Khodorkovsky was CIA target

[emad]

Ex-CIA traitor Aldrich Ames implicated: London Evening Standard

Khodorkovsky was CIA target

1 June 2005

MIKHAIL Khodorkovsky, the former oil magnate jailed by a Moscow court for nine years for fraud and tax evasion, was the target of an undercover operation by America's Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which believed he was involved in a huge money-laundering operation by the Russian mafia and ex-KGB officers.

America has condemned the prosecution of Khodorkovsky, accusing Russia of 'back-sliding' on democracy, but the undercover CIA operation against him suggests the US government is being hypocritical because it had also regarded him with great suspicion.


Finance and defence consultant Karon von Gerhke-Thompson has given a detailed account of the CIA operation to a congressional committee investigating Russian corruption. She says the investigation began after she was introduced to Alexandre Konanykhine, who was close to then Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

-------------------

Gerhke-Thompson said her role for the CIA was eventually compromised by American double agent Aldrich Ames. She said a CIA officer told her that after Ames had blown her cover, she would be killed or arrested if she travelled to Russia. Congressional sources say Konanykhine denied the claims and was granted political asylum in America after saying the Russian mafia wanted to kill him.

http://www.thisislondon.com/news/business/articles/timid400994?source=This%20is%20Money

[MisterP]

1. CIA leadership: pro-oligarch, pro-mafia, evidence be hanged!

Agents: "He's going out with the mob."
Leadership: "No he's not, he's a persecuted beacon of democracy, like Somoza and Musharraf."

[Sandpiper]

2. Bushco: Champion of the Robber Baron

If Khodorkovsky lived in the U.S., he'd be given a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

[bemildred]

3. Try CIA agent. nt

[dArKeR]

4. I believe this guy was saying that Khodorkovsky got the axe because

Putin didn't want American Corporations to take over Russian oil. Before I heard Mr. X, below say this, my European friends told me this about a month ago, which I posted on the DU then.

[bemildred]

5. I think you have it. nt

[Supersedeas]

6. Hypocritical: in 'Merika all are considered innocent until found guilty

[lovuian]

7. Well Well Well so the US really did want him arrested HMMM!!!

Somehow I beleive the CIA was watching him but with him owning all the Oil in Russia it was probably a deal between putin and bush

Bush gets Saddam and Putin gets Khordorsky

Both get riches and removal of their enemies!!!

[emad]

8. CIA was running a covert op since 1993:

SNIP:

The CIA asked Gerhke-Thompson to work for Konanykhine from April 1993.

'I volunteered my services as an unpaid intelligence asset to the CIA on a CIA operation to penetrate what the CIA, FBI and Department of Justice knew was a KGB money-laundering operation with tentacles that reached in the Kremlin to Boris Yeltsin,' she said.

'The CIA believed that financial aid from the US and international lending institutions to support Russia's transition was being laundered through front firms into offshore banks. A substantial amount of the laundered money was believed to be in safe havens in offshore banks or was used to establish offshore businesses and joint venture partnerships with Western firms.'

'According to Mr V, Konanykhine and Khodorkovsky were key players to unravelling the ties between the KGB, senior government officials and Russian organised crime families.'
ENDSNIP

SO if the spooks were watching the $$$$$$$$$ from "financial aid from the US and international lending institutions to support Russia's transition".....they know where the estimated Yukos $50billion fraud has gone.

NOW if they're that clued up, is there going to be a breaking story that they were also monitoring the Iraq Oil-for-Food scam in roughly that same period?


SNIP:Top Kremlin operatives and a flamboyant Russian politician reaped millions of dollars in profits under the U.N. oil-for-food program by selling oil that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein allowed them to buy at a deep discount, a Senate investigation has concluded. The allegations -- which also include descriptions of kickbacks paid to Hussein -- are detailed in hundreds of pages of reports and documents made public last night by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in advance of a hearing tomorrow.

The documents outline a trail of oil and money that leads directly from Iraq to the Kremlin and the former chief of staff to Russian President Vladimir Putin and former president Boris Yeltsin. The report said Iraq sought to influence and reward the Russian government because it sits on the powerful U.N. Security Council that oversaw sanctions against the Hussein government. Russia repeatedly sided with Iraq on issues before the Security Council.

In addition, the reports allege that Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, several Russian entities and a Houston-based oil trading company, Bayoil, "paid millions of dollars in illegal, under-the-table surcharges to the Hussein regime in connection with these oil transactions." U.S. officials say Hussein used illicit proceeds from oil sales to buy weapons, among other things."
http://www.acepilots.com/unscam/

[seemslikeadream]

9. Thanks emad

:hi:

[mbperrin]

10. More like a CIA partner! He's a Carlyle grouper!

Arrested Russian Businessman Is Carlyle Group Adviser

http://www.rusnet.nl/news/2003/11/11/commentary02.shtml

November 10, 2003
By Greg Schneider
The Washington Post

The arrest of two of Russia's top businessmen in recent months was more than a distant headline for Washington's well-connected private equity firm, Carlyle Group.



Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 40, Russia's richest man, owns Yukos Oil Co
Chris Kleponis / Bloomberg News

Carlyle, known for the glittering roster of former statesmen among its partners and advisers, has ties to both Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, the jailed Russian tycoons.

Khodorkovsky, 40, Russia's richest man and former chief executive of Yukos Oil Co., serves as an adviser to Carlyle's Energy Group. He is among 15 luminaries who help the firm sort through investment opportunities in energy industries, along with former secretary of state James A. Baker III, former British prime minister John Major and Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Daniel Yergin.

<more>
Bit of the CYA, eh?

[emad]

12. Poppy resigned mysteriously from Carlyle earlier this year.

Ex UK PM John Major is still in there.

Hope they subpoena him as a trial witness in the London BCCI class action (resumes June 13) - the UK press has long reported that the plaintiffs have threatened to do this.

[emad]

11. Russia approves concept of resisting money-laundering

Russia approves concept of resisting money-laundering

MOSCOW. June 1 (Interfax) - The Russian government has approved the concept of resisting money-laundering and the funding of terrorism, Federal Financial Monitoring Service chief Viktor Zubkov said on Wednesday.

The concept, covering the period until 2010, provides for legislative and organizational measures that should be taken to resist money-laundering and the funding of terrorism, he said.

"The concept will be submitted to the president in a few days," he said.

http://www.interfax.ru/e/B/politics/28.html?id_issue=11305419

So has Putin never heard the term "get thee behind me Satan" or words to that equivalent?