Magda Hassan
12-02-2008, 08:41 AM
Below are a series of articles mentioning activities of Far West LLC A consulting firm with an odd way of doing business. Also some pictures of players in the company and some background information on them. Researchers and readers familiar with Peter Dale Scott (see his work in the Global Drug Meta Group which I think we have in the drugs board here) will recognise many here. I have only included the English articles. There is much more in Russian at ????.??
IPROG "Experts" Update Their Mug Shots
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Ruslan Saidov aka Ugur Mehmed (left) and Vladimir Filin aka "Ilyich", "El Buho". Photos courtesy Pravda.info
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"Somewhere near Moscow": Anton Surikov (center) with Shatbai Shavit (left) and Dov Kontorer at the recent conference of Israeli and Russian intelligence services organized by Sergei Kurginyan and his Experimental Creative Center. Photo courtesy Forum.msk.ru
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Owners of Far West Ltd (from the left): Ruslan Saidov, Vladimir Filin, Anton Surikov
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Davidoviz-Muller's ties to LA fascism, to death squads, his double game with FARC are logical outcome of the social nature of FarWest -- the mafiiso-political society born out of the New World Order, new fascism.
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From the left: Filin, Saidov, Surikov. Recent photo from Finland
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Vladimir Vladimirovich Litovchenko (b. 1960)
General-Major of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Ukrainian Ministry of Defense,
Vice-president of Far West LLC
Owner of several ethanol factories in Brazil,
business partner of George Soros
Known cover names:
Vladimir Ilyich Filin (Ukrainian and British passports)
F. P. Carvallo (Brazilian passport)
Stoikovich (Serbian passport)
Known handles: "Ilyich," "El Buho"
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Anton Surikov -- Mansour Nathoev
Rt. Colonel of GRU, commander of the "security service" of the Cherkess Congress. Received special training in guerilla war and psychological operations.
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Fritz Ermarth of the Nixon Center and SAIC.
"Former" CIA officer, probably partly ethnic Adygei and distant relative of Surikov-Natkhoev. Main contact of Farwest in the United States. Specialist in disinformation and false-flag operations. Representative of the US military-industrial complex and post-Nazi elites in the Atlantic intelligence community. Member of the Bushes' inner circle of political and intelligence operatives. Ideologically motivated Russophobe, one of the central figures in the ongoing secret war against Russia.
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Sir Rodric Braithwaite of
Deutsche Bank and
David Cameron's Advisory Council on Foreign Affairs
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Ruslan Saidovich Sadulaev (b. 1960)
Major-General, Advisor to the Minister of Defense, Republic Uzbekistan, head of the illegal "external intelligence service of Chechen Republic," formerly "The Istambul Bureau" under President Maskhadov. Close associate of Khozh Nukhaev, wanted for the murder of Paul Khlebnikov.
Known cover names
Ruslan Saidov (Russian passport),
Ruslan Muhammedovich Muhammedov (Uzbek passport), Nihat (Turkish passport)
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Alexei Kolosovskii (b. 1960)
Ulrainian and British passports on
Alexei Likhvintsev
Major-General of
Ukrainian military intelligence, in charge of the Special Department "R" (Russia). Married to Liudmilla Rozkina, US and British passports, former GRU agent.
Handles: "Pribalt"
Photo circa 1988-89
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Igor Sechin (b. 1960), Kremlin functionary and the informal leader of Russian siloviki.
Served in Angola under Kolosovskii's command as military interpretor.
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Major-General Valery Lunev (cover name)
KGB, Belarus
Handle: Lun
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Alfonso Davidoviz-Mueller,
Cuban-Soviet double agent, banker, involved in narcotrafficking and money laundering, known to major secret services and used by them. Married to the relative of Venezuelan General Mueller Rojas.
Handle: "Felix"
Barbarossa at Our Gates? The Anti-Russian Alliance of Western and Saudi Intelligence Behind Far West LLC Prepares Bloody Sunday in the Northern Caucasus, Food and Gas Blockade against Russia
During the last few days the International Editorial Board of burtsev.rua group of investigative reporters associated with the Internet weekly Left Russia (left.ru)--received information from several reliable sources about latest activities of the international alliance of secret services who have been engaged in subversive activities against Russia under the cover of the consulting company Far West LLC, with headquarters in Dubai.
The alliance includes the secret services of the USA and UK (CIA, DIA, MI-6, MI-5, and the Scotland Yard), represented by their front companies: Diligence LLC, KBR, New Bridge Strategies, Erinys International, Titon International, Meteoric Tactical Solution, and Aegis Defence Services. From Saudi Arabia-- the General Intelligence Service, represented by Prince Rasheed as Rasheed, a relative of Prince Turki al Faisal, and the family of Adnan Khashoggi. The Turkish General Staff and the Gray Wolves, as well as the President Kadyrov's military, are represented by the Istambul Bureau, or the Information Service of the Ministry of Defense of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, under the command of the brigadier-general Ruslan Saidov and Khozh Nukhaev, wanted by Russian Prosecutor for the murder of Paul Khlebnkov of Forbes Magazine. The Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), represented by generals Vladimir Filin and Alexei Likhvintsev. KGB of Belorussia, represented by General Valery Lunev and the vice-president Viktor Sheiman. Lithunian military intelligence, represented by Audrius Butkevicius and Rolandas Paksas.
Their senior partners are said to be the defense minister Robert Gates, his close associate Fritz Ermarth, formerly (?) of the CIA, NSC, NIC, and the Rand Corporation, who since his retirement has been working under the cover of the Nixon Center and the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the former ambassador in the Soviet Union Sir Roderic Braithwaithe, his close associate Ruslan Berenis, thought to be senior officer of British military intelligence, and Prince Faisal al Turki, former head of the General Intelligence Service of Saudi Arabia, and ambassador in Britain and the United States.
Below we publish our summary of the information we received from several sources.
1. The chief of the Istambul Bureau Ruslan Saidov and the billionaire Mikhail Gutseriev who recently fled Russia and filed for political asylum in England, prepare a bloody provocation during the coming opposition meeting in the North Caucasian city of Nazran, Ingush Republic on November 24. There is a strong possibility that the violence they plan will lead to human victims and will be recorded on video, blamed on federal authorities and used for a new round of the psychological warfare waged by the corporate press in the West against the independent course of President Putin.
2. One of the shadow chiefs of the Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), Vladimir Filin, has recently been given additional political role. Following his appointment as the head of the Working Group for coordinating the intelligence activities of Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Belorussia, Filin was assigned to coordinate the collaboration of Ukrainian intelligence with their Georgian counterparts. This means that GUR will provide the Georgian military with th e intelligence about Russian special services in the Caucasus. The strong operational capacities that GUR has in Moscow and Rostov-on-the Don will assure the quality of intelligence that the Georgians will be receiving now. This can indicate that after he has crushed the recent protests in Tbilisi, President Saakashvili and his US advisers now plan a military provocation in the breakaway South Ossetia.
3. After consultations with Robert Gates and Condoleeza Rice, Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic States, and Belorussia begin to prepare for a warfare against Gasprom, Russian natural gas state monopoly, and indirectly against Germany. Filin will coordinate the activities of special services in this operation. It is expected that around the New Year these countries will succeed in blocking 100 percent of Russia's natural gas deliveries to the EC (with the exception of Finland). For this purpose, Ukraine filled to the fullest all its natural gas storage facilities in the western parts of the country. Theoretically, this reserves will last for the participating countries till the next fall.
The gas blockade will be supplemented by the blockade of food deliveries from the EC to Russia through Poland, Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Baltic states.
There has been an increase in the activity of the Chehen gangsters from the former Alazan organized crime group of Khozh Nukhaev in the Russian ports of Novorossiisk, Tuapse, and Jugbe. This indicates that closer to the New Year one can expect that these entry points will be used for the arrival of professional commando teams from Saidov's Istambul Bureau.
6. In coordination with the above preparations, US state agencies are about to make highly visible arrests of and accusations against several highly placed Russian officials under the article 312 of the Patriotic Act . These officials are associated with Gasprom, Transneft, and Ministry of Agriculture. The last can be used as pretext for a food blockade against Russia.
7. At the same time, the US officials pressure the leadership of Turkmenistan for sharp increase of the natural gas sold to Gasprom. This pressure tactics include threats to arrest Western bank accounts of unnamed Turkmen officials.
The intelligence information suggest that the US, Britain, and their allies in Asia prepare serious military provocations in Kyrgyzstan and the Uzbekistan part of the Fergana Valley.
The situation in Russia will become most critical January and February of 2008. In the words of one of our sources, If in addition something bad happens inside the country we may not be able to control the situation.
Russian original is at < http://left.ru/2007/15/barbarossa167.phtml >
Our comments
The first confirmation of this information came when this English translation was being prepared. On November 14thGlenn R. Simpson of the WSJ reported that the government of the British Virgin Islands told the U.S. Justice Department there is "overwhelming evidence" Russian Telecommunications Minister Leonid Reiman secretly owns a large chunk of Russia's telecoms industry through an offshore fund.
It is not accidental that this news comes from the WSJ crowd that have been the cheerleader of the psychological warfare against Russia in past few years of which Dr. Goebbels himself would have been proud. An analysis of WSJ anti-Putin publications since the summit in Bratislava might have revealed an uncanny coordination with a number of subversive activities in Russia and London that FarWest undertook during this period. We believe that WSJ is extremely well connected both with the influential nucleus of the Council for International Relations and the right-wing elements (perhaps even rogue elements) in the US intelligence community who have been pulling the strings behind the FarWest alliance.
In the specific case of Glenn R. Simpson's piece Russian Regulator Under Fire; Virgin Islands Says Evidence Points To Telecom Holdings, out attention was drawn to Simpson's failure to inform his readers about the relations between the Alfa Group and its owner Russian oligarch Mikhail Friedman and the elements of the US intelligence community behind FarWest. According to Simpson,
The case [against Reiman ed.] originates from a dispute over the rights to a 25% stake in Megafon, one of Russia's biggest mobile carriers, between Russian tycoon Mikhail Fridman and IPOC. The evidence that IPOC is owned by Mr. Reiman was the subject of an Oct. 17, 2006, article on page one of The Wall Street Journal.
Indeed, that article, Russian Connection: Why Putin's Telecom Minister Is in Investigators' Sights Abroad; German and Swiss Probes Tag Leonid Reiman as Owner Of Businesses He Oversees, also failed even to mention one piece of information that was in public domain: Friedman's Alfa was in bed with Diligence LLC and that was only the tip of the iceberg. Alfa's international advisory board of directors included the chairman of Diligence LLC Richard Burt and Lord Charles Powell, member of its advisory board.
http://www.left.ru/burtsev/ops/burt.jpg Richard Burt of Diligence LLC and Mikhail Friedman of Alfa Group: a dangerous alliance against Russia
Simpson, who co-authored that article with Gregory L. White, David Crawford, might have missed the importance of this fact at that time. But since then the BusinessWeek investigation (http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/07_09/b4023070.htm?chan=gl) revealed that Diligence was doing some dirty job for Friedman, spying on IPOC and violating laws. Strangely enough, the experienced team of investigative journalists working for BusinessWeek has also failed to notice that Ambassador Burt was on the board of Alfa Capital when the company hired Diligence LLC and that Burt was also the international director with the influential Washington lobbying firm Barbour, Griffith and Rogers that hired Diligence for Friedman. In short, Burt's Alfa Group hired Burt's Diligence LLC through Burt's Barbour, Griffith and Rogers to dig some dirt on Reiman. What for? Why would Ambassador Burt and his friends in Diligence LLC like the former director of the CIA and FBI William Webster, managing director of the Carlyle Group Edward Mathias, former adviser to Margaret Thatcher and John Major Lord Charles Powell, former President Clinton's Chief of Staff Thomas F. McLarty and other luminaries of the conservative TransAtlantic cabal why would they be interested digging dirt on Leonid Reiman and other Russian crooks in high positions? Do they have in mind blackmailing Russian leadership into surrendering Russia and its natural wealth to Western crooks in power? Hm... how can one entertain such a ridiculous proposition even for a moment! Shame on us!
For more on Diligence LLC, Farwest LLC, and Alfa Group see our article US Companies Linked to Vice-President Cheney Supervised the Transfer of Ukrainian WMD to Iran (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/novyiregion.phtml) .
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Valentin Zorin
Last October President of the non-recognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Doku Umarov proclaimed a new formation - the Caucasian Emirate, and declared himself the Emir of the Caucasian militants and the leader of Jihad. Umarov's seemingly unmotivated proclamation of the caliphate came as surprise to Chechnya watchers Western and Russian think tanks. Why would the leader of the embattled Chechen Islamists suddenly decide to antagonize the West who is interested in stoking the unrest in the Russian Caucasus? The international research group burtsev.ru has the answer to this question.
According to sources close to Ukrainian and Russian intelligence, Doku Umarov's declaration of Islamic Caucasian Emirate was the result of his manipulation by Brigadier-General Ruslan Saidov, head of the Istanbul Bureau of the External Intelligence of the Republic of Ichkeria (formerly, the Department of Information of the Defense Ministry of Ichkeria).
Umarov made this declaration under the pressure from Anzor Astemirov, aka Emir Seyfullah. Astemirovethnically Adygei-Kabardinianhas been Saidov's agent for a long time. Saidov helped him to became the head of the Supreme Sharia Court in 2005, after Russians eliminated Sadulaev, who had had this important position before being appointed the president of Ichkeria after the death of Maskhadov. Sadulaev was also considered to be controlled by Saidov and was probably betrayed by him when Saidov officially changed sides and gave oath of loyalty to Ramzan Kadyrov.
It is said that Akhmed Zakaev, the former foreign minister of the so-called Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI), was horrified by Umarov's declaration that presented him as a de facto representative of the Caucasian branch of al Qaeda, not the most comfortable position in England these days. Waxed hysterical, he resigned his post, but does not dare to expose Astemirov's provocation. In the 1980s the KGB used Zakaev, as well as Movladi Udugov and Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, as their agent in the circles of nationalist Chechen and Ingush intelligentsia. In September 1991 the KGB files with their personal information were captured by the Dudaev people when they stormed the KGB office in Grozny, and got in Saidov's hands. Zakaev and Udugov know this and are afraid to confront Saidov. i
Saidov has made the goals of his provocation clear by the very title of his recent article Now the West Has No Choice but Choose Between al Qaeda and Kadyrov. ii By presenting Umarov and Zakaev as pan-Islamists and al Qaeda jihadists, Saidov wants to secure support for Ramzan Kadyrov from those sections of Western elites and intelligence services that still see Kadyrov as pro-Russian and continue to support the opposition to his rule, while trying to explain to them that Kadyrov's regime is a form of the Qadiri tactics of deceptive surrender to Moscow in order to regroup and make another bid for independence when the time comes.
What we know about Saidov
According to the recent book by the editor of Left.ru Anton Baumgarten, Ruslan Saidov (cover name for Ruslan S-ev) is a former officer of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff (GRU) who was trained as a deep penetration agent for the Near East and Central Asia. iii He was born in Daghestan, half Akin-Chechen, half Spaniard. His father, important Communist functionary in the Ferghana Valley, died under the arrest for corruption. After special training in a GRU school served in Afghanistan with a group of other young officers who later formed the organized criminal group known in the Russian press as FarWest. In 1991 Saidov was sent to Dudaev and since then worked together with Dudaev's and Maskhadov's intelligence chief Khozh Nukhaev, former Moscow gangster wanted for the murder of American journalist Paul Khlebnikov. Both are thought to be Sufi sheiks. In the early 1990s Saidov and Nukhaev spent much time in London. Saidov's relations with British intelligence can be dated by that time at the latest. In London Nukhaev was observed and eventually embraced by the Atlantist elites around Margaret Thatcher and the Bush family. http://left.ru/burtsev/English/nukhaev.jpg Hozh Nukhaev, wanted for the murder of American journalist Paul Khlebnikov, together with Margaret Thatcher in London.
In the mid-1990s Saidov was introduced to Prince Turki al-Faisal and can be described as his junior partner in the Russian Caucasus since then. According to Saidov, he was the one to greet Turki's agent Abu al -Walid in Chechnya. Earlier he had established business relations with the family of Adnan Khashoggi. Also in the mid-1990s Saidov developed strong relations with the Turkish General Staff and one of the branches of the extremist pan-Turkists organization Grey Wolves. Since then Istanbul has been his operational base. Shortly before the second war with Russia in 1999 Saidov and Nukhaev moved to Istanbul the newly formed Bureau of External Intelligence, a secret mini-intelligence organization within the Interior Ministry.
In September 1999 Saidov was badly wounded during the fighting in Daghestan and received medical treatment in Switzerland, where a year before his GRU colleagues and partners, together with US private intelligence companies, set up the consulting agency Far West Ltd. Saidov claims that the hitman was sent by al-Walid. It appears that al-Walid, the resident of Saudi intelligence in Chechnay, suspected that Saidov was a double agent, working for the pan-Turkists of the General Staff and having commercial realations with some old hands in GRU. Saidov's revenge came in 2004 when he was contracted by the CIA to prevent al-Walid's move from Chechnya to Iraq that was agreed upon during President Akhmat Kadyrov's visit to Saudi Arabia. Saidov gave al-Walid's whereabouts to the GRU battalion East under the command of Yamadaev and he was killed.
The journalistic investigation by burtsev.ru has also revealed that throughout the 1990s Saidov and Nukhaev provided financing to Chechen separatists in part through the family of Adnan Khashoggi, partly through narcotrafficking and racket. In the process, Saidov amassed significant personal wealth. With the help of Saudi intelligence, Saidov received access to construction business and his companies now participate in the management of commercial real estate, including Jumeira Beach Residence (http://www.jbr.ae/highband/index.htm) and Mall of the Emirates (http://www.malloftheemirates.com/photoGallery.asp) . Using his connections in Russian Ministry of Defence Saidov played important role in the heroin operation by the FarWest organized crime group, moving dozens tons of heroin from Afghanistan to Kosovo. After the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kosovo, Saidov and his FarWest partners became more involved in subversive politics in Russia. There are reasons to believe that Saidov played some role in events in Andijan and in the bloodshed in Nalchik in 2005. According to our sources, Saidov's Istanbul Bureau carried out the assassination of Paul Khlebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya, as well as assisted in the assassination of Andrei Kozlov, the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank, in 2006. iv http://left.ru/burtsev/English/saidov.jpg Ruslan Saidov with close associate Natalia Roeva. Photo courtesy Forum.msk.ru
Saidov is a a vice-president of Far West LLC, a consulting company based in Dubai, which serves as front for the anti-Russian alliance of secret services of US, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Lithuania, and (partly) Belorussia. The other vice-president is Vladimir Filin, general of the Ukrainian General Staff and one of the shadow power brokers in Ukrainian politics.
Saidov has Russian, Turkish and Jordanian passports, possibly other citizenships. Regularly visits the United States.
??????????
i Saidov has publicly alleged Udugov's service for KGB and FSB in a number of articles, the latest is The West Blackmails Russian Elite by Swiss Bank Accounts 11.06.2007 <http://news.rin.ru/news///144893/> . Saidov tied Zakaev to Soviet KGB in A Brawl Among Chechen Emigre: former actor Akhmed Zakaev is responsible for the liquidation of Aslan Maskhadov. Forum.msk.ru 11.25. 2007 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/news/408816.html>
ii ????? ??? ??????, ???? ???????????? ? ?????, ??????? ?? ???????: ??????? ???????? ??? ??????? ?????? ???-????? Forum.msk.ru 11.23.2007 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/region/408023.html>
iii Anton Baumgarten. Third Barbarossa. <http://www.left.ru/2007/11/baumgarten163.phtml>
iv ?????? ??????? ?????????? ? ???????? ?? ????? ?????? ??????????? ?????? ??????????. Left.ru no. 12 (2007) <http://left.ru/2007/12/burtsev164.phtml>
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US Companies Linked to Vice-President Cheney Supervised the Transfer of Ukrainian WMD to Iran
On 27-30 November 2006, the Russian news agency Novyi Region published a three-part investigation, signed by Valery Briusov, of the illegal sale of Ukrainian KH-55 cruise missiles to Iran in 2001, which contains new and quite sensational information. 1 According to the news agency, the new information-- which includes copies of the SBU internal correspondence--comes from a former officer of the SBU (Ukrainian Security Service), who has accused the Ukrainian leadership in suppressing the report on the investigation prepared by then SBU Chairman Alexander Turchinov in the spring of 2005. In April of that year Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko acknowledged the illegal sale of strategic cruise missiles KH-55 to Iran and China from Ukraine. But Turchinov soon was fired and so far only one member of the criminal group was tried and sentenced to prison, while another suspect, Oleg Orlov, extradicted to Ukraine from the Czech Republic last spring remains out of his mind. The news agency quotes its source as rhetorically asking:
Is it believable that two petty middlemen were able to carry out such a grandiose operation, during which several great powers for the first time in history blatantly violated the holy of holies: the international agreements on the non-proliferation of strategic arms? Where are the rest of the people involved? Where are the crews of the heavy transport planes loaded with those missiles, which took off from the airport near Kiev and flew to Iran and China instead of Zhukovskoe, near Moscow? Where are those who allowed these flights? How could these planes cross the borders of several states? Who received them in Iran and China and where did they get afterwards?
Clearly, someone was very interested in hushing up the affair with KH-55s. The article then quotes a list of companies which allegedly took part in the conspiracy. The quote comes from a fragment of the secret letter by Alexander Turchinov to the Secretary of the National Security Council (NSC), Petr Poroshenko, dated by August 25, 2005 (facsimile of page 4 of the letter is attached):
...under the cover of credit lines for ZAO Atomstroyexport (Russia), and [they? - burtsev.ru] guaranteed to the Iranians and the Chinese the transfer of necessary payments through the controlled investment firms CTF Holdings Ltd, AB Holdings Ltd (Gibraltar), ARS Nova Ltd, Volgen Trading Ltd, Alfa Star Ltd, Investworld Ltd, (Cyprus). Isofert Trading INC, Transchem International INC (Panama), EMM Arab Systems Ltd (Cyprus) were used for transactions with the Chinese.
The company Far West Ltd (Switzerland) provided, under the control of Diligence LLC (USA), the general management of this operation and the contacts with the Iranians through its branch office in Tehran.
???hnocalty INC and SP-Trade INC, controlled by KBR INC (all from USA) were used for payments to S.H. Heritage Holding Ltd (Cyprus), which acted as financial middleman in contacts with the Iranians, who were represented by SATAK Co Ltd, controlled by the Committee of Foreign Operations of the High Command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Department 140/16 of the Organization of Defense Industry of Iran. 2
This information was obtained from Israeli National Police by the SBU delegation that visited Israel in the summer of 2005. The head of the delegation was General Mikhail Kozhemiakin, one of Turchinov's deputies. The Israelis were happy to share with the Ukrainians what they knew about the KH-55 deal.
In his letter to Poroshenko, Turchinov argues that the list of the companies obtained from Israeli intelligence suggests that this large-scale operation was sanctioned by the governments of Russia, the United States, and Iran. He also points out that the conspiracy assigns Ukraine the role of the chief perpetrator of the crime and that Ukraine's reputation may be badly damaged as the result. To avoid this, he proposed that the NSC considered giving the Ukrainian Parliament the documents that reveal the real organizers of the KH-55 sales.
Instead, in September 2005 Turchinov, Kozhemiakin, and Poroshenko were fired, subjected to smear and threatened with criminal prosecution. It seemed that the affair with KH-55 was forgotten for good.
The article then quotes a memo from August 2006 by the deputy head of the SBU, Nikolai Kurkin, to his boss. Kurkin writes that he received a request by the first deputy of the Secretary of the NSC, Yurii Tereshchenko, who is also the head of the Ukraines State Service on Export Control (SSEC), for a copy of Turchinov's report on the illegal sales of KH-55 to China and Iran that Turchinov sent to Poroshenko in August 2005. According to Tereshchenko, the report was not discussed by the NSC and its text had disappeared, with only the cover sheet left, a copy of which Kurkin attached to his memo. Kurkin concludes by arguing that since Turchinov's report contains information that is damaging to Ukrainian state leaders and considering frequent leaks of secret information from the NSC it is not advisable to give Tereshchenko a copy of the report.
According to the source, the SBU then was given the oral order to destroy all the documents received by Kozhemiakin's group from the Israelis and to inform the NCS that Turchinov's report never existed. The source also explained that the SBU officers made copies of Turchinov's report as precaution and sent them to a number of addressees, including in the United States.
The Organizers
The article points out as organizers of the illegal sales a group of former high-ranking Soviet bureaucrats: Yury Masliukov, Leonard Vid, and Alexander Fain. The story begins in the 1980s, when the Soviet government resumed its military-technical cooperation with Iran.
In 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev signed a secret executive order by the Politburo On shipments of special equipment to Iran in 1986-87, sending military specialists to Iran, and receiving Iranian specialists for training in the operation, use, and repairs of special equipment.
In accordance with this decision, Iran received, among other things, the first party of the ballistic missiles Scud.
Yurii Masliukov was the one responsible for preparing this decision and carrying it out. At that time he was the chairman of Gosplan and of the Military-Industrial Commission at the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The Commission coordinated the work of the Soviet military-industrial complex, as well as the export-import of arms and dual technologies, both legal and not.
Masliukov's experience and connections in the international arms trade and military-industrial espionage can be appreciated from this description by one of the owners of Far West Ltd, Ruslan Saidov, describing this aspect of Masliukov's activities.
In the past there was an organization called COCOM--Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls. This international organization controlled Western exports to East Bloc countries. CoCom had 17 member statesall Nato members (except Iceland, Japan, and Australia). Five neutral countries and New Zealand closely cooperated with this organization. The leading role in CoCom was played, of course, by the United States. The Soviet Union responded by creating an effective system against the CoCom embargo. It included foreign trade organizations, KGB, GRU, industry, and the Academy of Sciences. Thousands firms were created abroad (some of them continue to operate today), billions of dollars were budgeted for these activities. This work was deemed so important that it was presided over by Yury Dmitrievich Masliukov, first deputy of the prime minister.
Masliukov's first deputy was one Leonard Vid. He also took active part in the preparation of the Politburo decision on Iran. After 1991 they parted. Masliukov became a high functionary in the CPRF (presently he is State Duma deputy) and, from time to time, held important positions in the government under Yeltsin. Leonard Vid went to private banking and became the chairman of the Alpha-Bank (retired in 2002).
Company Far West Ltd was registered in 1998 in Switzerland by a group of former GRU officers and agents (GRU--The Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff). Among them was Anton Surikov, who at that time was in charge of Masliukov's secretariat in Evgeny Primakov's government (Masliukov served as Primakov's vice-premier, 1998-99).
According to a number of open sources, Far West Ltd operates in the grayand black arms markets. It has branches in Iran and Ukraine, among other countries. The article alleges that the company has been used to cash in on some special connections that Masliukov and Vid cultivated back in the Soviet period of their careers.
Interestingly, Masliukov's business relations with Vid also continued in quite respectable areas: a significant number of military enterprises in Izhevsk and Votkins (Masliukov represents this region in the State Duma), including the factory producing the ICBMs Topolthe main weapon of Russia's strategic nuclear forceskeep their accounts in the Alpha-Bank.
Another long-time associate of Masliukov, Alexander Fain, is the General Director of the Alfa-Eco Group (biggest shareholder of Alfa-Bank). When Masliukov presided over the Soviet military-industrial complex, Fain was a chief designer at one of the enterprises engaged in a nuclear related military production. It was thanks to the efforts of Fain, supported by Masliukov, that Alfa-Group landed the contract to serve the accounts of Rosatom enterprises, including Atomstroiexport that builds the famous Busher station in Iran and another nuclear station in China (in Tianwan).
The article describes close relations between Alfa Group and the circle of Vice-President Dick Cheney. The highest level management of Alfa Group includes US citizens linked to the Anglo-American intelligence community. The leaders of Alfa Group have close contacts with Dick Cheney and the management of Halliburton.
The best known example of these relations was the $600 million credit that the Tyumen Oil Company (TNK), controlled by the consortium of Alfa Group and Access Industries Inc, received from the American Exim-Bank after the political lobbying by Dick Cheney. The deal was followed by TNC's strategic alliance with Cheney's Halliburton in the reconstruction of the huge Samotlor oil fields and the inclusion of several managers from Diligence LLC in the leadership of Alfa Group.
Diligence LLC is a so-called private military company (PMC) created by former officers of the CIA and British MI-5. In fact, it is a private intelligence service that serves the interests of the financial-industrial groups linked to the Republican party. The head of Diligence LLC, Richard Burt, is also a member of the board of directors of Alfa Capital that serves the accounts of Russia's most sensitive military-industrial companies and Rosatom.
In addition, Diligence LLC is a partner of another PMC--KBR Inc, subdivision of Halliburton.
The Conspiracy. A reconstruction.
The article reconstructs the events of 1999-2001 as follows.
In 1998-99 the neocon wing of the Republican party, led by Cheney and Rumsfeld, designed a strategy for establishing the US control over the Persian Gulf region that envisioned military interventions in Iraq and Iran. A war against Iraq was much easier to justify than against Iran because of the bad reputation of Saddam's regime after its aggression against Kuwait. To obtain a casus belli against Iran was much more problematic. There were no international sanctions against Iran and, their despite the ferocious anti-Israeli rhetoric, the Iranian leadership conducted a very cautious foreign policy, aan the Iranian intelligence services were effective. In short, presenting to UN mythic evidence of WMD in Iran would not work, real were needed. Iran had to be trapped and caught red-handed in violating the regime of non-proliferation. But how to lure Iran into the lethal trap?
According to the source, it was obvious that the WMD were to be "leaked" from the territory of the fSU. But how to convince the Iranians to take the bait? Only a private company with financial resources and unique connections could help Cheney, and this company was Alfa Group.
The Iranian leadership and intelligence knew and trusted Masliukov, Vid, and Fain. After all, they lobbied Soviet arms sales to Iran and also served the credit lines for the Busher project (Vid and Fain). They were well positioned to convince the Iranians to accept the unexpected "present." Alfa Group had a dense network of offshore companies to hide the financial transactions of the deal while Masliukov had the Far West Ltd people, experienced in black market arms deals, to carry out the operation. When the Republicans won the 2000 elections and Cheney became the vice-president, the conspiracy got under way.
The Spoiler
The operation to create a casus belli against Iran lasted over one year and was the result of a unique confluence of business and political interests of several powerful groups in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, and China. It was carried out without a hitch, and by 2002 the Cheney-Rumsfeld group had in its sleeve the joker to be used when the moment comes. Iran indeed had violated the international law on WMD and deserved a good bombing. But then something went wrong.
The Baptist pastor Alexander Turchinov was an outsider to the intelligence community and its con games. His appointment as the head of the SBU was the result of the complex and short-lasting power sharing arrangements between the orangist factions in Kiev (Turchinov is Yulia Timoshenko's man).
When Turchinov became acquainted with the SBU dossier on the KH-55 affair, he realized that it was a colossal conspiracy which painted Ukraine as a country capable for any crime if it pays, including arming with WMD the newly appointed enemies of mankind--Islamic terrorists. He was pro-American, as all orangists, but he could not agree with this role for Ukraine. So, according to the source, Turchinov began his own investigation and sent Kozhemiakin to Israel, because he knew that only the Israelis were interested in the truth. After all, no matter what would be the results of Cheney's game, the Iranian made KH-55s would be falling on Israel. Kozhemiakin and his group received a warm welcome in Israel and were given all the information known by that time. And the Israelis knew a lot.
Prior to Kozhemiakin's trip, Turchinov put some pressure on Ukrspetsexport and GUR (Ukrainian military intelligence). There were people in these establishments who knew the details of the deal. A certain bureaucratic struggle began and it was reflected in the press.
As early as in April 2005 Turchinov apparently found out that the Far West partners, Alexei Likhvintsev and Leonid Kosiakov from GUR and Valery Lysenko from Ukrspetsexport were directly linked to the KH-55 affair. There had been also new details about the role of Alfa Group, which was mentioned in the famous parliamentary inquiry of deputy Hryhoriy Omelchenko in January 2005, there surfaced also the names of two Panamanian offshore companies: Isofert Trading INC and Transchem International INC, belonging to the oligarch Viacheslav Kantor , protege of Mikhail Friedman, owner of Alpha Bank, in the Jewish Congress of Russia.
Then came the most unexpected and revealing reaction to the first publication based on Turchinov's investigation. The head of Far West Ltd, Vladimir Filin, publicly accused Valery Lysenko in receiving a huge bribe of $3 million from his company (FWL) for facilitating the secret deals of Far West Ltd with Syria and Iraq.
After this confession, it became clear that the KH-55 deal was gone public in a very different way than its organizers hoped to use it. The role of KBR Inc and Diligence LLC, who supervised the operation both in Alfa-Group and Far West Ltd, became visible, as well as Cheney's ears behind them. Turchinov requested a meeting of NSC and that was the end of his career in the SBU. The article concludes by observing the ironic outcome of Cheney's conspiracy: the Islamic Republic received the WMD thanks to US neocons and some leaders of Russia's Jewish Congress.
Burtsev.ru
Other publications (in English) on this affair from burtsev.ru (http://left.ru/burtsev/index_en.html) <http://left.ru/burtsev/index_en.html>
Filin-"El Buho" Is Getting Nervous (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filinnervous.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filinnervous.phtml>
"Consulting" Agency Far West, LLC Paid $3 Million Bribe to Ukrainian Official For Illegal Arms Deals with Syria and Iran (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/lysenko.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/lysenko.phtml>
Far West, Ltd. Leaves Europe Under the Threat of Criminal Persecution. Renamed Far West, LLC (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filin.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filin.phtml>
Far West, LLC Co-Owner, mentioned in X-55 Scandal, Accuses US Military Intelligence of Using the Hawala Network for Money Laundering and Personal Enrichment (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/hawala.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/hawala.phtml>
New Information on the Involvement of Far West, Ltd in Illegal Arms Smuggling (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/x-55en.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/x-55en.phtml>
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1 Pt. 1 <http://www.nr2.ru/kiev/93615.html/print/>, Pt.2 <http://www.nr2.ru/kiev/93830.html>, Pt. 3 <http://www.nr2.ru/dnepropetrovsk/94036.html/print/>
2 The Instrumentation Factory Plant or Department 140/16 <http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles (http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/Missile/3876_4098.html)
/Iran/Missile/3876_4098.html (http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/Missile/3876_4098.html)>
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New Information on the Involvement of Far West, Ltd in Illegal Arms Smuggling:
Did Far West, Ltd. Supply SAMS Igla to Chechen Separatists?
First, we want to quote a typical piece of news about the evolving scandal with the illegal deliveries of Ukrainian cruise missiles X-55 to China and Iran. It will be followed by additional information
Ukraine Goes After Missile Dealers
http://templetonthorp.com/fr/news862
KIEV -- A Ukrainian government probe into lucrative illicit weapons sales by officials loyal to former President Leonid Kuchma has led to secret indictments or arrests of at least six arms dealers accused of selling nuclear-capable missiles destined for Russia to Iran and China, a high-ranking intelligence official said Friday.
