25 Novembre 2008

While Russian judges are going to sentence Mikhail Khodorkovski, former owner of the oil company Yukos, guilty of fraud and tax evasion, the American vested interests are preparing to bite Putin heels, because he put in trouble that Jewish friend of them. Senator John McCain has already warned: the trial against Khodorkovski isn’t a normal trial but “a wiggling coup against democracy and capitalism forces, that shakes foundations of the USA-Russia relationship”. Said by a responsible of a State, the USA, that has seen Enron and 9/11 (coup d’état, of a new kind), isn’t bad. But, maybe, it is needed to have a better look at the story of this pure free trade martyr.

Born in 1963, when attending the university at Moscow (graduated in chemistry) Khodorkovsky entered in Young Communists League, youth club of the PCUS (Communist Party of the Soviet Union), taking the charge of vice-secretary of the Frunze district: a nice start for a nice career in the Party, which nominated him at the charge of chief in the local Industrial Technologies Center. But that times were the times of the Perestroika, and Khodorkovski started to make his first money as “privatized communist”, re-selling computers.

Independently if it’s true or false, money earned with this activity gave him the possibility to furnish “financial services” to the very first Russian entrepreneurs, alias former KGB officials and members of the Organizatsya (the Russian Mafia), that were buying enterprises, factories, firms and properties of the USSR at slashed prices. Services offered by Khodorkovsky were simply these: he exchanged rubles (that were loosing worth at an accelerated rhythm) with dollars, then sending this new money in offshore accounts. Obviously, this pretty operations couldn’t be done without “religious” influential contacts that the young communist had abroad: the Rothschild of London, as many says. The truth of the matter is that Khodorkovsky earned so much, but giantly a lot so much, that he was able to open his own bank, the Menatep: the bank preferred by the “new entrepreneurs”, former spies and Russian Mafia’s people.

So, when the now alcohol addicted Eltsin launches (with suggestions by free market economists, like Jeffrey Sachs, a Jew of the Chicago School) a forced privatization plan – “loan in exchange for shares” – the little communist was ready: by dint of rigged auctions, giving “loans” that the regime would never gave back, he appropriated of “shares” in Russian public estates, especially mining areas, with slashed prices. Obviously, also these operations requested special supports from abroad. Mikhail, in fact, opened dummy corporations in tax heavens that, as well as total secret, guaranteed fiscal immunity and any kind of legal protection against every minority member that, in the case, would discover which was the final money’s destination. Tax heaven’s in the world are about seventy, but Khodorkovsky preferred three or four of them, all under British control (and British mean Rothschild’s): Gibraltar, Isle of Man, Panama, and Switzerland.

An example. In 1994 Khodorkovski & friends bought the 20% of the Apatit’s ownership, a Russian state mining enterprise, that was worth 1,400,000,000 US$, with only 225,000 US$ ! ! ! (yes, 6220 times less of its real value), with the promise to invest 283,000,000 US$ for renewing plants and maintain workforce. When Apatit was put on auction, what a miracle!, there were only four societies to try to buy it: they were four societies founded by Khodorkovsky in the above quoted tax heavens. And, fancy that!, when one of the four societies won the auction with slashed prices, refused totally to invest the promised 283,000,000 US$ in Apatit, although it was compelled to do so by the purchase deal; an injunction by the Russian court – to invest money or to give back money – remained a dead letter.

Whish society we are talking about? The Menatep!, of the young communist; which sped up itself to scatter the shares in other offshore societies, out of the Russian Jurisdiction. In the meantime, Apatit’s managers nominated by Khodorkovski started to heavily undersell Apatit’s products to many dummy corporations created to resell these products at very high prices on the global market. In such a way, the company paid dividends and taxes like a firm at a loss: nothing or almost nothing. According to Russian Public Prosecutor, in this way Khodorkovski has made a giant fraud to the society he owns – Apatit, that he was bleeding – and to minority shareholders, something like 200,000,000 US$, evading many millions of US$ of taxes.

In 1995, the trick worked again, with a lot more strategic firm: Avisma, titanium producer, to be sold to the best offerer. Who won? An offshore society that, strangely enough, was owned by Menatep Bank. Obviously, the phantom-society paid a ridiculous price, a lowest fraction of the real worth of Avisma. And here also, other societies, “ad hoc” made, bought the extremely precious (1) production of the enterprise with prices under the market value of titanium, reselling it at the highest prices of the global titanium market. Another big theft to taxation and to minority shareholders, and another Russian source of income bled and gutted (2).

The same method was used to acquire the Yukos oil-company, “privatized” with auction. Khodorkovski – or, better, his usual dummy corporations – paid 309,000,000 US$ to have 78% of the Yukos group. Immediately after the attainment, when quoted on Moscow Stock Exchange, Yukos revealed to the world its real value: 6,000,000,000 US$ (20 times the auction’s price). A little nice transaction, for Rothschild & C. It was like buying a Rolex for one twentieth of its value.

To the management level of the Yukos ownership’s structure there was a “Menatep Group”, which head office was a PO box in Gibraltar; Khodorkovski personally owned the 28% of the Menatep Group, which was the main shareholder of the Yukos Universal Limited, owner of the 61% of the real Yukos. As usual, Yukos sold at less than cost price the oil and its by-products to dummy corporations and phantom-societies (of the young communist) of Gibraltar. These societies re-sold these products, this time, with the correct market price, evading taxes and giving nothing to the wretched minority shareholders. With a prudential calculation, the theft this time amounted to 1,700,000,000 US$.

