukos shareholders are under arrest –
former Yukos head Mikhail Khodorkovsky
and Platon Lebedev. Another shareholder – Vasily Shakhnovsky is uder a
written undertaking not to leave place expecting the verdict of the
court on his tax evasion case."
[Roman Abramovich is one of a number of Russian Jewish hustlers
and exploiters (some still chased around the world by Russian law) who
became fabulously wealthy with the fall of communism and the
impoverishment of the Russian masses. Reference in this article below
is to the fact that Abramovich spent $300 million to buy a
professional soccer team in Great Britian, where he now lives after
his large share in looting Russia.]
Audit Chamber to check Abramovich activities at the governor position,
Russia Journal, January 30, 2004
"Russian Audit Chamber will start investigation of activities of
Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. This was announced today by
its Chairman Sergey Stepashin. Earlier Stepashin attended a meeting of
trustee council of charity fund attached to Russian Trade and Industry
Chamber, The fund aimed to collect payments from big business in
favour of neglected children. According to Stepashi,
the fund collected only one million dollars in
2003 and this was called a biggest shame by Audit Chamber
Chairman. The collected funds were transferred to orphanages and
boarding houses, some of which receive no more than 9 rubles ($0.3) a
day for a kid from the state. In this connection the Audit Chamber
will investigate fulfillment of obligations by big business, including
Chukotka governor Abramovich. “This is a question of ethics”,
Stepashin stated, expressing his bewilderment on how it is possible in
such circumstances to spend $300 million for a football club. “We’ve
long had questions to Abramovich in moral aspect, and we will
see how he worked at the governor position”.
[Jewish corruption, and chronic Jewish defense of
corruption, always solicits "anti-Semitism."]
Jewish capital is good for Russia, Jewish politics less so,
By Eliahu Salpeter, Haaretz
(Israel), February 28, 2004
"Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the wealthiest man in Russia, is under
investigation. It's Anti-Semitism again, say
Jewish sources. It is doubtful whether there are many Jews in
the world the value of whose assets reach $5
billion. Certainly, there is no other Jew who can afford to
lose a billion dollars and still be the richest man in Russia.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 39, looks in photographs (depending on the
angle) like a young Shas politico or like a successful Wall Street
investment consultant. According to Fortune magazine,
Khodorkovsky controls 16 percent of the shares in the company
Yukos and owns more than half of them personally. Yukos is said to be
worth $15-20 billion, and with the completion of the deal to acquire
the Sibneft, which was signed about three months ago, it will become
the third-largest oil company in the world, and
the largest in Russia. The troubles started for Yukos (and
Khodorkovsky) at the beginning of July, when the police arrested
his aide and chief ally, Platon Lebedev, and
accused him of fraud, forgery and tax violations and also
interrogated (but did not arrest) Khodorkovsky himself. About
two weeks ago, the General Prosecutor's Office announced that
it had also opened an investigation of five murders or attempted
murders of officials and businessmen at odds with the company.
In Moscow, it's said, the police are investigating Khodorkovsky's
aides but are aiming at him; the authorization for the investigation
was given by President Vladimir Putin. The burning question in Moscow
is what lies behind the investigation? ... The Jews in Russia are, of
course, concerned about whether there are anti-Semitic elements in the
affair. Of the dozen or so Russian billionaires who made their
fortunes during the past decade, seven were
Jewish. Three of them have already been deposed from heading
their companies and pushed out of Russia as well - Aleksandr
Smolensky, the crash of whose bank in 1998
led to the worst financial crash in the post-Communist era;
Boris Berezovsky, "the Kremlin
godfather," whose demonstrative conversion to Christianity
proved to be of no avail; and Vladimir Gusinsky, who was not
helped by his demonstrative Jewishness as chairman of the Jewish
Congress in Russia. Four remain: Khodorkovsky, bankers Pyotr
Aven and Mikhai Fridman and the current media star of the
oligarchs, Roman Abramovich - among other things, the main
owner of Sibneft - who is considered the richest
man in Russia after Khodorkovsky ... Aleksandr
Osovtsov, former vice president of the Jewish Congress in Russia
says the anti-Semitism in the affair is clear. The same team from the
Prosecutor General's Office that in its day forced Gusinsky to
leave Russia is active now and by chance or not, Gusinsky was
one of the financial supporters of the Jewish Congress and
Khodorkovsky is also among its supporters. Chelsea's new owner
In recent weeks international attention has been accorded to the
seventh of the Jewish oligarchs, Roman Abramovich, who
purchased the English soccer team Chelsea for about $200 million ...
The patronage of Berezovsky (who at the time still enjoyed the
support of the Kremlin) helped him acquire, for the paltry sum of
about $100 million, dozens of local oil companies and to build from
them the huge Sibneft company. In 2002, the profits of Sibneft came to
$1.1 billion ... Both oligarchs and Jews are not particularly loved by
the average Russian, and conflict with Khodorkovsky definitely
only helps the president [Putin]. It is therefore difficult to assume
that Khodorkovsky believes that he is able to compete with Putin's
political machine. It is even more difficult to believe that
Khodorkovsky thinks that a Jew can be elected president of Russia.
The Khodorkovsky affair gives rise to a more realistic
question: Is there a likelihood that
influential Jews in Moscow, oligarchs and politicians, will be able in
the foreseeable future to help Israel in the Kremlin?
Their relative weight is no less than the weight of Jews in the upper
reaches of the American economy. However, the Russian regime is
light years away from the lobbying mechanism that exists in the United
States. The influence of ordinary citizens on Russian foreign policy
is very small. Until this situation changes, emigration is likely to
leave only a few Jews in Russia. If Israel
wants to influence the Kremlin through Jewish public opinion, it will
have to do this in the future as well through Congress and the White
House in Washington, and not through the Jewish voter in Moscow."
[Right. Another extremely powerful Jew with no "known
interaction with the organized Jewish community" ... ]
Russian Jew named prime minister brings out Jewish pride — and anxiety,
By Lev Krichevsky, Jewish Telegraphic
Agency, March 2, 2004
"The Jewish man named Russia’s new prime
minister is little known to the country’s Jewish community. But
Jewish leaders welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s selection
this week of Mikhail Fradkov, currently
Russia’s envoy to the European Union in Brussels. Jewish
leaders said Fradkov, who was expected to be approved by the
pro-Putin majority in the Russian Parliament on Friday, has had no
interaction with the organized Jewish community. If approved,
Fradkov would be the first identified Jew to serve as Russia’s
prime minister. His father is known to be Jewish, and while the
background of his mother is unclear, he was
profiled in a biographical volume of the Russian Jewish Encyclopedia
that was published in 1997 ... For some Russian Jewish leaders,
Fradkov’s Jewishness is welcome. “This nomination sends a clear
signal to everyone,” said Yevgeny Satanovsky, president of the
Russian Jewish Congress. “It means that Russia’s president is an
absolute pragmatist, it means that a person’s nationality does not
mean anything to him, and that he is judging people by their business
and personal qualities.” Satanovsky said that while Russia’s
next Cabinet’s policies may remain an open question, Russian Jews
already have received an answer to an important question. “This
question is: Can a Jew become Russian prime minister? The answer is
yes. The next question can only be whether a Jew can be Russia’s
president. But this nomination basically means that in today’s Russia
a Jew can be anything. And this is very positive,” Satanovsky
said. But others are expressing mixed feelings about Fradkov’s
nomination, worrying that it could cause a backlash. “Of course, this
is an overall positive thing to Jews,” said Lyudmila Krasnopolskaya,
an English-language instructor at a Moscow college. “Yet given this,
I’m not sure this choice will necessarily make
all Russians that happy.” A recent conference on xenophobia and
racism in Russia held last week in Moscow reported that more than 60
percent of Russians have xenophobic sentiments, and many are
anti-Semitic. “There are people in the society who can try to make
this an issue,” said Lazar, speaking of Fradkov’s Jewish
background. “I know there are people even inside the Kremlin whom this
nomination will not make extremely happy,” Satanovsky said."
[One of the many Russian Jewish thieves that looted the Russian
people after the fall of communism heads to Great Britain to continue
his dirty work.]
Abramovich Packs His Bags,
by Andrey Fadeyev, Translated by Howard Goldfinger,
Rosbalt News Agency [Russia], March 24,
2004
"No one any longer doubts that oil magnate Roman Abramovich and
his estimated fortune of USD 13.2 billion may quit Russia. Last week
the Financial Times declared: 'Everything suggests that
Abramovich, one of the wealthiest and most secretive of the
oligarchs, is preparing to give the Russian government whatever may be
required so that he can leave the country without losing everything.'
A few days before Russia's presidential election, the same newspaper
carried information about talks between Abramovich and
non-Russian companies about the possible sale of his 46% interest in
Sibneft. The potential buyers included the Anglo-Dutch Royal
Dutch/Shell, the American firm ChevronTexaco and France's Total.
