28 janvier 2008
Arrestation à Moscou d'un caïd présumé de la pègre recherché par le FBI
MOSCOU - La police russe a annoncé vendredi avoir arrêté Semen Moguilevitch, considéré par le FBI comme un caïd de la pègre russe, dans le cadre d'une enquête pour malversations sur le plus grand distributeur russe de cosmétiques.
"C'est un homme qui a plusieurs identités, plusieurs nationalités. Depuis quinze ans, il est recherché non seulement par la police en Russie mais également dans d'autres pays", a déclaré Angela Kastouïeva, porte-parole du ministère de l'Intérieur, sur la chaîne NTV.
La Russie, l'Ukraine, Israël et les Etats-Unis recherchent Semen Moguilevitch depuis le début des années 1990, selon Mme Kastouïeva.
La télévision russe a montré les images d'un homme très corpulent, vêtu d'un survêtement et gros fumeur, qui monte tranquillement à bord d'une fourgonnette de la police.
Le nom de Semen Moguilevitch est apparu vendredi matin dans la presse après l'arrestation mercredi soir de Vladimir Nekrassov, patron d'Arbat Prestige, leader de la distribution de cosmétiques en Russie, accusé d'évasion fiscale.
Selon la police, M. Moguilovitch travaillait pour M. Nekrassov, un Franco-Russe selon la presse russe.
L'avocat du patron d'Arbat Prestige, Alexandre Dobrovinski, a qualifié d'"absurdes" les accusations contre son client. "On l'accuse du fait que trois de ses fournisseurs, parmi des milliers, n'ont pas payé leurs impôts", s'est indigné M. Dobrovinski joint par téléphone par l'AFP.
L'avocat a réfuté tout lien entre son client et Sergueï Chneïder (un des nombreux pseudonymes de Semen Moguilevitch).
"La police lui a posé la question lors de l'interrogatoire. Il connaît simplement l'ex-femme" de M. Moguilevitch, a indiqué M. Dobrovinski.
Le bureau russe d'Interpol a confirmé que l'homme arrêté était recherché depuis 2003 à la demande du FBI. Et indiqué également qu'il avait été arrêté dans le cadre de l'affaire Arbat Prestige, mais dans le cadre d'une demande émanant d'un pays étranger.
Né en 1946 en Ukraine, Semen Moguilevitch est présenté par le FBI comme un "homme d'affaires" accusé d'avoir participé à un montage fictif visant à détourner des investissements de 150 millions de dollars.
Selon la presse russe, M. Moguilevitch a appartenu à l'époque soviétique à la mafia de Lioubertsy, puis à celle de Solntsevo. Ces deux groupes étaient considérés comme parmi les plus puissants des années 70 au début des années 90.
Il est soupçonné par les justices russe, israélienne et américaine de blanchiment, extorsion, trafic d'armes, trafic de drogues, etc.
27 janvier 2008
Drones Russes
De nouvelles photos ont été ajoutées à l'album photo
http://cfries.canalblog.com/albums/drones_militaires/index.html
Spy tells of Russia misdeeds in book
UNITED NATIONS – A former Russian top spy says his agents helped the Russian government steal nearly $500 million from the U.N.’s oil-for-food program in Iraq before the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States in 2000 as a double agent, says he oversaw an operation that helped Saddam’s regime manipulate the price of Iraqi oil sold under the program – and allow Russia to skim profits.
Tretyakov, former deputy head of intelligence at Russia’s U.N. mission from 1995 to 2000, names some names, but sticks mainly to code names. Among the spies he says he recruited for Russia were a Canadian nuclear weapons expert who became a U.N. nuclear verification expert in Vienna, a senior Russian official in the oil-for-food program and a former Soviet bloc ambassador. He describes a Russian businessman who got hold of a nuclear bomb and kept it stored in a shed at his dacha outside Moscow.
The 51-year-old Tretyakov had never spoken out about his spying before this week, when he granted his first news media interviews to publicize a book published Thursday. Written by former Washington Post journalist Pete Earley, the book is titled “Comrade J.: The Untold Secrets of Russia’s Master Spy in America after the End of the Cold War.”
“It’s an international spy nest,” Tretyakov said of the U.N., during an interview this week with The Associated Press. “Inside the U.N., we were fishing for knowledgeable diplomats who could give us first of all anti-American information.”
His defection was first reported by the AP in 2001. Shortly after, the New York Times broke the news that he was not a diplomat, but a top Russian spy who was extensively debriefed by the CIA and the FBI.
Some of the people named or referenced by a code name in the book have denied Tretyakov’s claims. The Russian mission to the U.N. said Friday it would have no immediate comment.
Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, described Tretyakov’s allegations as potentially serious violations of law and U.N. rules.
But Dujarric said it would be up to others to prosecute if the allegations are substantiated: “Since the U.N. can’t prosecute, it is now up to national governments to prosecute.”
An 18-month investigation into the oil-for-food corruption, led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, culminated in an October 2005 report accusing more than 2,200 companies from some 40 countries of colluding with Saddam’s regime to bilk the humanitarian program in Iraq of $1.8 billion.
