by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

It is now a fortnight since President Vladimir Putin (lead image, left) announced  a tax on Russians exporting their cash and capital to tax avoidance havens abroad;  and since Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin followed to explain that Cyprus is the target. “We have started implementing the instructions on taxing dividends from foreign accounts with Cyprus”, Mishustin said at a Kremlin meeting with Putin on April 1. “The Cypriot government has been notified of the changes in the agreement on avoiding dual taxation.”  

 “For Putin to make his remark in a national address,” comments a Moscow finance source, “and then for Mishustin to confirm that Cyprus was intended in the President’s speech shows this is now a high priority move.  It reveals how upset the Kremlin – especially Andrei Belousov [first deputy prime minister] — has been with the role Cyprus plays in the outflow of Russian capital. I do not see any government allowing capital flight now during a deep and lasting recession.”

“This sounds a death knell for Cyprus accountants and law firms,” says a Limassol investor. “This is their biggest business. From now on only the most hardened criminals or escapees from Russia will be here.”

There has been a flurry of press leaks from Cyprus Government officials claiming that the Russian move is not targeting Cyprus. But no official at the Foreign and Finance Ministries in Moscow, nor at the Russian Embassy in Nicosia, has said this on the record. According to Mishustin and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, the new rules are still being decided, and will be announced on April 24.     

By the way, the kibosh was an iron bar used two hundred years ago by cobblers in the north of England to flatten leather as they were making clogs. When the word reached the streets of London, it meant flatten in more ways than that one. The government of President Nicos Anastasiades (lead image, right) and Nicos Christodoulides, his foreign minister and aspiring successor, having chosen last year to cut their ties to Russia in exchange for American promises to protect the island from the Turks, is the clog in this story.

by Editor - Wednesday, April 8th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Late last week the 193 member states of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) agreed unanimously on a statement of “solidarity of countries in the fight against the pandemic”. They also agreed unanimously there is “no place for any form of discrimination, racism and xenophobia in the response to the pandemic.”

On the explicit opposition of Ukraine, Georgia, the US, the UK, and the European Union, the UN did not agree on “the rejection of trade wars and the use of unilateral sanctions adopted in circumvention of the UN Security Council to ensure urgent access to food and medicine, as well as countering financial speculation with essential goods.”  This was the language of a resolution drafted by Russia.

Thus has the world decided that warfare is an essential service and should continue without lockdown, quarantine, social distancing, hand-washing, or restriction of any kind.

by Editor - Tuesday, April 7th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Now for a psycho-shocker of a spy story in which the National Security Agency’s (NSA) chief of the Research Directorate goes head to head with Russians whom his research proves tried “to change the outcome of our presidential election”, and then tried to kill Sergei Skripal to “serve[d] as a warning to Russia’s adversaries”.

The psycho-shock has already happened to the NSA chief and storyteller, Eric Haseltine (lead images),  so he is paralysed by a Russian weapon that’s about to psycho-shock the reader. That’s you.

After you read this, you will never again be able to type on a keyboard without anticipating that the “diabolically clever” Russians are reading every word. But maybe you are suspicious the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) might be doing the same thing? “Naw”, says Michael Arneson, Haseltine’s hero and NSA engineer from a dirt poor Minnesota family with no more than a high school diploma, and whose favourite drink is Mr Pibb. “The CIA is way too incompetent to create something this good.”  In this tale,  American heroes fit to fight the Russians and save you from your keyboards,  talk like that.

by Editor - Monday, April 6th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Dutch lawyers leading the defence against the charge of premeditated murder in the destruction of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014, have no experience of litigation in cases involving aircraft crashes, war crimes, military crimes, or homicide – except for cases when they have defended Dutch police accused of shooting people on the streets of Rotterdam.     

The first of the defence lawyers, Sabine ten Doesschate, has never conducted a defence in a murder trial; in her short career so far, she has specialized in white collar fraud. Her leader, Boudewijn van Eijck, has a career record of defending Rotterdam police in collaboration with Rotterdam police commanders and prosecutors; at the time they included Fred Westerbeke, lead prosecutor of the MH17 investigation, and Dedy Woei-A-Tsoi, one of the three prosecutors now in court.

Asked if his relationships with them create a conflict for him to defend in this trial, van Eijck  refuses to answer.  “Our focus is the MH17 case,” he said through a spokesman on Friday, “not the professional careers of the lawyers.”