Abramovich's desire to distance himself from the giant Russian
company as quickly as possible is further indication of his readiness
to make serious tactical concessions. Certainly, the English Daily
Mail newspaper spoke of the billionaire's evident intention of 'transferring
his base of operations to Britain' in explaining its inclusion
of Abramovich at the top of its
The Rich Report 2004 (a list of Britain's wealthiest). According
to the paper, Abramovich has purchased two homes in Britain,
declared his intention of educating his children in Britain and has
been rapidly selling off his Russian properties
in order to move his money to the West. In view the governor of
Chukotka's intimacy with the corridors of power, one can assume that
he knows what is ahead better than his fellow oligarchs, especially
after the meeting that did not take place between him, as leader of
one of the constituent areas of the Far East Federal District, and the
Russian president in Khabarovsk. Abramovich almost surely
understood the chill emanating from the direction of Vladimir Putin as
a warning. Abramovich is packing his suitcases. But that isn't
easy. After all, a good many things have accumulated in those
suitcases, and not everything can be taken abroad at the drop of a
hat. Well aware of Abramovich's intentions, the fiscal and
security agencies of government have set about
to convince him of the need to share his wealth ... Russia's
Tax and Collections Ministry has charged Sibneft with underpaying its
taxes for 2000-2001 by approximately USD 1 billion."
[Another thieving Jewish Robber Baron-Dual Loyalist hiding in
Israel seeks to pull political strings in Russia from Jewish
Central, i.e., Israel.]
Nevzlin Offers to Fund Party,
By Carl Schreck, Moscow Times
[Russia],
March 26, 2004
"Leonid Nevzlin, Yukos' largest
shareholder not in jail, has offered to fund the new political
party of opposition presidential candidate Irina Khakamada.
Nevzlin, who is residing in Israel to
avoid prosecution in Russia, where he is facing charges of fraud
and tax evasion, said he is ready to put his money on the line
to back Khakamada's newly created Free Russia party. "I want to allow
Russia to go down the path of democracy," Nevzlin said Thursday
in a telephone interview with Interfax. "And for that reason I'm ready
to support the democratic party that Irina Khakamada is creating." It
was not immediately known whether Khakamada would accept his offer.
Her spokesman, Konstantin Lazerev, said she would release a statement
Thursday evening on her web site, Hakamada.ru, but as of 8:30 p.m. it
had not been posted. Earlier this year, Nevzlin said he would help
fund Khakamada's presidential campaign. Khakamada, however, later
denied that she had taken any money from him. Nevzlin did not
specify the amount of money he would like to give, Interfax reported,
saying only that he will likely be "one of many who is ready to
support this initiative, and that's why I'm ready to offer only
partial financing necessary for building the party." Lazerev said Free
Russia is actively seeking financial backers. Khakamada was a founder
and co-leader of the Union of Right Forces, or SPS, but it did not
support her candidacy, and she officially left the party earlier this
week. Khakamada has described Free Russia as a "democratic, opposition
party" that will work to attract new people, particularly young
Russians, and build on "the energy and initiative of civil society" to
change the country's course. The party's organizing committee held its
first meeting Tuesday. Another former SPS leader, Boris Nemtsov,
has left politics. He is head of the board of directors of
Neftyanoi, and this week joined the board of Rostik Group, which
owns Rosinter Restaurants, which owns the Patio Pizza, Planeta Sushi
and Rostik's chains."
[Jews in Russia dominate the "Russian"
mafia. Exploitive Jewish "oligarchs" have also
plundered
the Russian people. Berezovsky is one of them.]
Russian advertising tsar killed in second car bomb attack,
By Andrew Osborn, The Indepedent (UK),
April 2004
"One of Russia's most successful businessmen
has been blown up in his armoured limousine in the second attempt on
his life in less than a year. Boris Goldman, president of the
advertising firm New Found Quality (NFQ),
died on Monday night along with his driver and bodyguard when an
assassin on a motorcycle placed a powerful bomb on the roof of his
limousine when it stopped at a traffic light in south-west Moscow. The
killer did not manage to escape the subsequent blast and lost his own
life too. Although not in the financial league of Russia's super-rich
oligarchs, Mr Goldman was widely rated as
one of the country's most successful businessmen. Last year he
was Russia's "Media Manager" of the year, and his company's clients
have included blue-chip firms such as Ford, Bosch, DaimlerChrysler and
Mercedes-Benz. His firm, NFQ, is alleged to have close links to
Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who lives in the UK in
self-imposed exile. Yesterday Kommersant, a
daily newspaper owned by Mr Berezovsky, put the story of
Mr Goldman's murder on the front page with the headline, "The
killers die but they don't give up". Its tone was critical of Russia's
cash-starved law enforcement agencies. Mr Goldman, it
suggested, had not been offered the protection he deserved. The
businessman escaped a first attempt on his life last October in
exactly the same street when a mine was placed under his Toyota jeep
and exploded, badly injuring his driver. He was unhurt. Nobody was
arrested for that attack and Mr Goldman later claimed that the
authorities had accused him of faking the incident. Fearing for his
life, Mr Goldman decided to hire a specially converted Volvo
S80 limousine from a company called Armortex for $800 (£440) a day. He
was on his way home on Monday night in the Volvo when his killer, who
has since been identified as a 24-year-old Muscovite, struck ...
Police are said to have several strong leads as to who ordered the hit
and Russian media reported yesterday that four suspects had been
detained for questioning. Kommersant claimed that a walkie-talkie used
by the killer to communicate with his handlers had survived the blast
and that police had used it to get a fix on their location.
Speculation is rife that Mr
Goldman was killed as part of a
savage struggle to gain control of Russia's multimillion-dollar
advertising market. The market was virtually non-existent until
1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed but has since enjoyed frenzied
growth with most of Moscow now covered in giant billboards and Russian
TV showing some of the world's longest advertisement breaks. Mr
Goldman was typical of many Russian businessmen. A former teacher
of Russian language and literature, he quickly reinvented himself and
embraced the free market. After surviving the first attempt on his
life, Mr Goldman told the media that it might have been linked to a
conflict between NFQ's three founders. Mr Goldman founded the
firm in 1992 along with Sergey Fomkin and Maksim Blokh
but the founding partners appear to have had a falling out. Some of
NFQ's senior executives apparently left the firm in recent times,
taking with them big-name clients and leaving behind bad blood."
[JTR Contributor's comment: "Now here is a lesson for all
those who believe 'Neoconservatives' have any legitimate or consistent
ideology, other than promoting whatever appears to be in the interests
of 'the-only-democracy-in-the-middle-east.' Putin has stood up to the
Jewish
oligarchs, and this has pissed off nearly every American Jewish
commentator, as they whine about the curbing of 'freedom' and
'democracy' IN RUSSIA (while there has been no curbing in the U.S. or
Israel, no sir). So now they support Muslim terrorists who are
fighting for 'independence' and to preserve their 'ethnic identity,'
unlike the Palestinians who are subhuman cold-blooded murders that
wish to wipe out the Jewish state. Whether or not to side with Muslim
terrorists depends only on the answer to the question, 'Is it good for
the Neocons(and the Neocon agenda)?']
The Chechens' American friends. The Washington neocons' commitment to
the war on terror evaporates in Chechnya, whose cause they have made
their own,
by John Laughland, The Guardian (UK),
September 8, 2004
"An enormous head of steam has built up behind the view that President
Putin is somehow the main culprit in the grisly events in North
Ossetia. Soundbites and headlines such as "Grief turns to anger",
"Harsh words for government", and "Criticism mounting against Putin"
have abounded, while TV and radio correspondents in Beslan have been
pressed on air to say that the people there blame Moscow as much as
the terrorists. There have been numerous editorials encouraging us to
understand - to quote the Sunday Times - the "underlying causes" of
Chechen terrorism (usually Russian authoritarianism), while the
widespread use of the word "rebels" to describe people who shoot
children shows a surprising indulgence in the face of extreme
brutality. On closer inspection, it turns out
that this so-called "mounting criticism" is in fact being driven by a
specific group in the Russian political spectrum - and by its American
supporters. The leading Russian critics of Putin's handling of
the Beslan crisis are the pro-US politicians Boris Nemtsov and
Vladimir Ryzhkov - men associated with the extreme neoliberal market
reforms which so devastated the Russian economy
under the west's beloved Boris Yeltsin - and the Carnegie Endowment's
Moscow Centre. Funded by its New York head
office, this influential thinktank - which operates in tandem
with the military-political Rand Corporation, for instance in
producing policy papers on Russia's role in helping the US restructure
the "Greater Middle East" - has been quoted
repeatedly in recent days blaming Putin for the Chechen atrocities.
The centre has also been assiduous over recent months in arguing
against Moscow's claims that there is a link between the Chechens and
al-Qaida. These people peddle essentially the same line as that
expressed by Chechen leaders themselves, such as Ahmed Zakaev, the
London exile who wrote in these pages yesterday. Other prominent
figures who use the Chechen rebellion as a stick with which to beat
Putin include Boris Berezovsky, the Russian oligarch who, like
Zakaev, was granted political asylum in this country, although the
Russian authorities want him on numerous charges. Moscow has often
accused Berezovsky of funding Chechen rebels in the past. By
the same token, the BBC and other media sources are putting it about
that Russian TV played down the Beslan crisis, while only western
channels reported live, the implication being that Putin's Russia
remains a highly controlled police state. But this view of the Russian
media is precisely the opposite of the impression I gained while
watching both CNN and Russian TV over the past week: the Russian
channels had far better information and images from Beslan than their
western competitors. This harshness towards Putin is perhaps explained
by the fact that, in the US, the leading group which pleads the
Chechen cause is the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC).