The program was aimed at easing Iraqi suffering under U.N. sanctions imposed after Saddam’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. It allowed Iraq to sell oil provided the bulk of the proceeds were used to buy food, medicine and other humanitarian goods and to pay war reparations. Volcker’s reports blamed shoddy U.N. management and the world’s most powerful nations for allowing corruption in the $64 billion program to go on for years.
Tretyakov defected to the United States with his wife and daughter in 2000, after serving as a double agent passing along secrets to the U.S. government. He warns that Russia, despite the end of the Cold War, harbors bad intentions toward the United States.
The decision to defect, he said, was made only after his mother died in 1997, and he had no other close relatives alive in Russia who could be used to blackmail him.
By John Heilprin
Associated Press
Published: January 27, 2008 6:00 a.m.
RosUkrEnergo
The history of RosUkrEnergo (RUE) dates to July 2004, when it replaced EuralTransGas as the official importer of gas to Ukraine. EuralTransGas had itself in 2002 replaced Itera, an “equally opaque” trading company that had played a similar intermediary role between Turkmenistan and Ukraine. In 2005, Naftohaz Ukrayiny secured 36 bcm of Turkmen gas from RUE in a barter deal that gave the intermediary firm some 37.5% of the Turkmen flow. RUE sold this gas in turn to EU countries, providing the vast majority of its $3 billion in sales and $500 million in profit. As noted above, the January 4 agreement only increased RUE’s role. It also yielded the firm a 50 percent share in the new UGE venture that will supply gas to Ukrainian domestic industries. Until May 2006, the ownership and operations of RUE remained murky. Registered in Zug, Switzerland, it is owned jointly on an equal basis by Gazprom and by the Centragas holding company, an umbrella corporation run by Austria’s Raiffeisen bank on behalf of a group of Ukrainian investors that it refused to identify despite pressure from Western officials. Officials in Russia and Ukraine had repeatedly accused one another of ownership in the company while themselves denying any participation. Despite these denials, the participation of high-level Russian and Ukrainian officials in RUE’s operations cannot be doubted. Aleksandr Medvedev, the director of Gazprom’s export arm, is one of eight members of the board of RUE. Konstantin Chuychenko, the head of Gazprom’s legal department and a longtime associate of Putin, is a co-director of RUE, while Gazprom banking subsidiary chairman Andrei Akimov also sits on the board.
In a March 2006 press conference, Yushchenko declared that he had no knowledge of RUE’s true ownership. However, after his resignation, former State Security Service (SBU) chief Oleksandr Turchynov said that the government had ordered him to investigate the company - before Yushchenko ordered him to abandon the inquiry last summer. Turchynov declared that this investigation had uncovered the involvement of the known organized criminal Semyon Mogilevich, the former president Leonid Kuchma, and the then little known businessman Dmytro Firtash. There are also reported links to the Russian FSB. In response, current SBU chief Ihor Drizhchany denied that his organization had ever undertaken any criminal investigation into RUE. Information soon started to flow even more quickly.
The Wall Street Journal reported on April 23 that investigations into RUE were under way. On April 24, Global Witness (a nonpartisan, multinational NGO) released a devastating report entitled "It’s a Gas: Funny Business in the Turkmen-Ukraine Gas Trade." In addition to its criticism of the practices of President Niyazov and Gazprom, the report detailed the involvement of “top Ukrainian public officials” in RUE, and heavily criticized the opaque ownership structure of the company. Finally, on April 26, Gazprom-owned newspaper Izvestia announced that Dmytro Firtash and Ivan Fursin, two Ukrainian businessmen, are the owners of RosUkrEnergo. Holding company Centragas confirmed Izvestia’s report in a statement, saying Firtash owned a 90 percent stake in Centragas, and Ivan Fursin a 10 percent stake. Firtash is director of the Cyprusbased investment company Highrock Holdings, as well as board chairman of Estonian fertilizer factory Nitrofert, according to Global Witness. Fursin owns an Odesa bank and a movie theater, and, as the Russian newspaper Izvestia reported, is also president of a branch of Highrock Holdings. The newspaper also reported that Highrock was owned by Mogilevich.
In a parliamentary debate earlier this year it was alleged that Mogilevich, a reputed organized crime boss who is on the FBI’s "most wanted" list on charges of being involved in a stock fraud, was involved in the company. Firtash was previously involved in two other
gas trading firms with Zeev Gordon, an Israeli lawyer who also represents Mogilevich. Mogilevich denied any involvement in RUE; Gordon said he had not met Firtash through Mogilevich; finally, Firtash insists while he met with Mogilevich, he never had any business
dealings with him. Firtash’s background was probed by Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank, which subsequently cleared him of wrongdoing. However, this verdict was not quite as important as that of the court of public opinion, in which numerous doubts still remain.
The opaque nature of RUE’s operations and ownership structure would raise questions in any country. In a nation such as Ukraine, which is eager to join the WTO and to demonstrate its ability to abide by accepted business practices and international commercial
standards, the continued role of RUE is simply unacceptable. If it continues in its present form, RUE will not only endanger Ukraine’s energy future, but likely its Euro-Atlantic aspirations as well.
Source : Hudson Institute's Center for Eurasian Policy (2006)