The deals with Moscow-allied nations -- which violate international nonproliferation treaties -- put pressure on Ukraine's new president to halt the country's well-established illegal arms trades as he tries to boosts ties with and join NATO and the European Union.
President Victor Yushchenko has promised to investigate illicit weapons dealing, including a U.S. allegation that Kuchma approved the sale of a sophisticated Kolchuga radar system to Iraq despite UN sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime. Kuchma denied the allegations.
Ukraine's intelligence agency, the State Security Service, launched its investigation of the case involving Iran and China on Feb. 14, 2004, during Kuchma's presidency. But the probe was never publicized until this week when lawmaker Hrihoriy Omelchenko -- a reserve colonel in the intelligence service -- wrote to Yushchenko asking him to pursue a full investigation. Omelchenko made his letter available to The Associated Press.
Six missiles purportedly ended up in Iran and another six allegedly went to China, although export documents known as end-user certificates recorded the final recipient of some 20 Kh-55 missiles for sale as "Russia's Defense Ministry," according to Omelchenko's letter. He did not say what happened to the eight remaining missiles.
The missiles allegedly sold to Iran were unarmed, but are designed to carry 200-kiloton nuclear warheads. Western nations have accused Iran of trying to develop a nuclear weapons program, an allegation Tehran denies. China is a declared nuclear weapons state.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko and Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Vyacheslav Sedov said Ukraine had not informed Russia of the allegations that missiles meant for Moscow had been diverted, and that Moscow would await Ukraine's investigation. Russia's state arms export company, Rosoboronexport, declined comment.
Omelchenko's letter to Yushchenko and another to the Prosecutor General, Svyatoslav Piskun, refer to a Ukrainian Security Service report that includes details of the allegations.
At least three people were arrested and another three were indicted last year in connection with the illicit arms trade -- including some of those mentioned by name in the letters -- according to the intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
According to Omelchenko's letter, in 2000 Russian national Oleg Orlov and a Ukrainian partner identified as E.V. Shilenko "exported 20 Kh-55 cruise missiles through a fake contract and end-user certificate" with Russia's state-run arms dealer and with a firm called Progress, which is a daughter company of Ukrspetseksport -- Ukraine's weapons exporting agency.
Last year, Ukrainian prosecutors indicted Orlov and Shilenko in absentia for illegal weapons trading, the intelligence official said. Orlov was detained on July 13 in the Czech Republic.
There is an ongoing extradition procedure to return Orlov to Ukraine for possible prosecution, a spokesman for the Czech Justice Ministry, Petr Dimun, confirmed Friday. Dimun said the procedures were interrupted recently because Orlov suffered a stroke and was hospitalized, although he was "recovering well."
Shilenko remains at large, said Omelchenko's letter, which also notes an attempt on Orlov's life, saying: "The physical elimination of Orlov in a Czech prison was prevented."
The State Security Service has also issued an official inquiry about a Cyprus-based Russian man identified in the letters as G. K. Shkinov, who also remains at large.
"The law enforcement bodies of that country [Cyprus] are performing an investigation," Omelchenko wrote.
Another three Ukrainians were detained last year in connection with the deal, and the case was forwarded to a Kiev court, Omelchenko wrote.
Orlov is reputed to be a prominent weapons broker. In its 2001 report, the UN Security Council implicated Orlov and his Cyprus- and Dubai-based EMM Arab Systems Ltd. in sanctions busting related with ferrying weapons and supplies to Angola's rebel UNITA group. The Kh-55, known in the West as the AS-15, has a range of 2,975 kilometers and is designed to carry a nuclear warhead with a 200-kiloton yield. Iran does not operate long-range bombers but it is believed it could adapt its Soviet-built Su-24 strike aircraft to launch the missile. The missile's range would put Israel and a number of U.S. allies in the region within reach.
Ukrainian weapons dealers ferried missiles to China through a Ukraine-based cargo company run by a former secret service agent, the letters said. Omelchenko also said in 2001 that weapons dealers sent ground targeting systems, maintenance equipment and missile technicians to Iran.
Profits from the sales were estimated at $2.1 million or more, the letters said.
Valery Malev, the head of Ukrspetseksport, has also been implicated in the deals. But he died in 2002 in Ukraine when his car collided with a truck. Police concluded he fell asleep behind the wheel, but many speculate his car had been tampered with.
"Valery Malev, the head of Ukrspetseksport, knew that missiles were not exported to Russia but to third countries and with forged documents," Omelchenko wrote.
A multimillion-dollar deal involving sales of oil-processing equipment to Iran was used as a mask for the sales, Omelchenko's letters claim. They add that a Cyprus-based company, S.H. Heritage Holding Ltd., and Iran-based Satak Co. Ltd. of NIOC were involved in the concealment. Internet search and telephone inquiries turned up no information about the companies.
S.H. Heritage owner Haider Sarfraz, an Australian national, died in a 2004 car accident, the letters claim. They do not specify where the accident occurred.
Although Ukraine in the 1990s renounced the nuclear armaments it inherited in the Soviet breakup, the country remains a sizable producer of weapons including missiles, aircraft and tanks.
The country has also remained under scrutiny for its murky weapons deals. In 2000, the United States accused Ukraine of selling infantry weapons to Afghanistan's Taliban regime. Russia has charged Ukraine with doing the same for Chechen rebels.
In 2001, Kuchma acknowledged that $32 billion worth of Ukrainian military hardware had found its way illegally into international markets during the 1990s. Last year, Ukrainian police arrested four men from Greece, Pakistan and Iraq, on suspicion of attempted illegal weapons trade and hiring mercenaries in a deal worth more than $800 million for an unspecified force fighting in Iraq.
In March 2004, former Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk warned that several hundred SA-2 surface-to-air missiles brought to Ukraine for decommissioning were unaccounted for, due to "accounting problems" and "the absence of records."
(The Moscow Times 07.02.05)
Comments by burtsev.ru
Let us begin with several details omitted in this article.
Company "Progress" was paid by the US firm "TECHNOCALITY, INC"
for the delivery of 6 X-55 to China in April 2000: in May the firm transferred $600, 000 to "Central European International Bank" (Budapest) received by "Progress". In its turn TECHNOCALITY, INC received from two Cyprus firms $500,000 (from Investworld, Ltd) and $200,000 (from EMM ARAB SYSTEMS, Ltd)
for the delivery in May 2001 of six X-55 and the system KHO-120 to Iran, TECHNOCALITY, INC paid to PROGRESS $800,000. As a cover up they used a fictive contract between the Iranian firm SATAK Co. Ltd. of NIOC and the companyS. H. Heritage Holding, Ltd. owned by Haider Sarfrazand registered in Cyprus. The contract was allegedly for delivery to Iran equipment for oil distilleries. The Iranians had one condition: regular technical service of these missiles. In 2002-2003 Ukrainian military specialists made trips to Iran for this purpose.
The information and what follows is from the piece published in January 4 2006 at the forums of compromat.ru and pravda.info. i
"The Ukrainian public learned about these swindles in spring 2005 from the Prosecutor Genera Stanislav Piskun and the SBU Director Alexander Turchinov. Victor Yushchenko confirmed their statements 'with bitterness.' But already in September 2005 Piskun and Turchinov had to leave their posts. However, according to the source close to Turchinov, the ex-Director continues to monitor the situation.
The collected information allows to expand the information, already made public by the press, about the role of the middleman company FAR WEST LTD with headquarters in Switzerland and the two offshores in Panama: ISOFERT TRADING COMPANY INC and TRANSCHEM INTERNATIONAL INC. ii
According to this information, the opening of the criminal investigation in February 2004 was prompted by the documents which came from Germany. In October 2003, the Ukrainian businessman Sergei Petrov, iii formerly one of the CIOs of FAR WEST, LTD, turned to German law enforcement agencies. He accused his former companions in arms smuggling in violation of international agreements and sanctions. iv Specifically, Petrov revealed the shipment of portable SAMs "Igla" to FARC in exchange to 600 kilograms of cocaine in August 2002 through Brazil. Incidentally, one of the participants of this deal was soon after blown up in the suburbs of Moscow. v
Another episode relates to illegal shipments of light arms, mortars and ammunition from Belorussia to Kosovo and Palestinian Autonomy in 2001. These arms were immediately used by the Albanians in the ethnic conflict in Macedonia and by the Palestinians against Israel.
Petrov also revealed the details of deals with X-55. According to his testimony [sic], out of six missiles shipped to China (with technical documentation) three were meant for Pakistan. Besides their payments to PROGRESS, the Chinese transferred $3 million through Cyprus to one of the Panamanian offshores, while Pakistan transferred to another offshore $4 million from Karachi. In case of Iran, besides payments to PROGRESS, the executors [of the deal] in Dubai received two tons of golden ingots. These ingots were taken from Kuwait to Iraq in 1990, and in December 2002, on the eve of US military operation, were shipped to Iran.
Petrov also revealed a number of arms smuggling episodes in the 1990s, such as:
- arms deliveries to the former Yugoslavia from the Western Army Group of Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia.
- arms deliveries to Yemen (through Chechnya in May-June 1994) and some African countries with armed conflicts. vi
- arms deliveries to Taliban in Afghanistan in exchange to heroin.
- arms shipments to Saddam Hussein through Belorussia and Syria.
- arms deliveries to Chechen fighters, including a big party of AK rifles from Izhevsk in 1995 and a party of SAMs "Igla" from Ukraine in 1997.
Besides, Petrov informed about the mechanisms of corrupt lobbying for legal arms sales in 1995-2001 from Ukraine and Belorussia of aviation to Yemen, Sudan, and Peru, and tanks to Sudan and Pakistan. In response to Petrov's information, in December 2003 German special services, together with their French colleagues, interrogated the head of Far West Ltd. Vladimir Filin, his deputies Yakov Kosman and Sultan Suleimenov and the board members Alexei Likhvintsev, Anton Surikov, and Venezuelan citizen Alfonso Davidovich. They denied all allegations and explained them by Petrov's mental illness.
A month later Petrov was killed (blown up in his car) in SA. Simultaneously, the Iran-Australian middleman Haider Sarfraz was killed in a strange car accident, while driving in the defective car of his Turkish companion Ugur Mekhmed [sic] (aka Ruslan Saidov), a member of the Far West Ltd leadership. But by that time the Germans lost interest to this case having given the information about it to SBU."
This was the part concerning FWL. Here follows the information about Orlov and the Americans. Note that in the piece in The Moscow Times contains not a single word about the US connection.
"SBU arrested Evdokimov and announced international search for Orlov and Shilenko. The last has disappeared without a trace. As to Orlov, he lived in Karlovy Vara until August 2004, before he attempted to flee from Czechia to Dubai through Frankfurt. It appears that during those several months [in Chechnya] Orlov bargained with the CIA. His attempt to escape failed. He was apprehended.
Apparently, during one and half year since his arrest, the Americans were able to come to an agreement with Orlov. According to a source close to Turchinov, he was promised a minimal sentence in Ukraine where he apparently will be deported. Orlov will give testimony agreed upon with the CIA, which will not politically harm the United States.
Specifically, Orlov will tell about the "gray" deliveries of SAMs "Igla" and the anti-tank systems 9K11 "Fagot" to Georgia from Ukraine through Bulgaria in summer 2004, on the eve of his arrest. It is possible that this deal was meant as a cover for another, when in March 2004 a large party of SAMs "Igla" was sold to Syria from Ukraine through Georgia and Lebanon. It was paid for by one Islamist foundation in Saudi Arabia.
Another topic is the lobbying of legal arms deals with "problem" countries, allegedly also known to Orlov. Specifically, it concerns the corrupted mechanisms of access to the highest levels of power in Moscow for Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Sudan, labeled "outlaw regimes" by Washington. Already after Orlov's arrest, Russia delivered fighter planes MIG-29 to Sudan and Yemen, and began deliveries of light arms to Venezuela, and signed contracts with Iran and Syria for sales of AA systems. Orlov's trial will be full of scandal."
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i The owner of compromat.ru, Sergei Gorshkov, removed this information from the board several days later without explanations.
ii On the connection between Far West, Ltd. and these banks, see: http://ru.obkom.net.ua/articles/2005-11/15.1647.shtml?rss
iii On Sergei Petrov (aka Serge Rodin), see: his intervew <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/petrov_en.phtml> and his secretely recorded conversation with the leaders of Far West Ltd. <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/bristol_en.phtml>
iv See Petrov's interview at http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/petrov_en.phtml
v His name was Mikhail Vunsh, the owner of the big company OMNIFUD, importer of "Bush's legs." His car was blown on December 2 2002. The driver and the guard were also killed. Vunsh was close to Petrov and Roman Tsepov, both killed in 2004. According top one source, they wanted to split from Filin and take control of cocaine deliveries through Petersburg port. On Vunsh's death , see: http://www.vremya.ru/2002/223/3/29858.html
vi On deliveries to Aden, Yemen, see: http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml
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Far West, LLC Co-Owner, mentioned in X-55 Scandal, Accuses US Military Intelligence of Using the Hawala Network for Money Laundering and Personal Enrichment
Mr. Ruslan Saidov (Turkish passport in the name of Ugur Mehmed)--Major of GRU 1 in reserve and co-owner of the "consulting" agency Far West LLC (formerly Far West Ltd)--has recently accused the high ranking officer of US military intelligence (DIA) Colonel Caleb Temple and his colleagues of running a heroin operation in the Near East and using the hawala money-transfer system for money laundering.
Just as his business partner Vladimir Filin 2 , Ruslan Saidov has emerged in public domain only recently from that murky anonymous zone where for the last fifteen years or so, former officers of Soviet secret services have been converting their expertise and connections into wealth, power, and more connections. What is different about Saidov is that this son of a high-ranking party apparatchik, known for his militant atheism, is a hardcore convert to Muslim fundamentalism and thought to be a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood's Special Organization in the former Soviet Union. 3
It may seem that Mr. Saidov's credentials make him an unlikely partner of DIA, the CIA, Mossad, MI6 and similar pillars of the Western security state. But the world of late imperialism creates most strange bedfellows. Especially when things concern Russia, or the Soviet Union before it. Suffices it to recall the well-documented alliance of Islamic fundamentalists, Osama bin Laden's Maktab al-Khidimat, and the choicest set of Afghan drug lords with the land of the free in the 1980s. Imperialism's war on international terrorism includes imperialism's use of international terrorism as its proxy for war against Russia. In this war people like Saidov and his friends are invaluable assets. Thus, according to one source, the CIA contracted Saidov for the liquidation of Abu al-Walid in 2004, when this officer of Saudi General Intelligence Service was about to leave Chechnya with his men and possibly join the Resistence in Iraq. 4 Recently, however, Saidov's and his Far West, Ltd partner's relations with Western intelligence came under the stress of Oleg Orlov's affair and the information about Far West, Ltd involvement in illegal arms smuggling, including the sale of Ukrainian X-55 cruise missiles to Iran and China. 5 Perhaps, this explains Saidov's recent leak about the involvement of US intelligence services in heroin trade and money laundering. Saidov's (and his FWL partners') own expertise in these activities has been recently the subject of substantial interest in Russian press, including the journalistic investigation by burtsev.ru in the course of which our intelligence source was killed. 6 What follows is an excerpt from Saidov's article about the recent reports in British press that Iran provides training camps for Chechen terrorists. 7 We hope that this information can be of interest to researches and all people of good will who believe that something is terribly wrong with the world where under the pretext of state security, cliques, unaccountable to the people, run amok and bring us ever closer to the brink of mutual annihilation.
Research group burtsev.ru
02.01.06
<...>
The hypocrisy of Western politicians and propagandists is well known. Just consider the public statements by US officials that hawala (a Muslim form of money transfers based on trust) is the most important money-transfer service used for financing terrorists and includes the financial and the banking systems of Dubai and Pakistan, where allegedly regulation and control of financial markets are practically non-existent. This is what the senior officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Caleb Temple, told about the mechanism of hawala. He alleged that the money, moved through hawala, come from Syria (from smuggling), as well as from wealthy extremists and charities in Europe and the Middle East. Supposedly, also U.S. money is moved, by way of hawala, to terrorists in Iraq. 8
It is noteworthy that Americans do not mention that smuggling through Syria and Lebanon comes through the US occupied Iraq where it is brought by US military transport planes from Afghanistan via the US base in Qatar. In the Sunni Triangle the agents of US secret services give this smuggled goods, or, to put it simply, the Afghan heroin, to those very terrorists who they supposedly fight, but in reality provoke religious strife between the Iraqi Sunni and Shiia communities. As to the money which Colonel Temple's colleagues in DIA and the CIA receive for their part in heroin traffic through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, they laundry this money exactly through hawala in Pakistan and Dubai. I can even name those who do this and through what financial institutions.
So the Americans will be well advised to think before making statements about Syria, hawala, Iran, or, for instance, about the Philippines terrorist organization Abu-Sayyaf. After all, this organization was created in the early 1990s by the Philippine military intelligence closely supervised by DIA and the CIA. As it was proved in the Philippines court, this organization was for a long time headed by an officer of this military intelligence. It was also established that several years prior to 9/11 this officer discussed in Manila plans for an aerial attack against the WTC Towers not with the representatives of Osama bin Laden, but with one ultra-right US organization, whose member, Timothy McVeigh, soon afterwards blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing hundreds of people. This discussion was conducted on the initiative of the Americans. 9
End quote.
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1 GRURussian abbreviation for the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of Defense Ministry.
2 On Vladimir Filin, see our publication Narcobarons from the CIA and MI-6. Interview with Vladimir Filin (http://left.ru/inter/2005/narkobarons.phtml) and also the so-called Yasenev's Memo (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml) and Peter Dale Scott's pathbreaking essay The Global Drug Meta-Group:Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11. Lobster. The Journal of Parapolitics: <http://lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>
3 Sources on Saidov's career and biography include Yasenev's Memo (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml) (English), Conversations with Armen (http://left.ru/2006/2/razgovory136.phtml) (Russian), Saidov's Rehersal (http://left.ru/2005/15/rehersal132.phtml) (Russian), Saidov's own article Beslan oplachen na Rublevke (http://www.pravda.info/kompromat/3880.html) (Russian).
4 Yasenev's Memo, (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml) also quoted in Peter Dale Scott The Global Drug Meta-GroupDrugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11
5 New Information on the Involvement of Far West, Ltd in Illegal Arms Smuggling (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/x-55en.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/x-55en.phtml>
6 The officer of Russian military intelligence Armen Sarkisian was killed on July 27, 2005 in Dagestan. See Conversations with Armen (http://left.ru/2006/2/razgovory136.phtml) (Russian)
7 Ruslan Saidov, Information of British Media that Iran trains Chechens in terrorism Is 100% Lie. Pravda.info, 11.29.05: http://forum.msk.ru/material/news/5275.html
8 Apparently, Saidov refers to Caleb Temple as quoted in The Invisible Bankers. By Michael Freedman, 10.17.05. Forbes.com <http://www.forbes.com/business/global/2005/1017/024A.html>
9 On Terry Nichols' (McVeigh's accomplice) contacts in Manila, see Timothy McVeigh and the Marketing of Osama Bin Laden. By Chaim Kupferberg at <http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP310C.html >
Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa
http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/davidovich.jpg Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa. Photo courtesy Pravda-info From the dossier compiled by burtsev.ru
1.The first reference to Alfonso Davidovich occurs in the articles on the conspiracy in Cote d'Azur, published in of 1999-2000 in Russian. The first article was published by the tabloid Versiya on August 3, 1999. According to the article, signed by Andrei Batumskii, the information came from French intelligence and a French professor,a well-known political scientist, specialist on Russian defense, security and organized crime. He is well-known by the work he contracts from French government, including French counterintelligence.
In the second article of July 4, 2000, Versiya added to its sources Israeli intelligence.
According to this information--it was clarified in the second Versiya article a year later--a Venezuelan banker Alfonso Davidovich settled at Adnan Hashoggis villa in Boulier in June 1999, together with his young black female secretary. In Latin American press, he is said to be responsible for laundering the funds of the Columbian left insurrection organization FARC, which carries out an armed struggle with the official authorities, supported by the narcotics business.
2.The above information about Davidovich was quoted by John Dunlop in Storm in Moscow (October 2004, http://www.sais-jhu.edu/programs/res/papers/Dunlop paper.pdf). To this Dunlop adds a bit of new information from the so-called Yasenevs memo (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml) at compromat.ru, that was published only two months after Dunlops essay (?!). Dunlops footnote says: The article Rossiyu zhdet oranzhevaya revolytsiya, compormat.ru, 17 December 2004 reports that Davidovich lives in Munich and enjoys both German and Venezuelan citizenship. He is also said to be personally acquainted with international arms dealer Khashoggi. 1
Note: In Versiyas and Dunlops articles, Davidovichs last name Ochoa is not mentioned. Armen Sarkisian observed that the first time the surname Ochoa was added to Alfonso Davidovich in the Pravda.info announcement of May 3, 2005 (http://www.pravda.info/news/2695.html) about the meeting of the board of directors of Far West, Ltd. That took place in hotel Ritz Carlton in Dubai on May 2. At this meeting FWL and Pravda.info exchanged assets (whatever it means) and the Venezuelan political scientists Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa was mentioned as the member of the FWL board of directors and the editorial board of Pravda.info. His photo was attached to this announcement.
3.According to Armen Sarkisian, he saw a few neutral references to Davidovich and Lybia on German sites several years ago, then they disappeared from the Web.
4.Information on Davidovich in the documents published at compromat.ru in 2003-04.
Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa, b. 1948. Venezuelan. His grandfather was from Kiev. Has German and Venezuelan citizenship. For the last 10 years resides in Munich. Owns banks and companies in the Barbados, the Caymans, and other offshores. It was said that in 1999 Davidovich was accused in press of smuggling arms to Zapatistas and money laundering for Colombian mafia. Finances anti-globalization movement.
In 1977 he went through special training in the GRU school in Privolnoe (Nikolaevskaya oblast) USSR, and in East Germany. Has friendly relations with Hugo Chavez, and is acquainted with Fidel Castro, Marcus Wolf and Adnan Hashoggi. Has many contacts in Colombia, including FARC.
5. Latest Information about Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa
According to one anonymous source, Davidovich manages 30% of Far West, Ltd voting stock which belongs to Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (Venezuela). 2
From Conversations with Armen
"In 1977 he [Davidovich] came to USSR in a group of six Cubans. He had a passport in the name of Jose Rodriguez, Captain of the Cuban Army. From 1981 to 1988 he visited the SU four times: three times as Jose Alva, Colombian citizen, one as Cuban Jose Rodriguez. That last time he accompanied General Arnaldo Ochoa. From 1995 to 2005 he visited Russia six times under his real name in his German passport."
[The FARC connection strongly bothered us and I told Armen about this. Here is his answer.]
The information about FARC participating in the OPS business has been confirmed. 3 Lets not idealize this organization. There are different people in FARC and they have problems with financing. Also recall the trial of the Cuban generals Francisco [sic] Ochoa and De La Guardia. Ten or fifteen years ago they were sentenced by a Cuban court and executed for smuggling cocaine from Colombia to the US through Cuba. (There was much information about this trial, including in the official Cuban press. Fidel Castro talk about that). Another matter, that the US, while accusing FARC of protecting narcobusiness, does not say anything about the ultra-right death squadrons, the police and the Colombian army whose share in narcotrafficking is much bigger than FARCs.
I spoke to man who knows Latin American problems and the real reasons for Filins stay in Colombia in 1988-90 on Gusevs orders. 4 This is what he told me. Since the 1970s Gusev was acquainted with the Cuban General Arnaldo Ochoa. They met in Angola and Ethiopia. When in 1988-89 Fidel Castro decided to liquidate the Ochoade la Guardia business, their men in Colombia, together with their contacts within FARC, began to restructure narcotraffic. Ochoa, at that time not yet under arrest, asked General Gusev for technical assistance. Filins trip was related to this, though overtly he went to Colombia on a different assignment. It was at this time that Filin got acquainted with Davidovich (Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa) who served as a liaisonin the triangle: Arnaldo Ochoahis agents in FARCPablo Escobar and the brothers Ochoa (namesakes of the general and Davidovich) from the Medellin Cartel.
In addition, Davidovich always had direct access to Gusev since he had gone through training in the USSR. My interlocutor told me that some of Arnaldo Ochoas men have continued in the Colombian guerrilla organizations until the present day and formed the basis for the Colombian scheme of the OPS. 5
Armen continues on Davidovich and FARC in another message:
One of my acquaintances saw the information on the Ochoa--La Guardia affair that Castro sent to the Soviets. According to this information, the organized criminal society was formed by Ochoa and La Guardia in the early 1980s and included elements from the Cuban army and secret services. Some of them were in Colombia, in FARC. Arnaldo Ochoa ordered them to organize a channel for cocaine traffic to the United States. His agents and their Colombian associates (or agents) made an agreement with Medellin cartel to ship cocaine to Cuba by sea or air. From Cuba, Ochoa and La Guardia shipped this cocaine to the United States, either to Miami, where Ochoa had his agents in the emigre community, or to Nicaragua (where Ochoa also had his men) and then through Honduras by air to the States. According to Castros information, for this operation Arnaldo Ochoa and La Guardia established business contacts with the CIA agents. After the trial in Havana, Castro attempted to recall Ochoas men in FARC, Miami, and Nicaragua in order to put them on trial. But they disobeyed and went out of the Cuban command. This was the reason that Castro gave to the Soviet leadership for his drastic cuts in the Cuban financing of FARC. According to my acquaintance, it was then that FARC went to self-financing.
Davidovich finances anti-globalization movement. (!?)
Vadim: I just dont understand: What for Davidovich would support antiglobalist movement and in such a way that nobody knows about that?
Armen: Ask yourself: Why Davidovich supports antiglobalist Kagarlitsky? I am not a specialist in world antiglobalism, but I suppose that those whom he supports are antiglobalists of the same sort as Kagarlitsky. This is called hostile penetration with the goal of taking control.
On IPROG and Venezuela. 6
Armen wrote:
"At Surikovs request, Davidovich helped Kagarlitsky and Glinchikova to infiltrate Hugo Chavezs circle. Perhaps they got acquainted with Chavezs assistants on their own, but it was Davidovich who recommended that Venezuelans work closely with IPROG. That included Chavezs appearance at the meeting organized by Kagarlitsky during Chavezs visit in Moscow. The Russians, through their diplomatic channels, tried to dissuade the Venezuelans from this meeting. But [Davidovichs] lobbying was so strong that it almost came to a scandal."
Vadim: "Is that so? I recently heard rumors that there were plans to assassinate Chavez. Could Glinchikova by chance be involved in this :)) Anyway I hope Chavezs security service knows about Surikovs US connections. Troubles of this kind can come from unexpected directions."
"From the very beginning, the OPS was intended for profitable criminal activities. Money is all for them . As to politics, it is used to help their business. Look at these two articles from the vantage point of their 'commercial interest.' Surikov's 'The Real President (http://www.zavtra.ru/cgi/veil/data/zavtra/04/577/62.html)' was published in December 2004, when the preparations for the Russian-Venezuelan deal sell Kalashnikov rifles was close to completion. The middleman was Davidovich. The amount of the deal - $40-50 million. Clearly, the OPS was very interested to get in favor with Chavez at that time. One way to achieve this is to praise him in press. According to our information, right after 'The Real President' was published Surikov told Kagarlitsky to get it translated and take to Venezuelan Embassy. Afterwards, when Kagarlitsly with Glinchikova went to Caracas he took the translation with him and showed it to Chavez' advisers. In other words, the addressee of Surikov's article was the Venezuelans, rather than our leftists about whom Surikov does not give a damn (that was before his "Kasianov" project)."
On Davidovichs functions within the OPS
Armen: "Davidovich is responsible for FWL representation in Colombia, they have office in Bogot. He is also responsible for Venezuela. OPS needs Venezuela for trafficking."
"The distribution of responsibilities in the OPS as follows. Filin, partly Likhvintsev, Davidovich, and Kosman, the four of them are at the top and excersize general leadership. Filin is responsible for the headquarters of Far West, Ltd. in Switzerland. Filin and Davidovich are responsible for purchasing cocaine in Colombia and the FLW office in Bogot.Likhvintsev is responsible for cocaine traffic through the port of St. Petersburg and its delivery to the Azeris. Saidov is in contact with Jamaat Shariat and is responsible for purchasing Afghan heroin coming through Turkmenistan to Dagestan. He is also responsible for the port of Novorossiisk and the FWL office in the Crimea. Surikov is responsible for contacts with Hizb-ut-Tahrir in Udmurtia, Tatarstan and Bashkiria, as well as for purchasing there the Afghan heroin that comes through Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. He is also responsible for the FWL office in Izhevsk 7 and for shipping of "special merchandise" (i.e.,. heroin - burtsev.ru) to the port of Novorossiisk (for this he uses the Adygei ethnic criminal group). Kosman is responsible for the transfer of the heroine, delivered to Europe from the Novorossiisk, to Kosovo Albanians in Mediterranean and for the FWL office in Kosovo. Filin, Kosman, and Davidovich are responsible for financial transactions related to drug trafficking and for laundering the proceeds in Caribbean offshores. Saidov is responsible for financial transactions and money laundering in the Gulf and for the FLW office in Dubai. Filin and Likhvintsev are in communication with their accomplices in their former directorate (GRU - burtsev.ru). Likhvintsev is in contact with their "protection" at "the top" (in the Kremlin - burtsev.ru). Butkevichius supervises the FWL office in Georgia and is responsible for the OPS communication with Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili. Surikov is responsible for receiving intelligence from the corrupted officers of secret services about the information which these services gather about the OPS and their competitors. Surikov (and Baranov) is also responsible for politics, informational campaigns in mass media (presently Filin, Saidov, and Roeva also take part in these activities) and for communication with YUKOS (through Kondaurov). Lunev is responsible for physical actions against their opponents. He is also responsible for the FWL offices in Iraq and Afghanistan and for their business there with KBR/Halliburton (formerly headed by Dick Cheney), hiring for them mercenaries. They closed their office in Angola. Before, Likvintsev was responsible for it. Filin and Surikov are responsible for their connections in the United States, Davidovich with Venezuela, Saidov with Saudi Arabia, Saidov and Surikov with Turkey, Saidov with the Chechens and Hizb ut-Tahrir in Central Asia."
On Davidovich and Russian Arms Sale to Venezuela
From Zurab Sikharulidze 8 :
Ochoa visited Izhevsk [where the Kalashnikovs are made] in connection with the sale of 100,000 Kalashnikovs AK-130 for $40 million. The manufacturer is the Izhevsk factory Izhmash.
He was accompanied by Vladimir Filin, Alexei Likhvintsev and Anton Surikov. Surikov comes to our city often, because he oversees the office of Far West Ltd. In Udmurtia,Tatarstan, and Bashkiria (Natalia Roeva is in charge of this office).
Armen's last Message
Final Information
From Armen, 21:25:50 17/07/2005
For the time being this is the last communication from us.
1. Fritz Ermarth is indeed the most important contact of the OPS in the United States. 9
2. According to our source who knows the situation with the foreign assets of the OPS, in 2000 up to 90 percent of their assets were in Europe (Switzerland, Luxembourg, England, and France) and in offshores - former British colonies in the Western hemisphere.
Recently (apparently being afraid of having problems in the West, what Filin and Surikov have been writing about lately) the OPS had transfered up to two thirds of their assets to the Gulf (Dubai, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia). Another 20 percent has been moved to South America (Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela), Turkey and Ukraine. Only less than 15 percent of all their assets still remain in England, Switzerland and Caribbean offshores. They have moved everything from France and Luxembourg.In the United States and Russia they never had any serious assets. 10
One can judge from this information on what external powers (besides the United States) they depend.
3.Audrius Butkevichius was a military adviser to the late Laurent Kabila, when he was coming to power in the late 1990s in Zaire-Congo.
On this we temporarily stop our communication with you. We are waiting for your publications and wish you success.
Armen and Zurab
??????????
1 On Dunlop's suppression of the explosive contents of Yasenev's Memo, see Peter Dale Scott, The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11 <http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>
2 "Swiss: O??? "Far West Ltd" ? ????????? ??????" <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/sanitarlesa.phtml>
3 OPS - Russian abbreviation for Organized Criminal Society.
4 Vladimir Ilyich Filin (b. 1959)-- Russian military oligarch, the "Head of the Board of Directors" of Far West, LLC (formerly Far West ,Ltd) allegedly the leader of the international criminal society, formed by a group of former officers and agents of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff (GRU) in the early 1990s. More on this society, see Peter Dale Scott, The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11 <http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>
5 General Yuri Gusev was the second in command in GRU. He was the "godfather" of OPS, died in 1992 in a strange car accident in Moscow. Vladimir Filin, the brain of the OPS and the president of FWL, took over after Gusev's death. It was Filin with who Armen and Zurab talked in Switzerland.
6 IPROG -- Institute for Globalization Studies (Moscow), established by Mikhail Deliagin, Mikhail Kasianov's associate, in 2000. Since 2002 its director is Boris Kagarlitsky, well-known in the West as leftist. According to some sources, IPROG has been financed by Berezovsky, YUKOS, and Far West, Ltd. Three directors and owners of FWL, Vladimir Filin, Ruslan Saidov, and Anton Surikov, are listed at the IPROG masthead (http://www.iprog.ru/cast/) as "experts," "historians," and "senior researchers."
7 Izhevsk -- the capital city of Udmurtia and the site of Izhmash, one of the biggest arm manufacturer in Russia. One of the strongholds of the OPS.
8 Zurab Sikharulidze, officer in Armen's unit, assigned to investigate the activities of Far West, Ltd. in Udmurtia, where it is said to be involved in drug trafficking, arms smuggling, and organizing underground cells of the extremist Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir. Apparently was stationed in the city of Izhevsk. Together with another officer of their unit, Mikhail Konovalov, was fired from the service and blacklisted in August 2006 after the murder of Armen Sarkisian.
9 Fritz Ermarth - a "nuclear whiz kid" and a master of intelligence con game has been an influential figure in the US intelligence community for the last 20-25 years. Served in the CIA, NSC, and NIC. Officially retired in 1998. Said to have 5 percent of voting stock in Far West, Ltd. Long-time associate of Anton Surikov.
10 This information has been recently confirmed by Vladimir Filin, who announced the withdrawl of FWL from Europe, citing the fear of criminal persecution by US law enforcement for the alleged participation of FWL in the illegal sale of X-55 cruise missiles to Iran and China in 2001. See: "The CIA and Israeli Intelligence Conduct Big Operation." By Vladimir Filin < http://forum.msk.ru/material/fpolitic/7221.html >
Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa
http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/davidovich.jpg Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa. Photo courtesy Pravda-info From the dossier compiled by burtsev.ru
1.The first reference to Alfonso Davidovich occurs in the articles on the conspiracy in Cote d'Azur, published in of 1999-2000 in Russian. The first article was published by the tabloid Versiya on August 3, 1999. According to the article, signed by Andrei Batumskii, the information came from French intelligence and a French professor,a well-known political scientist, specialist on Russian defense, security and organized crime. He is well-known by the work he contracts from French government, including French counterintelligence.
In the second article of July 4, 2000, Versiya added to its sources Israeli intelligence.