Ten Doeschate and van Eijck have announced they have engaged a Dutch public relations company called Headline Communications and a spokesman named Martin van Putten.  The company has no operating record in The Netherlands. Responding to questions emailed over two weeks about the two lawyers, their expertise to mount a professional defence, and their conflicts of interest, Van Putten at first lied; then insisted “we do not comment in the media until after the next [court] session on June 8^th.”  When asked by telephone to clarify the lawyers’ silence and misleading statements he has made on their behalf, he cut the telephone line.

The third lawyer on the team, Yelena Kutyina, is a Moscow lawyer with trial experience defending media personalities in assault and injury compensation claims and appearing herself as a judge in television courtroom shows.  Asked to describe her experience in criminal trials, Kutyina refuses to answer.

“So far as I can tell,” commented veteran war crimes defence lawyer Christopher Black, a Canadian, “so far as I can tell, they are not acting like a real defence.”

by Editor - Sunday, April 5th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The US satellite images proving that a BUK missile brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014, have existed for twenty-three days – between July 20 and August 12, 2014. Since then they ceased to exist.  Since then too, for almost six years, no US Government official has claimed in public, nor told Dutch police, prosecutors, or military intelligence officials in secret, that the images can be viewed with the naked eye.

A week ago, on March 23, Hendrik Steenhuis, a judge of The Hague District Court, ordered the production and disclosure of these US satellite images as evidence in the trial of four men accused of transporting the missile to its launch site, participating in the order to fire, and intending to kill all 298 people on board the aircraft.

Steenhuis, the presiding trial judge, gave Dutch prosecutors until June 8 to comply with the order and prove the satellite images exist. If they do not, the foundation of the case against the four accused, and against the Russian military and political command for ordering the BUK launched, will collapse.

Lawyers with experience in comparable international tribunals are sceptical of both Judge Steenhuis’s order, and of the likelihood the US Government and Dutch prosecutors will obey it.  Christopher Black was a Canadian lawyer for the defence in the Yugoslav trials beginning in 1993, and the Rwanda trials commencing in 1994. He says: “In our trial at the ICTR [International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda] we pushed the judges to order the prosecution to produce what they claimed they had. Several times under our browbeating, they did make such orders. But they were never followed up. The prosecution never complied, even when a couple of times they were roasted by the judges for disregarding their orders. They didn’t care and nothing was done. We think it was all window-dressing for the press in order to make the judges appear neutral when they were part of the prosecution.”

by Editor - Tuesday, March 31st, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

“The immediate priority is to prevent the quick spread of this disease”, President Vladimir Putin (lead image, top left) declared in his state speech on the corona virus last week.  

This is the point on which there is no disagreement, not now at least. But how restrictive for the economy the anti-contagion measures should be, and at what cost compared to the cost of the virus impact on life and death, is a point of considerable debate, inside Russia as everywhere else. That is the point which Putin avoided. He is not alone among the heads of state or government in the rest of the world.  What is the difference then between Putin and all of them?

by Editor - Monday, March 30th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

“Where no case is made out against a man, or such a flimsy one that it cannot stand on its feet, he is entitled to say: ‘I ask the jury to say that I am not guilty without hearing a word from me.’”

That sentence was written almost sixty years ago by one of the most brilliant tellers of courtroom stories in the English language, Henry Cecil. Nom de plume of an English county court judge,  Cecil  put the words in the mouth of the barrister for the defendant, in his summing-up for the jury. The story is a whodunit, with much of Cecil’s characteristic poking of fun and then, at the end — well, a surprise I shan’t reveal.

In the tale of the trial of four defendants accused of murder in the shooting-down of Malaysia Airlines MH17, there are no jokes. But the proceedings which commenced at Schiphol, in The Netherlands, on March 9 and adjourned on March 23 for ten weeks, did have a surprise ending. That is also the point of Cecil’s defence speech. The point is that the Dutch prosecutors have revealed the case they are making out against the defendants, and also,  they insist, against the Russian state, is such a flimsy one, it cannot stand on its own feet. It should therefore be dismissed by the panel of three judges.

Recognizing this in his first ruling, issued on March 23, Hendrik Steenhuis, the presiding judge, gave the prosecution, the Dutch Government behind them,  and the US Government behind them,  one last chance.

This was his order to produce in court the crucial piece of evidence on which the case of murder depends – the US satellite images which US officials have long claimed to prove the firing of a BUK missile at MH17 and to have reported in secret to Dutch intelligence. But since the evidence of the chief of Dutch military intelligence, and also of the investigating police and prosecutors – official secrets now leaked in public – is that the US has not provided the evidence, the judge’s order is an ultimatum.

