By John Helmer, Moscow

Smelting aluminium is a dirty business, so it’s every smelterman’s dream to recuperate on a tropical island far from the Big Smoke. Denis Island, for example, three balmy degrees south of the Equator in the Indian Ocean. And so, once upon a recent time, Oleg Deripaska (lead image), control shareholder of the Russian aluminium monopoly Rusal, downed tools, shut the door on his potline, and flew off. To Denis Island, where he was accompanied by his own valets, cooks, servers, and maids.

Or is this the fantasy of Rusal employees, fearful of wage payment delays and job losses looming in the management’s new plan, according to an insider at Rusal headquarters in Moscow? “The crisis will not miss a single industry,” Deripaska predicted early in the year. “’The worst is yet to come.” For whom? Rusal insiders at Moscow headquarters ask.
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by Editor - Monday, September 21st, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama have on file three pieces of evidence showing both of them knew what had caused the crash of Malaysian Airlines MH17, and of the deaths of all 298 souls on board. They knew it little more than two hours after the crash had occurred in eastern Ukraine. They also knew each other knew it, because they discussed what had happened in a telephone call which took place before 19:45 Moscow time, 11:45 Washington time, on Thursday, July 17. MH17 was downed that day at 16:20 Ukraine time, 17:20 Moscow time, 09:20 Washington time.

The first piece of evidence is the agenda paper for the telephone call. This had been negotiated and formalized by the Russian Foreign Ministry, the Russian Embassy in Washington, the State Department and the White House before July 17. The second piece of evidence is the tape of the Putin-Obama conversation, as recorded by the Kremlin. The third piece of evidence is the tape of the Obama-Putin conversation, as recorded by the White House.

This evidence establishes that Putin believed, and Obama believed Putin would announce, not that a ground-to-air missile had brought MH17 down, but that other weapons had done so. The story that a Russian-made Buk missile had caused the disaster began after Obama had spoken to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko at about 19:00 Kiev time, 20:00 Moscow time, 12 noon Washington time.
Take away that story, because Obama knew it to be false when he had spoken earlier to Putin, and what do you have? A war crime by two governments. How to prove innocence and guilt? The tapes at the Kremlin and the White House.
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by Editor - Thursday, September 17th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Political responsibility and legal liability, like fish rot, start at the head. President Barack Obama’s and President Vladimir Putin’s heads, to be exact.

For evidence of the destruction of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, and of the 298 people on board, what the two presidents knew from the start — before the start, in fact – was revealed in a telephone conversation the two of them held three hours after the crash. Today, fourteen months later, it is now certain what they didn’t know, and didn’t discuss, because it didn’t happen. One of those things was an explosion of a Buk ground-to-air missile on the port (left) side of the aircraft. Why that didn’t happen has now been revealed in the only direct physical evidence admissible so far in international courts of law. This is the post-mortem evidence of the 296 individuals, and 700 body parts recovered from the aircraft.

The coroners of the UK and Australia say they will not test this evidence for the foreseeable future; by a loophole in the coronial law they may refuse to consider it at all. In Germany and The Netherlands, lawyers say there is no independent coronial court for investigation of cause of death . German state police and the Dutch-led Joint Investigation Team (JIT) are not independent of their governments; nor of the Ukrainian Government’s right as a JIT member to veto what is investigated, what is disclosed, who to convict.

The only courts in which it will be possible to consider this evidence are the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, and the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The first is now the venue of a case brought by the daughter of Wilhelm Theodore Grootscholten, 55, a Dutch victim of the MH17 crash. The second is to decide who is responsible for the death of Fatima Dyczynski, 25, also Dutch. The defendants charged with culpability in the loss of their lives are the Government of Ukraine; Dutch officials at the time of the crash, Minister of Security and Justice Ivo Opstelten and Fred Teeven, the State Secretary for Security and Justice; the International Civil Aviation Organization; and the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (Euro Control).
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by Editor - Wednesday, September 16th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

The Dutch Government has decided to launch a missile attack on Moscow in October. By suppressing all evidence obtained from the bodies of victims of the crash of Malaysian Airlines MH17, officials of the Dutch Safety Board and associated Dutch military officers, police and prosecutors are preparing to release a report on the crash with a gaping hole in its veracity.

At the same time, and apparently unknown in The Netherlands, an Australian coroners’ report on the identification and forensic testing of the bodies carried out in The Netherlands reveals post-mortem evidence to show that in their public statements the Dutch government officials have been lying about metal evidence they claim to have found. This evidence has not only been buried with the passengers’ remains. It has been buried by the Dutch Government and by coroners in the UK and Australia, who are now legally required to investigate independently what caused the deaths of citizens in their jurisdiction. All are withholding the CT scans, X-rays, autopsy and other post-mortem results, including metallurgical assays, the documentation of which accompanied the coffins of the aircraft’s victims from The Netherlands to their homelands.
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by Editor - Sunday, September 13th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Vladimir Yakunin, the recently replaced boss of Russian Railways, says President Vladimir Putin saved his bacon when he was fired the first time in June 2013, and then a second time a year ago. But last month, Yakunin has been telling his friends, it was Putin who made a pig’s breakfast of himself. On August 18, the day after Yakunin disclosed what he claims was his resignation, Putin said the move had been Yakunin’s choice, adding: “I have yet to speak to him about it.”