According to this information--it was clarified in the second Versiya article a year later--a Venezuelan banker Alfonso Davidovich settled at Adnan Hashoggis villa in Boulier in June 1999, together with his young black female secretary. In Latin American press, he is said to be responsible for laundering the funds of the Columbian left insurrection organization FARC, which carries out an armed struggle with the official authorities, supported by the narcotics business.
2.The above information about Davidovich was quoted by John Dunlop in Storm in Moscow (October 2004, http://www.sais-jhu.edu/programs/res/papers/Dunlop paper.pdf). To this Dunlop adds a bit of new information from the so-called Yasenevs memo (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml) at compromat.ru, that was published only two months after Dunlops essay (?!). Dunlops footnote says: The article Rossiyu zhdet oranzhevaya revolytsiya, compormat.ru, 17 December 2004 reports that Davidovich lives in Munich and enjoys both German and Venezuelan citizenship. He is also said to be personally acquainted with international arms dealer Khashoggi. 1
Note: In Versiyas and Dunlops articles, Davidovichs last name Ochoa is not mentioned. Armen Sarkisian observed that the first time the surname Ochoa was added to Alfonso Davidovich in the Pravda.info announcement of May 3, 2005 (http://www.pravda.info/news/2695.html) about the meeting of the board of directors of Far West, Ltd. That took place in hotel Ritz Carlton in Dubai on May 2. At this meeting FWL and Pravda.info exchanged assets (whatever it means) and the Venezuelan political scientists Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa was mentioned as the member of the FWL board of directors and the editorial board of Pravda.info. His photo was attached to this announcement.
3.According to Armen Sarkisian, he saw a few neutral references to Davidovich and Lybia on German sites several years ago, then they disappeared from the Web.
4.Information on Davidovich in the documents published at compromat.ru in 2003-04.
Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa, b. 1948. Venezuelan. His grandfather was from Kiev. Has German and Venezuelan citizenship. For the last 10 years resides in Munich. Owns banks and companies in the Barbados, the Caymans, and other offshores. It was said that in 1999 Davidovich was accused in press of smuggling arms to Zapatistas and money laundering for Colombian mafia. Finances anti-globalization movement.
In 1977 he went through special training in the GRU school in Privolnoe (Nikolaevskaya oblast) USSR, and in East Germany. Has friendly relations with Hugo Chavez, and is acquainted with Fidel Castro, Marcus Wolf and Adnan Hashoggi. Has many contacts in Colombia, including FARC.
5. Latest Information about Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa
According to one anonymous source, Davidovich manages 30% of Far West, Ltd voting stock which belongs to Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (Venezuela). 2
From Conversations with Armen
"In 1977 he [Davidovich] came to USSR in a group of six Cubans. He had a passport in the name of Jose Rodriguez, Captain of the Cuban Army. From 1981 to 1988 he visited the SU four times: three times as Jose Alva, Colombian citizen, one as Cuban Jose Rodriguez. That last time he accompanied General Arnaldo Ochoa. From 1995 to 2005 he visited Russia six times under his real name in his German passport."
[The FARC connection strongly bothered us and I told Armen about this. Here is his answer.]
The information about FARC participating in the OPS business has been confirmed. 3 Lets not idealize this organization. There are different people in FARC and they have problems with financing. Also recall the trial of the Cuban generals Francisco [sic] Ochoa and De La Guardia. Ten or fifteen years ago they were sentenced by a Cuban court and executed for smuggling cocaine from Colombia to the US through Cuba. (There was much information about this trial, including in the official Cuban press. Fidel Castro talk about that). Another matter, that the US, while accusing FARC of protecting narcobusiness, does not say anything about the ultra-right death squadrons, the police and the Colombian army whose share in narcotrafficking is much bigger than FARCs.
I spoke to man who knows Latin American problems and the real reasons for Filins stay in Colombia in 1988-90 on Gusevs orders. 4 This is what he told me. Since the 1970s Gusev was acquainted with the Cuban General Arnaldo Ochoa. They met in Angola and Ethiopia. When in 1988-89 Fidel Castro decided to liquidate the Ochoade la Guardia business, their men in Colombia, together with their contacts within FARC, began to restructure narcotraffic. Ochoa, at that time not yet under arrest, asked General Gusev for technical assistance. Filins trip was related to this, though overtly he went to Colombia on a different assignment. It was at this time that Filin got acquainted with Davidovich (Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa) who served as a liaisonin the triangle: Arnaldo Ochoahis agents in FARCPablo Escobar and the brothers Ochoa (namesakes of the general and Davidovich) from the Medellin Cartel.
In addition, Davidovich always had direct access to Gusev since he had gone through training in the USSR. My interlocutor told me that some of Arnaldo Ochoas men have continued in the Colombian guerrilla organizations until the present day and formed the basis for the Colombian scheme of the OPS. 5
Armen continues on Davidovich and FARC in another message:
One of my acquaintances saw the information on the Ochoa--La Guardia affair that Castro sent to the Soviets. According to this information, the organized criminal society was formed by Ochoa and La Guardia in the early 1980s and included elements from the Cuban army and secret services. Some of them were in Colombia, in FARC. Arnaldo Ochoa ordered them to organize a channel for cocaine traffic to the United States. His agents and their Colombian associates (or agents) made an agreement with Medellin cartel to ship cocaine to Cuba by sea or air. From Cuba, Ochoa and La Guardia shipped this cocaine to the United States, either to Miami, where Ochoa had his agents in the emigre community, or to Nicaragua (where Ochoa also had his men) and then through Honduras by air to the States. According to Castros information, for this operation Arnaldo Ochoa and La Guardia established business contacts with the CIA agents. After the trial in Havana, Castro attempted to recall Ochoas men in FARC, Miami, and Nicaragua in order to put them on trial. But they disobeyed and went out of the Cuban command. This was the reason that Castro gave to the Soviet leadership for his drastic cuts in the Cuban financing of FARC. According to my acquaintance, it was then that FARC went to self-financing.
Davidovich finances anti-globalization movement. (!?)
Vadim: I just dont understand: What for Davidovich would support antiglobalist movement and in such a way that nobody knows about that?
Armen: Ask yourself: Why Davidovich supports antiglobalist Kagarlitsky? I am not a specialist in world antiglobalism, but I suppose that those whom he supports are antiglobalists of the same sort as Kagarlitsky. This is called hostile penetration with the goal of taking control.
On IPROG and Venezuela. 6
Armen wrote:
"At Surikovs request, Davidovich helped Kagarlitsky and Glinchikova to infiltrate Hugo Chavezs circle. Perhaps they got acquainted with Chavezs assistants on their own, but it was Davidovich who recommended that Venezuelans work closely with IPROG. That included Chavezs appearance at the meeting organized by Kagarlitsky during Chavezs visit in Moscow. The Russians, through their diplomatic channels, tried to dissuade the Venezuelans from this meeting. But [Davidovichs] lobbying was so strong that it almost came to a scandal."
Vadim: "Is that so? I recently heard rumors that there were plans to assassinate Chavez. Could Glinchikova by chance be involved in this :)) Anyway I hope Chavezs security service knows about Surikovs US connections. Troubles of this kind can come from unexpected directions."
"From the very beginning, the OPS was intended for profitable criminal activities. Money is all for them . As to politics, it is used to help their business. Look at these two articles from the vantage point of their 'commercial interest.' Surikov's 'The Real President (http://www.zavtra.ru/cgi/veil/data/zavtra/04/577/62.html)' was published in December 2004, when the preparations for the Russian-Venezuelan deal sell Kalashnikov rifles was close to completion. The middleman was Davidovich. The amount of the deal - $40-50 million. Clearly, the OPS was very interested to get in favor with Chavez at that time. One way to achieve this is to praise him in press. According to our information, right after 'The Real President' was published Surikov told Kagarlitsky to get it translated and take to Venezuelan Embassy. Afterwards, when Kagarlitsly with Glinchikova went to Caracas he took the translation with him and showed it to Chavez' advisers. In other words, the addressee of Surikov's article was the Venezuelans, rather than our leftists about whom Surikov does not give a damn (that was before his "Kasianov" project)."
On Davidovichs functions within the OPS
Armen: "Davidovich is responsible for FWL representation in Colombia, they have office in Bogot. He is also responsible for Venezuela. OPS needs Venezuela for trafficking."
"The distribution of responsibilities in the OPS as follows. Filin, partly Likhvintsev, Davidovich, and Kosman, the four of them are at the top and excersize general leadership. Filin is responsible for the headquarters of Far West, Ltd. in Switzerland. Filin and Davidovich are responsible for purchasing cocaine in Colombia and the FLW office in Bogot.Likhvintsev is responsible for cocaine traffic through the port of St. Petersburg and its delivery to the Azeris. Saidov is in contact with Jamaat Shariat and is responsible for purchasing Afghan heroin coming through Turkmenistan to Dagestan. He is also responsible for the port of Novorossiisk and the FWL office in the Crimea. Surikov is responsible for contacts with Hizb-ut-Tahrir in Udmurtia, Tatarstan and Bashkiria, as well as for purchasing there the Afghan heroin that comes through Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. He is also responsible for the FWL office in Izhevsk 7 and for shipping of "special merchandise" (i.e.,. heroin - burtsev.ru) to the port of Novorossiisk (for this he uses the Adygei ethnic criminal group). Kosman is responsible for the transfer of the heroine, delivered to Europe from the Novorossiisk, to Kosovo Albanians in Mediterranean and for the FWL office in Kosovo. Filin, Kosman, and Davidovich are responsible for financial transactions related to drug trafficking and for laundering the proceeds in Caribbean offshores. Saidov is responsible for financial transactions and money laundering in the Gulf and for the FLW office in Dubai. Filin and Likhvintsev are in communication with their accomplices in their former directorate (GRU - burtsev.ru). Likhvintsev is in contact with their "protection" at "the top" (in the Kremlin - burtsev.ru). Butkevichius supervises the FWL office in Georgia and is responsible for the OPS communication with Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili. Surikov is responsible for receiving intelligence from the corrupted officers of secret services about the information which these services gather about the OPS and their competitors. Surikov (and Baranov) is also responsible for politics, informational campaigns in mass media (presently Filin, Saidov, and Roeva also take part in these activities) and for communication with YUKOS (through Kondaurov). Lunev is responsible for physical actions against their opponents. He is also responsible for the FWL offices in Iraq and Afghanistan and for their business there with KBR/Halliburton (formerly headed by Dick Cheney), hiring for them mercenaries. They closed their office in Angola. Before, Likvintsev was responsible for it. Filin and Surikov are responsible for their connections in the United States, Davidovich with Venezuela, Saidov with Saudi Arabia, Saidov and Surikov with Turkey, Saidov with the Chechens and Hizb ut-Tahrir in Central Asia."
On Davidovich and Russian Arms Sale to Venezuela
From Zurab Sikharulidze 8 :
Ochoa visited Izhevsk [where the Kalashnikovs are made] in connection with the sale of 100,000 Kalashnikovs AK-130 for $40 million. The manufacturer is the Izhevsk factory Izhmash.
He was accompanied by Vladimir Filin, Alexei Likhvintsev and Anton Surikov. Surikov comes to our city often, because he oversees the office of Far West Ltd. In Udmurtia,Tatarstan, and Bashkiria (Natalia Roeva is in charge of this office).
Armen's last Message
Final Information
From Armen, 21:25:50 17/07/2005
For the time being this is the last communication from us.
1. Fritz Ermarth is indeed the most important contact of the OPS in the United States. 9
2. According to our source who knows the situation with the foreign assets of the OPS, in 2000 up to 90 percent of their assets were in Europe (Switzerland, Luxembourg, England, and France) and in offshores - former British colonies in the Western hemisphere.
Recently (apparently being afraid of having problems in the West, what Filin and Surikov have been writing about lately) the OPS had transfered up to two thirds of their assets to the Gulf (Dubai, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia). Another 20 percent has been moved to South America (Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela), Turkey and Ukraine. Only less than 15 percent of all their assets still remain in England, Switzerland and Caribbean offshores. They have moved everything from France and Luxembourg.In the United States and Russia they never had any serious assets. 10
One can judge from this information on what external powers (besides the United States) they depend.
3.Audrius Butkevichius was a military adviser to the late Laurent Kabila, when he was coming to power in the late 1990s in Zaire-Congo.
On this we temporarily stop our communication with you. We are waiting for your publications and wish you success.
Armen and Zurab
??????????
1 On Dunlop's suppression of the explosive contents of Yasenev's Memo, see Peter Dale Scott, The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11 <http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>
2 "Swiss: O??? "Far West Ltd" ? ????????? ??????" <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/sanitarlesa.phtml>
3 OPS - Russian abbreviation for Organized Criminal Society.
4 Vladimir Ilyich Filin (b. 1959)-- Russian military oligarch, the "Head of the Board of Directors" of Far West, LLC (formerly Far West ,Ltd) allegedly the leader of the international criminal society, formed by a group of former officers and agents of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff (GRU) in the early 1990s. More on this society, see Peter Dale Scott, The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11 <http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>
5 General Yuri Gusev was the second in command in GRU. He was the "godfather" of OPS, died in 1992 in a strange car accident in Moscow. Vladimir Filin, the brain of the OPS and the president of FWL, took over after Gusev's death. It was Filin with who Armen and Zurab talked in Switzerland.
6 IPROG -- Institute for Globalization Studies (Moscow), established by Mikhail Deliagin, Mikhail Kasianov's associate, in 2000. Since 2002 its director is Boris Kagarlitsky, well-known in the West as leftist. According to some sources, IPROG has been financed by Berezovsky, YUKOS, and Far West, Ltd. Three directors and owners of FWL, Vladimir Filin, Ruslan Saidov, and Anton Surikov, are listed at the IPROG masthead (http://www.iprog.ru/cast/) as "experts," "historians," and "senior researchers."
7 Izhevsk -- the capital city of Udmurtia and the site of Izhmash, one of the biggest arm manufacturer in Russia. One of the strongholds of the OPS.
8 Zurab Sikharulidze, officer in Armen's unit, assigned to investigate the activities of Far West, Ltd. in Udmurtia, where it is said to be involved in drug trafficking, arms smuggling, and organizing underground cells of the extremist Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir. Apparently was stationed in the city of Izhevsk. Together with another officer of their unit, Mikhail Konovalov, was fired from the service and blacklisted in August 2006 after the murder of Armen Sarkisian.
9 Fritz Ermarth - a "nuclear whiz kid" and a master of intelligence con game has been an influential figure in the US intelligence community for the last 20-25 years. Served in the CIA, NSC, and NIC. Officially retired in 1998. Said to have 5 percent of voting stock in Far West, Ltd. Long-time associate of Anton Surikov.
10 This information has been recently confirmed by Vladimir Filin, who announced the withdrawl of FWL from Europe, citing the fear of criminal persecution by US law enforcement for the alleged participation of FWL in the illegal sale of X-55 cruise missiles to Iran and China in 2001. See: "The CIA and Israeli Intelligence Conduct Big Operation." By Vladimir Filin < http://forum.msk.ru/material/fpolitic/7221.html >
__________________________________________________ __________
Andrei Petrov and Valentin Zorin
Academician Anton Surikov Confirms Professor Peter Dale Scott's "Prishtina Dash" Hypothesis
In his recent ground-breaking essay "The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11," Peter Dale Scott takes a further step from our conclusion that the so-called 1999 "conspiracy" in Cote d'Azur between the Chechen warlord Shamil Basaev and the head of Yeltsin's administration Alexandr Voloshin had to do with the prior surprise arrival of Russian paratroopers in Prishtina. The "mad dash" of Russian motorized column reached the Slatina airport on June 11, 1999. Several days later a colorful company began to assemble in Adnan Khashoggi's villa near Nice. As has been established since then, besides Voloshin and Basaev this group included:
four co-owners of the "consulting" agency Far West, Ltd.(FWL)--recently renamed as Far West, LLC--which did business with private military companies KBR Halliburton and Diligence LLC among others;
these co-owners were also former officers of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet/Russian General Staff (GRU). They were Ret. Colonel Anton Surikov (Turkish citizen Mansur Natkhoev) and Ret. Major Ruslan Saidov (Turkish citizen Ugur Mehmed). Two other co-owners of FWL, Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa (Venezuelan and German passports) and Yakov Abramovich Kosman (Israeli and German passports), were former (?) secret agents of GRU. 1
Alleged leaders and bankers of an international drug trafficking organization delivering huge quantities of Afghan heroin to Kosovo Albanian retail networks in Western and Central Europe: Alfonso Davidovich, Yakov Kosman, Anton Surikov, Ruslan Saidov.
Supposedly, at least three "controllers" of the Abkhazian heroin "line": Ruslan "Malysh" Tsveiba, 2 Gary Aiba, head of the influential veteran organization and former mayor of Sukhumi, 3 Sultan Sosnaliev, deputy minister of Abkhazian defense. 4
In our June 2005 investigative essay "Bad Actors in IPROG: The Devil's Dozen," we linked the meeting at Hashoggi's to the new geopolitical situation in the Balkans after the Prishtina dash:
What could such a motley lot have been negotiating in the summer of 1999? We believe that these negotiations were related to a dramatic change in the situation in the Balkans. It included the NATO occupation of Kosovo, the KLA coming to power, and the famous dash by the Russian armored column to Prishtina and their seizure of the main airport, which promised an extended presence by Russian troops in Kosovo and even the possibility of a Russian sector in the province. Thus the international narcotrafficking, targeting Europe, faced a radically new situation, that opened new possibilities; but this also required new agreements between the regulators and curators of narcotraffic, and therefore, new guarantees or protection from the highest instances. 5
Building on this reading of the conspiracy in Nice, Professor Peter Dale Scott went further and all but suggested that the Prishtina dash itself could have been be driven by the imperatives of drug trade. He observed that
Within a year of the troops' arrival, by 2000, according to DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of the heroin seized in the United States nearly double the percentage taken four years earlier. Much of it was now distributed in America by Kosovar Albanians.
It is significant therefore, he continued, that
The `Pristina dash' by Russian parachutists in 1999 during the Kosovo crisis (the purpose of the `dash' was to force NATO to guarantee for Russia a separate sector of responsibility in Kosovo) was organized by the head of the General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, and his deputy, Leonid Ivashov, without the knowledge of minister of defense Igor Sergeyev and most likely without Yeltsin's knowledge.
While the question of whether Sergeev did or did not know about Kvashnin's operation remains a matter of some debate, there could not be any doubt that Yeltsin and his closest circle did know and sanctioned it. Virtually all sources, including Ivashov, confirm this. It is also clear that Kvashnin could not communicate with Yeltsin directly, but only through the powerful head of his administration Alexander Voloshin, the most trusted member of the Family. It can be assumed therefore that had the Prishtina dash was conceived, at least in part, as the means to establish a secure hub for moving Afghan heroin to Europe through the network of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Voloshin would have been in the know from the very beginning and would actually be the guarantor of the Kremlin roof (protection) for Kvashnin and the obshchak of the GRU and Ministry of Defense. 6
On February 8, 2006 Pravda-info, the Internet newspaper that belongs to Far West, LLC, published Anton Surikov's article "The Government of the United States Is Seriously Concerned about the Safety of CIA Analyst," in which he reveals the following information about the then executive director of Far West, Ltd. and the alleged leader of the drug meta-group, the military oligarch Vladimir Ilyich Filin.
"When V. I. Filin, who was at that time in Belgrade, learned about the advance of [Russian]peace keepers towards Prishtina he, together with Colonel V. S. Kovalchuk 7 , went to Kosovo on their own risk, unarmed and without bodyguards. They arrived there several hours before our paratroopers. They used this time to get in touch with the field commanders of KLA and received personal guarantees from Hashim Thaci and Ramush Haradinaj that there would be no provocations against the Russian peacekeepres on the part of Albanians." 8
It goes without saying that under the conditions of the strictest secrecy that surrounded the planning and the execution of the Prishtina dash, Filin could not be acting other than on Kvashnin's personal orders. Yet Filin retired from the army in 1993. His ties to Kvashnin were therefore informal, outside of the chain of command. Yet his role in the operation was clearly planned in advance. Moreover, it is clear that Filin had been not only acquainted with Thaci and Haradinaj but must have had some leverage with them in order to obtain such extraordinary guarantees at the moment when these KLA leaders were themselves caught by surprise. As we know now, Filin's own relations with the KLA operatives and business fronts dated back to 1990-93, when he and Alexei Likhvintsev, future co-owner of Far West, Ltd, were on a special and very sensitive assignment in East Germany to sell the property of the Western Group of the Soviet Army. It was then that the first shipments of Afghan heroin were moved to Europe through the Ministry of Defense installations and sold to Kosovo Albanian drug dealers. It has been also reported that another member of Filin's group, Yakov Kosman, served as financial adviser to Hashim Thaci in 1997-2000. 9 Finally, it is also noteworthy that Ramush Haradinaj is widely believed to have been the key CIA man in the KLA hierarchy and that Filin's and his associates' own ties to the US, British, and Saudi intelligence have been recently the subject of substantial interest in Russian press. 10
To conclude, in conjunction with the facts already known, Anton Surikov's information about Vladimir Filin's involvement in the Prishtina dash operation provides important evidence in favor of Peter Dale Scott's suggestion that this geopolitical operation had a secret drug dimension and could have been even primarily motivated by the imperatives of the global drug trade now inseparable from those of geopolitics.
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1 More on Davidovich, see: in Vadim Stolz, Conversations with Armen. (Excerpts) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/armen_excerpts.phtml>
2 Tsveiba was listed by Georgian authorities as guilty of "genocide" during the Georgian-Abkhazian war 1992-93. Killed in January 2000.
3 Aiba was assassinated in Sukhumi in 2004. According to printed sources he was close associate of Ruslan Saidov, who at the time was involved in anti-Russian activities in Abkhazia. Circumstantial evidence suggest that in Abkhazia he worked in close coordination with another member of the alleged criminal society, Audrius Butkevicius , who at than time was in Georgia , organizing the "revolution of the roses" on behalf of KBR Halliburton and the "Dick Cheney cabal" in Washington.
4 On the Abkhazian connection of the so-called Chechen group of narco-traffickers, see Anton Surikov's paper Crime in Russia: international implications. Published in 1995 by Brassey's for the Centre for Defence Studies, University of London. Surikov's account is disinformation in respect of names and affiliations.
5 See in Russian, Bad Actors in IPROG: The Devil's Dozen. Left.ru (June 2005) <http://www.left.ru/2005/10/burtsev127.html>
6 Obshchak - criminal argo for thieves' shared monetary fund. It is widely believed that every powerful state organization in Russia supports such a fund with the proceeds from racket or protection of criminal activities. According to secretly taped conversations which Sergei Petrov, former member of the alleged criminal society led by Vladimir Filin, submitted to German and French law enforcement bodies in the fall of 2003, the Afghan heroine business directed through Kosovo by Filin's network brought about $200-250 million per year into the coffers of the GRU obshchak. See, the Hilton transcript <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/hilton_en.phtml>
7 Colonel Valentin Kovalchuk is the head of Filin's personal security. Believed to have accompanied Filin and his family in their recent relocation from Lausanne, Switzerland to San Paolo, Brazil. As the reason for this move, Filin cited his fear of criminal persecution by the US law enforcement for his and Ruslan Saidov's alleged role in smuggling strategic cruise missiles X-55 from Ukraine to Iran and China in 2001.
8 Anton Surikov, "The Government of the United States Is Seriously Concerned about the Safety of CIA Analyst." Pravda-info, 02.08.2006 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/power/7495.html> (http://forum.msk.ru/material/power/7495.html)]
9 See, Yasenev's Memo <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml>
10 On Haradinaj's war crimes and involvement with drug trafficking, see: "KOSOVO LIBERATION ARMY"Freedom Fighters or.... By Banja Luka. Reporter Magazine, issue 190, December 12, 2001 <http://www.kosovo.com/ramush.html>. On Filin's group, and, in particular, Anton Surikov's ties to Western Intelligence, see: Yasenev's Memo <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml>; Vadim Stolz, Did the CIA Order "People's" Referendum in Russia? (In Russian), Left.ru (January 2006) <http://left.ru/2005/15/referendum132.phtml>; Valentin Zorin and Vadim Stolz, Saidov's Rehersal, Left.ru (January, 2006) <http://left.ru/2005/15/rehersal132.phtml>; Bad Actors in IPROG: The Raid Left.ru (July 2005) <http://www.left.ru/2005/11/burtsev128.html>
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Far West, Ltd. Leaves Europe Under the Threat of Criminal Persecution. Renamed Far West, LLC
Last week, Pravda.info published the article "The CIA and Israeli Intelligence Conduct Big Operation (http://forum.msk.ru/material/fpolitic/7221.html)" by the military oligarch Vladimir Filin, head of the controversial consulting agency Far West, Ltd., which has become recently the subject of substantial interest in Russian investigative journalism and internationally. 1
In his article Vladimir Filin alleged that the US and Israel wanted to compromise Russia's arms trade with countries like Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and other pariah states in Washington's parlance. Most interesting is Filin's announcement about his company's exodus from the West. We quote.
"External pressure on the Kremlin is strong and open, but not always successful. Therefore the US and Israel need new means for pressuring [Russia]. Specifically, there has been a decision made to discredit the mechanism of political decisions in Russian arms trade by portraying it as corrupted. Supposedly, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Sudan and other "outcast countries" pay bribes to the Kremlin through some alleged middlemen to get political approval for arms contracts. I don't know anything about such bribes. I assume they do not exist. But this is not important for the CIA and Mossad. All they need is to find a convenient candidate for the role of the alleged middleman, make him testify, and then to spin the scandal in the unprincipled international mass media. It is well-known how skillfully Western press demonizes businessmen from the former Soviet Union without any proof [of their guilt]. It suffices to recall the unbridled campaign of slanders against such a law-abiding person as Victor Bout, who was turned into an international outcast.
Nowadays, the CIA and Mossad are trying to do something similar with the agency Far West LLC (formerly "Far West Ltd") now by threatening it, now promising all kind of rewards for "cooperation."
Simultaneously, in the West, Ukraine, and Russia, the US and Israeli intelligence services and their agents of influence in Kiev and Moscow have started a campaign of psychological pressure against "Far West LLC." In the Internet they've been creating a reference base, both in Russian and English, for the planned publications in leading Western media outlets, which usually serve as a prelude for criminal investigations and arrests.
Under these conditions, the leadership of "Far West LLC"--who does not wish to smear themselves and to play into the hands of the enemies of mankind--the United Sates, NATO, and Israel--have transferred the management of the agency from Europe to the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Turkey, Iran, and Ukraine, that is to those countries where the blatant provocations of the US and Mossad are less easy to conduct and where extradition is impossible unless in the form of kidnapping and other illegal activities.
At the same time those in the Kremlin must clearly understand that no private structure by itself, without support can oppose the state, especially such powerful as the United States and Israel."
End quote.
According to a later announcement by Pravda-info, Vladimir Filin moved from Lausanne, Switzerland to San Paulo, Brazil, where he joined a number of companies and business ventures. 2
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1 See, Peter Dale Scott, The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11. Lobster. The Journal of Parapolitics <http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>
2 See, the masthead of Pravda-info at <http://forum.msk.ru/author/19.html >
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FarWest, LLC Eliminates the Key Witness in the X-55 WMD Deal: Preventive Liquidation of Oleg Orlov in the Light of 2008
One thing the Russian citizen Oleg Orlov knew for sure when he was about to board the flight from Prague to Dubai in August 2004 was that he wanted to put as many miles as possible between himself and Kiev or for that matter Moscow. He did not get to Dubai that day or ever since. The Czech police arrested Orlov in the airport on the international warrant and put in the prison, charging Orlov with smuggling to Iran several Ukrainian cruise missiles, capable of delivering 200-kiloton nuclear charge to targets 3000 kilometers away. For a year or so Orlov fought his extradition to Ukraine, surviving an assassination attempt and a stroke. He knew he would be killed in Kiev. The CIA team that was interrogating him in the prison knew this too and used Orlov's fear to blackmail him into talking to them. Then Orlov was brought to Kiev...
There was virtually no information about Orlov since then. Only unconfirmed rumors that he was very sick and hardly able to speak.
Then, on July 5 an brief anonymous announcement was published in stringer.ru that Orlov was murdered. For almost two weeks Ukrainian authorities kept silent and ignored even the official inquiry of Russian Foreign Office about Orlov's fate. Finally, Kiev announced that Orlov was throttled to death by another inmate in the Kiev detention center. However, some details that have emerged since then, strongly suggest foul play.
The investigative article by the Moscow editorial board of burtsev.ru claims that--according to their sources who are close to Ukrainian secret services and identified only as the intelligence team 'Yaroslav Galan'-- Orlov's liquidation was an outcome of the long struggle between Yulia Timoshenko and her close advisors and a group of senior officers of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR). The article identifies the latter as Generals Vladimir Filin and Alexei Likhvintsev and names as their allies the present headt of GUR General Alexander Galaka, as well as the former head of Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and GUR General Igor Smeshko. This group of Ukrainian intelligence heads is thought to compose the Ukrainian branch of the consulting agency FarWest, LLC (formerly -- FarWest, LTD) with the central office in Dubai, which has been linked to the sale of X-55 to Iran and China.
According to the Yaroslav Galan team, Timoshenko was angry at the GRU chefs for their role in her losing the post of the premier last summer, when Filin and Likhvintsev arranged for the head of the Social-Democratic Party Alexander Moroz' switching sides and going over to Yanukovich. As the result the governing coalition lost the majority and the supposedly pro-Russian Party of the Regions formed the new government by anti-crisis coalition bretween Yanukovich, Moroz, and the communists. Other reasons given for the feud are control of secret funds and political disagreements. Filin is afraid that Timoshenko's open anti-Russian stance could lead to Ukraine being split into two, with its industrial Eastern parts and the Crimea joining Russia. He believes that Yanukovich and his Donetsk oligarchs are in a better position to preserve the unity of Ukraine and, eventually, deliver it to NATO.
In her struggle against the FarWest group Timoshenko's advisors already leaked to the press some of the classified information about the X-55 deal. Last year, her closest advisor Alexander Turchinov and the former SBU general Kozhemyakin organized the three-part publication in the newspaper Novyi region. 1 According to the classified documents published, FarWest LTD was in the center of the secret operation as the agent of Dick Cheney's circle of secret services operatives and ideologues, looking to create a casus belli for attacking Iran. The operation was supervised by the front company of this group the private intelligence company Diligence LLC, chaired by Reagan's Ambassador to Germany Richard Burt also of Alpha-Capital, shady monopoly of Russian oligarch Mikhail Friedman, and Barbour Griffith & Rogers one of the most influential right-wing lobbying firms in Washington, close to the Bush Family.
After this publication, meetings were held between Timoshenko and Turchinov and Filin, Likhvintsev and Galaka. In the words of the Ukrainian sources, during some of them both sides used foul language and exchanged physical threats. After one of such meetings in April 2007, SBU announced it had information about the plans to assassinate Timoshenko. This announcement, the sources say, was to remind Timoshenko that Filin's threats were not empty words and to increase psychological pressure on her.
Apparently, Timoshenko correctly understood the hint and changed her tactics to show she was open to a compromise. There was a political reason too. Nobody wants to antagonize secret services on the eve of new elections.
But Farwest couldn't take the risk that Timoshenko may use the X-55 episode again while Oleg Orlov was alive and could testify against them, especially, given the possibility of US Democrats coming to power in 2008 and opening the official investigation. This sealed Orlov's fate.
The article in Left.ru contains also an interview with the chairman of the international editorial board of burtsev.ru Vadim Stolz who shares his thoughts about Olov's murder. The interview was taken by Natasha Barch, representative of the Moscow group. The abridged translation of this interview as follows.
NB. Vadim, I gather by this time you had the opportunity to discuss the sad news about Oleg Orlov with your American friends. So my main question to you is: Why do the Democrats refuse to raise the question about the smuggling of X-55s to Iran and the role of the Cheney gang in it?
VS. There is no one single answer to this. Several things should be kept in mind. First, even raising these questions in the mainstream press can provoke th ehell of a storm in the United States. Just think about this. The White House transfer OMD to Iran's mullahs! And the same White House attacks Iraq under the false pretext of Saddam having OMD! Even Hitler would have blushed at such a hypocrisy! This is more than cynicism. It shows the criminal mind at work in the very heart of the celebrated US system of government. If the American people learn about this the entire political system will be shaken. And Democrats are no less interested in its preservation than the Republicans. Class solidarity between the rulers that's the name of the game.
Second, the Democrats themselves might be indirectly involved in this crime. When in 1999 Filin and Likhvintsev came up with the plan to sell X-55s to China, Smeshko (SBU) and Maleev (Ukrspetsexport) they agreed at once, but wanted Kuchma's approval. Kuchma provisionally agreed, but notified George Tenet, DCI. Tenet just didn't reply. But he , no doubt, notified Clinton and Gore as well as Cheney's people. Tenet was a good boy to everyone, that's why Cheney let him stay after the Democrats had left. Then the Chinese made a discreet inquiry with the Kremlin. The President apparently decided that there was nothing bad in improving China's defenses and did not interfere. After that FarWest brought in their people in military intelligence and Rosvooruzhenie, as well as the notorious Viktor Bout, the old buddy since their Angola dealings in arms and diamonds. And, lo and behold! In May 2000 the Chinese received half a dozen X-55s. Everyone was happy and pleased with FarWest. The Chinese, the Kremlin, and the Ukrainians did not realize that this sale was a trap, which FarWest set up for them at the behest of the neocon cabal in the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department.
NB. This is the first time I hear about the smuggling of X-55s as intended to be a trap for China. Usually they talk about Iran. Could you expand on this?
VS. This is true. China as the target of Cheney's provocation has never been mentioned, to my knowledge. Apparently, people cannot comprehend how one can attack China. But there exist strong evidence that the neocons planned a preventive war against China as early as 1998. Incidentally, this could be one reason they bought the so-called Kurginyan's geopolitical conception. This is what Brzezinsky, in horror, called the new Holly Alliance between the United States, Russia, Israel, and India against China, the Muslim world, and the old Europe. The old Zbig still foams at the mouth whenever he recalls this abominable idea. Yet the neocons reasoned very simply: Why wait before the Chinese get stronger than us? Don't forger that Libby and Wolfowitz authored the thesis about the preventive strike against any country that could challenge the world supremacy of the United States. They had grand plans. No less that a permanent revolution of sorts. Iraq was only for the appetizer. Next, Iran would be struck and has an orange revolution of its own. That would give the neocons the control over China's supplies of oil and make it ready for a democratic revolution -- Tiananmen-2. What else can the freedom loving American people do in the face of those Russians arming with WMDs the Chinese commies?! With China becoming democratic, the fate of Russia will be sealed. Most people simply cannot imagine such plans can exist. Their consciousness falls behind their social being. Neocon ideologues are made of a different stuff. They were schooled in neo-Trotskyism and neo-Hegelianism. This taught them to think in big historical categories. And their game is not over yet.
NB. What do you have in mind?
??. We see the liquidation of Orlov in the light of the coming strike against Iran, possibly a nuclear strike.
NB. Are you saying the Americans can still use the X-55 in Iran as a pretext for attacking it?