If the evidence isn’t produced by June 8, when the court resumes, the court will be asked to rule that the defendants have no case to answer.

by Editor - Sunday, March 29th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

On Sunday, March 22, Russia’s Defence Ministry sent more than fifteen Ilyushin heavy transport planes to Rome with medical aid to Italy, setting up a special medical headquarters at Bergamo, in the Lombady region of northern Italy.  This is the largest Russian aid operation in Europe since World War II.

To avoid US intervention to stop it, the air convoy flew across Turkish and Greek airspace, avoiding Ukraine and Poland. As military secrets go, the operational plan devised by Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and his Italian counterpart, Lorenzo Guerini, was a near-perfect success.

Recriminations followed the next day from the Financial Times which accused Moscow of  trying to “exploit EU tensions over medical export bans and delays in financial support.”  The newspaper quoted the director of an Italian think-tank, Nathalie Tocci, as saying “Russia needs a quick win, so it wants to act fast…It does what Russia always does, which is seize low-hanging fruit.” Tocci and her think-tank are employed by NATO, the European Commission, the European External Action Service, and the European Defence Agency.

by Editor - Wednesday, March 25th, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The presiding judge in the trial of murder in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014, dropped a bombshell at the end of his 45-minute ruling presented in court in The Netherlands yesterday.   

The Dutch prosecutors are now attempting to cover it up. A press spokesman, Monique Buunk, was asked for a copy of the judge’s ruling. She declined and refused to explain. A summary of the ruling issued by the prosecution press office on Monday afternoon said only: “the court also put a number of questions to the prosecution and counsel for the relatives.” The court has now adjourned until June 8.

Reading from a prepared paper, Judge Hendrik Steenhuis (lead image) ordered the Dutch prosecutors and the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team, which has provided the evidence for the murder charges, to report to the court whether US satellite data, allegedly showing the firing of a BUK missile to bring down the aircraft, have been provided to the investigation. The judge’s order also requires the prosecutors to explain whether the American satellite evidence can now be released to the court and to the lawyers representing Oleg Pulatov, one of the four men accused in the firing of the missile.

On January 22, 2016, according to Steenhuis , Dutch members of parliament were briefed by a Dutch satellite expert at a parliamentary discussion of the MH17 case that “the US has satellite images of the missile being fired”, and that these images were “shared with Dutch intelligence.” According to Steenhuis, the MP also announced “the US has no objection to declassification”. “Is this correct?” Steenhuis issued an order to the prosecutors for reply. “Is this satellite data to be released?”

The order for disclosure of the US satellite evidence opens in court for the first time the possibility that the Dutch prosecution may not be able to produce the satellite images because the US has not released them;  because a Dutch military intelligence report of September 21, 2016,  says it had received from the US no satellite imagery of a BUK missile launch at MH17; and because the US claim to have the satellite data is a fabrication. 

by Editor - Monday, March 23rd, 2020
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by John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The presiding judge in the trial of murder in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17, 2014, has dropped a bombshell at the end of his 45-minute presentation in court in The Netherlands on Monday morning.  

Reading from a prepared script, Judge Hendrik Steenhuis (lead image) ordered the Dutch prosecutors and the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team, which has provided the evidence for the murder charges, to report to the court whether US satellite data, allegedly showing the launch of a BUK missile to bring down the aircraft, have been provided to the investigation. The judge’s order also requires the prosecutors to explain whether the American satellite evidence can now be released to the court and to the lawyers representing Oleg Pulatov, one of the four men accused in the firing of the missile.

On January 22, 2016, according to Hendrick, a Dutch member of parliament claimed in a parliamentary hearing that “the US has satellite images of the missile being fired”, and that these images were “shared with Dutch intelligence.” The Dutch parliamentarian was not named. According to Steenhuis, the MP also announced “the US has no objection to declassification”.

“Is this correct?” Steenhuis issued an order to the prosecutors for answer.  “Is this satellite data to be released?”

The order for disclosure of the US satellite evidence opens in court for the first time the possibility that the Dutch prosecution may not be able to produce the satellite images because the US has not released them;  because a Dutch military intelligence report of September 21, 2016,  says it had received from the US no satellite imagery of a BUK missile launch at MH17; and because the data may not exist at all.

by Editor - Monday, March 23rd, 2020
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