For Yakunin to appear to have been driven out of Putin’s “inner circle” – the US Treasury uses that term; the White House prefers “cronies” – has triggered speculation in the Anglo-American media that the US campaign against the Kremlin has begun to produce the first signs of regime crack-up.

Yakunin is encouraging the speculation himself by telling his friends that his ouster is political, maybe ideological, but nothing to do with the state of Russian Railways (RZhD) or the capacity of the state budget to cover its rising costs and growing losses. Putin won’t listen to him any longer, Yakunin is confiding. The President is isolated more than ever before, he adds. For the usually loyal Yakunin to be saying this, even if quietly and to non-Russians, can only mean that reality is getting away from one of them. Some of Yakunin’s foreign friends like to think it’s Putin. The Russians think it’s Yakunin himself. “He’s lost his usefulness to the boss,” says one. “Age and the arrogance of power have overtaken his sense. He hasn’t been defeated by Putin’s enemies. He’s defeated himself.”
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by Editor - Wednesday, September 9th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Cyprus Government investigators have opened an inquiry into ex-Senator Leonid Lebedev (lead image) for transfers into a hidden Cyprus trust of $150 million in cash allegedly stolen from the regional Russian electricity company TGK-2 and a related company, TKS. Investigations by Russian prosecutors and the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD), reported to court hearings in Yaroslavl, have counted almost $240 million Lebedev has been accused of stealing through a chain of companies associated with his Sintez group, ending up in Cyprus. A Russian Government request for the Cypriot authorities to open Lebedev company registers and tax filings has been confirmed as triggering criminal checks on the island.

The Cyprus authorities are also checking how Lebedev managed to obtain a Cyprus passport in 2011; and the source of the funds he pledged to place in Cyprus to meet the €5 million requirement for buying citizenship. That was a year before Lebedev swore in the Limassol District Court that he was a Russian citizen, without assets in Cyprus, and “impossibil[ity] to travel to Cyprus”. His testimony was in response to a lawsuit by Commerzbank of Germany charging Lebedev with $240 million in loan fraud. At the time, Lebedev was a Politically Exposed Person (PEP), according to Cyprus and European Union regulations, and subject therefore to much tougher official checks.

Lebedev also hid his Cyprus nationality from the Federation Council, where he was the senator for the Chuvash Republic between 2002 and April of this year. For more on his dismissal, read this.
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by Editor - Monday, September 7th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

In Kiev on Sunday, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko complained that he isn’t getting cash from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) fast enough. Christine Lagarde, the IMF’s managing director, told him to stick to the Fund conditions, but she also promised to go soft on whether the IMF will stop the money if Ukraine decides not to repay the $3 billion bond owed for repayment to Russia in December.
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by Editor - Sunday, September 6th, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Officials of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are in flight from evidence of negligence, incompetence, and corruption in their management of billions of dollars in loans for Ukraine.

Nikolai Gueorguiev, head of the Ukraine team at IMF headquarters in Washington, DC, and Jerome Vacher, the IMF representative in Kiev, refuse to respond to questions on their role in the offshore diversion of IMF loan money through Privatbank and Credit Dnepr Bank, banks owned by Ukrainian oligarchs Igor Kolomoisky and Victor Pinchuk. The Fund’s Managing Director Christine Lagarde (lead image, front) and her spokesman, Gerry Rice (rear), are covering up evidence of conflicts of interest and multiple violations of the IMF Staff Code of Conduct which have been occurring in the Ukraine loan programme. Simonetta Nardin, head of the Fund’s media relations, refuses to explain her apparent violations of the Code, or respond to evidence that she fabricated elements of her career resume.

On Tuesday a spokesman at the US Department of Justice in Washington confirmed that an investigation is under way of the role played by US clearing banks in the movement of IMF funds through the Privatbank group and companies connected with Kolomoisky. Speaking for the Asset Forefeiture and Money Laundering Section, Peter Carr declined to give more details.
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by Editor - Thursday, September 3rd, 2015
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By John Helmer, Moscow

Listeners to US Government radio and readers of the London papers are being told that Kaliningrad is a Russian dagger pointed at the soft underbelly of the NATO alliance in central Europe. According to NATO sources, the dagger must be reversed so that it threatens the Kremlin instead.

Officials in the German Chancellery in Berlin and in the Polish government in Warsaw have begun asking their intelligence chiefs to prepare memoranda on how vulnerable the Russian outpost, formerly Königsberg in German East Prussia, is to a campaign of economic pressure and political subversion. Does this make Kaliningrad a potential flashpoint on the eastern war front, the next Crimea?
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by Editor - Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015
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by Editor - Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015
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