??. Nothing is off the table, as they say. With Orlov gone, FarWest has no witnesses left and can present the deal any way they want. They can create a fake like the conspiracy in Nice and connect the smuggling with the Kremlin. They can weave whatever fabrication they want since they have all the details, all the names, so that the fake will look irresistibly genuine. They can even implicate themselves for such an occasion. The neocon cabal has no choice. They have to create a crisis, to escalate things. Otherwise, they risk to find themselves in that very garbage basket of history where they somewhat prematurely declared communism and Marxism to have belonged. A strike against Iran will raise the stakes immensely and could allow them to introduce an emergency situation in the United States, extend the rule of Bush and Cheney, or, at least, assure the victory of John McCain.
NB. Speaking of McCain... As you know, recently Anton Surikov, the chief troubleshooter for FarWest in Moscow, has been all over town trying to convince high officials that burtsev.ru was hired by the Democrats, the CIA, and even the Bank of New York (!) to destroy FarWest, whose friend Rudolf Giuliani is the last hope of Russia. It's quite amazing how keen Surikov is to assure Kremlin bureaucrats that it is exactly Giuliani who has the best chance to run on the Republican ticket, isn't it?
NB. (laughing) This is pure Surikov. Here is his calculation. He knows that the Kremlin is afraid of Democrats, but they also hate to see the openly Russophobic McCain in the White House. This leaves Giuliani the least harmful option. So, in essence, Surikov is saying to these bureaucrats that our investigation of the illegal activities of FarWest threaten the only informal channel of communication they have with the right-wing republicans and neocons, because this channel is FarWest. This is precisely why Surikov cultivates in the Kremlin the ridiculous idea that the Democrats are more anti-Russian than the Republicans, even if they are of the completely insane variety that is in the White House now. For FarWest this is the way of making themselves valuable, even irreplaceable in the eyes of the Kremlin, making it overlook their anti-Russian activities. This is also a cover for their conspiratorial contacts with the agents of the Cheney cabal and other scum of the earth.
In reality, not the Democrats, but FarWest and this cabal behind it are dangerous to Russia and the sooner the Kremlin realizes this the fewer unpleasant surprises will it face in 2008.
NB. Could you describe the bad guys behind FarWest?
VS. These are the very people who played important, perhaps crucial role in the destruction of the Soviet Union: Robert Gates, Rodric Braithwaite, Turki al-Faisal, Fritz Ermarth. They represent conservative and neoconservative elites of Atlanticism. Now they conspire to destroy Russia.
NB. OK, let's summarize. Do you agree with the opinion of our Ukrainian sources that it was the conflict with Timoshenko that motivated FarWest to get rid of Orlov?
VS. Only in part. We believe that their motivation was more complex. I already mentioned the Iranian connection. Without Orlov, they can fake a stronger link between the Kremlin and the X-55 deal. So that besides a casus belli against Iran Washington will have a pretext to put pressure on the Kremlin, even blackmail certain state security officials and thus raise tensions in Moscow... But the Ukrainians are also right. FarWest needed to protect themselves from someone exploiting their vulnerability spot that Orlov was. They also took into account the possibility that their conspiracy with the Western-Saudi cabal fails and Sergei Ivanov becomes the next President. Ivanov does not trust FarWest and they know about his interest to the X-55 affair. So if Orlov survived till 2008 Ivanov would be able to use him against FarWest.
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1 US Companies Linked to Vice-President Cheney Supervised the Transfer of Ukrainian WMD to Iran (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/novyiregion.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/novyiregion.phtml>
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Kagarlitsky's Appointed Director of IPROG on Surikov's Request
Burtsev.ru
07.15.06
According to Anton Suirikov's latest revelation, he was the one who requested that Boris Kagarlitsky was appointed the director of the Moscow Institute for Globalization Studies (IPROG) in 2002 when Mikhail Deliagin, the founder of the Institute and its first director, had accepted a position in Mikhail Kasianov's government. Deliagin, a long-time associate of Surikov, is also a prominent member of the right-wing Rodina party, banned from running in the last Moscow elections for a racist video aired for its electoral campaign.
Surikov latest revelations come from his public correspondence (http://www.somnenie.narod.ru/knigi/grech/istoki28a.html) with Oleg Grechenevskii, a long-time dissident and human-rights activist from St. Petersburg, who has been writing extensively on Filin's gang - the group led by the military oligarch Vladimir Filin, allegedly involved in narcotrafficking, illegal arms trade, and money laundering.
In Surikov's words, he asked Deliagin to appoint Kagarlitsky director of IPROG after Kagarlitsky had told Surikov that wanted the job. This request came two years after Kagarlitsky, then the head of the political section of the neoliberal Moscow weekly Novaya Gazeta, published his article on the conspiracy in Nice (http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4083.html) in which he described Surikov as the 'former' officer of army intelligence and fingered him as the person responsible for organizing the meeting between Shamil Basaev and Alexander Voloshin. 1 Kagarlitsky's article also describes Surikov's meeting with Basaev in late August of 1999 and all but explicitely connects Surikov and his associates to the Moscow explosions in September 1999. This is how Surikov describes his contacts with Kagarlistky when the latter was preparing that article.
In the beginning of 2000 Mr. Kagarlitsky visited me on his own initiative to talk about the alleged conspiracy between Mr. Basaev and the Kremlin in the summer of 1999. He asked me several questions. I responded at length to those questions that related to me personally and to the political situation in general. As to several of his central questions, I did not give him any answers at all... By the way, I have no intention to answer these questions in the future as well. I read Mr. Kagarlitsky's article of January 24, 2000 in Novaya Gazeta only after it had been published. I was neither thrilled nor disturbed by it. Back then I did not think it was of great importance. This publication did not affect my relations with Mr. Kagarlitsky at all. I just want to emphasize that I did not initiate his publication nor was I his main source of information for it.
Surikov's account is remarkable in several ways. As it was his tactics before, he continues to avoid confirming or denying the central questions, i.e., the allegations about his participation in the conspiracy in Nice and the very fact of the meeting between Basaev and Voloshin. This tactics allows Surikov to perpetuate the conspiracy story without formally acknowledging his part in it. Secondly, he braggs of not being disturbed by the allegations of him taking part in a grave international crime. Consider that Kagarlitsky article has since become a staple of anti-Russian propaganda and, as such, a part of public consciousness, especially in the West, where the images of new Russian rulers blowing up their citizens fall into the carefully cultivated soil of Russophobia. Yet Surikov seems not at all concerned with the bad name Kagarlitsky's story gave him in the eyes of great many people around the world. This in itself is disturbing. Nor did Kagalitsky seem to have had any problems asking the man he accused in terrible crimes for a job in IPROG and later having the former intelligence officer Surikov working under his directorship on a number of supposedly left projects like the first Social Forum and even the United Socialist Front.
According to Surikov, he was introduced to Kagarlitsky by Anatoly Baranov, a long-time associate of Surikov and the owner of Pravda.info and Forum.msk.ru. Baranov also is the chief editor of the CPRF web site kprf.ru. Their meeting took place in the United States in the early 1996. It is not known what was the nature of Kagarlitsky's visit to the United States. But it has been long established that Surikov's first public contact with Fritz Ermarth, the high-ranking CIA official, took place in the spring of that year. It has also been known that Surikov and Ermarth worked together in the anti-Gore campaign of 1999, which peaked in the so-called Russiangate, or the BONY scandal. 2 Ermarth, who retired from the CIA in 1998, played central role in this operation. But he was clearly only a front man for some powerful Republican cabal behind him.
Two years after his meeting with Surikov in the US, Kagarlitsky was invited to give testimony to the Banking Subcommittee of US Congress (10 September 1998). The very fact of a prominent Russian Marxist being asked to testify before US Congress is rather unusual, especially considering that Kagarlitsky has no training in economic and financial matters. Kagarlitsky's testimony was very much in line with Ermarth's subsequesnt critique of Gore's Russian politics. Could it be that the idea to invite Kagarlitsky to the Capitol Hill came from Ermarth and his circle?
Finally, Surikov confirms the central role of Ret. FSB General Alexei Kondaurov in financing the activities of IPROG during Kagarlitsky's tenure. In the waning years of the Soviet Union Alexei Kondaurov occupied important positions in the Fifth Political Directorate of the KGB. His boss was General Philipp Bobkov. Eventually Bobkov wound up a head of the security service of Vladimir Gusinsky, the omnipotent oligarch and media mogul of Yeltsin's epoch. Kondaurov, after several years of service in FSB, accepted a similar position in Khodorkovsky's YUKOS. He became a millionair and played active role in the attempt toprivatize Ziuganov's CPRF in 2003. The attempt, led by Filin's group and YUKOS, with the help of Ziuganov's intimate friend Alexandr Prokhanov, with Boris Berezovsky behind him, eventually had failed. But Kondaurov secured for himself a seat in the State Duma from the CPRF. According to Vladimir Filin, Kondaurov sponsored not only IPROG, but the Left Front, one of Kagarlitsky's political projects, until last September. 3
What brought together the prominent leftist Boris Kagarlitsky and the man who could well have been his interrogator in 1982, when Kagarlitsky's group of young socialists was arrested by KGB, is a question that deserves a separate journalistic investigation.
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1 For a detailed analysis of that story, see the recent essay by Peter Dale Scott The Global Drug Meta-Group:Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11. (http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm) On Kagarlitsky's explanations of his association with Surikov, see our report from the 2005 press-conference of the Left Front in Moscow Boris Kagarlitsky Defends Himself Against Accusations (http://www.left.ru/2005/11/preskonf_eng.html)in (http://www.left.ru/2005/11/preskonf_eng.html)Cover-Up (http://www.left.ru/2005/11/preskonf_eng.html)
2 Surikov wrote about Ermarth's role in Russiagate a number of times. One such account is in his 2002 article Did Berezovsky Buy Off Communists for US Intelligence? <http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/10/09/37954_.html>, published under the pen names Anna Kolchak (in English) and Eintingon (in Russian).
3 See interview with Filin at <http://forum.msk.ru/print.html?id=9687>
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Filin-"El Buho" Is Getting Nervous
Below is our translation of the anonymous comment posted at forum.msk.ru in response to Vladimir Filin's last article on the re-opening of the criminal investigation of the Russian furniture chains "Three Whales" and "Grand," thought to related to the sudden resignation of the Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov. Forum.msk.ru belongs to a group of former officers and agents of the Soviet military intelligence (GRU) whose leader is said to be Ret. Leutenant-Colonel Vladimir Ilyich Filin. The group's business face is the "consulting" agency Far West, LLC (formerly Far West, Ltd). It controls a number of periodicals, including the "nationalist" weekly Zavtra (chief editor Alexander Prokhanov) and the Moscow Institute for Globalization Studies whose director is the prominent Russian leftist Boris Kagarlitsky. In the last three years this group, which also includes the former Luthunian defense minister Audrius Butkevicius, has been alleged in press to be an organized criminal society, involved in narcotrafficking, illegal arms trade, ties with Western and Saudi intelligence, and subversive activities against Russia. The main sources of these allegations were the former officer of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) Sergei Petrov (aka Serge Rodin) and the officer of Russian military counterintelligence Armen Sarkisian who in the spring of 2005 provided over fifty pages of information on the activities and the background of the group's leaders to the investigative group burtsev.ru. Petrov was killed in South Africa in January 2004. Sarkisian was killed and his counterintelligence unit dissolved in July 2005. Since then several anonymous author(s) have occasionally used forum.msk.ru to post bits of information on the activities of Filin's group. The internal evidence of this information suggests that it may come from some elements in Russian secret services or/and the group's competitors.
Filin-bird Is Getting Nervous
(The last name Filin also means eagle-owl in Russian, or el Buho in Spanish)
(posted 2006.06.24 )
1. Surikov-Natkhoev was first outed for his participation in Armeniagate in 1996. 1 Then for his lobbying the interests of Khloponin and the Norilsk Nickel, Nikitin and the MIG Corporation, Udmurtia and Topol-M in 1998-99. 2 Then, together with Fritz Ermarth, for Russiagate and Basaevs invasion of Dagestan in 1999. 3 As the result, Surikov had to become political scientist.
2. [Viktor] Bout-Aminov, [Richard] Chichakli, and Oleg Orlov were outed in Angola and later in the rest of Africa in 2002-2005. 4 Then Orlov was outed in the X-55 affair, China and Iran in the beginning of 2005. 5 As the result, Orlov is in the Ukrainian jail, Chichakli hides somewhere in the Emirates, and Bout-Aminov keeps a low profile and shuttles between Moscow suburbs and Minsk. As to Bouts and Chichaklis friend Mr. Taylor, he has been apprehended by the Hague Tribunal. 6
3. Filin-El Buho, Likhvintsev, Kosman, Davidovich-Felix, Lunev, Saidov-Mekhmet and the brothers Suleimenov 7 all had been outed by Fomenko, Kolesnikov, and Plotnikov 8 through their subordinates, Ashot and other Kasyanovs and the Sarkisians men. 9 This happened between the fall of 2003 and January 2004, during the fight for the Department of Fishery and the MIG Corporation. Sechin and Ustinov had failed to protect Surikov and Filin, because the last ones failed to disassociate themselves from YUKOS soon enough. 10 Next, in Belgrad Filins partner Lukovic-Legia was put in prison. 11
Then Americans joined the efforts to expose this group. They were Goss' and Foggo's men, helped by Turchinov and Kozhemiakin before Yushchenko fired them. 12 As the result, the Swiss-Brazilian Filin and the Turko-Arab Saidov had to become well-known political scientists and legal businesmen, trading in food, lumber, Persian rugs, and speculating in world stock exchanges. 13
Together with Butkevichius and Surikov, they took to court the Vilnus magazine Ekstra. 14 Besides, Saidov suddenly became business partner of Kadyrov-junior. 15 Kosman is back in France, where he now consults DGSE. 16 Davidovich is keeping low some place in South America: either in San Paulo, or Manaus, Bogota or Guayaquil.
In GUR Likhvintsev and Kosyakov monitor [the activities of] Turchinov, Kozhemiakin, and criminal investigations of arms smuggling. Lunev left Holland, made peace with Lukashenko and serves in the counter-terrorist department of his KGB. 17 Only the Suleimenovs continue with the old business: Istambul, the Crimea, Uzbekistan, Dubai, etc. http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filinnervous.phtml
What will be particularly amusing about this is Mossad saving Filin and Davidovichthe acting partners of the Colombian FARC, nicknamed El Buho and Felix, in trafficking cocaine to Russia through St Petersburg. 22 Even more savoury will look Mossad and the Indians saving al-Zavahiri's student, Ruslan Saidov--the propagandist of Jihad and the seller of arms and missile technology to Iran and Pakistan. That will be a great achievement indeed for the Jews and the Indians. If they succeed... 23
Addendum to the post above
In 2000-2002 Filin, Saidov, Davidovich, Kosman, Likhvintsev's wife 24 and the rest of the well-known political scientists founded in Dubai the consulting firm Fortex Consulting, Ltd.and several other companies. Their co-founder was the Bulgarian firm Arsenal, some sister companies of Polish firm Bumarand several firms from Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Estonia, and Jordan, known as producers of Kalashnikov machine guns AK-47 and AKM. Another co-founder of these companies was Oleg Orlov. Filin and Davidovich, under different names in their, respectively, Brazilian and German passports, 25 became co-founders of three Brazilian firms, which have been participating in the manufacturing the light attack bomber A-29 Super Tucanoand some other airspace products. Saidov and brothers Suleimenov control companies in Hong Kong and Dubai that have contracts with Chinese, Pakistani, and Iranian producers of torpedos, missiles and other weapons... Why does Kurginyan defend them is absolutely clear. Kurginyan is connected to Israel. That's 100 percent. Israel has long been stealing our technology. Kurginyan has connections with India and China, who also steal our technology.
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1 Anton Surikov's Cherkess ancestral name is Mansur Natkhoev. According to Armen Sarkisian, the Natkho clan has prominent positions in Turkish secret services and Surikov's third cousin is a General of Turkish army. Source: Razgovory s Armenom <http://left.ru/2006/2/razgovory136.phtml>
The so-called 'ArmeniaGate' scandal of 1996 started with the revelations of illegal transfer of Russian arsenals to Armenia that included scores of top-of-the-line battle tanks and Scud missile systems.
2 References to several episodes of political corruption. Alexander Khloponin, oligarch, presently the governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai in Siberia, Russia. Was chairman of the board of the Norilsk Nickel company. Udmurtia is autonomous republic that has a heavy concentration of military-industrial production, including the production of the advanced ICBM Topol-M. The Filin-Surikov group appears to belong to the clan of Yurii Masliukov, former chairman of the Soviet Gosplan and the the leading figure of Russian military-industrial complex. Presently, Masliukov is a State Duma deputy from Udmurtia.
3 Fritz Ermarth, former high-ranking CIA officer, presently at Nixon Foundation. Allegedly, business partner of Filin's group, long time acquaintance of Surikov. For an in-depth account of Ermarth-Surikov relations, see Vadim Stolz. Narodnyi referendum po ukazke TsRU? Left.ru, 15 (2005) <http://left.ru/2005/15/referendum132.phtml> Also: Peter Dale Scott. The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/. Lobster. The Journal of Parapolitics. 10/29/05 <http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>. Professor Scott's article provides a detailed description of Surikov's alleged involvement in Basaev's invasion of Dagestan in 1999.
4 Oleg Orlov, or Dr. Oleg, according to the UN expert panel on Sierra-Leone (UNSC), was Viktor Bout's accomplice. See <http://www.niza.nl/uk/campaigns/diamonds/docs/sierra_leone/2-6.htm>
5 On Orlov's and Filin's group alleged involvement in smuggling Ukrainian cruise missiles Kh-55 to Iran and China, see New Information on the Involvement of Far West, Ltd in Illegal Arms Smuggling. By burtsev.ru <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/x-55en.phtml>
6 Former president of Liberia Charles Taylor was handed over to the Hague Tribunal in June 2006. For a good bank of information on Bout and Chichakli, see The Viktor Bout File at <http://www.ruudleeuw.com/vbout00.htm>
7 All members of Filin's organization. For information on these personalities in English, see: the abovementioned Peter Dale Scott's essay (http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm)and the following materials, translated by burtsev.ru: Yasenev's Memo <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml>, Sergei Petrov's Interview: Revelations of the Fugitive Kremlin Financier <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/petrov_en.phtml> , Conversations with Armen (On Alfonso Davidovich- excerpts in English) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/armen_excerpts.phtml> , Far West, Ltd. Leaves Europe Under the Threat of Criminal Persecution. Renamed Far West, LLC <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filin.phtml>, "Consulting" Agency Far West, LLC Paid $3 Million Bribe to Ukrainian Official For Illegal Arms Deals with Syria and Iran <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/lysenko.phtml> , as well as our footnotes to the transcripts of alleged conversations between the members of Filin's organization, entitled for short Bristol < http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/bristol_en.phtml> and Hilton <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/hilton_en.phtml>.
8 Generals Segei Fomenko, Yevgeny Kolesnikov, and Alexander Plotnikov, all of Federal Security Service, were fired in May 2006. See Heads Roll in New Drive Against State Corruption, By By Carl Schreckand Valeria Korchagina. The St Petersburg Times, May 16, 2006 <http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=17572>
9 Ashot most likely Ashot Egiazarian, a shadowy financier connected to Kasyanov's clan. Brothers Sarkisian (not to confuse with Armen Sarkisian, counterintelligence officer, killed in July 2005): Arkady Sarkisian, Senator from Khakassia, was dismissed by Putin's order in May 2006. Represents the interests of the Deripaska oligarchic clan. We were not able to establish the identity of his brother.
10 Igor Sechin, close associate of Vladimir Putin, deputy head of Presidential Administration, often described as the leader of the 'siloviki' faction in the present regime. Probably the Igor repeatedly referred to in the transcripts of the recodings ,allegedly made by Sergei Petrov during his meetings with Filin, Surikov, Likhvintsev, and one Gennady Nikolaevich, businesman from Geneva . See, Bristol (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/bristol_en.phtml) and Hilton (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/hilton_en.phtml). Vladimir Ustinov, former Prosecutor General, fired by Putin in June 2006. Ustinov and Sechin are relatives by the marriage of their children. Both men may be implicated in the developing investigation of the furniture store chains Grand and Three Whales.
11 Milorad Ulemek Lukovic (nom de guerre Legia) received a 40-year jail term for the assassination of Ivan Stambolic, a former president of Serbia, in August 2000 and the attempt to assasinate Vuk Draskovic, then a prominent opposition leader and currently Serbia's foreign minister. Lukovic-Legia is also the prime suspect for the assasination of Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic.
12 Alexander Turchinov, close associate of Yulia Timoshenko, was appointed the head of Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) following the victory of the orange putsch in Kiev. Turchinov resigned in September 2005 after Yushchenko fired Timoshenko as prime minister. According to Vladimir Filin, Turchinov used his position to tie Filin's group with the illegal transfer of Kh-55 cruise missiles to Iran and that Turchinov acted on behalf of the anti-Cheney elements in the CIA leadership. See, Vladimir Filin. Ne smotrite gollivudskie fil'my... V Vashingtone gotoviat 'raketnyi skandal.' Zavtra, ?15 (647) 12 April, 2006 <http://zavtra.ru/cgi//veil//data/zavtra/06/647/14.html>
General Andrei Kozhemiaki, head of the SBU Operations Department under Turchinov.
13 Filin and Saidov were not public figures before 2005 when they suddenly emerged as experts, historians, and well-known political scientists at the Moscow Institute for Globalization Studies under the prominent Russian leftist Boris Kagarlitsky.
14 Audrius Butkevichius, former Lithunian defense minister, convicted felon (bribery). Close to the Albert Einstein Institute,associated with the CIA. In the 1990s went through special training in Britain, where he at one time resided together with Surikov and Igor Sutiagin, now in prison for espionage. Close to the Georgian oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili, Berezovsky's business partner since the days of the Logovaz. According to his close friend Anton Surikov, Butkevichius was one of the organizers of the pro-American putsch in Georgia in 2003 (revolution of the roses). According to Butkevichius, he and his partners from Far West, LLC--Surikov, Filin, Saidov, and Baranov-have filed a libel case against the Lithunian weekly Ekstra. Last winter it published a long investigative piece on the alleged criminal activities of Butkevichius and Filin's organization. See, Audrius Butkevichius. Rossiiskii komppromat prishol v litovskii sud. Forum.msk.ru, 2006.03.07 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/kompromat/8630.html>
15 Recently, Saidov has radically changed his public views from being militant Islamist to supporter of the pro-Russian Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. It is likely to be just another ruse to get in favor with the Kremlin at the time when Filin's group faces prosecution for illegal arms trading. The liquidation in quick succession of two leading Chechen separatists, Sadullaev and Basaev, might have been the price Saidov was willing to pay the Kremlin for saving himself and his accomplices. He was said to have been close to both men for many years.
16 The Direction Gnrale de la Scurit Extrieure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DGSE) (DGSE) or General Directorate for External Security is France's external intelligence agency.
17 See our dossier on Valerii Lunev at <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/lunev.phtml>
18 Yurii Shekochikhin, a neoliberal State Duma deputy, editor and investigative journalist of Novaya Gazeta, died from some mysterious decease in 2003. He wrote several investigative articles on the Three Whales affair.
19 Sergei Kurginyan is a well-known political scientist. Since the days of perestroika, presides over the Moscow Experimental Creative Center. Widely believed to have special relations with Russian intelligence. Long-time associate of Surikov. Yakov Kedmi, former head of Nativ, an Israeli agency that acted on the territory of the former Soviet Union and provided support to the Israeli intelligence services. See: John Loftus . THE FRAMING OF MICHAEL CHERNEY <http://www.intelligencesummit.org/cherney/>
20 Heydar Aliev, the president of Azerbajan; Vladimir Gusinsky powerful oligarch and media mogul, General Igor Rodionov defense minister.
21 Shabtai Shavit (Hebrew: ???? ????) was the Director General of the Mossad from 1990 to 1996.
22 On Davidovich and the cocain connection, see our dossier at <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/armen_excerpts.phtml>. According to Armen Sarkisian, Vladimir Filin's relations with Davidovich go back to the 1980s, when Davidovich was a liason officer between the Cuban General Arnaldo Ochoa and Filin's commander General Yurii Gusev of GRU.
23 On this conference, see: Anton Surikov. V Podmoskovie sporili o mezhdunarodnom terrorizme i planakh Kitaia v Sibiri i na Dal'nem Vostoke. 2006.07.01 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/news/11847.html>
24 Liudmilla Rozkina, one of the founders of Far West, Ltd. in 1998. Owns 10 percent of the company. According to Sergei Petrov, Rozkina is the former secret agent of the Soviet GRU. Has British passport.
25 This is a very important detail. Vladimir Filin, Alfonso Davodovich, and Yakov Kosman appear to reside in the West not under their birth names. Thus, in addition to his Soviet/Russian passport, Filin may carry Ukrainian, British, Serbian, and Brazilian papers in different names. According to Surikov's statement in his public correspondence with the human-rights activist Oleg Grechenevsky, Yakov Kosman uses the German passport in the name of his German grandmother, while Alfonso Davidovich had assumed the name of his Venezuelan wife after moving to East Germany in the 1970s and afterwards exchanged the East German passport in this name to the Federal. See, Surikov's letter to Grechenevsky, dated 18.04.06 at <http://www.anticompromat.ru/surikov/ist27d.html>
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"Consulting" Agency Far West, LLC Paid $3 Million Bribe to Ukrainian Official For Illegal Arms Deals with Syria and Iran
18 February, 2006
As we recently reported, the controversial consulting agency Far West, Ltd. had suddenly left Europe in the end of January 2006 , citing the fear of criminal prosecution by US law enforcement agencies and changing its name to Far West, LLC. 1
This announcement followed the sensational public statement by Vladimir Filin, chairman of the FWL board. In the interview he gave the FWL owned publication Pravda-info (11.16.05) Filin told about his agency giving US $3 million in bribes to Valery Lysenko, the deputy director of Ukrspetsexport (http://use-weapon.astral.kiev.ua/index.html), the Ukrainian state agency for arms export.
Filin gave this interview in response to the publication of the sensational article by Ivan Demidov in the Ukrainian newspaper Obkom. 2 Demidov accused two Filin's partners, Ukrainian Generals Leonid Kosyakov and Alexei Likhvintsev, and the so-called small oligarch Vyacheslav Kantor, adviser to Yushchenko, of seeking to obtain control over two Ukrainian sea ports, in Odessa and Ilyichevsk. The article hints that under the guise of ammonium nitrate and other fertilizers, to be exported to South America by Kantor's company Akron, the group plans to transport drugs.
The centerpiece of Demidov's article is the facsimile of the internal letter (http://ru.obkom.net.ua/related/uspecex.html) (dated 04.18.05) by the deputy director of Ukrspetsexport Valery Lysenko (http://www.defense-ua.com/rus/news/?id=13448&prn=yes) to the Head of Security Service of Ukraine Alexander Turchinov. Lysenko wrote this letter in response to Turchinov's inquiry (dated 04.12.05) concerning Far West, Ltd.
The letter names Likhvintsev as a founder and Kosyakov as the general director of Far West, Ltd. which consults the sales of light arms and military supplies to the countries of Africa and Latin America. Lysenko also lists businesspartners of FWL: private military companies KBR Halliburton (US), Diligence Iraq, LLC (Kuwait), and Meteoric Tactical Solutions (South Africa).
Lysenko's letter further identifies two Panamanian offshore companies, owned by Yushchenko's adviser, the ammonium mogul Vyacheslav Kantor,--Isofert Trading INC and Transchem International INC--as being used by Far West, Ltd. for most of their financial transactions. 3
Lysenko concludes by saying that Far West, Ltd. approached Ukrspetsexport with proposals for cooperation, including consulting on a number of questions related to military-technical cooperation with Turkey. However, we had to decline these proposals because of the dubious reputation of Far West, Ltd.
Demidov suggests that Turchinov sent his inquiry to Urkrspetsexport because he did not trust his own service to do the background check on Likhvintsev and Kosyakov who either had already been or were about to be appointed to general's positions in the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff.
According to Demidov, Kosyakov has Swiss and Likhvintsev British passports. As another possible problem with their appointment to high and sensitive positions in the Ukrainian security state, Demidov cites their career in the Soviet military intelligence, which included service in the GRU group N (for Narcotics) in Afghanistan. Officially the Group was tasked with fighting narcotraffic by intercepting caravans with drugs and infiltrating drug networks. Special Group N enjoyed personal support of a high-ranking GRU general and its members were allowed unauthorized contacts with representatives of US intelligence. Its commander was Leonid Kosyakov, Alexei Likhvintsev was his deputy. The Group included Anton Surikov and Ruslan Saidov, now members of FWL board. Demidov also mentions some of the later activities of the Group members: looting Soviet arsenals in the West Group Army, selling arms for diamonds in Africa, training Basaev's Abkhazian batallion.
The article alleges that Fritz Ermarth, formerly high ranking official in the CIA, NSC, and NIC, plays the role of the supervisor of this GRU group on the part of the FWL's chief partner: KBR Halliburton and the Dick Cheney circle.
Two days after the publication of Demidov's article, Pravda-info denounced Alexander Turchinov, alleging that he was a homosexual, a religious cultist, and a former KGB informer. The piece was written by Natalia Roeva (Valiahmetova), new President of FWL, and included her interview with Filin who made this sensational statement.
Roeva - What can you say about the "Ukrspetsexport" letter to Turchinov, signed by Lysenko?
Filin: - There is one very interesting moment in this letter. It alleges that we offered "Ukrspetsexport" our consulting regarding Turkey, but they turned us down because of our "dubious reputation." I assume that when Lysenko was signing this letter he realized that he would have to pay for this kind of talk. So now I want to have a piece of this game, imposed on me, and ask this question: if our "dubious reputation" had prevented them from using our consulting services in regard to Turkey, why then the same "dubious reputation" did not prevent [them from carrying out with us] much bigger projects with Syria and Iran and in a such a way that "Americans and Israelis did not learn about [those projects]"? Perhaps, because the kickback was so big--three million dollars: $750,000, then one million, then another $750,000, then $200,000 and then $300,000 more? Or perhaps, it didn't matter because [he] liked so much the "relaxing" vacations abroad "paid by the company"?
Roeva: - You are telling very interesting things.
Filin: - Come on, I will tell much more interesting things when [they give me] another pretext. 4
One can only speculate what made Vladimir Filin to publicly implicate himself and his company in a grave international crime, but his last words strongly suggest that it was his intention to warn Ukrainian and, possibly, Russian arms trade establishment from leaking even more damaging information about Far West, Ltd. In any case, his statement clearly stunned many in Russia and Ukraine. According to Russian informational agency Novyi Region, Vladimir Filin's revelations shocked the employees of Rosoboronexport who worked with Ukrspetsexport on a number of projects. 5 The agency quotes one of these employees who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.
Q: What such enormous bribes are paid for in the arms market?
A: For confidentiality, as Vladimir Filin correctly pointed out. Confidentiality is specially highly priced when the contract, to put it mildly, does not correspond to international agreements about the non-proliferation of certain types of weapons and technologies.
Q: But what kind of secret deals could Ukraine have with Syria and Iran?
A: Nothing secret with Syria, Ukraine sells there only spare parts for their obsolete stock of airplanes and armor.Iran is a different matter. As Victor Yushchenko confirmed in the beginning of this year [2005 burtsev.ru], Ukraine had leaked to Iran the strategic cruise missiles of X-55 type, produced in the Soviet Union. This missile can deliver a nuclear charge and selling it, undoubtfully, violates all existing international treaties on the nonproliferation of missile technologies and the weapons of mass destruction. 6
The Rosoboronexport official also explained that ammonium nitrate produced by Vyacheslav Kantor's company Akron has dual, civil and military, use, including the production of explosives and rocket fuel. He added that the offshore companies, like Kantor's Isofert Trading INC and Transchem International INC, are commonly used by arms dealers to hide financial transactions under confidential contracts. 7
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1 Far West, Ltd. Leaves Europe Under the Threat of Criminal Persecution. Renamed Far West, LLC. Left.ru <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filin.phtml>
According to the latest announcement by the Internet publication Pravda-info,Vladimir Filin has left his residence in Lausanne, Switzerland and settled in San Paulo, Brazil. He is said to have business interests in a number of Brazil companies, specifically in lumber industry and the production of poultry for export. He was joined there by Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa, who previously resided in Munich, Germany. Two other leaders of Far West, Ltd./LLC, Yakov Kosman and Valery Lunev, also formerly of Russian military intelligence, have left the countries of their legal residence France and the Netherlands respectively--for permanent residence in Dubai, where they were joined by the financial director Ruslan Berenis (UK) and Sultan Suleimenov, first deputy of the executive director of FWL. See, Political Scientist Fritz Ermarth and businessman Adnan Khashoggi Do Not Own Agency Far West . By Natalia Roeva, Pravda-info, 10.02.2006 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/news/7539.html> and Vladimir Filin's bio at the masthead of Pravda-info <http://forum.msk.ru/author/19.html>
2 Ivan Demidov, Kto vydavlivaet sok iz 'nakolotykh apelsinov'? (Who Squeezes Juice from 'Drug-Injected Oranges') Obkom (11.15.05) <http://ru.obkom.net.ua/articles/2005-11/15.1647.shtml> Reprinted in Ekonomicheskie novosti under the title Sovetniki Yushchenko lobbiruiut interesy rossiiskikh oligarkhov (Yushchenko's Advisers Lobby Russian Oligarchs)(11.16.05) <http://economic-ua.info/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2698>????????? ?????? ????????? ???????? ?????????? ????????? http://economic-ua.info/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2698
3 Demidov claims that in the 1990s Kantor's own profits from Akron were moved to these offshores through AVTOVAZ Bank belonging to Boris Berezovsky and Badri Patarkatsishvili.
4 "Is Yulia Timoshenko's Closest Associate Religious Sectarian, Pederast and Former Informer?" Pravda-info, 11.17.2005 <http://www.forum.msk.ru/material/news/4891.html>
5 The Rosoboronexport State Corporation is the sole state intermediary agency for Russia's military exports/imports.
6 Arms Traders Receive Orange Suitcase With Compromising Materials (in Russian). By Andrei Latynin. Novyi Region 2 (12.13.2005) <http://www.nr2.ru/siberia/49429.html >
7 Vyacheslav Moshe Kantor was detained for questioning regarding suspicions of international money laundering on February 9, 2006, when he arrived at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport.<http://www.jewishva.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=165523>
IPROG "Experts" Update Their Mug Shots
http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/saidovsm.jpg http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filinsm2.jpg
Ruslan Saidov aka Ugur Mehmed (left) and Vladimir Filin aka "Ilyich", "El Buho". Photos courtesy Pravda.info
http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/shavit.jpg
"Somewhere near Moscow": Anton Surikov (center) with Shatbai Shavit (left) and Dov Kontorer at the recent conference of Israeli and Russian intelligence services organized by Sergei Kurginyan and his Experimental Creative Center. Photo courtesy Forum.msk.ru
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Owners of Far West Ltd (from the left): Ruslan Saidov, Vladimir Filin, Anton Surikov
http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/davidoviz.jpg
Davidoviz-Muller's ties to LA fascism, to death squads, his double game with FARC are logical outcome of the social nature of FarWest -- the mafiiso-political society born out of the New World Order, new fascism.
http://left.ru/burtsev/English/troe.jpg
From the left: Filin, Saidov, Surikov. Recent photo from Finland
http://left.ru/burtsev/English/filin.jpg
Vladimir Vladimirovich Litovchenko (b. 1960)
General-Major of the Main Intelligence Directorate, Ukrainian Ministry of Defense,
Vice-president of Far West LLC
Owner of several ethanol factories in Brazil,
business partner of George Soros
Known cover names:
Vladimir Ilyich Filin (Ukrainian and British passports)
F. P. Carvallo (Brazilian passport)
Stoikovich (Serbian passport)
Known handles: "Ilyich," "El Buho"
http://left.ru/burtsev/English/surikov.jpg
Anton Surikov -- Mansour Nathoev
Rt. Colonel of GRU, commander of the "security service" of the Cherkess Congress. Received special training in guerilla war and psychological operations.
http://left.ru/burtsev/English/ermarth.jpg
Fritz Ermarth of the Nixon Center and SAIC.