The list of the self-styled "distinguished
Americans" who are its members is a rollcall of the most prominent
neoconservatives who so enthusastically support the "war on terror".
They include Richard Perle, the notorious Pentagon adviser;
Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame; Kenneth Adelman, the
former US ambassador to the UN who egged on the invasion of Iraq by
predicting it would be "a cakewalk"; Midge Decter, biographer
of Donald Rumsfeld and a director of the rightwing Heritage
Foundation; Frank Gaffney of the militarist Centre for Security
Policy; Bruce Jackson, former US military intelligence officer and
one-time vice-president of Lockheed Martin, now president of the US
Committee on Nato; Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise
Institute, a former admirer of Italian fascism and now a leading
proponent of regime change in Iran; and R James Woolsey, the former
CIA director who is one of the leading cheerleaders behind George
Bush's plans to re-model the Muslim world along pro-US lines. The ACPC
heavily promotes the idea that the Chechen rebellion shows the
undemocratic nature of Putin's Russia, and cultivates support for the
Chechen cause by emphasising the seriousness of human rights
violations in the tiny Caucasian republic. It compares the Chechen
crisis to those other fashionable "Muslim" causes, Bosnia and Kosovo -
implying that only international intervention in the Caucasus can
stabilise the situation there. In August, the ACPC welcomed the award
of political asylum in the US, and a US-government funded grant, to
Ilyas Akhmadov, foreign minister in the opposition Chechen government,
and a man Moscow describes as a terrorist. Coming from both political
parties, the ACPC members represent the backbone of the US foreign
policy establishment, and their views are indeed those of the US
administration. Although the White House issued a condemnation of the
Beslan hostage-takers, its official view remains that the Chechen
conflict must be solved politically. According to ACPC member Charles
Fairbanks of Johns Hopkins University, US pressure will now increase
on Moscow to achieve a political, rather than military, solution - in
other words to negotiate with terrorists, a policy the US resolutely
rejects elsewhere. Allegations are even being made in Russia that the
west itself is somehow behind the Chechen rebellion, and that the
purpose of such support is to weaken Russia, and to drive her out of
the Caucasus."
Chelsea boss and Russia's murky business world, by Simon
Bell, Times (UK), July 3, 2003
"THERE have been virtually no sightings of Roman Abramovichoutside
Russia until now, and his purchase of Chelsea for what is, to him,
petty cash is another sign of the stirring of Russia’s mega-rich
tycoons into the wider world. Mr
Abramovich, 36, is married with children. He dresses casually
and wears a slight stubble. He is a keen football fan but no one is
quite sure if he has an interest or not in a Russian club. The last
person to enlighten us further is Mr Abramovich
himself. He has said: “What’s the difference
between a rat and a pet mouse? Public relations." H e is
so reclusive that not so long ago in Moscow there was a newspaper
competition to try to find a photograph of him
... In 1940, when the Soviet Army entered the Baltic states, his
parents lost everything and were deported to Krasnoyarsk, a deeply
depressing industrial city in central Siberia that, 55 years later,
would be the home of the world’s second biggest aluminium company,
RusAl, co-owned by Roman Abramovich ... Mr
Abramovich quietly runs one of two Jewish charitable
associations in Russia, organised with President Putin’s blessing
...Contacts were the coin of the realm in Mikhail Gorbachev’s, and
later Boris Yeltsin’s, Russia, and Mr Abramovich made
perhaps the most vital contact of his early career at the Moscow
Institute: Eugene Shvidler. In May this year Mr
Shvidler became chairman of Yukos-Sibneft, the fourth
largest oil company in the world, formed from Mikhail
Khodorkovsky’s Yukos and Mr Abramovich’s
Sibneft. It was a long way from Mr Abramovich’s start
in 1992 selling retread tyres. His other crucial contact was
Boris Berezovsky. In 1993-94 Mr Berezovsky
was Russia’s chief oligarch, a king-maker who,
with his own and other oligarchs’ money, would go on to make “Czar”
Yeltsin the President in 1996. Mr Abramovich,
then 26, was head of an oil trading firm in Omsk and was carefully
cultivating local politicians who enabled his company to grow into the
most powerful in the region. Mr Berezovksy spotted
him and invited him to join the board of a new oil company that he was
setting up called Sibneft, and later made him chairman ... Mr
Berezovsky was forced to leave Russia in 2001
under the shadow of alleged fraud. He is
now appealing against an extradition order, pursued by President Putin
himself. Mr Abramovich, always the politician, made
peace with Mr Putin and has assumed Mr
Berezovsky’s former interests
in Russia. Mr Abramovich has made billions
from the sale of a stake in Sibneft and will make even more from the
rumoured sale of a car company in Russia co-owned with his partner and
fellow oligarch, Oleg Deripaska."
Judge
Finds Against Shleifer, Hay and Harvard,
Economic Principles, July 4, 2004
"The US government's long-running wrangle with economist
Andrei Shleifer
and Harvard University over Harvard's ill-fated Russia
Project in the 1990s was resolved last week, in the government's
favor. A Federal judge ruled that, by quietly investing on their own
accounts while advising the Russian government, Harvard professor
Shleifer and his Moscow-based assistant
Jonathan Hay had conspired to
defraud the US Agency for International Development (USAID),
which had been paying their salary. Hay was faulted for violating
three counts of the False Claims Act, Shleifer for
one, with two other counts against him pending a possible jury trial
on what it means to have been "assigned" to Russia under the
contract's terms. (Shleifer asserts that the
conflict-of-interest rules didn't apply to him since, though directing
the project, he had continued to reside outside of Russia, in Newton,
Mass.) The decision by US District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock,
based on motions by all sides for that he decide the case as a matter
of law on the facts presented, left both Shleifer and
Hay liable for treble damages --
as much as $120 million apiece, in the
worst case. At the same time, Judge Woodlock cleared Harvard
University of the government's most serious accusation, namely that
its administrators knew or should have known that their team leaders
were investing personally in concert with their wives. He ruled out
treble damages under the False Claims Act, thereby confirming
Harvard's view of itself as the victim of a couple of rogue employees.
It was in 1992, after Congress passed the Freedom for Russia and the
Emerging Eurasian Democracies and Open Market Support Act, that USAID
hired Harvard to provide consultants to the Russian government to help
design institutions favorable to democratic government and a market
economy. Shleifer in
due course became the project director, Hay
his deputy. Allegations of conflict of
interest boiled over among US aid workers in Moscow in 1997, and USAID
began an internal investigation. The agency suspended the project in
May. An angry Russian government, staffed by
friends of Shleifer and Hay,
shelved the relationship the same day. Harvard then fired Hay
and relieved Shleifer, a
tenured professor, of his project duties. USAID then
cancelled the contract. And in September, 2000, the US Attorney in
Boston filed an 11-count civil claim against Harvard University,
Shleifer, Hay, Nancy
Zimmerman (Shleifer's wife and a partner in
a hedge fund with investments in Russia) and Elizabeth Hebert (Hay's
then-girlfriend, now his wife). US Attorney Donald Stern
said at the time that his office
had contemplated criminal charges but filed none.
Judge Woodlock quickly dismissed the charges against Zimmerman and
Hebert, on grounds that neither worked for Harvard or the government
and were not parties to the contract. As
previously reported, Harvard at one point offered to settle its
part of the case for as much as $24 million, or two-thirds the value
of its contract, in the course of an unsuccessful mediation by Judge
David Mazzone, according to attorneys familiar with the case ...Shleifer,
who left Russia with his parents when he was 15, only to return as a
senior adviser to its government (and a distinguished economist) at
the age of 30, remains a Harvard
professor ... Jonathan Hay, who
became a student of Shleifer's while at Harvard Law
School, joined the London office of the Cleary Gottlieb
law firm as an associate in 2002.
Do Americans
Even Care?
Russia, Israel and Media Omissions,
by Alison Weir, CounterPunch, February
17, 2005
"As is often the case with AP's coverage of news having to do
with Israel, there's a serious omission in its reporting on the
Russia-Israel connection even when it involves oil and the United
States. The day after the State of the Union Address, two Interpol
fugitives attended the "National Prayer Breakfast" held in Washington
DC. The day before that, these fugitives from the law were the guests
of honor at an hour-long meeting of the International Relations
Committee on Capitol Hill, invited by ranking Democrat Tom
Lantos (Calif.) You would think
it would be hot news when wanted men being hunted by European police
suddenly pop up in the US particularly on Capitol Hill and at events
attended by the US president. Yet, there was not a
single AP story in the US on any of this. Not a single national
network television or radio news program even mentioned these facts.
In fact, Google and LexisNexis searches four days after these events
took place turned up only three newspaper articles on them anywhere in
the entire country. Who are these fugitives from the law, wanted by
Interpol, who are meeting at the highest levels of the US government?
And why didn't we learn of them? Therein lies the story. These two
men, it turns out, are just the tips of a colossal iceberg. And this
iceberg doesn't just have 90 percent of its mass hidden under water;
this iceberg is almost entirely submerged.