Later, Menatep Group opened a luxurious office in London. Its “managing director” was a sly lawyer of the City, Stephen Curtis, that was already furnishing his services to Boris Berezovski, another oligarch, Mafious (and backer of Chechenia’s criminals), Jew, escaped in Israel when pursued by Russian justice. Results from interceptions say that Curtis, in a meeting of 1999 with high trustees of Khodorkovski in the above quoted luxurious London office, explained the plan of the fraud-capital escape; the crude oil of Yukos was sold with many “commercial societies” like Behles in Switzerland, South Petroleum in Liberia, and Baltic Petroleum in Ireland.

Societies with their own different managements, but strangely near. For example, Swiss Behles shared with Menatep and Apatit the same Head Office, 46 rue du Rhone in Geneva. In 2004 Stephen Curtis started to feel burn the ground under his foot (T’s N: means to start to understand the real thing in which he is involved, and to not like what is discovering). He called the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS), the organ that watches over the organized crime in England: evidently he wanted to give information good to unmask the criminals that were paying him. In march 2004, when he was going with helicopter to an appointment with a MI6 agent, his private aircraft – a brand new Agusta 109E – fell, killing him.

In the mean time, Russian authorities had arrested Khodorkovski for fraud and evasion; following to what happened, Yukos shares value fallen, drying up the naïve American investors that believed in the business, loosing 5,7 billions US$. But hidden profits of the firm – the biggest part of the loot – were closed in secret bank accounts formally tied to the usual dummy corporations. In 2004, on demand of Moscow, Swiss authorities freezed 5 billions US$ in Behles’s account. But the big part remains inaccessible. According to Moscow’s public prosecutor, Yukos hides in its grid of offshore accounts 25 billions US$ of unpaid taxes and of frauds.

The fact is that Yukos has been, like Enron, Wall Street’s and Bloomberg’s most loved enterprise, and also loved by all the rest of USA financial media until yesterday. The Menatep-Yukos constellation enjoyed the use of the services of the four biggest American audit companies, Ernst & Young, Deloitte & Touche, KPMG and Pricewaterhouse Cooper: these societies gave an help to the colossal fiscal evasion and sack of Russian goods. Weakly, only Ernst & Young in July 2002 objected to Menatep Group’s accounting. This didn’t prevent other colossal American banks, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse First Boston (being silent on the Swiss UBS) from earning billions US$ selling to the people the tricked shares of Khodorkovski.
The APCO Worldwide, a subsidiary of the biggest advertising agency of the world, Grey Advertising, is nominated to do public relations for Menatep and to manage “public image” of Khodorkovski.

Under advice of APCO, the oligarch created in London, in 2001, an “Open Russia Foundation”, a non-profit foundation based on the model constituted by the Open Society of George Soros (the Jewish speculator that promotes “democracy” in eastern countries) – with the purpose to “promote democracy in Russia”, that is more clearly to kill Putin. Henry Kissinger entered in the managing board of the Foundation, after being well paid. The Foundation is spending much money to have powerful friends: it has paid also a futile photo book of Lord Snowdon, official photographer of the Royal Family; and donated 100,000 US$ to an American National Book Festival, headed by Laura Bush, US President’s wife.

Since March 2005, APCO is paying pages defending Khodorkovski on the website of the New York Times: pages which don’t look like advertisements but more like editorials. In the meantime, to have new powerful friends, Khodorkovski put much money in Carlyle (Bush Senior’s holding), a closed investment fund – that invests mainly in the military-industrial sector – that had, in the past, the Bin Laden family as shareholders.

So, mustn’t leave astonished the fact that the entire USA’s mass-media system and the most important members of the Administration, included Condoleeza Rice, scream like eagles for the martyrdom of Khodorkovski, and for the insults made by Putin against the “free market”.

But, contrarily to what USA mass media is screaming, Khodorkovky isn’t the only one “oppressed” by Putin. With Putin, the Russian government is persecuting for fiscal evasion and financial crimes of any seriousness other “oligarchs” of the Eltsin’s age: Berezovski (Aeroflot), Abramovitch (Sibneft), Gushinski (“Most” bank), Mickail Chernoy (Trans World Metals).
Almost all, instead facing the trial, have escaped: Abramovitch in London, Gushinski in Spain-Gibraltar, all others in Israel.

by Maurizio Blondet

Translate by O.I

Source > EFFEDIEFFE.com

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1) T’s N: titanium is extremely difficult to extract and to use, and the ability to work with it is very precious, because the properties of titanium make it wonderfully good to be employed in aerospace engineering and in any kind of high quality and “mechanical hi-tech” productions, but it is widely used also in all machining and machine tools from the most expensive to the cheapest, where is employed to plate utensils for precision and mass production works; for an example look at Sandvik – Coromant, world’s largest producers of plated utensils, which plate is made of TITANIUM carbides, nitrides, carbonic nitrides, very expensive because of the cost of titanium, and not so much time ago extremely expensive because Avisma is the largest producer of titanium (and worked titanium) in the world, with more than 30% of the market in its hands).
2) Lucy Komisar, “Yukos kingpin on trial”,  Corpwatch, 10th may 2005.