"Former" CIA officer, probably partly ethnic Adygei and distant relative of Surikov-Natkhoev. Main contact of Farwest in the United States. Specialist in disinformation and false-flag operations. Representative of the US military-industrial complex and post-Nazi elites in the Atlantic intelligence community. Member of the Bushes' inner circle of political and intelligence operatives. Ideologically motivated Russophobe, one of the central figures in the ongoing secret war against Russia.
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Sir Rodric Braithwaite of
Deutsche Bank and
David Cameron's Advisory Council on Foreign Affairs
http://left.ru/burtsev/English/saidov.jpg
Ruslan Saidovich Sadulaev (b. 1960)
Major-General, Advisor to the Minister of Defense, Republic Uzbekistan, head of the illegal "external intelligence service of Chechen Republic," formerly "The Istambul Bureau" under President Maskhadov. Close associate of Khozh Nukhaev, wanted for the murder of Paul Khlebnikov.
Known cover names
Ruslan Saidov (Russian passport),
Ruslan Muhammedovich Muhammedov (Uzbek passport), Nihat (Turkish passport)
http://left.ru/burtsev/English/likhvin.jpg
Alexei Kolosovskii (b. 1960)
Ulrainian and British passports on
Alexei Likhvintsev
Major-General of
Ukrainian military intelligence, in charge of the Special Department "R" (Russia). Married to Liudmilla Rozkina, US and British passports, former GRU agent.
Handles: "Pribalt"
Photo circa 1988-89
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Igor Sechin (b. 1960), Kremlin functionary and the informal leader of Russian siloviki.
Served in Angola under Kolosovskii's command as military interpretor.
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Major-General Valery Lunev (cover name)
KGB, Belarus
Handle: Lun
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Alfonso Davidoviz-Mueller,
Cuban-Soviet double agent, banker, involved in narcotrafficking and money laundering, known to major secret services and used by them. Married to the relative of Venezuelan General Mueller Rojas.
Handle: "Felix"
Barbarossa at Our Gates? The Anti-Russian Alliance of Western and Saudi Intelligence Behind Far West LLC Prepares Bloody Sunday in the Northern Caucasus, Food and Gas Blockade against Russia
During the last few days the International Editorial Board of burtsev.rua group of investigative reporters associated with the Internet weekly Left Russia (left.ru)--received information from several reliable sources about latest activities of the international alliance of secret services who have been engaged in subversive activities against Russia under the cover of the consulting company Far West LLC, with headquarters in Dubai.
The alliance includes the secret services of the USA and UK (CIA, DIA, MI-6, MI-5, and the Scotland Yard), represented by their front companies: Diligence LLC, KBR, New Bridge Strategies, Erinys International, Titon International, Meteoric Tactical Solution, and Aegis Defence Services. From Saudi Arabia-- the General Intelligence Service, represented by Prince Rasheed as Rasheed, a relative of Prince Turki al Faisal, and the family of Adnan Khashoggi. The Turkish General Staff and the Gray Wolves, as well as the President Kadyrov's military, are represented by the Istambul Bureau, or the Information Service of the Ministry of Defense of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, under the command of the brigadier-general Ruslan Saidov and Khozh Nukhaev, wanted by Russian Prosecutor for the murder of Paul Khlebnkov of Forbes Magazine. The Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), represented by generals Vladimir Filin and Alexei Likhvintsev. KGB of Belorussia, represented by General Valery Lunev and the vice-president Viktor Sheiman. Lithunian military intelligence, represented by Audrius Butkevicius and Rolandas Paksas.
Their senior partners are said to be the defense minister Robert Gates, his close associate Fritz Ermarth, formerly (?) of the CIA, NSC, NIC, and the Rand Corporation, who since his retirement has been working under the cover of the Nixon Center and the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), the former ambassador in the Soviet Union Sir Roderic Braithwaithe, his close associate Ruslan Berenis, thought to be senior officer of British military intelligence, and Prince Faisal al Turki, former head of the General Intelligence Service of Saudi Arabia, and ambassador in Britain and the United States.
Below we publish our summary of the information we received from several sources.
1. The chief of the Istambul Bureau Ruslan Saidov and the billionaire Mikhail Gutseriev who recently fled Russia and filed for political asylum in England, prepare a bloody provocation during the coming opposition meeting in the North Caucasian city of Nazran, Ingush Republic on November 24. There is a strong possibility that the violence they plan will lead to human victims and will be recorded on video, blamed on federal authorities and used for a new round of the psychological warfare waged by the corporate press in the West against the independent course of President Putin.
2. One of the shadow chiefs of the Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), Vladimir Filin, has recently been given additional political role. Following his appointment as the head of the Working Group for coordinating the intelligence activities of Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, and Belorussia, Filin was assigned to coordinate the collaboration of Ukrainian intelligence with their Georgian counterparts. This means that GUR will provide the Georgian military with th e intelligence about Russian special services in the Caucasus. The strong operational capacities that GUR has in Moscow and Rostov-on-the Don will assure the quality of intelligence that the Georgians will be receiving now. This can indicate that after he has crushed the recent protests in Tbilisi, President Saakashvili and his US advisers now plan a military provocation in the breakaway South Ossetia.
3. After consultations with Robert Gates and Condoleeza Rice, Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic States, and Belorussia begin to prepare for a warfare against Gasprom, Russian natural gas state monopoly, and indirectly against Germany. Filin will coordinate the activities of special services in this operation. It is expected that around the New Year these countries will succeed in blocking 100 percent of Russia's natural gas deliveries to the EC (with the exception of Finland). For this purpose, Ukraine filled to the fullest all its natural gas storage facilities in the western parts of the country. Theoretically, this reserves will last for the participating countries till the next fall.
The gas blockade will be supplemented by the blockade of food deliveries from the EC to Russia through Poland, Ukraine, Belorussia, and the Baltic states.
There has been an increase in the activity of the Chehen gangsters from the former Alazan organized crime group of Khozh Nukhaev in the Russian ports of Novorossiisk, Tuapse, and Jugbe. This indicates that closer to the New Year one can expect that these entry points will be used for the arrival of professional commando teams from Saidov's Istambul Bureau.
6. In coordination with the above preparations, US state agencies are about to make highly visible arrests of and accusations against several highly placed Russian officials under the article 312 of the Patriotic Act . These officials are associated with Gasprom, Transneft, and Ministry of Agriculture. The last can be used as pretext for a food blockade against Russia.
7. At the same time, the US officials pressure the leadership of Turkmenistan for sharp increase of the natural gas sold to Gasprom. This pressure tactics include threats to arrest Western bank accounts of unnamed Turkmen officials.
The intelligence information suggest that the US, Britain, and their allies in Asia prepare serious military provocations in Kyrgyzstan and the Uzbekistan part of the Fergana Valley.
The situation in Russia will become most critical January and February of 2008. In the words of one of our sources, If in addition something bad happens inside the country we may not be able to control the situation.
Russian original is at < http://left.ru/2007/15/barbarossa167.phtml >
Our comments
The first confirmation of this information came when this English translation was being prepared. On November 14thGlenn R. Simpson of the WSJ reported that the government of the British Virgin Islands told the U.S. Justice Department there is "overwhelming evidence" Russian Telecommunications Minister Leonid Reiman secretly owns a large chunk of Russia's telecoms industry through an offshore fund.
It is not accidental that this news comes from the WSJ crowd that have been the cheerleader of the psychological warfare against Russia in past few years of which Dr. Goebbels himself would have been proud. An analysis of WSJ anti-Putin publications since the summit in Bratislava might have revealed an uncanny coordination with a number of subversive activities in Russia and London that FarWest undertook during this period. We believe that WSJ is extremely well connected both with the influential nucleus of the Council for International Relations and the right-wing elements (perhaps even rogue elements) in the US intelligence community who have been pulling the strings behind the FarWest alliance.
In the specific case of Glenn R. Simpson's piece Russian Regulator Under Fire; Virgin Islands Says Evidence Points To Telecom Holdings, out attention was drawn to Simpson's failure to inform his readers about the relations between the Alfa Group and its owner Russian oligarch Mikhail Friedman and the elements of the US intelligence community behind FarWest. According to Simpson,
The case [against Reiman ed.] originates from a dispute over the rights to a 25% stake in Megafon, one of Russia's biggest mobile carriers, between Russian tycoon Mikhail Fridman and IPOC. The evidence that IPOC is owned by Mr. Reiman was the subject of an Oct. 17, 2006, article on page one of The Wall Street Journal.
Indeed, that article, Russian Connection: Why Putin's Telecom Minister Is in Investigators' Sights Abroad; German and Swiss Probes Tag Leonid Reiman as Owner Of Businesses He Oversees, also failed even to mention one piece of information that was in public domain: Friedman's Alfa was in bed with Diligence LLC and that was only the tip of the iceberg. Alfa's international advisory board of directors included the chairman of Diligence LLC Richard Burt and Lord Charles Powell, member of its advisory board.
http://www.left.ru/burtsev/ops/burt.jpg Richard Burt of Diligence LLC and Mikhail Friedman of Alfa Group: a dangerous alliance against Russia
Simpson, who co-authored that article with Gregory L. White, David Crawford, might have missed the importance of this fact at that time. But since then the BusinessWeek investigation (http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/07_09/b4023070.htm?chan=gl) revealed that Diligence was doing some dirty job for Friedman, spying on IPOC and violating laws. Strangely enough, the experienced team of investigative journalists working for BusinessWeek has also failed to notice that Ambassador Burt was on the board of Alfa Capital when the company hired Diligence LLC and that Burt was also the international director with the influential Washington lobbying firm Barbour, Griffith and Rogers that hired Diligence for Friedman. In short, Burt's Alfa Group hired Burt's Diligence LLC through Burt's Barbour, Griffith and Rogers to dig some dirt on Reiman. What for? Why would Ambassador Burt and his friends in Diligence LLC like the former director of the CIA and FBI William Webster, managing director of the Carlyle Group Edward Mathias, former adviser to Margaret Thatcher and John Major Lord Charles Powell, former President Clinton's Chief of Staff Thomas F. McLarty and other luminaries of the conservative TransAtlantic cabal why would they be interested digging dirt on Leonid Reiman and other Russian crooks in high positions? Do they have in mind blackmailing Russian leadership into surrendering Russia and its natural wealth to Western crooks in power? Hm... how can one entertain such a ridiculous proposition even for a moment! Shame on us!
For more on Diligence LLC, Farwest LLC, and Alfa Group see our article US Companies Linked to Vice-President Cheney Supervised the Transfer of Ukrainian WMD to Iran (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/novyiregion.phtml) .
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Valentin Zorin
Last October President of the non-recognized Chechen Republic of Ichkeria Doku Umarov proclaimed a new formation - the Caucasian Emirate, and declared himself the Emir of the Caucasian militants and the leader of Jihad. Umarov's seemingly unmotivated proclamation of the caliphate came as surprise to Chechnya watchers Western and Russian think tanks. Why would the leader of the embattled Chechen Islamists suddenly decide to antagonize the West who is interested in stoking the unrest in the Russian Caucasus? The international research group burtsev.ru has the answer to this question.
According to sources close to Ukrainian and Russian intelligence, Doku Umarov's declaration of Islamic Caucasian Emirate was the result of his manipulation by Brigadier-General Ruslan Saidov, head of the Istanbul Bureau of the External Intelligence of the Republic of Ichkeria (formerly, the Department of Information of the Defense Ministry of Ichkeria).
Umarov made this declaration under the pressure from Anzor Astemirov, aka Emir Seyfullah. Astemirovethnically Adygei-Kabardinianhas been Saidov's agent for a long time. Saidov helped him to became the head of the Supreme Sharia Court in 2005, after Russians eliminated Sadulaev, who had had this important position before being appointed the president of Ichkeria after the death of Maskhadov. Sadulaev was also considered to be controlled by Saidov and was probably betrayed by him when Saidov officially changed sides and gave oath of loyalty to Ramzan Kadyrov.
It is said that Akhmed Zakaev, the former foreign minister of the so-called Chechen Republic of Ichkeria (ChRI), was horrified by Umarov's declaration that presented him as a de facto representative of the Caucasian branch of al Qaeda, not the most comfortable position in England these days. Waxed hysterical, he resigned his post, but does not dare to expose Astemirov's provocation. In the 1980s the KGB used Zakaev, as well as Movladi Udugov and Zelimkhan Yandarbiev, as their agent in the circles of nationalist Chechen and Ingush intelligentsia. In September 1991 the KGB files with their personal information were captured by the Dudaev people when they stormed the KGB office in Grozny, and got in Saidov's hands. Zakaev and Udugov know this and are afraid to confront Saidov. i
Saidov has made the goals of his provocation clear by the very title of his recent article Now the West Has No Choice but Choose Between al Qaeda and Kadyrov. ii By presenting Umarov and Zakaev as pan-Islamists and al Qaeda jihadists, Saidov wants to secure support for Ramzan Kadyrov from those sections of Western elites and intelligence services that still see Kadyrov as pro-Russian and continue to support the opposition to his rule, while trying to explain to them that Kadyrov's regime is a form of the Qadiri tactics of deceptive surrender to Moscow in order to regroup and make another bid for independence when the time comes.
What we know about Saidov
According to the recent book by the editor of Left.ru Anton Baumgarten, Ruslan Saidov (cover name for Ruslan S-ev) is a former officer of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff (GRU) who was trained as a deep penetration agent for the Near East and Central Asia. iii He was born in Daghestan, half Akin-Chechen, half Spaniard. His father, important Communist functionary in the Ferghana Valley, died under the arrest for corruption. After special training in a GRU school served in Afghanistan with a group of other young officers who later formed the organized criminal group known in the Russian press as FarWest. In 1991 Saidov was sent to Dudaev and since then worked together with Dudaev's and Maskhadov's intelligence chief Khozh Nukhaev, former Moscow gangster wanted for the murder of American journalist Paul Khlebnikov. Both are thought to be Sufi sheiks. In the early 1990s Saidov and Nukhaev spent much time in London. Saidov's relations with British intelligence can be dated by that time at the latest. In London Nukhaev was observed and eventually embraced by the Atlantist elites around Margaret Thatcher and the Bush family. http://left.ru/burtsev/English/nukhaev.jpg Hozh Nukhaev, wanted for the murder of American journalist Paul Khlebnikov, together with Margaret Thatcher in London.
In the mid-1990s Saidov was introduced to Prince Turki al-Faisal and can be described as his junior partner in the Russian Caucasus since then. According to Saidov, he was the one to greet Turki's agent Abu al -Walid in Chechnya. Earlier he had established business relations with the family of Adnan Khashoggi. Also in the mid-1990s Saidov developed strong relations with the Turkish General Staff and one of the branches of the extremist pan-Turkists organization Grey Wolves. Since then Istanbul has been his operational base. Shortly before the second war with Russia in 1999 Saidov and Nukhaev moved to Istanbul the newly formed Bureau of External Intelligence, a secret mini-intelligence organization within the Interior Ministry.
In September 1999 Saidov was badly wounded during the fighting in Daghestan and received medical treatment in Switzerland, where a year before his GRU colleagues and partners, together with US private intelligence companies, set up the consulting agency Far West Ltd. Saidov claims that the hitman was sent by al-Walid. It appears that al-Walid, the resident of Saudi intelligence in Chechnay, suspected that Saidov was a double agent, working for the pan-Turkists of the General Staff and having commercial realations with some old hands in GRU. Saidov's revenge came in 2004 when he was contracted by the CIA to prevent al-Walid's move from Chechnya to Iraq that was agreed upon during President Akhmat Kadyrov's visit to Saudi Arabia. Saidov gave al-Walid's whereabouts to the GRU battalion East under the command of Yamadaev and he was killed.
The journalistic investigation by burtsev.ru has also revealed that throughout the 1990s Saidov and Nukhaev provided financing to Chechen separatists in part through the family of Adnan Khashoggi, partly through narcotrafficking and racket. In the process, Saidov amassed significant personal wealth. With the help of Saudi intelligence, Saidov received access to construction business and his companies now participate in the management of commercial real estate, including Jumeira Beach Residence (http://www.jbr.ae/highband/index.htm) and Mall of the Emirates (http://www.malloftheemirates.com/photoGallery.asp) . Using his connections in Russian Ministry of Defence Saidov played important role in the heroin operation by the FarWest organized crime group, moving dozens tons of heroin from Afghanistan to Kosovo. After the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kosovo, Saidov and his FarWest partners became more involved in subversive politics in Russia. There are reasons to believe that Saidov played some role in events in Andijan and in the bloodshed in Nalchik in 2005. According to our sources, Saidov's Istanbul Bureau carried out the assassination of Paul Khlebnikov and Anna Politkovskaya, as well as assisted in the assassination of Andrei Kozlov, the first deputy chairman of the Central Bank, in 2006. iv http://left.ru/burtsev/English/saidov.jpg Ruslan Saidov with close associate Natalia Roeva. Photo courtesy Forum.msk.ru
Saidov is a a vice-president of Far West LLC, a consulting company based in Dubai, which serves as front for the anti-Russian alliance of secret services of US, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine, Lithuania, and (partly) Belorussia. The other vice-president is Vladimir Filin, general of the Ukrainian General Staff and one of the shadow power brokers in Ukrainian politics.
Saidov has Russian, Turkish and Jordanian passports, possibly other citizenships. Regularly visits the United States.
??????????
i Saidov has publicly alleged Udugov's service for KGB and FSB in a number of articles, the latest is The West Blackmails Russian Elite by Swiss Bank Accounts 11.06.2007 <http://news.rin.ru/news///144893/> . Saidov tied Zakaev to Soviet KGB in A Brawl Among Chechen Emigre: former actor Akhmed Zakaev is responsible for the liquidation of Aslan Maskhadov. Forum.msk.ru 11.25. 2007 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/news/408816.html>
ii ????? ??? ??????, ???? ???????????? ? ?????, ??????? ?? ???????: ??????? ???????? ??? ??????? ?????? ???-????? Forum.msk.ru 11.23.2007 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/region/408023.html>
iii Anton Baumgarten. Third Barbarossa. <http://www.left.ru/2007/11/baumgarten163.phtml>
iv ?????? ??????? ?????????? ? ???????? ?? ????? ?????? ??????????? ?????? ??????????. Left.ru no. 12 (2007) <http://left.ru/2007/12/burtsev164.phtml>
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US Companies Linked to Vice-President Cheney Supervised the Transfer of Ukrainian WMD to Iran
On 27-30 November 2006, the Russian news agency Novyi Region published a three-part investigation, signed by Valery Briusov, of the illegal sale of Ukrainian KH-55 cruise missiles to Iran in 2001, which contains new and quite sensational information. 1 According to the news agency, the new information-- which includes copies of the SBU internal correspondence--comes from a former officer of the SBU (Ukrainian Security Service), who has accused the Ukrainian leadership in suppressing the report on the investigation prepared by then SBU Chairman Alexander Turchinov in the spring of 2005. In April of that year Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko acknowledged the illegal sale of strategic cruise missiles KH-55 to Iran and China from Ukraine. But Turchinov soon was fired and so far only one member of the criminal group was tried and sentenced to prison, while another suspect, Oleg Orlov, extradicted to Ukraine from the Czech Republic last spring remains out of his mind. The news agency quotes its source as rhetorically asking:
Is it believable that two petty middlemen were able to carry out such a grandiose operation, during which several great powers for the first time in history blatantly violated the holy of holies: the international agreements on the non-proliferation of strategic arms? Where are the rest of the people involved? Where are the crews of the heavy transport planes loaded with those missiles, which took off from the airport near Kiev and flew to Iran and China instead of Zhukovskoe, near Moscow? Where are those who allowed these flights? How could these planes cross the borders of several states? Who received them in Iran and China and where did they get afterwards?
Clearly, someone was very interested in hushing up the affair with KH-55s. The article then quotes a list of companies which allegedly took part in the conspiracy. The quote comes from a fragment of the secret letter by Alexander Turchinov to the Secretary of the National Security Council (NSC), Petr Poroshenko, dated by August 25, 2005 (facsimile of page 4 of the letter is attached):
...under the cover of credit lines for ZAO Atomstroyexport (Russia), and [they? - burtsev.ru] guaranteed to the Iranians and the Chinese the transfer of necessary payments through the controlled investment firms CTF Holdings Ltd, AB Holdings Ltd (Gibraltar), ARS Nova Ltd, Volgen Trading Ltd, Alfa Star Ltd, Investworld Ltd, (Cyprus). Isofert Trading INC, Transchem International INC (Panama), EMM Arab Systems Ltd (Cyprus) were used for transactions with the Chinese.
The company Far West Ltd (Switzerland) provided, under the control of Diligence LLC (USA), the general management of this operation and the contacts with the Iranians through its branch office in Tehran.
???hnocalty INC and SP-Trade INC, controlled by KBR INC (all from USA) were used for payments to S.H. Heritage Holding Ltd (Cyprus), which acted as financial middleman in contacts with the Iranians, who were represented by SATAK Co Ltd, controlled by the Committee of Foreign Operations of the High Command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Department 140/16 of the Organization of Defense Industry of Iran. 2
This information was obtained from Israeli National Police by the SBU delegation that visited Israel in the summer of 2005. The head of the delegation was General Mikhail Kozhemiakin, one of Turchinov's deputies. The Israelis were happy to share with the Ukrainians what they knew about the KH-55 deal.
In his letter to Poroshenko, Turchinov argues that the list of the companies obtained from Israeli intelligence suggests that this large-scale operation was sanctioned by the governments of Russia, the United States, and Iran. He also points out that the conspiracy assigns Ukraine the role of the chief perpetrator of the crime and that Ukraine's reputation may be badly damaged as the result. To avoid this, he proposed that the NSC considered giving the Ukrainian Parliament the documents that reveal the real organizers of the KH-55 sales.
Instead, in September 2005 Turchinov, Kozhemiakin, and Poroshenko were fired, subjected to smear and threatened with criminal prosecution. It seemed that the affair with KH-55 was forgotten for good.
The article then quotes a memo from August 2006 by the deputy head of the SBU, Nikolai Kurkin, to his boss. Kurkin writes that he received a request by the first deputy of the Secretary of the NSC, Yurii Tereshchenko, who is also the head of the Ukraines State Service on Export Control (SSEC), for a copy of Turchinov's report on the illegal sales of KH-55 to China and Iran that Turchinov sent to Poroshenko in August 2005. According to Tereshchenko, the report was not discussed by the NSC and its text had disappeared, with only the cover sheet left, a copy of which Kurkin attached to his memo. Kurkin concludes by arguing that since Turchinov's report contains information that is damaging to Ukrainian state leaders and considering frequent leaks of secret information from the NSC it is not advisable to give Tereshchenko a copy of the report.
According to the source, the SBU then was given the oral order to destroy all the documents received by Kozhemiakin's group from the Israelis and to inform the NCS that Turchinov's report never existed. The source also explained that the SBU officers made copies of Turchinov's report as precaution and sent them to a number of addressees, including in the United States.
The Organizers
The article points out as organizers of the illegal sales a group of former high-ranking Soviet bureaucrats: Yury Masliukov, Leonard Vid, and Alexander Fain. The story begins in the 1980s, when the Soviet government resumed its military-technical cooperation with Iran.
In 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev signed a secret executive order by the Politburo On shipments of special equipment to Iran in 1986-87, sending military specialists to Iran, and receiving Iranian specialists for training in the operation, use, and repairs of special equipment.
In accordance with this decision, Iran received, among other things, the first party of the ballistic missiles Scud.
Yurii Masliukov was the one responsible for preparing this decision and carrying it out. At that time he was the chairman of Gosplan and of the Military-Industrial Commission at the Council of Ministers of the USSR. The Commission coordinated the work of the Soviet military-industrial complex, as well as the export-import of arms and dual technologies, both legal and not.
Masliukov's experience and connections in the international arms trade and military-industrial espionage can be appreciated from this description by one of the owners of Far West Ltd, Ruslan Saidov, describing this aspect of Masliukov's activities.
In the past there was an organization called COCOM--Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls. This international organization controlled Western exports to East Bloc countries. CoCom had 17 member statesall Nato members (except Iceland, Japan, and Australia). Five neutral countries and New Zealand closely cooperated with this organization. The leading role in CoCom was played, of course, by the United States. The Soviet Union responded by creating an effective system against the CoCom embargo. It included foreign trade organizations, KGB, GRU, industry, and the Academy of Sciences. Thousands firms were created abroad (some of them continue to operate today), billions of dollars were budgeted for these activities. This work was deemed so important that it was presided over by Yury Dmitrievich Masliukov, first deputy of the prime minister.
Masliukov's first deputy was one Leonard Vid. He also took active part in the preparation of the Politburo decision on Iran. After 1991 they parted. Masliukov became a high functionary in the CPRF (presently he is State Duma deputy) and, from time to time, held important positions in the government under Yeltsin. Leonard Vid went to private banking and became the chairman of the Alpha-Bank (retired in 2002).
Company Far West Ltd was registered in 1998 in Switzerland by a group of former GRU officers and agents (GRU--The Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff). Among them was Anton Surikov, who at that time was in charge of Masliukov's secretariat in Evgeny Primakov's government (Masliukov served as Primakov's vice-premier, 1998-99).
According to a number of open sources, Far West Ltd operates in the grayand black arms markets. It has branches in Iran and Ukraine, among other countries. The article alleges that the company has been used to cash in on some special connections that Masliukov and Vid cultivated back in the Soviet period of their careers.
Interestingly, Masliukov's business relations with Vid also continued in quite respectable areas: a significant number of military enterprises in Izhevsk and Votkins (Masliukov represents this region in the State Duma), including the factory producing the ICBMs Topolthe main weapon of Russia's strategic nuclear forceskeep their accounts in the Alpha-Bank.
Another long-time associate of Masliukov, Alexander Fain, is the General Director of the Alfa-Eco Group (biggest shareholder of Alfa-Bank). When Masliukov presided over the Soviet military-industrial complex, Fain was a chief designer at one of the enterprises engaged in a nuclear related military production. It was thanks to the efforts of Fain, supported by Masliukov, that Alfa-Group landed the contract to serve the accounts of Rosatom enterprises, including Atomstroiexport that builds the famous Busher station in Iran and another nuclear station in China (in Tianwan).
The article describes close relations between Alfa Group and the circle of Vice-President Dick Cheney. The highest level management of Alfa Group includes US citizens linked to the Anglo-American intelligence community. The leaders of Alfa Group have close contacts with Dick Cheney and the management of Halliburton.
The best known example of these relations was the $600 million credit that the Tyumen Oil Company (TNK), controlled by the consortium of Alfa Group and Access Industries Inc, received from the American Exim-Bank after the political lobbying by Dick Cheney. The deal was followed by TNC's strategic alliance with Cheney's Halliburton in the reconstruction of the huge Samotlor oil fields and the inclusion of several managers from Diligence LLC in the leadership of Alfa Group.
Diligence LLC is a so-called private military company (PMC) created by former officers of the CIA and British MI-5. In fact, it is a private intelligence service that serves the interests of the financial-industrial groups linked to the Republican party. The head of Diligence LLC, Richard Burt, is also a member of the board of directors of Alfa Capital that serves the accounts of Russia's most sensitive military-industrial companies and Rosatom.
In addition, Diligence LLC is a partner of another PMC--KBR Inc, subdivision of Halliburton.
The Conspiracy. A reconstruction.
The article reconstructs the events of 1999-2001 as follows.
In 1998-99 the neocon wing of the Republican party, led by Cheney and Rumsfeld, designed a strategy for establishing the US control over the Persian Gulf region that envisioned military interventions in Iraq and Iran. A war against Iraq was much easier to justify than against Iran because of the bad reputation of Saddam's regime after its aggression against Kuwait. To obtain a casus belli against Iran was much more problematic. There were no international sanctions against Iran and, their despite the ferocious anti-Israeli rhetoric, the Iranian leadership conducted a very cautious foreign policy, aan the Iranian intelligence services were effective. In short, presenting to UN mythic evidence of WMD in Iran would not work, real were needed. Iran had to be trapped and caught red-handed in violating the regime of non-proliferation. But how to lure Iran into the lethal trap?
According to the source, it was obvious that the WMD were to be "leaked" from the territory of the fSU. But how to convince the Iranians to take the bait? Only a private company with financial resources and unique connections could help Cheney, and this company was Alfa Group.
The Iranian leadership and intelligence knew and trusted Masliukov, Vid, and Fain. After all, they lobbied Soviet arms sales to Iran and also served the credit lines for the Busher project (Vid and Fain). They were well positioned to convince the Iranians to accept the unexpected "present." Alfa Group had a dense network of offshore companies to hide the financial transactions of the deal while Masliukov had the Far West Ltd people, experienced in black market arms deals, to carry out the operation. When the Republicans won the 2000 elections and Cheney became the vice-president, the conspiracy got under way.
The Spoiler
The operation to create a casus belli against Iran lasted over one year and was the result of a unique confluence of business and political interests of several powerful groups in the United States, Russia, Ukraine, Iran, and China. It was carried out without a hitch, and by 2002 the Cheney-Rumsfeld group had in its sleeve the joker to be used when the moment comes. Iran indeed had violated the international law on WMD and deserved a good bombing. But then something went wrong.
The Baptist pastor Alexander Turchinov was an outsider to the intelligence community and its con games. His appointment as the head of the SBU was the result of the complex and short-lasting power sharing arrangements between the orangist factions in Kiev (Turchinov is Yulia Timoshenko's man).
When Turchinov became acquainted with the SBU dossier on the KH-55 affair, he realized that it was a colossal conspiracy which painted Ukraine as a country capable for any crime if it pays, including arming with WMD the newly appointed enemies of mankind--Islamic terrorists. He was pro-American, as all orangists, but he could not agree with this role for Ukraine. So, according to the source, Turchinov began his own investigation and sent Kozhemiakin to Israel, because he knew that only the Israelis were interested in the truth. After all, no matter what would be the results of Cheney's game, the Iranian made KH-55s would be falling on Israel. Kozhemiakin and his group received a warm welcome in Israel and were given all the information known by that time. And the Israelis knew a lot.
Prior to Kozhemiakin's trip, Turchinov put some pressure on Ukrspetsexport and GUR (Ukrainian military intelligence). There were people in these establishments who knew the details of the deal. A certain bureaucratic struggle began and it was reflected in the press.
As early as in April 2005 Turchinov apparently found out that the Far West partners, Alexei Likhvintsev and Leonid Kosiakov from GUR and Valery Lysenko from Ukrspetsexport were directly linked to the KH-55 affair. There had been also new details about the role of Alfa Group, which was mentioned in the famous parliamentary inquiry of deputy Hryhoriy Omelchenko in January 2005, there surfaced also the names of two Panamanian offshore companies: Isofert Trading INC and Transchem International INC, belonging to the oligarch Viacheslav Kantor , protege of Mikhail Friedman, owner of Alpha Bank, in the Jewish Congress of Russia.
Then came the most unexpected and revealing reaction to the first publication based on Turchinov's investigation. The head of Far West Ltd, Vladimir Filin, publicly accused Valery Lysenko in receiving a huge bribe of $3 million from his company (FWL) for facilitating the secret deals of Far West Ltd with Syria and Iraq.
After this confession, it became clear that the KH-55 deal was gone public in a very different way than its organizers hoped to use it. The role of KBR Inc and Diligence LLC, who supervised the operation both in Alfa-Group and Far West Ltd, became visible, as well as Cheney's ears behind them. Turchinov requested a meeting of NSC and that was the end of his career in the SBU. The article concludes by observing the ironic outcome of Cheney's conspiracy: the Islamic Republic received the WMD thanks to US neocons and some leaders of Russia's Jewish Congress.
Burtsev.ru
Other publications (in English) on this affair from burtsev.ru (http://left.ru/burtsev/index_en.html) <http://left.ru/burtsev/index_en.html>
Filin-"El Buho" Is Getting Nervous (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filinnervous.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filinnervous.phtml>
"Consulting" Agency Far West, LLC Paid $3 Million Bribe to Ukrainian Official For Illegal Arms Deals with Syria and Iran (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/lysenko.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/lysenko.phtml>
Far West, Ltd. Leaves Europe Under the Threat of Criminal Persecution. Renamed Far West, LLC (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filin.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filin.phtml>
Far West, LLC Co-Owner, mentioned in X-55 Scandal, Accuses US Military Intelligence of Using the Hawala Network for Money Laundering and Personal Enrichment (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/hawala.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/hawala.phtml>
New Information on the Involvement of Far West, Ltd in Illegal Arms Smuggling (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/x-55en.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/x-55en.phtml>
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1 Pt. 1 <http://www.nr2.ru/kiev/93615.html/print/>, Pt.2 <http://www.nr2.ru/kiev/93830.html>, Pt. 3 <http://www.nr2.ru/dnepropetrovsk/94036.html/print/>
2 The Instrumentation Factory Plant or Department 140/16 <http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles (http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/Missile/3876_4098.html)
/Iran/Missile/3876_4098.html (http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Iran/Missile/3876_4098.html)>
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New Information on the Involvement of Far West, Ltd in Illegal Arms Smuggling:
Did Far West, Ltd. Supply SAMS Igla to Chechen Separatists?
First, we want to quote a typical piece of news about the evolving scandal with the illegal deliveries of Ukrainian cruise missiles X-55 to China and Iran. It will be followed by additional information
Ukraine Goes After Missile Dealers
http://templetonthorp.com/fr/news862
KIEV -- A Ukrainian government probe into lucrative illicit weapons sales by officials loyal to former President Leonid Kuchma has led to secret indictments or arrests of at least six arms dealers accused of selling nuclear-capable missiles destined for Russia to Iran and China, a high-ranking intelligence official said Friday.
The deals with Moscow-allied nations -- which violate international nonproliferation treaties -- put pressure on Ukraine's new president to halt the country's well-established illegal arms trades as he tries to boosts ties with and join NATO and the European Union.