They are Mikhail Brudno
and Vladimir Dubov, Israeli-Russian
partners in the giant Russian oil company Yukos. They, along with a
number of their cronies, are wanted by Interpol for allegedly bilking
Russian citizens out of billions of dollars. To elude Russian
prosecution, these men have taken up residence in Israel.
As the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz explains: "In recent years
Russian authorities began investigating [Yukos], its managers and
major stockholders, many of whom are of Jewish origin. The probes
caused several of the managers to flee to Israel, and resulted in
Khodorkovski's [Yukos CEO] arrest and a Kremlin
attack on Yukos." The fact is that
Israel is an important factor in the ongoing, nation-shaking power
struggle now going on in Russia. Yet AP virtually never reports this
connection. For example, a few months ago in a typical
AP story on this power struggle, "Report: Russia again charges
Berezovsky," Moscow AP Bureau Chief Judith Ingram makes no
mention anywhere that Berezovsky is an Israeli
citizen, or of his many connections to Israel.
Such omissions by AP and large swaths of the
American media leave Americans seriously disadvantaged in deciphering
what is going on in Russia, and its profound significance for the
world. In order to make
sense of this Russian power struggle, and to understand its importance
to the rest of us, it is necessary to understand the usually omitted
Israeli subtext. When this is understood, the friendship of such
pro-Israel Congressional leaders as Rep. Lantos
to fugitive Russian oil tycoons begins to make sense.
To explore this background it is often useful to turn to the Israeli
press. In July a major Israeli publication, the Jerusalem Post,
carried an article headlined: "Boris Berezovsky:
Putin's Russia dangerous for Israel." Before describing what this
contained, let us first go into a little of the background ...
Boris Berezovsky is one of seven "oligarchs," as they are
known both inside and outside Russia: massively rich, powerful
manipulators who through violence, theft and corruption acquired a
mammoth percentage (reports range from 70 to 85 percent) of Russia's
resources, from its oil to the auto industry to mass media outlets. At
the same time, the group steadily gained control over much of the
country's political apparatus. Using extraordinary financial resources
and insider dealing, the oligarchs handpicked prime ministers and
governmental leaders and barely even bothered to do this behind the
scenes. In 1997 Yukos founder Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
one of the group and Russia's sometimes richest man (several of the
oligarchs trade the top spot back and forth) told an interviewer
before he was arrested and imprisoned by Putin last year ...
Almost all of these oligarchs, it turns out,
have significant ties to Israel. In fact,
Berezovsky himself has Israeli citizenship a fact that caused
a scandal of Watergate proportions in Russia in 1996 when it was
exposed by a Russian newspaper. Do Berezovsky's dual
loyalties really matter? Yes. In the realm of global dominance,
Israel's interests and Russia's are considerably divergent.
It is in Israel's interests to bring to
power a regime in Russia friendly to Israel, rather than the current
one under Putin, which Israeli leaders feel is supportive of its
enemies. Not long ago, for example, Putin met with Syrian leaders an
action highly disturbing to Israel. Having an Israeli
citizen at the highest levels of the Russian government is ideal, from
Israel's point of view. In Berezovsky they had such a
man. The Jerusalem Post article mentioned above is revealing.
It describes Berezovsky as "the Godfather of the Oligarchs' and
Kingmaker of Russia's Politics'" and reports Berezovsky's
statement that "Putin's Russia is dangerous for Israel."
Berezovsky goes on to assert that Putin "supports terror" in
the Middle East through Russia's previous relations with Iraq and
current relations with Iran. While Israelis may have been delighted at
Berezovsky's position in Russia, It is not surprising that Russian
citizens were somewhat less so. Finding
that a powerful leader and member of the Russian Security Council was
an Israeli citizen was disconcerting, at best. As a
result of the media uproar over Berezovsky's Israeli
citizenship and other events, the
Oligarchs' connections to Israel are widely known in Russia and
elsewhere. In Israel they are covered frequently, often with
adulation, including a recent hit Israeli TV series called "The
Oligarchs." "Some of its episodes," according to
Israeli writer Uri Avnery, "are simply unbelievable
or would have been, if they had not come straight from the horses'
mouths: the heroes of the story, who gleefully boast about their
despicable exploits. The series was
produced by Israeli immigrants from Russia."
Avnery writes that the
oligarchs used "cheating, bribery and murder," as they "exploited the
disintegration of the Soviet system to loot the treasures of the state
and to amass plunder amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. In
order to safeguard the perpetuation of their business, they took
control of the state. Six out of the seven are Jews."
According to a Washington Post story by David Hoffman, the
group bought and controlled Russian governmental officials at the
highest levels. After financing Yeltsin's election in 1996, Hoffman
writes: "The tycoons met and decided to insert one of their own into
government. They debated who and chose [Vladimir] Potanin, who became
deputy prime minister. One reason they
chose Potanin was that he is not Jewish, and most of the rest of them
are, and feared a backlash against the Jewish bankers."
In Russia, the oligarchs are deeply loathed, considered villains who
worked to bleed the country dry; during their reign many Russian
citizens saw their life savings disappear overnight.
A new term was coined for their
dominance, "semibankirshchina" (the rule of the seven bankers), and
they were widely known to have wielded small, murderous armies.
There are rumors that Berezovsky, subject of the
respectful AP article, was even responsible for the gunning down of an
American journalist, Forbes Moscow editor Paul Klebnikov. While
no one has been charged with the murder of Klebnikov, who had written
a book on Berezovsky, many suspect a Berezovsky connection. As a
friend of Klebnikov wrote: "Experienced expatriates in Russia shared
an essential rule: Don't cross these brutal billionaires, ever, or
you're likely to go home in a box." [JTR editor's note:
Klebnikov wrote an anonymous (for fear of assassination) feature
article at Forbes about Berezovsky a few years ago and an entire book
entitled The Godfather of the Kremlin and the Looting of Russia."]
The Chechnya Connection
There is evidence that Berezovsky's responsibility
for death and tragedy may be vastly greater. "Berezovsky
boasts that he caused the war in Chechnya," Avnery
reports, "in which tens of thousands have been killed and a whole
country devastated. He was interested in the mineral resources and a
prospective pipeline there. In order to achieve this he put an end to
the peace agreement that gave the country some kind of independence.
The oligarchs dismissed and destroyed Alexander Lebed, the popular
general who engineered the agreement, and the war has been going on
since then. "In the end," Avnery writes, "there was a
reaction: Vladimir Putin, the taciturn and tough ex-KGB operative,
assumed power, took control of the media, put one of the oligarchs (Mikhail
Khodorkovsky) in prison, caused the others to flee (Berezovsky
is in England, Vladimir Gusinsky is in Israel,
another, Mikhail Chernoy, is assumed to be hiding
here.)" Yet, apart from the Washington Post,
American media report on almost none of
this. Instead, US coverage largely portrays
Berezovsky and his crowd as American-style entrepreneurs who
are being hounded by a Russian government whose
actions are, to repeat the media's commonly used phrase, "politically
motivated." US news stories, even when they occasionally do hint at
questionable practices, tend to use such phrases as "brash young
capitalists" to describe the oligarchs. For example, a long series
co-produced by FRONTLINE and the New York Times referred to
these men as "shrewd businessmen," and asked "what it's like to be
young, Russian and newly affluent?" Massive violence, dual loyalties,
and control of resources are rarely, if ever, part of the picture.
When AP Moscow bureau chief Ingram was
asked for this article about Berezovsky's
Israeli citizenship, she claimed to know nothing
about it, a curious contention for someone who has been
an AP news editor in Moscow since 1999. When Ingram was queried
further, she hung up the phone. An examination of
Ingram's reporting on the Berezovsky story cited
above raises serious questions. Though she is located in Moscow,
Ingram interviewed only two people for her news story:
Berezovsky, who is in London, and Berezovsky
associate Alex Goldfarb, in New York.
One wonders why she interviewed none of
the Russians residing around her. Similarly, one wonders why not a
single AP story has identified Berezovsky's
considerable connection to Israel. Further, nowhere
does Ingram's article convey the ruthlessness of the oligarchs'
actions, or the significance of their holdings,
including control of its media. Unnoted in
Ingram's report is the fact that her subject and fellow oligarch
Vladimir Gusinsky have
been two of Russia's most powerful media tycoons. Before Putin's
crackdown, according to the Washington Post, oligarchs had
succeeded in seizing "the reins of Russia's print and broadcast media,
vital to the evolution of the country's fledgling democracy and growth
of its nascent civil society." Berezovsky crony
Gusinsky, who is close friends with Rupert Murdoch
and was about the launch a satellite network, fled to Israel when it
appeared he would be arrested." Somehow, AP's bureau chief seems to
have missed all this Does this matter to
Americans? AP is the major news source for the thousands
of news outlets around the country who cannot afford to have their own
foreign correspondents. When AP chooses not to cover something, its
omission is felt throughout the nation. When national news networks
and others leave out the same facts, the cover-up is almost total.
Russia, despite its current turmoil,
contains enormous power. Its natural resources are gargantuan: it
possesses the world's largest natural gas reserves, the second largest
coal reserves, and the eighth largest oil reserves. It is the world's
largest exporter of natural gas, the second largest oil exporter, and
the third largest energy consumer. Russia's
significance on the world stage now, as in the past, is immense.
Similarly, the United States is currently the most powerful nation on
earth. It is therefore essential that its citizens be accurately
informed on issues of significance. Israeli citizens, Russian
citizens, and citizens of nations throughout the world know the
information detailed above. It is critical that American citizens be
no less well informed. For years, the neocons' push for war against
Iraq was largely uncovered by the US media. For even longer, the
neocons' close connections to Israel have gone largely unmentioned in
mainstream American news reports. As a result, very few Americans know
to what degree many of those responsible for the tragic US invasion
and occupation of Iraq have been motivated by Israeli concerns."
[We missed this one last summer. Its' a documentary film
series broadcast in Israel. And it's incredible.]
The
Oligarchs.
Or How the Virgin Became a Whore,
By URI AVNERY,
CounterPunch, August 4, 2004
"This is a TV series about Russia. But it could have been about
Israel. Or about the United States. It
is entitled "The Oligarchs" and is now being screened on Israeli
television. Some of its episodes are simply
unbelievable--or would have been, if they had not come straight from
the horses' mouths: the heroes of the story, who gleefully boast about
their despicable exploits. The series was
produced by Israeli immigrants from Russia.
The "oligarchs" are a tiny group of entrepreneurs who exploited the
disintegration of the Soviet system to loot the treasures of the state
and to amass plunder amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. In
order to safeguard the perpetuation of their business, they took
control of the state. Six out of the seven are Jews.
In popular parlance they are called "oligarchs"--from the Greek word
meaning "rule of the few". In the first years of post-Soviet Russian
capitalism they were the bold and nimble ones who knew how to exploit
the economic anarchy in order to acquire enormous possessions for a
hundredth or a thousandth of their value: oil, natural gas, nickel and
other minerals. They used every possible
trick, including cheating, bribery and murder. Every one of them had a
small private army. In the course of the series they are proud to tell
in great detail how they did it.
But the most intriguing part of the series recounts the way
they took control of the political apparatus. After a period of
fighting each other, they decided that it would be more profitable for
them to cooperate in order to take over the state. At
the time, President Boris Yeltsin was in a steep decline. On the eve
of the new elections for the presidency, his rating in public opinion
polls stood at 4%. He was an alcoholic with a severe heart disease,
working about two hours a day. The state was, in practice, ruled by
his bodyguard and his daughter; corruption was the order of the day.
The oligarchs decided to take power
through him. They had almost unlimited funds, control of all TV
channels and most of the other media. They put all these at the
disposal of Yeltsin's reelection campaign, denying his opponents even
one minute of TV time and pouring huge sums of money into the effort.
(The series omits an interesting detail:
they secretly brought over the most outstanding American election
experts and copywriters, who applied methods previously unknown in
Russia.) The campaign bore fruit: Yeltsin was indeed
reelected. On the very same day he had another heart attack and spent
the rest of his term in hospital. In
practice, the oligarchs ruled Russia. One of them, Boris Berezovsky,
appointed himself Prime Minister. There was a minor scandal when it
became known that he (like most of the oligarchs) had acquired Israeli
citizenship, but he gave up his Israeli passport and everything was in
order again. By the way, Berezovsky
boasts that he caused the war in Chechnya, in
which tens of thousands have been killed and a whole country
devastated. He was interested in the mineral resources
and a prospective pipeline there. In order to achieve this he put an
end to the peace agreement that gave the country some kind of
independence. The oligarchs dismissed and destroyed Alexander Lebed,
the popular general who engineered the agreement, and the war has been
going on since then. In the end, there was a reaction: Vladimir Putin,
the taciturn and tough ex-KGB operative, assumed power, took control
of the media, put one of the oligarchs (Mikhail Khodorkovsky)
in prison, caused the others to flee (Berezovsky is
in England, Vladimir Gusinsky is in Israel, another,
Mikhail Chernoy, is assumed to be hiding here.) Since
all the exploits of the oligarchs occurred in public,
there is a danger that the affair might cause an
increase in anti-Semitism in Russia. Indeed, the anti-Semites argue
that these doings confirm the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion",
a document fabricated by the Russian secret police a century ago,
purporting to reveal a Jewish conspiracy to control the worl ... [In
Israsel] Shimon Peres' connections with
multi-millionaires are well-known, as
are the huge sums poured out by American Jewish multi-millionaires for
extreme right-wing causes in Israel. One of the
Russian oligarchs is the part-owner of the second biggest Israeli
newspaper ... As a Russian commentator
in the TV series said about the new Russian democracy: "They have
turned a virgin into a whore.
Turning to the nearby new capitalist nation of Russia, in
1997 the Washington Post noted that
"In last year's presidential campaign, two of the most powerful
media
tycoons, Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, played a key role
in reelecting President Boris Yeltsin, demonstrating the might of
television in the young democracy." [HOFFMAN, p. 12]
JewsThe Wall Street Journal noted that Gusinsky (also spelled
Goussinsky) "is sometimes billed as the richest man in Russia."
[WALL ST, 4-13-95] For his part, Berezovsky was listed by Forbes
in 1997 as one of the "ten top" billionaires in the world. Both
Gusinsky and Berezovsky (originally Abramovitch) are Jewish.
Gusinsky is also the president of the Russian Jewish Congress and
his circle of international Jewish connections includes the
aforementioned Ronald Lauder and Edgar Bronfman of the World Jewish
Congress. A source told the Jewish Week that Gusinsky founded
the Russian Jewish Congress so his "physical well-being will no
longer be just [his] personal concern; it will be of international
[Jewish] interest,” i.e., whatever he does, he can tap into the
powerful international Jewish defense mother lode against
"anti-Semitism." [COHLER-ESSES, p. 13] The Jerusalem Post
notes that in Israel "media reports [were] hinting" that Gusinsky
"had ties to the Russian mafia." [COHEN, A.] Gusinsky built his
business empire from his Most Bank; the Chairman of the Board
of the Most Bank is Boris Hait who is also one of the
vice-presidents of the Russian Jewish Congress. Other
vice-presidents of the Jewish organization include Mikhail Friedman,
Chairman of the board of the Alpha Bank, and Vitali Malkin,
President of the Rossiiiski Kredit Bank.
Jews Gusinsky's media empire includes NTV television -- the
largest commercial television station in Russia with an audience of
120 million. It also broadcasts to Israel, and "recently [December
1997] unveiled plans to expand its Russian-language broadcasts to
Western Europe and other parts of the Middle East." [KRICHEVSKY, p.
10] (Even in the New York area, the Russian-language Russian
Television Network is run by a rabbi, president Mark Golub.
Alexander Polovets, the editor and publisher of Panorama,
"the most influential Russian-language newspaper in the United
States," is also Jewish. [TUGEND, 10-22-99]). Gusinsky also controls
the Echo of Moscow radio station; a weekly magazine called
Itogi (published in partnership with Newsweek/The Washington
Post); the newspaper Segodnya; and NTV-Plus, a
pay-per-view satellite network. In 1997, the Russian Orthodox
patriarch, Alexei II, charging blasphemy, declared that "God would
punish those responsible" for screening Martin Scorsese's film
The Last Temptation of Christ on Mr. Gubinsky's television
channel. The program had been postponed twice "because of Orthodox
Christian fury." [MEEK, p. 1] With mind-boggling chutzpah, NTV
had originally planned to show the film "in April, on Russian
Easter." [KRICHEVSKY, Jewish-Owned, p. 9] Meanwhile, "at
Gusinksi's influence," noted the Israeli newspaper Haaretz in
1998, "a synagogue and Holocaust museum are now being built at the
World War II Memorial site in Moscow." [MILNER]
JewsIn 2001, the deputy head of the Russian Jewish Congress, Mikhail
Miralashvili was arrested in Russia and charged with kidnapping.
"Mr. Mirilashvili," noted London's Independent,
"who holds joint Israeli and Russian citizenship, was due to leave
Russia this week with the Israeli President, Moshe Katzav, who is on
a state visit. Mr. Mirlashvili is a director of the St. Petersburg
company Russian Video, which was bought by Media-Most, controlled by
Mr. Gusinsky, in 1997. Mr. Gusinsky was later accused of defrauding
the state by buying the company for $10 million -- well below its
real value." [COCKBURN, P., 1-25-01]
Jews In July 1997, the Jewish Week reported that
"the Russian Jewish Congress, a powerful new group headed by one of
Russia's most prominent and controversial millionaires, has signed a
landmark agreement with American Jewry's top umbrella organization
[the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish
Organizations],
pledging joint cooperation and consultation ... The National
Conference
on Soviet Jewry, another U.S. umbrella group that encompasses many
of the same Jewish organizational members as the Presidents
Conference, was also a signatory.... Some, including a top Russian
Jewish Congress official, says it marks a milestone in the emergence
of
the Russian group as an influential diaspora player on the
international
stage ... In a separate initiative, the Russian Jewish Congress
signed an
agreement at about the same time with the World Jewish Congress..."