President Victor Yushchenko has promised to investigate illicit weapons dealing, including a U.S. allegation that Kuchma approved the sale of a sophisticated Kolchuga radar system to Iraq despite UN sanctions against Saddam Hussein's regime. Kuchma denied the allegations.
Ukraine's intelligence agency, the State Security Service, launched its investigation of the case involving Iran and China on Feb. 14, 2004, during Kuchma's presidency. But the probe was never publicized until this week when lawmaker Hrihoriy Omelchenko -- a reserve colonel in the intelligence service -- wrote to Yushchenko asking him to pursue a full investigation. Omelchenko made his letter available to The Associated Press.
Six missiles purportedly ended up in Iran and another six allegedly went to China, although export documents known as end-user certificates recorded the final recipient of some 20 Kh-55 missiles for sale as "Russia's Defense Ministry," according to Omelchenko's letter. He did not say what happened to the eight remaining missiles.
The missiles allegedly sold to Iran were unarmed, but are designed to carry 200-kiloton nuclear warheads. Western nations have accused Iran of trying to develop a nuclear weapons program, an allegation Tehran denies. China is a declared nuclear weapons state.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko and Defense Ministry spokesman Colonel Vyacheslav Sedov said Ukraine had not informed Russia of the allegations that missiles meant for Moscow had been diverted, and that Moscow would await Ukraine's investigation. Russia's state arms export company, Rosoboronexport, declined comment.
Omelchenko's letter to Yushchenko and another to the Prosecutor General, Svyatoslav Piskun, refer to a Ukrainian Security Service report that includes details of the allegations.
At least three people were arrested and another three were indicted last year in connection with the illicit arms trade -- including some of those mentioned by name in the letters -- according to the intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
According to Omelchenko's letter, in 2000 Russian national Oleg Orlov and a Ukrainian partner identified as E.V. Shilenko "exported 20 Kh-55 cruise missiles through a fake contract and end-user certificate" with Russia's state-run arms dealer and with a firm called Progress, which is a daughter company of Ukrspetseksport -- Ukraine's weapons exporting agency.
Last year, Ukrainian prosecutors indicted Orlov and Shilenko in absentia for illegal weapons trading, the intelligence official said. Orlov was detained on July 13 in the Czech Republic.
There is an ongoing extradition procedure to return Orlov to Ukraine for possible prosecution, a spokesman for the Czech Justice Ministry, Petr Dimun, confirmed Friday. Dimun said the procedures were interrupted recently because Orlov suffered a stroke and was hospitalized, although he was "recovering well."
Shilenko remains at large, said Omelchenko's letter, which also notes an attempt on Orlov's life, saying: "The physical elimination of Orlov in a Czech prison was prevented."
The State Security Service has also issued an official inquiry about a Cyprus-based Russian man identified in the letters as G. K. Shkinov, who also remains at large.
"The law enforcement bodies of that country [Cyprus] are performing an investigation," Omelchenko wrote.
Another three Ukrainians were detained last year in connection with the deal, and the case was forwarded to a Kiev court, Omelchenko wrote.
Orlov is reputed to be a prominent weapons broker. In its 2001 report, the UN Security Council implicated Orlov and his Cyprus- and Dubai-based EMM Arab Systems Ltd. in sanctions busting related with ferrying weapons and supplies to Angola's rebel UNITA group. The Kh-55, known in the West as the AS-15, has a range of 2,975 kilometers and is designed to carry a nuclear warhead with a 200-kiloton yield. Iran does not operate long-range bombers but it is believed it could adapt its Soviet-built Su-24 strike aircraft to launch the missile. The missile's range would put Israel and a number of U.S. allies in the region within reach.
Ukrainian weapons dealers ferried missiles to China through a Ukraine-based cargo company run by a former secret service agent, the letters said. Omelchenko also said in 2001 that weapons dealers sent ground targeting systems, maintenance equipment and missile technicians to Iran.
Profits from the sales were estimated at $2.1 million or more, the letters said.
Valery Malev, the head of Ukrspetseksport, has also been implicated in the deals. But he died in 2002 in Ukraine when his car collided with a truck. Police concluded he fell asleep behind the wheel, but many speculate his car had been tampered with.
"Valery Malev, the head of Ukrspetseksport, knew that missiles were not exported to Russia but to third countries and with forged documents," Omelchenko wrote.
A multimillion-dollar deal involving sales of oil-processing equipment to Iran was used as a mask for the sales, Omelchenko's letters claim. They add that a Cyprus-based company, S.H. Heritage Holding Ltd., and Iran-based Satak Co. Ltd. of NIOC were involved in the concealment. Internet search and telephone inquiries turned up no information about the companies.
S.H. Heritage owner Haider Sarfraz, an Australian national, died in a 2004 car accident, the letters claim. They do not specify where the accident occurred.
Although Ukraine in the 1990s renounced the nuclear armaments it inherited in the Soviet breakup, the country remains a sizable producer of weapons including missiles, aircraft and tanks.
The country has also remained under scrutiny for its murky weapons deals. In 2000, the United States accused Ukraine of selling infantry weapons to Afghanistan's Taliban regime. Russia has charged Ukraine with doing the same for Chechen rebels.
In 2001, Kuchma acknowledged that $32 billion worth of Ukrainian military hardware had found its way illegally into international markets during the 1990s. Last year, Ukrainian police arrested four men from Greece, Pakistan and Iraq, on suspicion of attempted illegal weapons trade and hiring mercenaries in a deal worth more than $800 million for an unspecified force fighting in Iraq.
In March 2004, former Defense Minister Yevhen Marchuk warned that several hundred SA-2 surface-to-air missiles brought to Ukraine for decommissioning were unaccounted for, due to "accounting problems" and "the absence of records."
(The Moscow Times 07.02.05)
Comments by burtsev.ru
Let us begin with several details omitted in this article.
Company "Progress" was paid by the US firm "TECHNOCALITY, INC"
for the delivery of 6 X-55 to China in April 2000: in May the firm transferred $600, 000 to "Central European International Bank" (Budapest) received by "Progress". In its turn TECHNOCALITY, INC received from two Cyprus firms $500,000 (from Investworld, Ltd) and $200,000 (from EMM ARAB SYSTEMS, Ltd)
for the delivery in May 2001 of six X-55 and the system KHO-120 to Iran, TECHNOCALITY, INC paid to PROGRESS $800,000. As a cover up they used a fictive contract between the Iranian firm SATAK Co. Ltd. of NIOC and the companyS. H. Heritage Holding, Ltd. owned by Haider Sarfrazand registered in Cyprus. The contract was allegedly for delivery to Iran equipment for oil distilleries. The Iranians had one condition: regular technical service of these missiles. In 2002-2003 Ukrainian military specialists made trips to Iran for this purpose.
The information and what follows is from the piece published in January 4 2006 at the forums of compromat.ru and pravda.info. i
"The Ukrainian public learned about these swindles in spring 2005 from the Prosecutor Genera Stanislav Piskun and the SBU Director Alexander Turchinov. Victor Yushchenko confirmed their statements 'with bitterness.' But already in September 2005 Piskun and Turchinov had to leave their posts. However, according to the source close to Turchinov, the ex-Director continues to monitor the situation.
The collected information allows to expand the information, already made public by the press, about the role of the middleman company FAR WEST LTD with headquarters in Switzerland and the two offshores in Panama: ISOFERT TRADING COMPANY INC and TRANSCHEM INTERNATIONAL INC. ii
According to this information, the opening of the criminal investigation in February 2004 was prompted by the documents which came from Germany. In October 2003, the Ukrainian businessman Sergei Petrov, iii formerly one of the CIOs of FAR WEST, LTD, turned to German law enforcement agencies. He accused his former companions in arms smuggling in violation of international agreements and sanctions. iv Specifically, Petrov revealed the shipment of portable SAMs "Igla" to FARC in exchange to 600 kilograms of cocaine in August 2002 through Brazil. Incidentally, one of the participants of this deal was soon after blown up in the suburbs of Moscow. v
Another episode relates to illegal shipments of light arms, mortars and ammunition from Belorussia to Kosovo and Palestinian Autonomy in 2001. These arms were immediately used by the Albanians in the ethnic conflict in Macedonia and by the Palestinians against Israel.
Petrov also revealed the details of deals with X-55. According to his testimony [sic], out of six missiles shipped to China (with technical documentation) three were meant for Pakistan. Besides their payments to PROGRESS, the Chinese transferred $3 million through Cyprus to one of the Panamanian offshores, while Pakistan transferred to another offshore $4 million from Karachi. In case of Iran, besides payments to PROGRESS, the executors [of the deal] in Dubai received two tons of golden ingots. These ingots were taken from Kuwait to Iraq in 1990, and in December 2002, on the eve of US military operation, were shipped to Iran.
Petrov also revealed a number of arms smuggling episodes in the 1990s, such as:
- arms deliveries to the former Yugoslavia from the Western Army Group of Russia, Ukraine, and Belorussia.
- arms deliveries to Yemen (through Chechnya in May-June 1994) and some African countries with armed conflicts. vi
- arms deliveries to Taliban in Afghanistan in exchange to heroin.
- arms shipments to Saddam Hussein through Belorussia and Syria.
- arms deliveries to Chechen fighters, including a big party of AK rifles from Izhevsk in 1995 and a party of SAMs "Igla" from Ukraine in 1997.
Besides, Petrov informed about the mechanisms of corrupt lobbying for legal arms sales in 1995-2001 from Ukraine and Belorussia of aviation to Yemen, Sudan, and Peru, and tanks to Sudan and Pakistan. In response to Petrov's information, in December 2003 German special services, together with their French colleagues, interrogated the head of Far West Ltd. Vladimir Filin, his deputies Yakov Kosman and Sultan Suleimenov and the board members Alexei Likhvintsev, Anton Surikov, and Venezuelan citizen Alfonso Davidovich. They denied all allegations and explained them by Petrov's mental illness.
A month later Petrov was killed (blown up in his car) in SA. Simultaneously, the Iran-Australian middleman Haider Sarfraz was killed in a strange car accident, while driving in the defective car of his Turkish companion Ugur Mekhmed [sic] (aka Ruslan Saidov), a member of the Far West Ltd leadership. But by that time the Germans lost interest to this case having given the information about it to SBU."
This was the part concerning FWL. Here follows the information about Orlov and the Americans. Note that in the piece in The Moscow Times contains not a single word about the US connection.
"SBU arrested Evdokimov and announced international search for Orlov and Shilenko. The last has disappeared without a trace. As to Orlov, he lived in Karlovy Vara until August 2004, before he attempted to flee from Czechia to Dubai through Frankfurt. It appears that during those several months [in Chechnya] Orlov bargained with the CIA. His attempt to escape failed. He was apprehended.
Apparently, during one and half year since his arrest, the Americans were able to come to an agreement with Orlov. According to a source close to Turchinov, he was promised a minimal sentence in Ukraine where he apparently will be deported. Orlov will give testimony agreed upon with the CIA, which will not politically harm the United States.
Specifically, Orlov will tell about the "gray" deliveries of SAMs "Igla" and the anti-tank systems 9K11 "Fagot" to Georgia from Ukraine through Bulgaria in summer 2004, on the eve of his arrest. It is possible that this deal was meant as a cover for another, when in March 2004 a large party of SAMs "Igla" was sold to Syria from Ukraine through Georgia and Lebanon. It was paid for by one Islamist foundation in Saudi Arabia.
Another topic is the lobbying of legal arms deals with "problem" countries, allegedly also known to Orlov. Specifically, it concerns the corrupted mechanisms of access to the highest levels of power in Moscow for Venezuela, Iran, Yemen, Syria, and Sudan, labeled "outlaw regimes" by Washington. Already after Orlov's arrest, Russia delivered fighter planes MIG-29 to Sudan and Yemen, and began deliveries of light arms to Venezuela, and signed contracts with Iran and Syria for sales of AA systems. Orlov's trial will be full of scandal."
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i The owner of compromat.ru, Sergei Gorshkov, removed this information from the board several days later without explanations.
ii On the connection between Far West, Ltd. and these banks, see: http://ru.obkom.net.ua/articles/2005-11/15.1647.shtml?rss
iii On Sergei Petrov (aka Serge Rodin), see: his intervew <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/petrov_en.phtml> and his secretely recorded conversation with the leaders of Far West Ltd. <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/bristol_en.phtml>
iv See Petrov's interview at http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/petrov_en.phtml
v His name was Mikhail Vunsh, the owner of the big company OMNIFUD, importer of "Bush's legs." His car was blown on December 2 2002. The driver and the guard were also killed. Vunsh was close to Petrov and Roman Tsepov, both killed in 2004. According top one source, they wanted to split from Filin and take control of cocaine deliveries through Petersburg port. On Vunsh's death , see: http://www.vremya.ru/2002/223/3/29858.html
vi On deliveries to Aden, Yemen, see: http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml
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Far West, LLC Co-Owner, mentioned in X-55 Scandal, Accuses US Military Intelligence of Using the Hawala Network for Money Laundering and Personal Enrichment
Mr. Ruslan Saidov (Turkish passport in the name of Ugur Mehmed)--Major of GRU 1 in reserve and co-owner of the "consulting" agency Far West LLC (formerly Far West Ltd)--has recently accused the high ranking officer of US military intelligence (DIA) Colonel Caleb Temple and his colleagues of running a heroin operation in the Near East and using the hawala money-transfer system for money laundering.
Just as his business partner Vladimir Filin 2 , Ruslan Saidov has emerged in public domain only recently from that murky anonymous zone where for the last fifteen years or so, former officers of Soviet secret services have been converting their expertise and connections into wealth, power, and more connections. What is different about Saidov is that this son of a high-ranking party apparatchik, known for his militant atheism, is a hardcore convert to Muslim fundamentalism and thought to be a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood's Special Organization in the former Soviet Union. 3
It may seem that Mr. Saidov's credentials make him an unlikely partner of DIA, the CIA, Mossad, MI6 and similar pillars of the Western security state. But the world of late imperialism creates most strange bedfellows. Especially when things concern Russia, or the Soviet Union before it. Suffices it to recall the well-documented alliance of Islamic fundamentalists, Osama bin Laden's Maktab al-Khidimat, and the choicest set of Afghan drug lords with the land of the free in the 1980s. Imperialism's war on international terrorism includes imperialism's use of international terrorism as its proxy for war against Russia. In this war people like Saidov and his friends are invaluable assets. Thus, according to one source, the CIA contracted Saidov for the liquidation of Abu al-Walid in 2004, when this officer of Saudi General Intelligence Service was about to leave Chechnya with his men and possibly join the Resistence in Iraq. 4 Recently, however, Saidov's and his Far West, Ltd partner's relations with Western intelligence came under the stress of Oleg Orlov's affair and the information about Far West, Ltd involvement in illegal arms smuggling, including the sale of Ukrainian X-55 cruise missiles to Iran and China. 5 Perhaps, this explains Saidov's recent leak about the involvement of US intelligence services in heroin trade and money laundering. Saidov's (and his FWL partners') own expertise in these activities has been recently the subject of substantial interest in Russian press, including the journalistic investigation by burtsev.ru in the course of which our intelligence source was killed. 6 What follows is an excerpt from Saidov's article about the recent reports in British press that Iran provides training camps for Chechen terrorists. 7 We hope that this information can be of interest to researches and all people of good will who believe that something is terribly wrong with the world where under the pretext of state security, cliques, unaccountable to the people, run amok and bring us ever closer to the brink of mutual annihilation.
Research group burtsev.ru
02.01.06
<...>
The hypocrisy of Western politicians and propagandists is well known. Just consider the public statements by US officials that hawala (a Muslim form of money transfers based on trust) is the most important money-transfer service used for financing terrorists and includes the financial and the banking systems of Dubai and Pakistan, where allegedly regulation and control of financial markets are practically non-existent. This is what the senior officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Caleb Temple, told about the mechanism of hawala. He alleged that the money, moved through hawala, come from Syria (from smuggling), as well as from wealthy extremists and charities in Europe and the Middle East. Supposedly, also U.S. money is moved, by way of hawala, to terrorists in Iraq. 8
It is noteworthy that Americans do not mention that smuggling through Syria and Lebanon comes through the US occupied Iraq where it is brought by US military transport planes from Afghanistan via the US base in Qatar. In the Sunni Triangle the agents of US secret services give this smuggled goods, or, to put it simply, the Afghan heroin, to those very terrorists who they supposedly fight, but in reality provoke religious strife between the Iraqi Sunni and Shiia communities. As to the money which Colonel Temple's colleagues in DIA and the CIA receive for their part in heroin traffic through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, they laundry this money exactly through hawala in Pakistan and Dubai. I can even name those who do this and through what financial institutions.
So the Americans will be well advised to think before making statements about Syria, hawala, Iran, or, for instance, about the Philippines terrorist organization Abu-Sayyaf. After all, this organization was created in the early 1990s by the Philippine military intelligence closely supervised by DIA and the CIA. As it was proved in the Philippines court, this organization was for a long time headed by an officer of this military intelligence. It was also established that several years prior to 9/11 this officer discussed in Manila plans for an aerial attack against the WTC Towers not with the representatives of Osama bin Laden, but with one ultra-right US organization, whose member, Timothy McVeigh, soon afterwards blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing hundreds of people. This discussion was conducted on the initiative of the Americans. 9
End quote.
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1 GRURussian abbreviation for the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of Defense Ministry.
2 On Vladimir Filin, see our publication Narcobarons from the CIA and MI-6. Interview with Vladimir Filin (http://left.ru/inter/2005/narkobarons.phtml) and also the so-called Yasenev's Memo (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml) and Peter Dale Scott's pathbreaking essay The Global Drug Meta-Group:Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11. Lobster. The Journal of Parapolitics: <http://lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>
3 Sources on Saidov's career and biography include Yasenev's Memo (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml) (English), Conversations with Armen (http://left.ru/2006/2/razgovory136.phtml) (Russian), Saidov's Rehersal (http://left.ru/2005/15/rehersal132.phtml) (Russian), Saidov's own article Beslan oplachen na Rublevke (http://www.pravda.info/kompromat/3880.html) (Russian).
4 Yasenev's Memo, (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml) also quoted in Peter Dale Scott The Global Drug Meta-GroupDrugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11
5 New Information on the Involvement of Far West, Ltd in Illegal Arms Smuggling (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/x-55en.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/x-55en.phtml>
6 The officer of Russian military intelligence Armen Sarkisian was killed on July 27, 2005 in Dagestan. See Conversations with Armen (http://left.ru/2006/2/razgovory136.phtml) (Russian)
7 Ruslan Saidov, Information of British Media that Iran trains Chechens in terrorism Is 100% Lie. Pravda.info, 11.29.05: http://forum.msk.ru/material/news/5275.html
8 Apparently, Saidov refers to Caleb Temple as quoted in The Invisible Bankers. By Michael Freedman, 10.17.05. Forbes.com <http://www.forbes.com/business/global/2005/1017/024A.html>
9 On Terry Nichols' (McVeigh's accomplice) contacts in Manila, see Timothy McVeigh and the Marketing of Osama Bin Laden. By Chaim Kupferberg at <http://globalresearch.ca/articles/KUP310C.html >
Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa
http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/davidovich.jpg Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa. Photo courtesy Pravda-info From the dossier compiled by burtsev.ru
1.The first reference to Alfonso Davidovich occurs in the articles on the conspiracy in Cote d'Azur, published in of 1999-2000 in Russian. The first article was published by the tabloid Versiya on August 3, 1999. According to the article, signed by Andrei Batumskii, the information came from French intelligence and a French professor,a well-known political scientist, specialist on Russian defense, security and organized crime. He is well-known by the work he contracts from French government, including French counterintelligence.
In the second article of July 4, 2000, Versiya added to its sources Israeli intelligence.
According to this information--it was clarified in the second Versiya article a year later--a Venezuelan banker Alfonso Davidovich settled at Adnan Hashoggis villa in Boulier in June 1999, together with his young black female secretary. In Latin American press, he is said to be responsible for laundering the funds of the Columbian left insurrection organization FARC, which carries out an armed struggle with the official authorities, supported by the narcotics business.
2.The above information about Davidovich was quoted by John Dunlop in Storm in Moscow (October 2004, http://www.sais-jhu.edu/programs/res/papers/Dunlop paper.pdf). To this Dunlop adds a bit of new information from the so-called Yasenevs memo (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml) at compromat.ru, that was published only two months after Dunlops essay (?!). Dunlops footnote says: The article Rossiyu zhdet oranzhevaya revolytsiya, compormat.ru, 17 December 2004 reports that Davidovich lives in Munich and enjoys both German and Venezuelan citizenship. He is also said to be personally acquainted with international arms dealer Khashoggi. 1
Note: In Versiyas and Dunlops articles, Davidovichs last name Ochoa is not mentioned. Armen Sarkisian observed that the first time the surname Ochoa was added to Alfonso Davidovich in the Pravda.info announcement of May 3, 2005 (http://www.pravda.info/news/2695.html) about the meeting of the board of directors of Far West, Ltd. That took place in hotel Ritz Carlton in Dubai on May 2. At this meeting FWL and Pravda.info exchanged assets (whatever it means) and the Venezuelan political scientists Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa was mentioned as the member of the FWL board of directors and the editorial board of Pravda.info. His photo was attached to this announcement.
3.According to Armen Sarkisian, he saw a few neutral references to Davidovich and Lybia on German sites several years ago, then they disappeared from the Web.
4.Information on Davidovich in the documents published at compromat.ru in 2003-04.
Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa, b. 1948. Venezuelan. His grandfather was from Kiev. Has German and Venezuelan citizenship. For the last 10 years resides in Munich. Owns banks and companies in the Barbados, the Caymans, and other offshores. It was said that in 1999 Davidovich was accused in press of smuggling arms to Zapatistas and money laundering for Colombian mafia. Finances anti-globalization movement.
In 1977 he went through special training in the GRU school in Privolnoe (Nikolaevskaya oblast) USSR, and in East Germany. Has friendly relations with Hugo Chavez, and is acquainted with Fidel Castro, Marcus Wolf and Adnan Hashoggi. Has many contacts in Colombia, including FARC.
5. Latest Information about Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa
According to one anonymous source, Davidovich manages 30% of Far West, Ltd voting stock which belongs to Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (Venezuela). 2
From Conversations with Armen
"In 1977 he [Davidovich] came to USSR in a group of six Cubans. He had a passport in the name of Jose Rodriguez, Captain of the Cuban Army. From 1981 to 1988 he visited the SU four times: three times as Jose Alva, Colombian citizen, one as Cuban Jose Rodriguez. That last time he accompanied General Arnaldo Ochoa. From 1995 to 2005 he visited Russia six times under his real name in his German passport."
[The FARC connection strongly bothered us and I told Armen about this. Here is his answer.]
The information about FARC participating in the OPS business has been confirmed. 3 Lets not idealize this organization. There are different people in FARC and they have problems with financing. Also recall the trial of the Cuban generals Francisco [sic] Ochoa and De La Guardia. Ten or fifteen years ago they were sentenced by a Cuban court and executed for smuggling cocaine from Colombia to the US through Cuba. (There was much information about this trial, including in the official Cuban press. Fidel Castro talk about that). Another matter, that the US, while accusing FARC of protecting narcobusiness, does not say anything about the ultra-right death squadrons, the police and the Colombian army whose share in narcotrafficking is much bigger than FARCs.
I spoke to man who knows Latin American problems and the real reasons for Filins stay in Colombia in 1988-90 on Gusevs orders. 4 This is what he told me. Since the 1970s Gusev was acquainted with the Cuban General Arnaldo Ochoa. They met in Angola and Ethiopia. When in 1988-89 Fidel Castro decided to liquidate the Ochoade la Guardia business, their men in Colombia, together with their contacts within FARC, began to restructure narcotraffic. Ochoa, at that time not yet under arrest, asked General Gusev for technical assistance. Filins trip was related to this, though overtly he went to Colombia on a different assignment. It was at this time that Filin got acquainted with Davidovich (Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa) who served as a liaisonin the triangle: Arnaldo Ochoahis agents in FARCPablo Escobar and the brothers Ochoa (namesakes of the general and Davidovich) from the Medellin Cartel.
In addition, Davidovich always had direct access to Gusev since he had gone through training in the USSR. My interlocutor told me that some of Arnaldo Ochoas men have continued in the Colombian guerrilla organizations until the present day and formed the basis for the Colombian scheme of the OPS. 5
Armen continues on Davidovich and FARC in another message:
One of my acquaintances saw the information on the Ochoa--La Guardia affair that Castro sent to the Soviets. According to this information, the organized criminal society was formed by Ochoa and La Guardia in the early 1980s and included elements from the Cuban army and secret services. Some of them were in Colombia, in FARC. Arnaldo Ochoa ordered them to organize a channel for cocaine traffic to the United States. His agents and their Colombian associates (or agents) made an agreement with Medellin cartel to ship cocaine to Cuba by sea or air. From Cuba, Ochoa and La Guardia shipped this cocaine to the United States, either to Miami, where Ochoa had his agents in the emigre community, or to Nicaragua (where Ochoa also had his men) and then through Honduras by air to the States. According to Castros information, for this operation Arnaldo Ochoa and La Guardia established business contacts with the CIA agents. After the trial in Havana, Castro attempted to recall Ochoas men in FARC, Miami, and Nicaragua in order to put them on trial. But they disobeyed and went out of the Cuban command. This was the reason that Castro gave to the Soviet leadership for his drastic cuts in the Cuban financing of FARC. According to my acquaintance, it was then that FARC went to self-financing.
Davidovich finances anti-globalization movement. (!?)
Vadim: I just dont understand: What for Davidovich would support antiglobalist movement and in such a way that nobody knows about that?
Armen: Ask yourself: Why Davidovich supports antiglobalist Kagarlitsky? I am not a specialist in world antiglobalism, but I suppose that those whom he supports are antiglobalists of the same sort as Kagarlitsky. This is called hostile penetration with the goal of taking control.
On IPROG and Venezuela. 6
Armen wrote:
"At Surikovs request, Davidovich helped Kagarlitsky and Glinchikova to infiltrate Hugo Chavezs circle. Perhaps they got acquainted with Chavezs assistants on their own, but it was Davidovich who recommended that Venezuelans work closely with IPROG. That included Chavezs appearance at the meeting organized by Kagarlitsky during Chavezs visit in Moscow. The Russians, through their diplomatic channels, tried to dissuade the Venezuelans from this meeting. But [Davidovichs] lobbying was so strong that it almost came to a scandal."
Vadim: "Is that so? I recently heard rumors that there were plans to assassinate Chavez. Could Glinchikova by chance be involved in this :)) Anyway I hope Chavezs security service knows about Surikovs US connections. Troubles of this kind can come from unexpected directions."
"From the very beginning, the OPS was intended for profitable criminal activities. Money is all for them . As to politics, it is used to help their business. Look at these two articles from the vantage point of their 'commercial interest.' Surikov's 'The Real President (http://www.zavtra.ru/cgi/veil/data/zavtra/04/577/62.html)' was published in December 2004, when the preparations for the Russian-Venezuelan deal sell Kalashnikov rifles was close to completion. The middleman was Davidovich. The amount of the deal - $40-50 million. Clearly, the OPS was very interested to get in favor with Chavez at that time. One way to achieve this is to praise him in press. According to our information, right after 'The Real President' was published Surikov told Kagarlitsky to get it translated and take to Venezuelan Embassy. Afterwards, when Kagarlitsly with Glinchikova went to Caracas he took the translation with him and showed it to Chavez' advisers. In other words, the addressee of Surikov's article was the Venezuelans, rather than our leftists about whom Surikov does not give a damn (that was before his "Kasianov" project)."
On Davidovichs functions within the OPS
Armen: "Davidovich is responsible for FWL representation in Colombia, they have office in Bogot. He is also responsible for Venezuela. OPS needs Venezuela for trafficking."
"The distribution of responsibilities in the OPS as follows. Filin, partly Likhvintsev, Davidovich, and Kosman, the four of them are at the top and excersize general leadership. Filin is responsible for the headquarters of Far West, Ltd. in Switzerland. Filin and Davidovich are responsible for purchasing cocaine in Colombia and the FLW office in Bogot.Likhvintsev is responsible for cocaine traffic through the port of St. Petersburg and its delivery to the Azeris. Saidov is in contact with Jamaat Shariat and is responsible for purchasing Afghan heroin coming through Turkmenistan to Dagestan. He is also responsible for the port of Novorossiisk and the FWL office in the Crimea. Surikov is responsible for contacts with Hizb-ut-Tahrir in Udmurtia, Tatarstan and Bashkiria, as well as for purchasing there the Afghan heroin that comes through Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. He is also responsible for the FWL office in Izhevsk 7 and for shipping of "special merchandise" (i.e.,. heroin - burtsev.ru) to the port of Novorossiisk (for this he uses the Adygei ethnic criminal group). Kosman is responsible for the transfer of the heroine, delivered to Europe from the Novorossiisk, to Kosovo Albanians in Mediterranean and for the FWL office in Kosovo. Filin, Kosman, and Davidovich are responsible for financial transactions related to drug trafficking and for laundering the proceeds in Caribbean offshores. Saidov is responsible for financial transactions and money laundering in the Gulf and for the FLW office in Dubai. Filin and Likhvintsev are in communication with their accomplices in their former directorate (GRU - burtsev.ru). Likhvintsev is in contact with their "protection" at "the top" (in the Kremlin - burtsev.ru). Butkevichius supervises the FWL office in Georgia and is responsible for the OPS communication with Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili. Surikov is responsible for receiving intelligence from the corrupted officers of secret services about the information which these services gather about the OPS and their competitors. Surikov (and Baranov) is also responsible for politics, informational campaigns in mass media (presently Filin, Saidov, and Roeva also take part in these activities) and for communication with YUKOS (through Kondaurov). Lunev is responsible for physical actions against their opponents. He is also responsible for the FWL offices in Iraq and Afghanistan and for their business there with KBR/Halliburton (formerly headed by Dick Cheney), hiring for them mercenaries. They closed their office in Angola. Before, Likvintsev was responsible for it. Filin and Surikov are responsible for their connections in the United States, Davidovich with Venezuela, Saidov with Saudi Arabia, Saidov and Surikov with Turkey, Saidov with the Chechens and Hizb ut-Tahrir in Central Asia."
On Davidovich and Russian Arms Sale to Venezuela
From Zurab Sikharulidze 8 :
Ochoa visited Izhevsk [where the Kalashnikovs are made] in connection with the sale of 100,000 Kalashnikovs AK-130 for $40 million. The manufacturer is the Izhevsk factory Izhmash.
He was accompanied by Vladimir Filin, Alexei Likhvintsev and Anton Surikov. Surikov comes to our city often, because he oversees the office of Far West Ltd. In Udmurtia,Tatarstan, and Bashkiria (Natalia Roeva is in charge of this office).
Armen's last Message
Final Information
From Armen, 21:25:50 17/07/2005
For the time being this is the last communication from us.
1. Fritz Ermarth is indeed the most important contact of the OPS in the United States. 9
2. According to our source who knows the situation with the foreign assets of the OPS, in 2000 up to 90 percent of their assets were in Europe (Switzerland, Luxembourg, England, and France) and in offshores - former British colonies in the Western hemisphere.
Recently (apparently being afraid of having problems in the West, what Filin and Surikov have been writing about lately) the OPS had transfered up to two thirds of their assets to the Gulf (Dubai, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia). Another 20 percent has been moved to South America (Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela), Turkey and Ukraine. Only less than 15 percent of all their assets still remain in England, Switzerland and Caribbean offshores. They have moved everything from France and Luxembourg.In the United States and Russia they never had any serious assets. 10
One can judge from this information on what external powers (besides the United States) they depend.
3.Audrius Butkevichius was a military adviser to the late Laurent Kabila, when he was coming to power in the late 1990s in Zaire-Congo.
On this we temporarily stop our communication with you. We are waiting for your publications and wish you success.
Armen and Zurab
??????????
1 On Dunlop's suppression of the explosive contents of Yasenev's Memo, see Peter Dale Scott, The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11 <http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>
2 "Swiss: O??? "Far West Ltd" ? ????????? ??????" <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/sanitarlesa.phtml>
3 OPS - Russian abbreviation for Organized Criminal Society.
4 Vladimir Ilyich Filin (b. 1959)-- Russian military oligarch, the "Head of the Board of Directors" of Far West, LLC (formerly Far West ,Ltd) allegedly the leader of the international criminal society, formed by a group of former officers and agents of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff (GRU) in the early 1990s. More on this society, see Peter Dale Scott, The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11 <http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>
5 General Yuri Gusev was the second in command in GRU. He was the "godfather" of OPS, died in 1992 in a strange car accident in Moscow. Vladimir Filin, the brain of the OPS and the president of FWL, took over after Gusev's death. It was Filin with who Armen and Zurab talked in Switzerland.
6 IPROG -- Institute for Globalization Studies (Moscow), established by Mikhail Deliagin, Mikhail Kasianov's associate, in 2000. Since 2002 its director is Boris Kagarlitsky, well-known in the West as leftist. According to some sources, IPROG has been financed by Berezovsky, YUKOS, and Far West, Ltd. Three directors and owners of FWL, Vladimir Filin, Ruslan Saidov, and Anton Surikov, are listed at the IPROG masthead (http://www.iprog.ru/cast/) as "experts," "historians," and "senior researchers."
7 Izhevsk -- the capital city of Udmurtia and the site of Izhmash, one of the biggest arm manufacturer in Russia. One of the strongholds of the OPS.
8 Zurab Sikharulidze, officer in Armen's unit, assigned to investigate the activities of Far West, Ltd. in Udmurtia, where it is said to be involved in drug trafficking, arms smuggling, and organizing underground cells of the extremist Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir. Apparently was stationed in the city of Izhevsk. Together with another officer of their unit, Mikhail Konovalov, was fired from the service and blacklisted in August 2006 after the murder of Armen Sarkisian.
9 Fritz Ermarth - a "nuclear whiz kid" and a master of intelligence con game has been an influential figure in the US intelligence community for the last 20-25 years. Served in the CIA, NSC, and NIC. Officially retired in 1998. Said to have 5 percent of voting stock in Far West, Ltd. Long-time associate of Anton Surikov.
10 This information has been recently confirmed by Vladimir Filin, who announced the withdrawl of FWL from Europe, citing the fear of criminal persecution by US law enforcement for the alleged participation of FWL in the illegal sale of X-55 cruise missiles to Iran and China in 2001. See: "The CIA and Israeli Intelligence Conduct Big Operation." By Vladimir Filin < http://forum.msk.ru/material/fpolitic/7221.html >
Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa
http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/davidovich.jpg Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa. Photo courtesy Pravda-info From the dossier compiled by burtsev.ru
1.The first reference to Alfonso Davidovich occurs in the articles on the conspiracy in Cote d'Azur, published in of 1999-2000 in Russian. The first article was published by the tabloid Versiya on August 3, 1999. According to the article, signed by Andrei Batumskii, the information came from French intelligence and a French professor,a well-known political scientist, specialist on Russian defense, security and organized crime. He is well-known by the work he contracts from French government, including French counterintelligence.
In the second article of July 4, 2000, Versiya added to its sources Israeli intelligence.