[COHLER-ESSES, Lawyer, p. 9]
Jews (A note about the Conference of Presidents of Major American
Jewish Organizations: It represents, notes Jewish journalist Wolf
Blitzer, "more than thirty of the most important national Jewish
organizations; it has come to be viewed as the authoritative voice
of the mainstream Jewish leadership ... Because the Presidents'
Conference, like AIPAC [the leading American Jewish Israel lobbying
organization], can almost always be found in support of the official
Israeli position, U.S. officials in all recent administrations have
to view it as a de facto arm of the Israeli government." [BLITZER,
p. 141-142])
JewsGusinsky also met with a number of Jewish American Congressmen,
including Carl Lewin, Frank Lautenberg, Joseph Lieberman, and Arlen
Specter. "The Middle East and 'rising anti-Semitism' were among the
topics discussed," noted Don Bonker ("a former Congressman who
handles public relations for Goussinsky in Washington"). [COHLER-ESSES,
US RUSSIAN, p. 1] The Jewish Week further noted that
"according to a Jewish official who spoke on the condition of
anonymity, Goussinsky's efforts to meet with top State Department
officials were rebuffed due to what one State official ; as his
'checkered past.'" [COHLER-ESSES, US-RUSSIAN, p. 1] In 2000,
Gusinsky, who, like other Rusisan Jewish media moguls, has dual
Russian-Israeli citizenship, fled Russia after accusations of fraud.
In October, related to the Gusinsky criminal investigation, Russian
police raided the central Moscow synagogue, searching "practically
everything," but particularly looking for "in what way was the
Jewish community ... laundering money it was receiving from its
sponsors." Alexander Osovtsov, Executive Vice President of the
Russian Jewish Congress, complained: "What gives special cynicism to
it is the fact that the action was undertaken on the single day when
the leaders of the Congress and the Jewish community were absent
from Moscow because they were on a one-day visit of peace and
solidarity to Israel." [INTERFAX RUSSIAN NEWS, 10-20-00]
JewsBoris Berezovsky's riches began with Logovaz, a car
dealership. He has since rapidly gained control of the Russian
Public Television network, known as ORT; the newspaper
Nezavisimaya Gazeta; the weekly magazine Ogonyok;
Transero, a Russian airline; and 80% of Russia's seventh largest
oil company, which merged in 1998 with another Jewish-owned oil firm
(together called Yuksi), to create "the world's largest oil company
in terms of reserves." [MCMAHON, p. 3] "Berezovsky," says the
Wall Street Journal, "has a reputation for labyrinthine
political and business intrigues and has in the past exercised
influence over Russian companies, including the national airline
Aeroflot, without taking over formal ownership." [HIGGINS, p. 2]
Jews"Like many of the people in Russia who became rich very fast,"
notes the New York Times, "Mr. Berezovsky has been the
subject of numerous press reports that suggest he relied on
organized crime to build his business empire." [STANLEY, p. A3]
Berezovsky, notes the Washington Post, "is part of a tight
circle of financiers and business moguls who, by his own estimate,
control half of Russia's economy ... [HOFFMAN, Russia]. ...
They all attained wealth in the violent, corruption-ridden,
high-stakes competition that followed the collapse of the Soviet
Union five years ago.... The scramble for wealth and power was
carried out with brutal means, often including car bombs and
assassinations.... Russian tycoons are not public heroes. Popular
resentments run deep over the vast sell-off of state property, which
made many of them rich and left millions of Russians in poverty."
[HOFFMAN, p. A26] Berezovsky, notes the (Jewish) Forward, is
one of the "robber barons accused of milking Russians dry." [BLUSTAIN,
p. 1]
JewsIn 1999 Berezovsky gained control of Moscow's popular TV-6
television station. That same year he claimed control of "Russia's
premiere daily newspaper, Kommersant," and fired its editor,
Raf Shakirov, who said that "his ouster [is] an attempt to curb
often critical coverage of the tycoon's business and political
activities." [HIGGINS, p. 2]
Jews In December 1996, Forbes magazine published a scathing
article about Berezovsky (making sure such reports will be few and
far between, the multi-billionaire responded by punishing the
magazine with a suit for libel, as did the other Jewish tycoon
giant, Vladmir Gusinsky, against the Wall Street Journal for
an unflattering report about him). [WALL ST JRNL, 4-13-95] The
Forbes article, entitled "The Godfather of the Kremlin," was
printed with no byline for fear of violent retribution to its
authors. "Berezovsky," noted the magazine's editor, James Michaels,
"stands tall as one of the most powerful men in Russia. Behind him
lies a trail of corpses, uncollected debts and competitors terrified
for their lives." [MICHEALS, p. 10]
Jews The anonymously written article in Forbes notes that
"Assassination is a tool of business competition. Scores of business
leaders and media personalities have been killed ... Berezovsky
controls
Russia's biggest national TV network. His control was solidified
shortly
after the first chairman of the network was assassinated gangland
style.
Berezovsky was immediately fingered by the police as a key suspect,
but the murder remains unsolved two years later ... Such is the
Russian
business environment today that the men at the top have use for the
shadowy army of killers and thugs who work further down in the scale
of corruption, running prostitute and protection rackets." [FORBES,
p.
91, 92]
JewsIn 1995 Vladislav Listiev, one of Russia's most popular
television talk show hosts, was named head of the Russian Public
Television network (ORT). One of his major efforts was to rid
the station of the corrupt, monopolistic advertising empire of a man
named Sergei Lisovsky. The Forbes article suggests that
Berezovsky was involved in Listiev's eventual assassination, and
when Berezovsky ended up with a controlling interest in ORT
(36%), he retained Livosky as the only agent for the company's
advertising.
JewsIncredibly, in 1996 Berezovsky vast wealth and power afforded
him the opportunity to become a member of the Kremlin Security
Council, a position that meant access to some of the Russian
government's most sensitive national secrets. He was soon embroiled
in a scandal over his national allegiance when the liberal newspaper
Izvestia publicized the fact that Berezovsky had secured
Israeli citizenship in 1994. Berezovsky threatened to sue the
newspaper, charging anti-Semitism. [SHALAPENTOKH, p. 19] (Meanwhile,
the ruthless baron publicly declares he is a convert to
Christianity). [KRICHEVSKY, L., 5-23-99]
JewsA year later Fortune magazine ran an article entitled
"Russia's Robber Barons," profiling ten of the most important
Russian business tycoons who have catapulted to economic dominance
in Russia with the collapse of communism; these included Gusinsky,
Berezovsky, Boris Hait, Mikhail Friedman, Vladimir Vinogradov,
Vladimir Potanin, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Alexander Smolensky, and
Pyotr Aven.
JewsAlong with Gusinsky and Berezovsky, not only are Hait and
Friedman Jewish, they are, as noted earlier, vice-presidents under
Gusinsky in the Russian Jewish Congress. Khodorovsky, the President
of Bank Menatep (and, curiously, the former Deputy Secretary
of the Moscow Branch of the Communist Party youth branch) is also
Jewish. (Khodorovsky's ability to make ideological U-turns on a dime
somewhat echoes the latent wheeling and dealing of Leonid Roitman,
whose "meteoric rise to power was fueled by the chaos of post-pestroika
Russia." In his earlier years, under the communist regime, says the
Jerusalem Post, Roitman set up "an organization called
Hatehiya, which taught summer camps for Jewish youth. In a brilliant
move, he registered Hatehiya as part of Komosol, the Communist Youth
movement, and it rapidly became 'one of the largest and strongest
organizations in Russia.'" [HECHT, p. 12]]
JewsContinuing the Fortune list, Pyotr Aren, of the Alpha
financial group, is also Jewish. Smolensky, president of
Stolichny Bank and Vinogradov, head of Inkombank, are
also -- according to a B'nai B'rith publication -- "believed to be
Jews." [BERNSTEIN, RUSSIA'S, p. 12] (Many Jews in Eastern Europe
publicly hide this fact of their identity). Of this group of
economic dominators, that leaves only Potanin who is not Jewish (in
a country where today less than half of 1% of the Russian population
is Jewish [BERNSTEIN, p. 12]), but he has had American Jewish
billionaire George Soros as a major backer in some of his deals,
including the takeover of Russia's Svyazinvest
telecommunications giant. (Soros has "invested around $2.5 billion
in Russia, more than anyone or any institution." [BROWNING, p. F2]
Jews "Soros's extraordinary role," noted the (London) Guardian
in 1994, "not only as the world's most successful investor but
now possibly, fantastically, as the single most powerful foreign
influence in the whole of the former Soviet empire, attracts more
suspicion than curiosity." [LEWIS, M., p. 14] "I have been a prime
target for the current version of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory,"
notes Soros himself, "If there was ever a man who fit the stereotype
of the Judeo-plutocratic Bolshevik Zionist world conspirator, it is
me. And that is, in fact, how I am increasingly depicted in Eastern
Europe and also to some extent in Western Europe, but not so much in
America." [SOROS, p. 239])
Jews The above ten Russians, notes the Fortune piece,
"dominate the country's trade in arms and precious metals, as well
as its production of copper, nickel, and a quarter of its oil. They
control the No. 1 and No. 3 television networks, the Visa bankcard
network, a big chunk of the pulp and paper industry, and an
increasing portion of the food processing industry ... Princeton
professor Stephen Cohen, writing in the Nation, dubbed [most
of today's Russian business elite] a 'semi-criminalized oligarchy'
that has made ordinary Russians 'suffer unduly and unjustly.'"