According to this information--it was clarified in the second Versiya article a year later--a Venezuelan banker Alfonso Davidovich settled at Adnan Hashoggis villa in Boulier in June 1999, together with his young black female secretary. In Latin American press, he is said to be responsible for laundering the funds of the Columbian left insurrection organization FARC, which carries out an armed struggle with the official authorities, supported by the narcotics business.
2.The above information about Davidovich was quoted by John Dunlop in Storm in Moscow (October 2004, http://www.sais-jhu.edu/programs/res/papers/Dunlop paper.pdf). To this Dunlop adds a bit of new information from the so-called Yasenevs memo (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml) at compromat.ru, that was published only two months after Dunlops essay (?!). Dunlops footnote says: The article Rossiyu zhdet oranzhevaya revolytsiya, compormat.ru, 17 December 2004 reports that Davidovich lives in Munich and enjoys both German and Venezuelan citizenship. He is also said to be personally acquainted with international arms dealer Khashoggi. 1
Note: In Versiyas and Dunlops articles, Davidovichs last name Ochoa is not mentioned. Armen Sarkisian observed that the first time the surname Ochoa was added to Alfonso Davidovich in the Pravda.info announcement of May 3, 2005 (http://www.pravda.info/news/2695.html) about the meeting of the board of directors of Far West, Ltd. That took place in hotel Ritz Carlton in Dubai on May 2. At this meeting FWL and Pravda.info exchanged assets (whatever it means) and the Venezuelan political scientists Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa was mentioned as the member of the FWL board of directors and the editorial board of Pravda.info. His photo was attached to this announcement.
3.According to Armen Sarkisian, he saw a few neutral references to Davidovich and Lybia on German sites several years ago, then they disappeared from the Web.
4.Information on Davidovich in the documents published at compromat.ru in 2003-04.
Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa, b. 1948. Venezuelan. His grandfather was from Kiev. Has German and Venezuelan citizenship. For the last 10 years resides in Munich. Owns banks and companies in the Barbados, the Caymans, and other offshores. It was said that in 1999 Davidovich was accused in press of smuggling arms to Zapatistas and money laundering for Colombian mafia. Finances anti-globalization movement.
In 1977 he went through special training in the GRU school in Privolnoe (Nikolaevskaya oblast) USSR, and in East Germany. Has friendly relations with Hugo Chavez, and is acquainted with Fidel Castro, Marcus Wolf and Adnan Hashoggi. Has many contacts in Colombia, including FARC.
5. Latest Information about Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa
According to one anonymous source, Davidovich manages 30% of Far West, Ltd voting stock which belongs to Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. (Venezuela). 2
From Conversations with Armen
"In 1977 he [Davidovich] came to USSR in a group of six Cubans. He had a passport in the name of Jose Rodriguez, Captain of the Cuban Army. From 1981 to 1988 he visited the SU four times: three times as Jose Alva, Colombian citizen, one as Cuban Jose Rodriguez. That last time he accompanied General Arnaldo Ochoa. From 1995 to 2005 he visited Russia six times under his real name in his German passport."
[The FARC connection strongly bothered us and I told Armen about this. Here is his answer.]
The information about FARC participating in the OPS business has been confirmed. 3 Lets not idealize this organization. There are different people in FARC and they have problems with financing. Also recall the trial of the Cuban generals Francisco [sic] Ochoa and De La Guardia. Ten or fifteen years ago they were sentenced by a Cuban court and executed for smuggling cocaine from Colombia to the US through Cuba. (There was much information about this trial, including in the official Cuban press. Fidel Castro talk about that). Another matter, that the US, while accusing FARC of protecting narcobusiness, does not say anything about the ultra-right death squadrons, the police and the Colombian army whose share in narcotrafficking is much bigger than FARCs.
I spoke to man who knows Latin American problems and the real reasons for Filins stay in Colombia in 1988-90 on Gusevs orders. 4 This is what he told me. Since the 1970s Gusev was acquainted with the Cuban General Arnaldo Ochoa. They met in Angola and Ethiopia. When in 1988-89 Fidel Castro decided to liquidate the Ochoade la Guardia business, their men in Colombia, together with their contacts within FARC, began to restructure narcotraffic. Ochoa, at that time not yet under arrest, asked General Gusev for technical assistance. Filins trip was related to this, though overtly he went to Colombia on a different assignment. It was at this time that Filin got acquainted with Davidovich (Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa) who served as a liaisonin the triangle: Arnaldo Ochoahis agents in FARCPablo Escobar and the brothers Ochoa (namesakes of the general and Davidovich) from the Medellin Cartel.
In addition, Davidovich always had direct access to Gusev since he had gone through training in the USSR. My interlocutor told me that some of Arnaldo Ochoas men have continued in the Colombian guerrilla organizations until the present day and formed the basis for the Colombian scheme of the OPS. 5
Armen continues on Davidovich and FARC in another message:
One of my acquaintances saw the information on the Ochoa--La Guardia affair that Castro sent to the Soviets. According to this information, the organized criminal society was formed by Ochoa and La Guardia in the early 1980s and included elements from the Cuban army and secret services. Some of them were in Colombia, in FARC. Arnaldo Ochoa ordered them to organize a channel for cocaine traffic to the United States. His agents and their Colombian associates (or agents) made an agreement with Medellin cartel to ship cocaine to Cuba by sea or air. From Cuba, Ochoa and La Guardia shipped this cocaine to the United States, either to Miami, where Ochoa had his agents in the emigre community, or to Nicaragua (where Ochoa also had his men) and then through Honduras by air to the States. According to Castros information, for this operation Arnaldo Ochoa and La Guardia established business contacts with the CIA agents. After the trial in Havana, Castro attempted to recall Ochoas men in FARC, Miami, and Nicaragua in order to put them on trial. But they disobeyed and went out of the Cuban command. This was the reason that Castro gave to the Soviet leadership for his drastic cuts in the Cuban financing of FARC. According to my acquaintance, it was then that FARC went to self-financing.
Davidovich finances anti-globalization movement. (!?)
Vadim: I just dont understand: What for Davidovich would support antiglobalist movement and in such a way that nobody knows about that?
Armen: Ask yourself: Why Davidovich supports antiglobalist Kagarlitsky? I am not a specialist in world antiglobalism, but I suppose that those whom he supports are antiglobalists of the same sort as Kagarlitsky. This is called hostile penetration with the goal of taking control.
On IPROG and Venezuela. 6
Armen wrote:
"At Surikovs request, Davidovich helped Kagarlitsky and Glinchikova to infiltrate Hugo Chavezs circle. Perhaps they got acquainted with Chavezs assistants on their own, but it was Davidovich who recommended that Venezuelans work closely with IPROG. That included Chavezs appearance at the meeting organized by Kagarlitsky during Chavezs visit in Moscow. The Russians, through their diplomatic channels, tried to dissuade the Venezuelans from this meeting. But [Davidovichs] lobbying was so strong that it almost came to a scandal."
Vadim: "Is that so? I recently heard rumors that there were plans to assassinate Chavez. Could Glinchikova by chance be involved in this :)) Anyway I hope Chavezs security service knows about Surikovs US connections. Troubles of this kind can come from unexpected directions."
"From the very beginning, the OPS was intended for profitable criminal activities. Money is all for them . As to politics, it is used to help their business. Look at these two articles from the vantage point of their 'commercial interest.' Surikov's 'The Real President (http://www.zavtra.ru/cgi/veil/data/zavtra/04/577/62.html)' was published in December 2004, when the preparations for the Russian-Venezuelan deal sell Kalashnikov rifles was close to completion. The middleman was Davidovich. The amount of the deal - $40-50 million. Clearly, the OPS was very interested to get in favor with Chavez at that time. One way to achieve this is to praise him in press. According to our information, right after 'The Real President' was published Surikov told Kagarlitsky to get it translated and take to Venezuelan Embassy. Afterwards, when Kagarlitsly with Glinchikova went to Caracas he took the translation with him and showed it to Chavez' advisers. In other words, the addressee of Surikov's article was the Venezuelans, rather than our leftists about whom Surikov does not give a damn (that was before his "Kasianov" project)."
On Davidovichs functions within the OPS
Armen: "Davidovich is responsible for FWL representation in Colombia, they have office in Bogot. He is also responsible for Venezuela. OPS needs Venezuela for trafficking."
"The distribution of responsibilities in the OPS as follows. Filin, partly Likhvintsev, Davidovich, and Kosman, the four of them are at the top and excersize general leadership. Filin is responsible for the headquarters of Far West, Ltd. in Switzerland. Filin and Davidovich are responsible for purchasing cocaine in Colombia and the FLW office in Bogot.Likhvintsev is responsible for cocaine traffic through the port of St. Petersburg and its delivery to the Azeris. Saidov is in contact with Jamaat Shariat and is responsible for purchasing Afghan heroin coming through Turkmenistan to Dagestan. He is also responsible for the port of Novorossiisk and the FWL office in the Crimea. Surikov is responsible for contacts with Hizb-ut-Tahrir in Udmurtia, Tatarstan and Bashkiria, as well as for purchasing there the Afghan heroin that comes through Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. He is also responsible for the FWL office in Izhevsk 7 and for shipping of "special merchandise" (i.e.,. heroin - burtsev.ru) to the port of Novorossiisk (for this he uses the Adygei ethnic criminal group). Kosman is responsible for the transfer of the heroine, delivered to Europe from the Novorossiisk, to Kosovo Albanians in Mediterranean and for the FWL office in Kosovo. Filin, Kosman, and Davidovich are responsible for financial transactions related to drug trafficking and for laundering the proceeds in Caribbean offshores. Saidov is responsible for financial transactions and money laundering in the Gulf and for the FLW office in Dubai. Filin and Likhvintsev are in communication with their accomplices in their former directorate (GRU - burtsev.ru). Likhvintsev is in contact with their "protection" at "the top" (in the Kremlin - burtsev.ru). Butkevichius supervises the FWL office in Georgia and is responsible for the OPS communication with Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili. Surikov is responsible for receiving intelligence from the corrupted officers of secret services about the information which these services gather about the OPS and their competitors. Surikov (and Baranov) is also responsible for politics, informational campaigns in mass media (presently Filin, Saidov, and Roeva also take part in these activities) and for communication with YUKOS (through Kondaurov). Lunev is responsible for physical actions against their opponents. He is also responsible for the FWL offices in Iraq and Afghanistan and for their business there with KBR/Halliburton (formerly headed by Dick Cheney), hiring for them mercenaries. They closed their office in Angola. Before, Likvintsev was responsible for it. Filin and Surikov are responsible for their connections in the United States, Davidovich with Venezuela, Saidov with Saudi Arabia, Saidov and Surikov with Turkey, Saidov with the Chechens and Hizb ut-Tahrir in Central Asia."
On Davidovich and Russian Arms Sale to Venezuela
From Zurab Sikharulidze 8 :
Ochoa visited Izhevsk [where the Kalashnikovs are made] in connection with the sale of 100,000 Kalashnikovs AK-130 for $40 million. The manufacturer is the Izhevsk factory Izhmash.
He was accompanied by Vladimir Filin, Alexei Likhvintsev and Anton Surikov. Surikov comes to our city often, because he oversees the office of Far West Ltd. In Udmurtia,Tatarstan, and Bashkiria (Natalia Roeva is in charge of this office).
Armen's last Message
Final Information
From Armen, 21:25:50 17/07/2005
For the time being this is the last communication from us.
1. Fritz Ermarth is indeed the most important contact of the OPS in the United States. 9
2. According to our source who knows the situation with the foreign assets of the OPS, in 2000 up to 90 percent of their assets were in Europe (Switzerland, Luxembourg, England, and France) and in offshores - former British colonies in the Western hemisphere.
Recently (apparently being afraid of having problems in the West, what Filin and Surikov have been writing about lately) the OPS had transfered up to two thirds of their assets to the Gulf (Dubai, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia). Another 20 percent has been moved to South America (Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela), Turkey and Ukraine. Only less than 15 percent of all their assets still remain in England, Switzerland and Caribbean offshores. They have moved everything from France and Luxembourg.In the United States and Russia they never had any serious assets. 10
One can judge from this information on what external powers (besides the United States) they depend.
3.Audrius Butkevichius was a military adviser to the late Laurent Kabila, when he was coming to power in the late 1990s in Zaire-Congo.
On this we temporarily stop our communication with you. We are waiting for your publications and wish you success.
Armen and Zurab
??????????
1 On Dunlop's suppression of the explosive contents of Yasenev's Memo, see Peter Dale Scott, The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11 <http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>
2 "Swiss: O??? "Far West Ltd" ? ????????? ??????" <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/sanitarlesa.phtml>
3 OPS - Russian abbreviation for Organized Criminal Society.
4 Vladimir Ilyich Filin (b. 1959)-- Russian military oligarch, the "Head of the Board of Directors" of Far West, LLC (formerly Far West ,Ltd) allegedly the leader of the international criminal society, formed by a group of former officers and agents of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet General Staff (GRU) in the early 1990s. More on this society, see Peter Dale Scott, The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11 <http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>
5 General Yuri Gusev was the second in command in GRU. He was the "godfather" of OPS, died in 1992 in a strange car accident in Moscow. Vladimir Filin, the brain of the OPS and the president of FWL, took over after Gusev's death. It was Filin with who Armen and Zurab talked in Switzerland.
6 IPROG -- Institute for Globalization Studies (Moscow), established by Mikhail Deliagin, Mikhail Kasianov's associate, in 2000. Since 2002 its director is Boris Kagarlitsky, well-known in the West as leftist. According to some sources, IPROG has been financed by Berezovsky, YUKOS, and Far West, Ltd. Three directors and owners of FWL, Vladimir Filin, Ruslan Saidov, and Anton Surikov, are listed at the IPROG masthead (http://www.iprog.ru/cast/) as "experts," "historians," and "senior researchers."
7 Izhevsk -- the capital city of Udmurtia and the site of Izhmash, one of the biggest arm manufacturer in Russia. One of the strongholds of the OPS.
8 Zurab Sikharulidze, officer in Armen's unit, assigned to investigate the activities of Far West, Ltd. in Udmurtia, where it is said to be involved in drug trafficking, arms smuggling, and organizing underground cells of the extremist Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir. Apparently was stationed in the city of Izhevsk. Together with another officer of their unit, Mikhail Konovalov, was fired from the service and blacklisted in August 2006 after the murder of Armen Sarkisian.
9 Fritz Ermarth - a "nuclear whiz kid" and a master of intelligence con game has been an influential figure in the US intelligence community for the last 20-25 years. Served in the CIA, NSC, and NIC. Officially retired in 1998. Said to have 5 percent of voting stock in Far West, Ltd. Long-time associate of Anton Surikov.
10 This information has been recently confirmed by Vladimir Filin, who announced the withdrawl of FWL from Europe, citing the fear of criminal persecution by US law enforcement for the alleged participation of FWL in the illegal sale of X-55 cruise missiles to Iran and China in 2001. See: "The CIA and Israeli Intelligence Conduct Big Operation." By Vladimir Filin < http://forum.msk.ru/material/fpolitic/7221.html >
__________________________________________________ __________
Andrei Petrov and Valentin Zorin
Academician Anton Surikov Confirms Professor Peter Dale Scott's "Prishtina Dash" Hypothesis
In his recent ground-breaking essay "The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11," Peter Dale Scott takes a further step from our conclusion that the so-called 1999 "conspiracy" in Cote d'Azur between the Chechen warlord Shamil Basaev and the head of Yeltsin's administration Alexandr Voloshin had to do with the prior surprise arrival of Russian paratroopers in Prishtina. The "mad dash" of Russian motorized column reached the Slatina airport on June 11, 1999. Several days later a colorful company began to assemble in Adnan Khashoggi's villa near Nice. As has been established since then, besides Voloshin and Basaev this group included:
four co-owners of the "consulting" agency Far West, Ltd.(FWL)--recently renamed as Far West, LLC--which did business with private military companies KBR Halliburton and Diligence LLC among others;
these co-owners were also former officers of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Soviet/Russian General Staff (GRU). They were Ret. Colonel Anton Surikov (Turkish citizen Mansur Natkhoev) and Ret. Major Ruslan Saidov (Turkish citizen Ugur Mehmed). Two other co-owners of FWL, Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa (Venezuelan and German passports) and Yakov Abramovich Kosman (Israeli and German passports), were former (?) secret agents of GRU. 1
Alleged leaders and bankers of an international drug trafficking organization delivering huge quantities of Afghan heroin to Kosovo Albanian retail networks in Western and Central Europe: Alfonso Davidovich, Yakov Kosman, Anton Surikov, Ruslan Saidov.
Supposedly, at least three "controllers" of the Abkhazian heroin "line": Ruslan "Malysh" Tsveiba, 2 Gary Aiba, head of the influential veteran organization and former mayor of Sukhumi, 3 Sultan Sosnaliev, deputy minister of Abkhazian defense. 4
In our June 2005 investigative essay "Bad Actors in IPROG: The Devil's Dozen," we linked the meeting at Hashoggi's to the new geopolitical situation in the Balkans after the Prishtina dash:
What could such a motley lot have been negotiating in the summer of 1999? We believe that these negotiations were related to a dramatic change in the situation in the Balkans. It included the NATO occupation of Kosovo, the KLA coming to power, and the famous dash by the Russian armored column to Prishtina and their seizure of the main airport, which promised an extended presence by Russian troops in Kosovo and even the possibility of a Russian sector in the province. Thus the international narcotrafficking, targeting Europe, faced a radically new situation, that opened new possibilities; but this also required new agreements between the regulators and curators of narcotraffic, and therefore, new guarantees or protection from the highest instances. 5
Building on this reading of the conspiracy in Nice, Professor Peter Dale Scott went further and all but suggested that the Prishtina dash itself could have been be driven by the imperatives of drug trade. He observed that
Within a year of the troops' arrival, by 2000, according to DEA statistics, Afghan heroin accounted for almost 20 percent of the heroin seized in the United States nearly double the percentage taken four years earlier. Much of it was now distributed in America by Kosovar Albanians.
It is significant therefore, he continued, that
The `Pristina dash' by Russian parachutists in 1999 during the Kosovo crisis (the purpose of the `dash' was to force NATO to guarantee for Russia a separate sector of responsibility in Kosovo) was organized by the head of the General Staff, Anatoly Kvashnin, and his deputy, Leonid Ivashov, without the knowledge of minister of defense Igor Sergeyev and most likely without Yeltsin's knowledge.
While the question of whether Sergeev did or did not know about Kvashnin's operation remains a matter of some debate, there could not be any doubt that Yeltsin and his closest circle did know and sanctioned it. Virtually all sources, including Ivashov, confirm this. It is also clear that Kvashnin could not communicate with Yeltsin directly, but only through the powerful head of his administration Alexander Voloshin, the most trusted member of the Family. It can be assumed therefore that had the Prishtina dash was conceived, at least in part, as the means to establish a secure hub for moving Afghan heroin to Europe through the network of the Russian Ministry of Defense, Voloshin would have been in the know from the very beginning and would actually be the guarantor of the Kremlin roof (protection) for Kvashnin and the obshchak of the GRU and Ministry of Defense. 6
On February 8, 2006 Pravda-info, the Internet newspaper that belongs to Far West, LLC, published Anton Surikov's article "The Government of the United States Is Seriously Concerned about the Safety of CIA Analyst," in which he reveals the following information about the then executive director of Far West, Ltd. and the alleged leader of the drug meta-group, the military oligarch Vladimir Ilyich Filin.
"When V. I. Filin, who was at that time in Belgrade, learned about the advance of [Russian]peace keepers towards Prishtina he, together with Colonel V. S. Kovalchuk 7 , went to Kosovo on their own risk, unarmed and without bodyguards. They arrived there several hours before our paratroopers. They used this time to get in touch with the field commanders of KLA and received personal guarantees from Hashim Thaci and Ramush Haradinaj that there would be no provocations against the Russian peacekeepres on the part of Albanians." 8
It goes without saying that under the conditions of the strictest secrecy that surrounded the planning and the execution of the Prishtina dash, Filin could not be acting other than on Kvashnin's personal orders. Yet Filin retired from the army in 1993. His ties to Kvashnin were therefore informal, outside of the chain of command. Yet his role in the operation was clearly planned in advance. Moreover, it is clear that Filin had been not only acquainted with Thaci and Haradinaj but must have had some leverage with them in order to obtain such extraordinary guarantees at the moment when these KLA leaders were themselves caught by surprise. As we know now, Filin's own relations with the KLA operatives and business fronts dated back to 1990-93, when he and Alexei Likhvintsev, future co-owner of Far West, Ltd, were on a special and very sensitive assignment in East Germany to sell the property of the Western Group of the Soviet Army. It was then that the first shipments of Afghan heroin were moved to Europe through the Ministry of Defense installations and sold to Kosovo Albanian drug dealers. It has been also reported that another member of Filin's group, Yakov Kosman, served as financial adviser to Hashim Thaci in 1997-2000. 9 Finally, it is also noteworthy that Ramush Haradinaj is widely believed to have been the key CIA man in the KLA hierarchy and that Filin's and his associates' own ties to the US, British, and Saudi intelligence have been recently the subject of substantial interest in Russian press. 10
To conclude, in conjunction with the facts already known, Anton Surikov's information about Vladimir Filin's involvement in the Prishtina dash operation provides important evidence in favor of Peter Dale Scott's suggestion that this geopolitical operation had a secret drug dimension and could have been even primarily motivated by the imperatives of the global drug trade now inseparable from those of geopolitics.
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1 More on Davidovich, see: in Vadim Stolz, Conversations with Armen. (Excerpts) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/armen_excerpts.phtml>
2 Tsveiba was listed by Georgian authorities as guilty of "genocide" during the Georgian-Abkhazian war 1992-93. Killed in January 2000.
3 Aiba was assassinated in Sukhumi in 2004. According to printed sources he was close associate of Ruslan Saidov, who at the time was involved in anti-Russian activities in Abkhazia. Circumstantial evidence suggest that in Abkhazia he worked in close coordination with another member of the alleged criminal society, Audrius Butkevicius , who at than time was in Georgia , organizing the "revolution of the roses" on behalf of KBR Halliburton and the "Dick Cheney cabal" in Washington.
4 On the Abkhazian connection of the so-called Chechen group of narco-traffickers, see Anton Surikov's paper Crime in Russia: international implications. Published in 1995 by Brassey's for the Centre for Defence Studies, University of London. Surikov's account is disinformation in respect of names and affiliations.
5 See in Russian, Bad Actors in IPROG: The Devil's Dozen. Left.ru (June 2005) <http://www.left.ru/2005/10/burtsev127.html>
6 Obshchak - criminal argo for thieves' shared monetary fund. It is widely believed that every powerful state organization in Russia supports such a fund with the proceeds from racket or protection of criminal activities. According to secretly taped conversations which Sergei Petrov, former member of the alleged criminal society led by Vladimir Filin, submitted to German and French law enforcement bodies in the fall of 2003, the Afghan heroine business directed through Kosovo by Filin's network brought about $200-250 million per year into the coffers of the GRU obshchak. See, the Hilton transcript <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/hilton_en.phtml>
7 Colonel Valentin Kovalchuk is the head of Filin's personal security. Believed to have accompanied Filin and his family in their recent relocation from Lausanne, Switzerland to San Paolo, Brazil. As the reason for this move, Filin cited his fear of criminal persecution by the US law enforcement for his and Ruslan Saidov's alleged role in smuggling strategic cruise missiles X-55 from Ukraine to Iran and China in 2001.
8 Anton Surikov, "The Government of the United States Is Seriously Concerned about the Safety of CIA Analyst." Pravda-info, 02.08.2006 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/power/7495.html> (http://forum.msk.ru/material/power/7495.html)]
9 See, Yasenev's Memo <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml>
10 On Haradinaj's war crimes and involvement with drug trafficking, see: "KOSOVO LIBERATION ARMY"Freedom Fighters or.... By Banja Luka. Reporter Magazine, issue 190, December 12, 2001 <http://www.kosovo.com/ramush.html>. On Filin's group, and, in particular, Anton Surikov's ties to Western Intelligence, see: Yasenev's Memo <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml>; Vadim Stolz, Did the CIA Order "People's" Referendum in Russia? (In Russian), Left.ru (January 2006) <http://left.ru/2005/15/referendum132.phtml>; Valentin Zorin and Vadim Stolz, Saidov's Rehersal, Left.ru (January, 2006) <http://left.ru/2005/15/rehersal132.phtml>; Bad Actors in IPROG: The Raid Left.ru (July 2005) <http://www.left.ru/2005/11/burtsev128.html>
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Far West, Ltd. Leaves Europe Under the Threat of Criminal Persecution. Renamed Far West, LLC
Last week, Pravda.info published the article "The CIA and Israeli Intelligence Conduct Big Operation (http://forum.msk.ru/material/fpolitic/7221.html)" by the military oligarch Vladimir Filin, head of the controversial consulting agency Far West, Ltd., which has become recently the subject of substantial interest in Russian investigative journalism and internationally. 1
In his article Vladimir Filin alleged that the US and Israel wanted to compromise Russia's arms trade with countries like Iran, Syria, Venezuela, and other pariah states in Washington's parlance. Most interesting is Filin's announcement about his company's exodus from the West. We quote.
"External pressure on the Kremlin is strong and open, but not always successful. Therefore the US and Israel need new means for pressuring [Russia]. Specifically, there has been a decision made to discredit the mechanism of political decisions in Russian arms trade by portraying it as corrupted. Supposedly, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Sudan and other "outcast countries" pay bribes to the Kremlin through some alleged middlemen to get political approval for arms contracts. I don't know anything about such bribes. I assume they do not exist. But this is not important for the CIA and Mossad. All they need is to find a convenient candidate for the role of the alleged middleman, make him testify, and then to spin the scandal in the unprincipled international mass media. It is well-known how skillfully Western press demonizes businessmen from the former Soviet Union without any proof [of their guilt]. It suffices to recall the unbridled campaign of slanders against such a law-abiding person as Victor Bout, who was turned into an international outcast.
Nowadays, the CIA and Mossad are trying to do something similar with the agency Far West LLC (formerly "Far West Ltd") now by threatening it, now promising all kind of rewards for "cooperation."
Simultaneously, in the West, Ukraine, and Russia, the US and Israeli intelligence services and their agents of influence in Kiev and Moscow have started a campaign of psychological pressure against "Far West LLC." In the Internet they've been creating a reference base, both in Russian and English, for the planned publications in leading Western media outlets, which usually serve as a prelude for criminal investigations and arrests.
Under these conditions, the leadership of "Far West LLC"--who does not wish to smear themselves and to play into the hands of the enemies of mankind--the United Sates, NATO, and Israel--have transferred the management of the agency from Europe to the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Turkey, Iran, and Ukraine, that is to those countries where the blatant provocations of the US and Mossad are less easy to conduct and where extradition is impossible unless in the form of kidnapping and other illegal activities.
At the same time those in the Kremlin must clearly understand that no private structure by itself, without support can oppose the state, especially such powerful as the United States and Israel."
End quote.
According to a later announcement by Pravda-info, Vladimir Filin moved from Lausanne, Switzerland to San Paulo, Brazil, where he joined a number of companies and business ventures. 2
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1 See, Peter Dale Scott, The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11. Lobster. The Journal of Parapolitics <http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>
2 See, the masthead of Pravda-info at <http://forum.msk.ru/author/19.html >
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FarWest, LLC Eliminates the Key Witness in the X-55 WMD Deal: Preventive Liquidation of Oleg Orlov in the Light of 2008
One thing the Russian citizen Oleg Orlov knew for sure when he was about to board the flight from Prague to Dubai in August 2004 was that he wanted to put as many miles as possible between himself and Kiev or for that matter Moscow. He did not get to Dubai that day or ever since. The Czech police arrested Orlov in the airport on the international warrant and put in the prison, charging Orlov with smuggling to Iran several Ukrainian cruise missiles, capable of delivering 200-kiloton nuclear charge to targets 3000 kilometers away. For a year or so Orlov fought his extradition to Ukraine, surviving an assassination attempt and a stroke. He knew he would be killed in Kiev. The CIA team that was interrogating him in the prison knew this too and used Orlov's fear to blackmail him into talking to them. Then Orlov was brought to Kiev...
There was virtually no information about Orlov since then. Only unconfirmed rumors that he was very sick and hardly able to speak.
Then, on July 5 an brief anonymous announcement was published in stringer.ru that Orlov was murdered. For almost two weeks Ukrainian authorities kept silent and ignored even the official inquiry of Russian Foreign Office about Orlov's fate. Finally, Kiev announced that Orlov was throttled to death by another inmate in the Kiev detention center. However, some details that have emerged since then, strongly suggest foul play.
The investigative article by the Moscow editorial board of burtsev.ru claims that--according to their sources who are close to Ukrainian secret services and identified only as the intelligence team 'Yaroslav Galan'-- Orlov's liquidation was an outcome of the long struggle between Yulia Timoshenko and her close advisors and a group of senior officers of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR). The article identifies the latter as Generals Vladimir Filin and Alexei Likhvintsev and names as their allies the present headt of GUR General Alexander Galaka, as well as the former head of Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and GUR General Igor Smeshko. This group of Ukrainian intelligence heads is thought to compose the Ukrainian branch of the consulting agency FarWest, LLC (formerly -- FarWest, LTD) with the central office in Dubai, which has been linked to the sale of X-55 to Iran and China.
According to the Yaroslav Galan team, Timoshenko was angry at the GRU chefs for their role in her losing the post of the premier last summer, when Filin and Likhvintsev arranged for the head of the Social-Democratic Party Alexander Moroz' switching sides and going over to Yanukovich. As the result the governing coalition lost the majority and the supposedly pro-Russian Party of the Regions formed the new government by anti-crisis coalition bretween Yanukovich, Moroz, and the communists. Other reasons given for the feud are control of secret funds and political disagreements. Filin is afraid that Timoshenko's open anti-Russian stance could lead to Ukraine being split into two, with its industrial Eastern parts and the Crimea joining Russia. He believes that Yanukovich and his Donetsk oligarchs are in a better position to preserve the unity of Ukraine and, eventually, deliver it to NATO.
In her struggle against the FarWest group Timoshenko's advisors already leaked to the press some of the classified information about the X-55 deal. Last year, her closest advisor Alexander Turchinov and the former SBU general Kozhemyakin organized the three-part publication in the newspaper Novyi region. 1 According to the classified documents published, FarWest LTD was in the center of the secret operation as the agent of Dick Cheney's circle of secret services operatives and ideologues, looking to create a casus belli for attacking Iran. The operation was supervised by the front company of this group the private intelligence company Diligence LLC, chaired by Reagan's Ambassador to Germany Richard Burt also of Alpha-Capital, shady monopoly of Russian oligarch Mikhail Friedman, and Barbour Griffith & Rogers one of the most influential right-wing lobbying firms in Washington, close to the Bush Family.
After this publication, meetings were held between Timoshenko and Turchinov and Filin, Likhvintsev and Galaka. In the words of the Ukrainian sources, during some of them both sides used foul language and exchanged physical threats. After one of such meetings in April 2007, SBU announced it had information about the plans to assassinate Timoshenko. This announcement, the sources say, was to remind Timoshenko that Filin's threats were not empty words and to increase psychological pressure on her.
Apparently, Timoshenko correctly understood the hint and changed her tactics to show she was open to a compromise. There was a political reason too. Nobody wants to antagonize secret services on the eve of new elections.
But Farwest couldn't take the risk that Timoshenko may use the X-55 episode again while Oleg Orlov was alive and could testify against them, especially, given the possibility of US Democrats coming to power in 2008 and opening the official investigation. This sealed Orlov's fate.
The article in Left.ru contains also an interview with the chairman of the international editorial board of burtsev.ru Vadim Stolz who shares his thoughts about Olov's murder. The interview was taken by Natasha Barch, representative of the Moscow group. The abridged translation of this interview as follows.
NB. Vadim, I gather by this time you had the opportunity to discuss the sad news about Oleg Orlov with your American friends. So my main question to you is: Why do the Democrats refuse to raise the question about the smuggling of X-55s to Iran and the role of the Cheney gang in it?
VS. There is no one single answer to this. Several things should be kept in mind. First, even raising these questions in the mainstream press can provoke th ehell of a storm in the United States. Just think about this. The White House transfer OMD to Iran's mullahs! And the same White House attacks Iraq under the false pretext of Saddam having OMD! Even Hitler would have blushed at such a hypocrisy! This is more than cynicism. It shows the criminal mind at work in the very heart of the celebrated US system of government. If the American people learn about this the entire political system will be shaken. And Democrats are no less interested in its preservation than the Republicans. Class solidarity between the rulers that's the name of the game.
Second, the Democrats themselves might be indirectly involved in this crime. When in 1999 Filin and Likhvintsev came up with the plan to sell X-55s to China, Smeshko (SBU) and Maleev (Ukrspetsexport) they agreed at once, but wanted Kuchma's approval. Kuchma provisionally agreed, but notified George Tenet, DCI. Tenet just didn't reply. But he , no doubt, notified Clinton and Gore as well as Cheney's people. Tenet was a good boy to everyone, that's why Cheney let him stay after the Democrats had left. Then the Chinese made a discreet inquiry with the Kremlin. The President apparently decided that there was nothing bad in improving China's defenses and did not interfere. After that FarWest brought in their people in military intelligence and Rosvooruzhenie, as well as the notorious Viktor Bout, the old buddy since their Angola dealings in arms and diamonds. And, lo and behold! In May 2000 the Chinese received half a dozen X-55s. Everyone was happy and pleased with FarWest. The Chinese, the Kremlin, and the Ukrainians did not realize that this sale was a trap, which FarWest set up for them at the behest of the neocon cabal in the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department.
NB. This is the first time I hear about the smuggling of X-55s as intended to be a trap for China. Usually they talk about Iran. Could you expand on this?
VS. This is true. China as the target of Cheney's provocation has never been mentioned, to my knowledge. Apparently, people cannot comprehend how one can attack China. But there exist strong evidence that the neocons planned a preventive war against China as early as 1998. Incidentally, this could be one reason they bought the so-called Kurginyan's geopolitical conception. This is what Brzezinsky, in horror, called the new Holly Alliance between the United States, Russia, Israel, and India against China, the Muslim world, and the old Europe. The old Zbig still foams at the mouth whenever he recalls this abominable idea. Yet the neocons reasoned very simply: Why wait before the Chinese get stronger than us? Don't forger that Libby and Wolfowitz authored the thesis about the preventive strike against any country that could challenge the world supremacy of the United States. They had grand plans. No less that a permanent revolution of sorts. Iraq was only for the appetizer. Next, Iran would be struck and has an orange revolution of its own. That would give the neocons the control over China's supplies of oil and make it ready for a democratic revolution -- Tiananmen-2. What else can the freedom loving American people do in the face of those Russians arming with WMDs the Chinese commies?! With China becoming democratic, the fate of Russia will be sealed. Most people simply cannot imagine such plans can exist. Their consciousness falls behind their social being. Neocon ideologues are made of a different stuff. They were schooled in neo-Trotskyism and neo-Hegelianism. This taught them to think in big historical categories. And their game is not over yet.
NB. What do you have in mind?
??. We see the liquidation of Orlov in the light of the coming strike against Iran, possibly a nuclear strike.
NB. Are you saying the Americans can still use the X-55 in Iran as a pretext for attacking it?
??. Nothing is off the table, as they say. With Orlov gone, FarWest has no witnesses left and can present the deal any way they want. They can create a fake like the conspiracy in Nice and connect the smuggling with the Kremlin. They can weave whatever fabrication they want since they have all the details, all the names, so that the fake will look irresistibly genuine. They can even implicate themselves for such an occasion. The neocon cabal has no choice. They have to create a crisis, to escalate things. Otherwise, they risk to find themselves in that very garbage basket of history where they somewhat prematurely declared communism and Marxism to have belonged. A strike against Iran will raise the stakes immensely and could allow them to introduce an emergency situation in the United States, extend the rule of Bush and Cheney, or, at least, assure the victory of John McCain.
NB. Speaking of McCain... As you know, recently Anton Surikov, the chief troubleshooter for FarWest in Moscow, has been all over town trying to convince high officials that burtsev.ru was hired by the Democrats, the CIA, and even the Bank of New York (!) to destroy FarWest, whose friend Rudolf Giuliani is the last hope of Russia. It's quite amazing how keen Surikov is to assure Kremlin bureaucrats that it is exactly Giuliani who has the best chance to run on the Republican ticket, isn't it?
NB. (laughing) This is pure Surikov. Here is his calculation. He knows that the Kremlin is afraid of Democrats, but they also hate to see the openly Russophobic McCain in the White House. This leaves Giuliani the least harmful option. So, in essence, Surikov is saying to these bureaucrats that our investigation of the illegal activities of FarWest threaten the only informal channel of communication they have with the right-wing republicans and neocons, because this channel is FarWest. This is precisely why Surikov cultivates in the Kremlin the ridiculous idea that the Democrats are more anti-Russian than the Republicans, even if they are of the completely insane variety that is in the White House now. For FarWest this is the way of making themselves valuable, even irreplaceable in the eyes of the Kremlin, making it overlook their anti-Russian activities. This is also a cover for their conspiratorial contacts with the agents of the Cheney cabal and other scum of the earth.
In reality, not the Democrats, but FarWest and this cabal behind it are dangerous to Russia and the sooner the Kremlin realizes this the fewer unpleasant surprises will it face in 2008.
NB. Could you describe the bad guys behind FarWest?
VS. These are the very people who played important, perhaps crucial role in the destruction of the Soviet Union: Robert Gates, Rodric Braithwaite, Turki al-Faisal, Fritz Ermarth. They represent conservative and neoconservative elites of Atlanticism. Now they conspire to destroy Russia.
NB. OK, let's summarize. Do you agree with the opinion of our Ukrainian sources that it was the conflict with Timoshenko that motivated FarWest to get rid of Orlov?
VS. Only in part. We believe that their motivation was more complex. I already mentioned the Iranian connection. Without Orlov, they can fake a stronger link between the Kremlin and the X-55 deal. So that besides a casus belli against Iran Washington will have a pretext to put pressure on the Kremlin, even blackmail certain state security officials and thus raise tensions in Moscow... But the Ukrainians are also right. FarWest needed to protect themselves from someone exploiting their vulnerability spot that Orlov was. They also took into account the possibility that their conspiracy with the Western-Saudi cabal fails and Sergei Ivanov becomes the next President. Ivanov does not trust FarWest and they know about his interest to the X-55 affair. So if Orlov survived till 2008 Ivanov would be able to use him against FarWest.
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1 US Companies Linked to Vice-President Cheney Supervised the Transfer of Ukrainian WMD to Iran (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/novyiregion.phtml) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/novyiregion.phtml>
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Kagarlitsky's Appointed Director of IPROG on Surikov's Request
Burtsev.ru
07.15.06
According to Anton Suirikov's latest revelation, he was the one who requested that Boris Kagarlitsky was appointed the director of the Moscow Institute for Globalization Studies (IPROG) in 2002 when Mikhail Deliagin, the founder of the Institute and its first director, had accepted a position in Mikhail Kasianov's government. Deliagin, a long-time associate of Surikov, is also a prominent member of the right-wing Rodina party, banned from running in the last Moscow elections for a racist video aired for its electoral campaign.
Surikov latest revelations come from his public correspondence (http://www.somnenie.narod.ru/knigi/grech/istoki28a.html) with Oleg Grechenevskii, a long-time dissident and human-rights activist from St. Petersburg, who has been writing extensively on Filin's gang - the group led by the military oligarch Vladimir Filin, allegedly involved in narcotrafficking, illegal arms trade, and money laundering.
In Surikov's words, he asked Deliagin to appoint Kagarlitsky director of IPROG after Kagarlitsky had told Surikov that wanted the job. This request came two years after Kagarlitsky, then the head of the political section of the neoliberal Moscow weekly Novaya Gazeta, published his article on the conspiracy in Nice (http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/4083.html) in which he described Surikov as the 'former' officer of army intelligence and fingered him as the person responsible for organizing the meeting between Shamil Basaev and Alexander Voloshin. 1 Kagarlitsky's article also describes Surikov's meeting with Basaev in late August of 1999 and all but explicitely connects Surikov and his associates to the Moscow explosions in September 1999. This is how Surikov describes his contacts with Kagarlistky when the latter was preparing that article.
In the beginning of 2000 Mr. Kagarlitsky visited me on his own initiative to talk about the alleged conspiracy between Mr. Basaev and the Kremlin in the summer of 1999. He asked me several questions. I responded at length to those questions that related to me personally and to the political situation in general. As to several of his central questions, I did not give him any answers at all... By the way, I have no intention to answer these questions in the future as well. I read Mr. Kagarlitsky's article of January 24, 2000 in Novaya Gazeta only after it had been published. I was neither thrilled nor disturbed by it. Back then I did not think it was of great importance. This publication did not affect my relations with Mr. Kagarlitsky at all. I just want to emphasize that I did not initiate his publication nor was I his main source of information for it.
Surikov's account is remarkable in several ways. As it was his tactics before, he continues to avoid confirming or denying the central questions, i.e., the allegations about his participation in the conspiracy in Nice and the very fact of the meeting between Basaev and Voloshin. This tactics allows Surikov to perpetuate the conspiracy story without formally acknowledging his part in it. Secondly, he braggs of not being disturbed by the allegations of him taking part in a grave international crime. Consider that Kagarlitsky article has since become a staple of anti-Russian propaganda and, as such, a part of public consciousness, especially in the West, where the images of new Russian rulers blowing up their citizens fall into the carefully cultivated soil of Russophobia. Yet Surikov seems not at all concerned with the bad name Kagarlitsky's story gave him in the eyes of great many people around the world. This in itself is disturbing. Nor did Kagalitsky seem to have had any problems asking the man he accused in terrible crimes for a job in IPROG and later having the former intelligence officer Surikov working under his directorship on a number of supposedly left projects like the first Social Forum and even the United Socialist Front.
According to Surikov, he was introduced to Kagarlitsky by Anatoly Baranov, a long-time associate of Surikov and the owner of Pravda.info and Forum.msk.ru. Baranov also is the chief editor of the CPRF web site kprf.ru. Their meeting took place in the United States in the early 1996. It is not known what was the nature of Kagarlitsky's visit to the United States. But it has been long established that Surikov's first public contact with Fritz Ermarth, the high-ranking CIA official, took place in the spring of that year. It has also been known that Surikov and Ermarth worked together in the anti-Gore campaign of 1999, which peaked in the so-called Russiangate, or the BONY scandal. 2 Ermarth, who retired from the CIA in 1998, played central role in this operation. But he was clearly only a front man for some powerful Republican cabal behind him.
Two years after his meeting with Surikov in the US, Kagarlitsky was invited to give testimony to the Banking Subcommittee of US Congress (10 September 1998). The very fact of a prominent Russian Marxist being asked to testify before US Congress is rather unusual, especially considering that Kagarlitsky has no training in economic and financial matters. Kagarlitsky's testimony was very much in line with Ermarth's subsequesnt critique of Gore's Russian politics. Could it be that the idea to invite Kagarlitsky to the Capitol Hill came from Ermarth and his circle?
Finally, Surikov confirms the central role of Ret. FSB General Alexei Kondaurov in financing the activities of IPROG during Kagarlitsky's tenure. In the waning years of the Soviet Union Alexei Kondaurov occupied important positions in the Fifth Political Directorate of the KGB. His boss was General Philipp Bobkov. Eventually Bobkov wound up a head of the security service of Vladimir Gusinsky, the omnipotent oligarch and media mogul of Yeltsin's epoch. Kondaurov, after several years of service in FSB, accepted a similar position in Khodorkovsky's YUKOS. He became a millionair and played active role in the attempt toprivatize Ziuganov's CPRF in 2003. The attempt, led by Filin's group and YUKOS, with the help of Ziuganov's intimate friend Alexandr Prokhanov, with Boris Berezovsky behind him, eventually had failed. But Kondaurov secured for himself a seat in the State Duma from the CPRF. According to Vladimir Filin, Kondaurov sponsored not only IPROG, but the Left Front, one of Kagarlitsky's political projects, until last September. 3
What brought together the prominent leftist Boris Kagarlitsky and the man who could well have been his interrogator in 1982, when Kagarlitsky's group of young socialists was arrested by KGB, is a question that deserves a separate journalistic investigation.
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1 For a detailed analysis of that story, see the recent essay by Peter Dale Scott The Global Drug Meta-Group:Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/11. (http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm) On Kagarlitsky's explanations of his association with Surikov, see our report from the 2005 press-conference of the Left Front in Moscow Boris Kagarlitsky Defends Himself Against Accusations (http://www.left.ru/2005/11/preskonf_eng.html)in (http://www.left.ru/2005/11/preskonf_eng.html)Cover-Up (http://www.left.ru/2005/11/preskonf_eng.html)
2 Surikov wrote about Ermarth's role in Russiagate a number of times. One such account is in his 2002 article Did Berezovsky Buy Off Communists for US Intelligence? <http://english.pravda.ru/main/2002/10/09/37954_.html>, published under the pen names Anna Kolchak (in English) and Eintingon (in Russian).
3 See interview with Filin at <http://forum.msk.ru/print.html?id=9687>
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Filin-"El Buho" Is Getting Nervous
Below is our translation of the anonymous comment posted at forum.msk.ru in response to Vladimir Filin's last article on the re-opening of the criminal investigation of the Russian furniture chains "Three Whales" and "Grand," thought to related to the sudden resignation of the Prosecutor-General Vladimir Ustinov. Forum.msk.ru belongs to a group of former officers and agents of the Soviet military intelligence (GRU) whose leader is said to be Ret. Leutenant-Colonel Vladimir Ilyich Filin. The group's business face is the "consulting" agency Far West, LLC (formerly Far West, Ltd). It controls a number of periodicals, including the "nationalist" weekly Zavtra (chief editor Alexander Prokhanov) and the Moscow Institute for Globalization Studies whose director is the prominent Russian leftist Boris Kagarlitsky. In the last three years this group, which also includes the former Luthunian defense minister Audrius Butkevicius, has been alleged in press to be an organized criminal society, involved in narcotrafficking, illegal arms trade, ties with Western and Saudi intelligence, and subversive activities against Russia. The main sources of these allegations were the former officer of Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR) Sergei Petrov (aka Serge Rodin) and the officer of Russian military counterintelligence Armen Sarkisian who in the spring of 2005 provided over fifty pages of information on the activities and the background of the group's leaders to the investigative group burtsev.ru. Petrov was killed in South Africa in January 2004. Sarkisian was killed and his counterintelligence unit dissolved in July 2005. Since then several anonymous author(s) have occasionally used forum.msk.ru to post bits of information on the activities of Filin's group. The internal evidence of this information suggests that it may come from some elements in Russian secret services or/and the group's competitors.
Filin-bird Is Getting Nervous
(The last name Filin also means eagle-owl in Russian, or el Buho in Spanish)
(posted 2006.06.24 )
1. Surikov-Natkhoev was first outed for his participation in Armeniagate in 1996. 1 Then for his lobbying the interests of Khloponin and the Norilsk Nickel, Nikitin and the MIG Corporation, Udmurtia and Topol-M in 1998-99. 2 Then, together with Fritz Ermarth, for Russiagate and Basaevs invasion of Dagestan in 1999. 3 As the result, Surikov had to become political scientist.
2. [Viktor] Bout-Aminov, [Richard] Chichakli, and Oleg Orlov were outed in Angola and later in the rest of Africa in 2002-2005. 4 Then Orlov was outed in the X-55 affair, China and Iran in the beginning of 2005. 5 As the result, Orlov is in the Ukrainian jail, Chichakli hides somewhere in the Emirates, and Bout-Aminov keeps a low profile and shuttles between Moscow suburbs and Minsk. As to Bouts and Chichaklis friend Mr. Taylor, he has been apprehended by the Hague Tribunal. 6
3. Filin-El Buho, Likhvintsev, Kosman, Davidovich-Felix, Lunev, Saidov-Mekhmet and the brothers Suleimenov 7 all had been outed by Fomenko, Kolesnikov, and Plotnikov 8 through their subordinates, Ashot and other Kasyanovs and the Sarkisians men. 9 This happened between the fall of 2003 and January 2004, during the fight for the Department of Fishery and the MIG Corporation. Sechin and Ustinov had failed to protect Surikov and Filin, because the last ones failed to disassociate themselves from YUKOS soon enough. 10 Next, in Belgrad Filins partner Lukovic-Legia was put in prison. 11
Then Americans joined the efforts to expose this group. They were Goss' and Foggo's men, helped by Turchinov and Kozhemiakin before Yushchenko fired them. 12 As the result, the Swiss-Brazilian Filin and the Turko-Arab Saidov had to become well-known political scientists and legal businesmen, trading in food, lumber, Persian rugs, and speculating in world stock exchanges. 13
Together with Butkevichius and Surikov, they took to court the Vilnus magazine Ekstra. 14 Besides, Saidov suddenly became business partner of Kadyrov-junior. 15 Kosman is back in France, where he now consults DGSE. 16 Davidovich is keeping low some place in South America: either in San Paulo, or Manaus, Bogota or Guayaquil.
In GUR Likhvintsev and Kosyakov monitor [the activities of] Turchinov, Kozhemiakin, and criminal investigations of arms smuggling. Lunev left Holland, made peace with Lukashenko and serves in the counter-terrorist department of his KGB. 17 Only the Suleimenovs continue with the old business: Istambul, the Crimea, Uzbekistan, Dubai, etc. http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filinnervous.phtml
What will be particularly amusing about this is Mossad saving Filin and Davidovichthe acting partners of the Colombian FARC, nicknamed El Buho and Felix, in trafficking cocaine to Russia through St Petersburg. 22 Even more savoury will look Mossad and the Indians saving al-Zavahiri's student, Ruslan Saidov--the propagandist of Jihad and the seller of arms and missile technology to Iran and Pakistan. That will be a great achievement indeed for the Jews and the Indians. If they succeed... 23
Addendum to the post above
In 2000-2002 Filin, Saidov, Davidovich, Kosman, Likhvintsev's wife 24 and the rest of the well-known political scientists founded in Dubai the consulting firm Fortex Consulting, Ltd.and several other companies. Their co-founder was the Bulgarian firm Arsenal, some sister companies of Polish firm Bumarand several firms from Slovenia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Estonia, and Jordan, known as producers of Kalashnikov machine guns AK-47 and AKM. Another co-founder of these companies was Oleg Orlov. Filin and Davidovich, under different names in their, respectively, Brazilian and German passports, 25 became co-founders of three Brazilian firms, which have been participating in the manufacturing the light attack bomber A-29 Super Tucanoand some other airspace products. Saidov and brothers Suleimenov control companies in Hong Kong and Dubai that have contracts with Chinese, Pakistani, and Iranian producers of torpedos, missiles and other weapons... Why does Kurginyan defend them is absolutely clear. Kurginyan is connected to Israel. That's 100 percent. Israel has long been stealing our technology. Kurginyan has connections with India and China, who also steal our technology.
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1 Anton Surikov's Cherkess ancestral name is Mansur Natkhoev. According to Armen Sarkisian, the Natkho clan has prominent positions in Turkish secret services and Surikov's third cousin is a General of Turkish army. Source: Razgovory s Armenom <http://left.ru/2006/2/razgovory136.phtml>
The so-called 'ArmeniaGate' scandal of 1996 started with the revelations of illegal transfer of Russian arsenals to Armenia that included scores of top-of-the-line battle tanks and Scud missile systems.
2 References to several episodes of political corruption. Alexander Khloponin, oligarch, presently the governor of Krasnoyarsk Krai in Siberia, Russia. Was chairman of the board of the Norilsk Nickel company. Udmurtia is autonomous republic that has a heavy concentration of military-industrial production, including the production of the advanced ICBM Topol-M. The Filin-Surikov group appears to belong to the clan of Yurii Masliukov, former chairman of the Soviet Gosplan and the the leading figure of Russian military-industrial complex. Presently, Masliukov is a State Duma deputy from Udmurtia.
3 Fritz Ermarth, former high-ranking CIA officer, presently at Nixon Foundation. Allegedly, business partner of Filin's group, long time acquaintance of Surikov. For an in-depth account of Ermarth-Surikov relations, see Vadim Stolz. Narodnyi referendum po ukazke TsRU? Left.ru, 15 (2005) <http://left.ru/2005/15/referendum132.phtml> Also: Peter Dale Scott. The Global Drug Meta-Group: Drugs, Managed Violence, and the Russian 9/. Lobster. The Journal of Parapolitics. 10/29/05 <http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm>. Professor Scott's article provides a detailed description of Surikov's alleged involvement in Basaev's invasion of Dagestan in 1999.
4 Oleg Orlov, or Dr. Oleg, according to the UN expert panel on Sierra-Leone (UNSC), was Viktor Bout's accomplice. See <http://www.niza.nl/uk/campaigns/diamonds/docs/sierra_leone/2-6.htm>
5 On Orlov's and Filin's group alleged involvement in smuggling Ukrainian cruise missiles Kh-55 to Iran and China, see New Information on the Involvement of Far West, Ltd in Illegal Arms Smuggling. By burtsev.ru <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/x-55en.phtml>
6 Former president of Liberia Charles Taylor was handed over to the Hague Tribunal in June 2006. For a good bank of information on Bout and Chichakli, see The Viktor Bout File at <http://www.ruudleeuw.com/vbout00.htm>
7 All members of Filin's organization. For information on these personalities in English, see: the abovementioned Peter Dale Scott's essay (http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/global-drug.htm)and the following materials, translated by burtsev.ru: Yasenev's Memo <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/yasenev_en.phtml>, Sergei Petrov's Interview: Revelations of the Fugitive Kremlin Financier <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/petrov_en.phtml> , Conversations with Armen (On Alfonso Davidovich- excerpts in English) <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/armen_excerpts.phtml> , Far West, Ltd. Leaves Europe Under the Threat of Criminal Persecution. Renamed Far West, LLC <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filin.phtml>, "Consulting" Agency Far West, LLC Paid $3 Million Bribe to Ukrainian Official For Illegal Arms Deals with Syria and Iran <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/lysenko.phtml> , as well as our footnotes to the transcripts of alleged conversations between the members of Filin's organization, entitled for short Bristol < http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/bristol_en.phtml> and Hilton <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/hilton_en.phtml>.
8 Generals Segei Fomenko, Yevgeny Kolesnikov, and Alexander Plotnikov, all of Federal Security Service, were fired in May 2006. See Heads Roll in New Drive Against State Corruption, By By Carl Schreckand Valeria Korchagina. The St Petersburg Times, May 16, 2006 <http://www.sptimes.ru/index.php?action_id=2&story_id=17572>
9 Ashot most likely Ashot Egiazarian, a shadowy financier connected to Kasyanov's clan. Brothers Sarkisian (not to confuse with Armen Sarkisian, counterintelligence officer, killed in July 2005): Arkady Sarkisian, Senator from Khakassia, was dismissed by Putin's order in May 2006. Represents the interests of the Deripaska oligarchic clan. We were not able to establish the identity of his brother.
10 Igor Sechin, close associate of Vladimir Putin, deputy head of Presidential Administration, often described as the leader of the 'siloviki' faction in the present regime. Probably the Igor repeatedly referred to in the transcripts of the recodings ,allegedly made by Sergei Petrov during his meetings with Filin, Surikov, Likhvintsev, and one Gennady Nikolaevich, businesman from Geneva . See, Bristol (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/bristol_en.phtml) and Hilton (http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/hilton_en.phtml). Vladimir Ustinov, former Prosecutor General, fired by Putin in June 2006. Ustinov and Sechin are relatives by the marriage of their children. Both men may be implicated in the developing investigation of the furniture store chains Grand and Three Whales.
11 Milorad Ulemek Lukovic (nom de guerre Legia) received a 40-year jail term for the assassination of Ivan Stambolic, a former president of Serbia, in August 2000 and the attempt to assasinate Vuk Draskovic, then a prominent opposition leader and currently Serbia's foreign minister. Lukovic-Legia is also the prime suspect for the assasination of Serbian Premier Zoran Djindjic.
12 Alexander Turchinov, close associate of Yulia Timoshenko, was appointed the head of Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) following the victory of the orange putsch in Kiev. Turchinov resigned in September 2005 after Yushchenko fired Timoshenko as prime minister. According to Vladimir Filin, Turchinov used his position to tie Filin's group with the illegal transfer of Kh-55 cruise missiles to Iran and that Turchinov acted on behalf of the anti-Cheney elements in the CIA leadership. See, Vladimir Filin. Ne smotrite gollivudskie fil'my... V Vashingtone gotoviat 'raketnyi skandal.' Zavtra, ?15 (647) 12 April, 2006 <http://zavtra.ru/cgi//veil//data/zavtra/06/647/14.html>
General Andrei Kozhemiaki, head of the SBU Operations Department under Turchinov.
13 Filin and Saidov were not public figures before 2005 when they suddenly emerged as experts, historians, and well-known political scientists at the Moscow Institute for Globalization Studies under the prominent Russian leftist Boris Kagarlitsky.
14 Audrius Butkevichius, former Lithunian defense minister, convicted felon (bribery). Close to the Albert Einstein Institute,associated with the CIA. In the 1990s went through special training in Britain, where he at one time resided together with Surikov and Igor Sutiagin, now in prison for espionage. Close to the Georgian oligarch Badri Patarkatsishvili, Berezovsky's business partner since the days of the Logovaz. According to his close friend Anton Surikov, Butkevichius was one of the organizers of the pro-American putsch in Georgia in 2003 (revolution of the roses). According to Butkevichius, he and his partners from Far West, LLC--Surikov, Filin, Saidov, and Baranov-have filed a libel case against the Lithunian weekly Ekstra. Last winter it published a long investigative piece on the alleged criminal activities of Butkevichius and Filin's organization. See, Audrius Butkevichius. Rossiiskii komppromat prishol v litovskii sud. Forum.msk.ru, 2006.03.07 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/kompromat/8630.html>
15 Recently, Saidov has radically changed his public views from being militant Islamist to supporter of the pro-Russian Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov. It is likely to be just another ruse to get in favor with the Kremlin at the time when Filin's group faces prosecution for illegal arms trading. The liquidation in quick succession of two leading Chechen separatists, Sadullaev and Basaev, might have been the price Saidov was willing to pay the Kremlin for saving himself and his accomplices. He was said to have been close to both men for many years.
16 The Direction Gnrale de la Scurit Extrieure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DGSE) (DGSE) or General Directorate for External Security is France's external intelligence agency.
17 See our dossier on Valerii Lunev at <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/lunev.phtml>
18 Yurii Shekochikhin, a neoliberal State Duma deputy, editor and investigative journalist of Novaya Gazeta, died from some mysterious decease in 2003. He wrote several investigative articles on the Three Whales affair.
19 Sergei Kurginyan is a well-known political scientist. Since the days of perestroika, presides over the Moscow Experimental Creative Center. Widely believed to have special relations with Russian intelligence. Long-time associate of Surikov. Yakov Kedmi, former head of Nativ, an Israeli agency that acted on the territory of the former Soviet Union and provided support to the Israeli intelligence services. See: John Loftus . THE FRAMING OF MICHAEL CHERNEY <http://www.intelligencesummit.org/cherney/>
20 Heydar Aliev, the president of Azerbajan; Vladimir Gusinsky powerful oligarch and media mogul, General Igor Rodionov defense minister.
21 Shabtai Shavit (Hebrew: ???? ????) was the Director General of the Mossad from 1990 to 1996.
22 On Davidovich and the cocain connection, see our dossier at <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/armen_excerpts.phtml>. According to Armen Sarkisian, Vladimir Filin's relations with Davidovich go back to the 1980s, when Davidovich was a liason officer between the Cuban General Arnaldo Ochoa and Filin's commander General Yurii Gusev of GRU.
23 On this conference, see: Anton Surikov. V Podmoskovie sporili o mezhdunarodnom terrorizme i planakh Kitaia v Sibiri i na Dal'nem Vostoke. 2006.07.01 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/news/11847.html>
24 Liudmilla Rozkina, one of the founders of Far West, Ltd. in 1998. Owns 10 percent of the company. According to Sergei Petrov, Rozkina is the former secret agent of the Soviet GRU. Has British passport.
25 This is a very important detail. Vladimir Filin, Alfonso Davodovich, and Yakov Kosman appear to reside in the West not under their birth names. Thus, in addition to his Soviet/Russian passport, Filin may carry Ukrainian, British, Serbian, and Brazilian papers in different names. According to Surikov's statement in his public correspondence with the human-rights activist Oleg Grechenevsky, Yakov Kosman uses the German passport in the name of his German grandmother, while Alfonso Davidovich had assumed the name of his Venezuelan wife after moving to East Germany in the 1970s and afterwards exchanged the East German passport in this name to the Federal. See, Surikov's letter to Grechenevsky, dated 18.04.06 at <http://www.anticompromat.ru/surikov/ist27d.html>
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"Consulting" Agency Far West, LLC Paid $3 Million Bribe to Ukrainian Official For Illegal Arms Deals with Syria and Iran
18 February, 2006
As we recently reported, the controversial consulting agency Far West, Ltd. had suddenly left Europe in the end of January 2006 , citing the fear of criminal prosecution by US law enforcement agencies and changing its name to Far West, LLC. 1
This announcement followed the sensational public statement by Vladimir Filin, chairman of the FWL board. In the interview he gave the FWL owned publication Pravda-info (11.16.05) Filin told about his agency giving US $3 million in bribes to Valery Lysenko, the deputy director of Ukrspetsexport (http://use-weapon.astral.kiev.ua/index.html), the Ukrainian state agency for arms export.
Filin gave this interview in response to the publication of the sensational article by Ivan Demidov in the Ukrainian newspaper Obkom. 2 Demidov accused two Filin's partners, Ukrainian Generals Leonid Kosyakov and Alexei Likhvintsev, and the so-called small oligarch Vyacheslav Kantor, adviser to Yushchenko, of seeking to obtain control over two Ukrainian sea ports, in Odessa and Ilyichevsk. The article hints that under the guise of ammonium nitrate and other fertilizers, to be exported to South America by Kantor's company Akron, the group plans to transport drugs.
The centerpiece of Demidov's article is the facsimile of the internal letter (http://ru.obkom.net.ua/related/uspecex.html) (dated 04.18.05) by the deputy director of Ukrspetsexport Valery Lysenko (http://www.defense-ua.com/rus/news/?id=13448&prn=yes) to the Head of Security Service of Ukraine Alexander Turchinov. Lysenko wrote this letter in response to Turchinov's inquiry (dated 04.12.05) concerning Far West, Ltd.
The letter names Likhvintsev as a founder and Kosyakov as the general director of Far West, Ltd. which consults the sales of light arms and military supplies to the countries of Africa and Latin America. Lysenko also lists businesspartners of FWL: private military companies KBR Halliburton (US), Diligence Iraq, LLC (Kuwait), and Meteoric Tactical Solutions (South Africa).
Lysenko's letter further identifies two Panamanian offshore companies, owned by Yushchenko's adviser, the ammonium mogul Vyacheslav Kantor,--Isofert Trading INC and Transchem International INC--as being used by Far West, Ltd. for most of their financial transactions. 3
Lysenko concludes by saying that Far West, Ltd. approached Ukrspetsexport with proposals for cooperation, including consulting on a number of questions related to military-technical cooperation with Turkey. However, we had to decline these proposals because of the dubious reputation of Far West, Ltd.
Demidov suggests that Turchinov sent his inquiry to Urkrspetsexport because he did not trust his own service to do the background check on Likhvintsev and Kosyakov who either had already been or were about to be appointed to general's positions in the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff.
According to Demidov, Kosyakov has Swiss and Likhvintsev British passports. As another possible problem with their appointment to high and sensitive positions in the Ukrainian security state, Demidov cites their career in the Soviet military intelligence, which included service in the GRU group N (for Narcotics) in Afghanistan. Officially the Group was tasked with fighting narcotraffic by intercepting caravans with drugs and infiltrating drug networks. Special Group N enjoyed personal support of a high-ranking GRU general and its members were allowed unauthorized contacts with representatives of US intelligence. Its commander was Leonid Kosyakov, Alexei Likhvintsev was his deputy. The Group included Anton Surikov and Ruslan Saidov, now members of FWL board. Demidov also mentions some of the later activities of the Group members: looting Soviet arsenals in the West Group Army, selling arms for diamonds in Africa, training Basaev's Abkhazian batallion.
The article alleges that Fritz Ermarth, formerly high ranking official in the CIA, NSC, and NIC, plays the role of the supervisor of this GRU group on the part of the FWL's chief partner: KBR Halliburton and the Dick Cheney circle.
Two days after the publication of Demidov's article, Pravda-info denounced Alexander Turchinov, alleging that he was a homosexual, a religious cultist, and a former KGB informer. The piece was written by Natalia Roeva (Valiahmetova), new President of FWL, and included her interview with Filin who made this sensational statement.
Roeva - What can you say about the "Ukrspetsexport" letter to Turchinov, signed by Lysenko?
Filin: - There is one very interesting moment in this letter. It alleges that we offered "Ukrspetsexport" our consulting regarding Turkey, but they turned us down because of our "dubious reputation." I assume that when Lysenko was signing this letter he realized that he would have to pay for this kind of talk. So now I want to have a piece of this game, imposed on me, and ask this question: if our "dubious reputation" had prevented them from using our consulting services in regard to Turkey, why then the same "dubious reputation" did not prevent [them from carrying out with us] much bigger projects with Syria and Iran and in a such a way that "Americans and Israelis did not learn about [those projects]"? Perhaps, because the kickback was so big--three million dollars: $750,000, then one million, then another $750,000, then $200,000 and then $300,000 more? Or perhaps, it didn't matter because [he] liked so much the "relaxing" vacations abroad "paid by the company"?
Roeva: - You are telling very interesting things.
Filin: - Come on, I will tell much more interesting things when [they give me] another pretext. 4
One can only speculate what made Vladimir Filin to publicly implicate himself and his company in a grave international crime, but his last words strongly suggest that it was his intention to warn Ukrainian and, possibly, Russian arms trade establishment from leaking even more damaging information about Far West, Ltd. In any case, his statement clearly stunned many in Russia and Ukraine. According to Russian informational agency Novyi Region, Vladimir Filin's revelations shocked the employees of Rosoboronexport who worked with Ukrspetsexport on a number of projects. 5 The agency quotes one of these employees who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity.
Q: What such enormous bribes are paid for in the arms market?
A: For confidentiality, as Vladimir Filin correctly pointed out. Confidentiality is specially highly priced when the contract, to put it mildly, does not correspond to international agreements about the non-proliferation of certain types of weapons and technologies.
Q: But what kind of secret deals could Ukraine have with Syria and Iran?
A: Nothing secret with Syria, Ukraine sells there only spare parts for their obsolete stock of airplanes and armor.Iran is a different matter. As Victor Yushchenko confirmed in the beginning of this year [2005 burtsev.ru], Ukraine had leaked to Iran the strategic cruise missiles of X-55 type, produced in the Soviet Union. This missile can deliver a nuclear charge and selling it, undoubtfully, violates all existing international treaties on the nonproliferation of missile technologies and the weapons of mass destruction. 6
The Rosoboronexport official also explained that ammonium nitrate produced by Vyacheslav Kantor's company Akron has dual, civil and military, use, including the production of explosives and rocket fuel. He added that the offshore companies, like Kantor's Isofert Trading INC and Transchem International INC, are commonly used by arms dealers to hide financial transactions under confidential contracts. 7
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1 Far West, Ltd. Leaves Europe Under the Threat of Criminal Persecution. Renamed Far West, LLC. Left.ru <http://left.ru/burtsev/ops/filin.phtml>
According to the latest announcement by the Internet publication Pravda-info,Vladimir Filin has left his residence in Lausanne, Switzerland and settled in San Paulo, Brazil. He is said to have business interests in a number of Brazil companies, specifically in lumber industry and the production of poultry for export. He was joined there by Alfonso Davidovich Ochoa, who previously resided in Munich, Germany. Two other leaders of Far West, Ltd./LLC, Yakov Kosman and Valery Lunev, also formerly of Russian military intelligence, have left the countries of their legal residence France and the Netherlands respectively--for permanent residence in Dubai, where they were joined by the financial director Ruslan Berenis (UK) and Sultan Suleimenov, first deputy of the executive director of FWL. See, Political Scientist Fritz Ermarth and businessman Adnan Khashoggi Do Not Own Agency Far West . By Natalia Roeva, Pravda-info, 10.02.2006 <http://forum.msk.ru/material/news/7539.html> and Vladimir Filin's bio at the masthead of Pravda-info <http://forum.msk.ru/author/19.html>
2 Ivan Demidov, Kto vydavlivaet sok iz 'nakolotykh apelsinov'? (Who Squeezes Juice from 'Drug-Injected Oranges') Obkom (11.15.05) <http://ru.obkom.net.ua/articles/2005-11/15.1647.shtml> Reprinted in Ekonomicheskie novosti under the title Sovetniki Yushchenko lobbiruiut interesy rossiiskikh oligarkhov (Yushchenko's Advisers Lobby Russian Oligarchs)(11.16.05) <http://economic-ua.info/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2698>????????? ?????? ????????? ???????? ?????????? ????????? http://economic-ua.info/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2698
3 Demidov claims that in the 1990s Kantor's own profits from Akron were moved to these offshores through AVTOVAZ Bank belonging to Boris Berezovsky and Badri Patarkatsishvili.
4 "Is Yulia Timoshenko's Closest Associate Religious Sectarian, Pederast and Former Informer?" Pravda-info, 11.17.2005 <http://www.forum.msk.ru/material/news/4891.html>
5 The Rosoboronexport State Corporation is the sole state intermediary agency for Russia's military exports/imports.
6 Arms Traders Receive Orange Suitcase With Compromising Materials (in Russian). By Andrei Latynin. Novyi Region 2 (12.13.2005) <http://www.nr2.ru/siberia/49429.html >
7 Vyacheslav Moshe Kantor was detained for questioning regarding suspicions of international money laundering on February 9, 2006, when he arrived at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport.<http://www.jewishva.org/content_display.html?ArticleID=165523>