[MELLOW, p. 120] Berezovsky has publicly bragged that he, Gusinsky,
Khodorovsky, Aren, Friedman, Smolensky, and Potanin control half of
Russia's wealth. [BERSTEIN, p. 12]
As Jewish scholar Betsy Gidwitz noted in 1999:
"That Jews control a disproportionately large share of the Russian
economy and Russian media certainly has some basis in fact. Between
50 and 80 percent of the Russian economy is said to be in Jewish
hands, with the influence of the five Jews among the eight
individuals commonly referred to as "oligarchs" particularly
conspicuous. (An oligarch is understood to be a member of a small
group that exercises control in a government. The five oligarchs of
Jewish descent are Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Friedman, Vladimir
Gusinsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Alexander Smolensky. The other
oligarchs are Vagit Alekperov, Vladimir Potanin, and Rem Vyakhirev.)
Perhaps the most famous (and simultaneously the most infamous) of
the oligarchs is Boris Berezovsky. In common with most of the other
Jewish oligarchs, Berezovsky controls industries in three critical
areas: the extraction and sale of a major natural resource, such as
oil, as a source of great wealth; a large bank (useful in
influencing industry and transferring assets abroad); and several
major media outlets (useful for exerting influence and attacking
rivals). He alsocontrols a significant share of the Aeroflot airline
and the Moscow automobile industry." [GIDWITZ, B., 9-15-99]\
A 1999 Wall Street Journal editorial notes that disturbing
situation in today's Russia:
"Russia's oligarchs -- many of them apparatchiks from the communist
days -- have stripped the country's best assets and transferred
their
winnings to off-shore companies they control ... For every dollar
a Russian has laundered abroad there had to be a counterparty at
the other end. London, Geneva, and New York are preferred
destinations, as well as off-shore havens such as Cyprus and
New Jersey. Estimates of $10 billion capital flight from Russia
each year are probably conservative." [W S J, 8-30-99, p. 8]
By 1998, the foreign minister of Russia was Yevgeni Primakov. His
real last name -- Finkelstein -- was dropped when he worked for the
KGB. Also that year, Sergio Kiriyenko became the prime minister of
Russia. He too is Jewish. [SAFIRE, p. 6] Primatov later succeeded
him as Prime Minister. "Two of the main political leaders in
Parliament," adds the Times of London, "Grigori Yavlinsky,
the leader of the liberal Yabloko Party, and Vladimir Zhirnovsky,
the head of the ultra-nationalist LDPR, also have Jewish parents."
[BEESTON] A Los Angeles Times reporter notes that "at least
half of the powerful 'oligarchs' who control a significant
percentage of the [Russian] economy are Jewish. The reviled
architect of Yeltsin's failed reform policies, Antaloy Chubais,
[later head of the national electrical power monopoly], is rumored
to be Jewish, along with Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, ousted
Deputy Minister Boris Nemtsov and Yeltsin's wife, Naina." [REYNOLDS,
p. 7A] The Jewish Telegraph Agency noted that "Chubais is not
... open about his Jewish roots." [KRICHEVSKY, L., 5-23-99]
Alexander Livshitz also served a spell as Russia's finance minister
in the 1990s. [KRICHEVSKY, L., 5-23-99]
In 1999, the Jewish Exponent noted that
"all but one of the eight leading [Russian] bankers are Jewish," and
four of them -- Goussinsky, Boris Hait, Mikhail Friedman, and Vitaly
Malkin -- occupy the top positions at the RJC [Russian Jewish
Congress] ... In addition to these business titans, often referred
to
here in the [Russian] media and on the street as the 'oligarchs,'
many of the leading political figures in Russia are also Jewish
or partly Jewish. These include fomer prime Minster Sergei Kiriyenko
and top Kremlin aides Yegor Gaidar and Boris Nemtsov. Grigori
Yavlinsky, the leader of the Yabloko, the largest democratic party
in the
Duma today, has one Jewish parent ... In the new Russia, the most
important fields ... to which Jews [have] gravitated [are] banking,
trade, the media, and show business." [RUBY, W., p. 37]
In late 1998, Viktor Ilyukin, the head of the Russian Parliament's
Security Affairs Committee, said this about the Yeltsin government:
"The large-scale genocide [i.e., Russian social and economic
collapse] wouldn't have been possible if Yeltsin's inner circle had
consisted of the main ethnicity groups, and not exclusively of one
group, the Jews." [NEW YORK TIMES, Communist, p. 12] That
same year, Nikolai Kandratenko, the governor of a southern Russian
province, called the government of the area's largest city "a
Zionist nest" exemplifying a "Judeo-Masonic mafia." [KRICHEVSKY, L.,
Russian, p. 7]
Meanwhile, also in the same year, the Jerusalem Post noted a
more commonly enforced stereotypes about the situation of Jews in
Russia:
"[A Christian woman in Dallas] heard about some young Jews in the
former Soviet Union getting help via a soup kitchen. She decided to
become the adoptive grandmother, sending in a monthly contribution
for
their welfare." [COHEN, A., p. 11]
As Jewish scholar Michael Paul Sacks noted in 1998 about the almost
secretive nature of the economic situation of Jews in modern Russia:
"Published census data on Jews [in Russia] have been very scarce,
but this [from the 1989 Russian census] and other sources leave no
doubt that in comparision with other groups Soviet Jews were very
distinctive in terms of their urban concentration and their
educational and professional achievement ... With the recent release
of new data from the 1989 census, a more precise understanding of
the opportunities available to Jews in 'Soviet' Russia is now
possible. These data show the number of men and women by major
ethnic groups (including Jews) in 257 job categories. Surprisingly,
this new information is not referred to even in the most recent
Russian scholarship on Jews, and it received no mention in western
sources ... Jews showed a very early path of upward mobility in the
modernizing sectors of the labor force ... [SACKS, 1998, p. 247] ...
Occupations that that were largest for Jews were primarily
top-level positions and all were white collar: physicians,
scientists, chief-managerial personnel, artists and producers,
literary and press personnel. The [job] categories that were largest
only for Russians were entirely manual labor and other low-skills;
tractor drivers, cleaners, weighers, nursemaids, lathe operators,
tailors and seamstresses, carpenters and dairy work." [SACKS, M.,
1998, p. 257]
A 1995 study in Russia found that 84% of employed Jews had
"professional or managerial positions." Another 4% were "owners of
firms or entrepreneurs." [SACKS, M., 1998, p. 265]
With the likes of Gusinsky, Berezovsky, and other powerful Jewish
business tycoons wielding extraordinary influence and blatantly
buying (and allegedly even killing) their broad way into the Russian
media, business, and government, (as well as centrally placed Jews
in the Russian government like Finance Minister Alexander Livshits
and First Deputy Minister in Charge of Economic Reform, Boris
Nemtsov), the Christian Science Monitor noted in 1997 that
"A loose coalition of nationalistic communists and out-and-out
[Russian] nationalists has begun to characterize President Boris
Yeltsin's regime as 'Jewish.' It is the Jewishness of Mr. Yeltsin's
regime, its essential foreignness to Russia, that [in this view]
explains
the plummeting economy, the brazen corruption and enrichment of the
few ... and Russia's subservient position to the West."
[SHLAPENTOKH, p. 19; WALL ST, 4-13-95, p. A14; HOFFMAN,
D., 1-10-97, p. A1; STANLEY, 6-14-97, p. A3]
Still another angle on Jewish economic dominance at the upper tiers
of capitalist Russia was a 1998 article in the Israeli daily,
Haaretz, which noted
"The most successful venture capitalists in the world in 1996 and
1997
operated out of Moscow and was started by an Israeli. The
Hermitage 1 and
Hermitage 2 funds specialize in investments in Russia and
other
countries of the former Soviet Union, although they invest
throughout
the world. They were set up in 1995 by Israeli businessman Benny
Steinmatz and the Safra brothers [and are] managed by American Bill
Broder ... Hermitage is considered the most senior player on
the
Moscow Stock Exchange, and it is the second-largest of the fund
managers active in Russia, with some $600 million to invest."
[LIPSON]
Then there is Boris Jordan, also Jewish, from New York's Long
Island, eventual head -- after Vladimir Gusinsky fled to Israel to
escape criminal prosecution -- of Russian television station NTV,
"who almost single-handedly established the Russian stock market,
who in one year earned half the global profits for his employers at
Credit Suisse First Boston, who walked away from a reported $4
million bonus because it was insultingly small and instead founded
Russia's first full-service investment bank, which he
optimistically called Renaissance Capital. Brash, bright and
above all ambitious, Jordan more than
any other individual put Russia on the financial map in the 90's.
'Czar Boris,' as he was dubbed by admiring business reporters, held
court high atop Moscow's most expensive new skyscraper, while
Renaissance's 800 pinstriped bankers and brokers handled
billions of dollars from blue-chip investors like George Soros and
the Harvard endowment. The darling of Davos, the Swiss summit for
the well heeled and influential, Jordan was, in his own words, on
top of the world." [BRZENSKI,
M., 7-22-01, p. 40]
Yet another Jewish Russian money mogul is Roman Abramovich. The
Warsaw Voice (headed by Jewish publisher and editor Andrzej
Jonas) noted in 1999 that he is "the CEO of the powerful Sibneft
oil group. A popular joke in Moscow says that one must count
one's fingers after shaking hands with Abramovich, who has for years
been associated with Berezovsky's financial group." [ZYGULSKI, p. 8]
Oil magnate Leonid Nevzlin became head of the Russian Jewish
Congress in 2001. He and the aforementioned Mihail Khodorkowvsky
"formed one of the first successful private banks in Russia in 1989.
The two then went into the oil business together, and now run the
YUKOS firm -- Khodorkovsky is in charge, and Nevzlin is his
deputy." The secular Jewish Nevzlin, like so many, has returned to
his Jewish roots. "For all my life," he says, "I have never felt any
substantial anti-Semitism, and was rather indifferent to the Jewish
community. Then something clicked, and I thought, Well, I'm over 40,
I have made a successful career, I have made a fortune. But what
will I tell my children when I am 70." [GORODETSKY, L., 5-23-01]
Then there is Mikhail Mirilashvili (a.ka., Misha Kutaisskey), who
"is one of the biggest shareholders of the local branch of LUK
oil. He is also president of Channel 11 and president and
deputy chairman of the St. Petersburg branch of the Russian chapter
of the World Jewish Congress." A brother, Konstantin, is the
"co-owner of Gosting Dvor, [St. Petersburg's] major shopping
center." [KORALYEV, VLADIMIR, 10-11-2000] Then there is Anatoly
Karachinsky, "head of Information Business Systems, Russia's largest
IT group." Karachinsky, also Jewish, "is regarded in Russia as the
country's answer to Bill Gates -- and who is about to become the
country's first high-technology dollar millionaire." Karachinsky
"set up NewspaperDirect, a system that allows newspapers from
anywhere in the world to be printed on a desktop." [FINANCIAL TIMES,
10-2-00]
Then there is New York-based Stuart Subotnick, also Jewish, who is
the CEO and president of Metromedia International Group. (In
1999, Subotnick was ranked by Forbes magazine among the
richest 400 Americans). This company's specialty is cable,
telephone, and digital media -- largely in Eastern Europe. Holdings
include complete -- or major -- shares in Russia's PLD Telekom,
Kosmos TV ("one of Russia's largest wireless cable
operators"), 50% of Comstar ("a large Moscow digital
communications carrier"), Romsat ("one of the largest cable
operators in Romania"), 70% of "a leading Bucharest-based ISP
(Internet Service Provider) called FX Internet. Metromedia
even has holdings in places like Belarus and Kazakhstan. In Russia
it also owns "several TV and radio stations in St. Petersburg and
Nizhii Novgorod." [CAPITAL MARKET RUSSIA, 5-20-99; AFX EUROPEAN
FOCUS, 1-12-01; CABLE EUROPE, 7-4-00; TELECOMMUNICATIONS SERVICES
MARKET, 6-26-00]Howard Jacobson rode with a taxi driver in
recent years in New York City. The driver was a fellow Jew, a recent
immigrant from Russia. "He speaks Yiddish," noted Jacobson in 1993,
"His family kept it alive so that they could talk among themselves
and
not be understood. 'A secret language,' he explains.
The secret language of the Jews. A light kept burning underground
all during those years of atheism. I'd
be touched if I wasn't alarmed. For where people speak a
secret language, how can suspicion and fear of them not
multiply?" [JACOBSON, H., 1993/1995, p. 80-81]
"Our people are not blind," proclaimed the head of the Russian
Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, in 1998, "They cannot fail to see
that the spread of Zionism in the government is one of the reasons
for the current catastrophe in the country, the mass impoverishment
and the process of extinction of its people." [ENSEL, M., p. 3]
The blustering of an anti-Semitic fanatic? In the same year, a
Jewish Russian immigrant in New York of considerable renown,
novelist Edward Topol (whose work was once banned in Russia),
stirred controversy and deep concern in the world Jewish community
because of a published letter he wrote to a Russian weekly
newspaper. In it Topol called prominent Jewish Russian bankers
"puppeteers" who manipulated Russian politics and its economy. The
puppeteers, he concluded, has "a very long Jewish last name --
Berezovsko-Goussinsko-Smolensko-Khodrokovsko, etc. ... How come all
or almost all the money in this country ended up in Jewish hands?"
Topol also called the economic crisis in Russia today a "Jewish
tragedy." "Mr. Topol's main premise," noted the (Jewish) Forward,
"is that for the first time in a millennium, Jews have gained real
political power and financial control over Russia and can pretty
much decide whether to 'cast the country into a chaos of wars and
poverty or raise it from the mud.'" [KRICHEVSKY, Emigre's, p. 5;
KAZAKINA, p. 5]
In 1997 the (Jewish) Forward reported that "with the
[Russian] economy in shambles, opposition parties held nationwide
strikes at the end of last month. [Even] Jews are grumbling that too
many Jews stand close to the reigns of power and too many Jewish
names fill the headlines." [BLUSTAIN, R, p. 1] "All the Jews, I
don't understand their motivation, to show they are rich ... [to
say] 'I am an owner and you are a slave,'" complained Alexander
Lieberman, the Jewish director of the Union Council's
Russian-American Bureau of Human Rights. "If I were a single Russian
and I saw and heard only Jews in the government ... [I would think]
'we are all without money because the Jews have all the Russian
money.'" [BLUSTAIN, p. 1] "People have quite bitter memories of
Jews in the [communist] revolution," noted Michael Chlenov, the
president of the Jewish Va'ad of Russia.
JewsIn this regard, transnationally, in 1996, Boris Berezovsky
hosted a party in honor of the earlier mentioned Ronald Lauder
(American Jewish owner of a number of TV stations in Europe),
attended by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and United States
Ambassador Thomas Pickering. Speaking to a reporter, Lauder (already
ensnarled in partnership media dealings in the Ukraine with Russian
mafia-clouded Vadim Rabinovich) publicly distanced himself from
Berezovsky, saying, "The invitations went out in President Yeltsin's
name." [FORBES, p. 91]
(excerpt from When Victims Rule. A Critique of
Jewish Preeminence in America, chapter
24, pt. 2
)
[The trans-world Jewish collusion. More evidence of the
Jewish/Zionist sweep of American foreign policy. Jewish/Zionist
Pentagon bigwig Richard Perle interferes in Russian politics in the
name of the Jewish Russian owners of Yukos Oil; Mikhail Khodorkovsky
(Russia's richest man) is Jewish]
THE WORLD: Russian Firm's Woes Raise Fears for Big Business. The
outcome of a battle between an energy giant and criminal prosecutors
could affect the development of the nation's free market
By Kim Murphy, Los Angeles Times, July
23, 2003
"When key Washington policy advisor Richard Perle sat down this
week for a meeting with leading Russian political analysts, he had an
unsolicited word of advice: Lay off Yukos Oil Co., the Russian energy
giant locked in a showdown with criminal prosecutors. Many believe
that the outcome of that battle could determine the future of big
business and foreign investment in this nation's still-fledgling
free-market economy. "It's possible already to say that real damage is
being done to the prospects for future Russian economic growth and
development by what appears to be an arbitrary, capricious and
vindictive campaign against a private company," warned Perle,
adding that "it will get very bad" if the Kremlin decides to move
decisively against Yukos. For nearly three weeks, Moscow has been
politically shaken by the face-off between prosecutors and Russia's
richest man, 40-year-old Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose Yukos
empire has been threatened by the arrest of a key shareholder,
searches at company offices and announcements that prosecutors are
examining company officials for suspected crimes from tax evasion to
murder. The fact that U.S. interests are quietly weighing in on
Khodorkovsky's behalf - Perle emphasized that he was not
speaking on behalf of the government, but U.S. Ambassador Alexander
Vershbow clearly was when he said the affair "raises a number of
questions for us" - is testament to Khodorkovsky's role as a
powerful advocate for Western interests in a country still deeply
troubled over issues such as U.S. policy in Iraq and the future of
free-market capitalism within its own borders. The outcome of the
Yukos crisis is crucial for Russia, not only because it will signal
whether free-enterprise advocates in the Kremlin will hold out against
an apparent assault from the state bureaucracy's old guard but also
because the dogfight has already proved costly. Yukos, which is
expected to become the world's fourth-largest oil company after a
planned merger with Russian company Sibneft, has lost $10 billion in
market capitalization over the last two weeks, or about a quarter of
its value. Its slide pulled down the stock market, which has lost more
than $20 billion ... It is not known to what extent [Russian Prime
Minister] Putin may have been involved in approving the July 2 arrest
of Platon Lebedev, 43, a billionaire and a key member of
Khodorkovsky's financial empire, on embezzlement charges stemming
from the privatization of a fertilizer plant nearly a decade ago. Some
analysts believe that Putin simply wants to warn Khodorkovsky
and the other oligarchs to stay out of politics and is not seeking to
reverse liberal economic reforms. Not only has Khodorkovsky
given millions of dollars to two liberal parties that might block
Kremlin policy in parliament, but he also urged Russia not to oppose
the U.S. in the war on Iraq."
|