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[Another apolegetic for Jewish wealth and power and Russia. These many Jewish billionaires are just "fronts," you see, for the real bad guys. As always, even the fabulously wealthy Jews -- most with ties to the Jewish "Russian" mafia -- who have shaped post-commuist Russia are depicted as victims,]
The Jews and The Bicycle Riders,
by Dr. Gary K. Busch, Pravda (Russia), July 26, 2003
"My grandmother, from Kovno, had a standard response to weighty matters of social and political policy. She would say ?I suspect it's all the fault of the Jews and the bicycle riders.' When people would ask 'Why the bicycle riders?' she would reply 'Why the Jews?' In the current discussion about the deteriorating fate of the 'oligarchs' in Russia the unspoken question is not about the bicycle riders. The question, to put it as a Russian euphemism, is a line five question. This refers to line five of the internal passport which deals with nationality; e.g. 'Jew'. There are a number of very good reasons why it is the Jewish oligarchs that are feeling the cool breeze from St. Petersburg and Moscow. First it was Gusinsky and Berezovsky and now the pressure is spreading to Khodorkovsky, and Abramovitch. The answer, in short, is the real powers behind the process of capital accumulation, the KGB and the 'Old Guard', no longer think they need to use them as an acceptable front. The elevation of Putin and many of those who have accompanied him have convinced them that there is no longer any need to mask who really has power, both economic and political, in Russia. There are many in Russia, let alone abroad, who may not understand why so many of today's oligarchs are Jews. This is to use the Russian line five classification of Jew which has nothing to do with faith or observance but is an inherited ethnic and nationality distinction. These Jews are oligarchs because they were chosen to be oligarchs and set up in business by the Chekists and the boys from the Aquarium for this purpose. I can only extrapolate from my own experiences in Russia in the early 1990's, helping to set up the trade in non-ferrous metals with the West ... The KGB and its allies, under Silayev and Kryuchkov, set up a system in which loyal and trusted members of the Komsomol system and friendly businessmen could form their own banks v Russian banks. Men like Khodorkovsky, Aven, Fridman and others were chosen and set up in the money business. They used the banks to channel the returning Mafia money into long-term businesses. With few exceptions, those chosen for this were all Jews. When Western pioneers like Marc Rich, David Reuben, Gerry Lennard or Jerry Cligman agreed to work within this system by creating the -tolling business, they were given a kick start of roubles to help pay for the initial costs of the tolling system, They, too, were mainly Jews, albeit foreign Jews. Between these two groups there was another layer of 'facilitators'; people who knew the parallel system. They set up the deals. They traded the hard earned cash from aluminium into cigarettes and vodka which could be brought back into Russia and sold for cash, providing liquidity to the system. These facilitators were among the first private businessmen in Russia. They had ties to the very independent private sector who had access to the raw materials and the internal organizations which could deliver on the agreements made; the Izmailova (the late Anton Malevksy), Soltsnevo, Long Pond groups to name but a few. The facilitators included the Chernoy brothers (Mischa and Lev), Sam Kislin, and the 'institutionals' Gregory Luchansky, Semyon Mogilevich (Lyubarsky and Long Pond) or Vadim Rabinovich in the Ukraine. Most of these, too, were Jews. Without these men the Russification of Russia couldn-t have taken place. They provided the only working system in Russia."

Jewish capital is good for Russia, Jewish politics less so,
By Eliahu Salpeter, Haaretz (Israel), August 17, 2003
"Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the wealthiest man in Russia, is under investigation. It's Anti-Semitism again, say Jewish sources It is doubtful whether there are many Jews in the world the value of whose assets reach $5 billion. Certainly, there is no other Jew who can afford to lose a billion dollars and still be the richest man in Russia. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, 39, looks in photographs (depending on the angle) like a young Shas politico or like a successful Wall Street investment consultant. According to Fortune magazine, Khodorkovsky controls 16 percent of the shares in the company Yukos and owns more than half of them personally. Yukos is said to be worth $15-20 billion, and with the completion of the deal to acquire the Sibneft, which was signed about three months ago, it will become the third-largest oil company in the world, and the largest in Russia. The troubles started for Yukos (and Khodorkovsky) at the beginning of July, when the police arrested his aide and chief ally, Platon Lebedev, and accused him of fraud, forgery and tax violations and also interrogated (but did not arrest) Khodorkovsky himself. About two weeks ago, the General Prosecutor's Office announced that it had also opened an investigation of five murders or attempted murders of officials and businessmen at odds with the company. In Moscow, it's said, the police are investigating Khodorkovsky's aides but are aiming at him; the authorization for the investigation was given by President Vladimir Putin. The burning question in Moscow is what lies behind the investigation? Maybe the Kremlin is embarking on a new hunt of the "oligarchs," the very wealthy Russians who made their fortunes during the Nineties' privatization ... The Jews in Russia are, of course, concerned about whether there are anti-Semitic elements in the affair. Of the dozen or so Russian billionaires who made their fortunes during the past decade, seven were Jewish. Three of them have already been deposed from heading their companies and pushed out of Russia as well - Aleksandr Smolensky, the crash of whose bank in 1998 led to the worst financial crash in the post-Communist era; Boris Berezovsky, "the Kremlin godfather," whose demonstrative conversion to Christianity proved to be of no avail; and Vladimir Gusinsky, who was not helped by his demonstrative Jewishness as chairman of the Jewish Congress in Russia. Four remain: Khodorkovsky, bankers Pyotr Aven and Mikhai Fridman and the current media star of the oligarchs, Roman Abramovich - among other things, the main owner of Sibneft - who is considered the richest man in Russia after Khodorkovsky. ... Aleksandr Osovtsov, former vice president of the Jewish Congress in Russia says the anti-Semitism in the affair is clear. The same team from the Prosecutor General's Office that in its day forced Gusinsky to leave Russia is active now and by chance or not, Gusinsky was one of the financial supporters of the Jewish Congress and Khodorkovsky is also among its supporters. Chelsea's new owner In recent weeks international attention has been accorded to the seventh of the Jewish oligarchs, Roman Abramovich, who purchased the English soccer team Chelsea for about $200 million ... The patronage of Berezovsky (who at the time still enjoyed the support of the Kremlin) helped him acquire, for the paltry sum of about $100 million, dozens of local oil companies and to build from them the huge Sibneft company. In 2002, the profits of Sibneft came to $1.1 billio ... The Khodorkovsky affair gives rise to a more realistic question: Is there a likelihood that influential Jews in Moscow, oligarchs and politicians, will be able in the foreseeable future to help Israel in the Kremlin? Their relative weight is no less than the weight of Jews in the upper reaches of the American economy."

St. Petersburg Jews jolted by stiff sentence for local leader,
By Lev Krichevsky, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, August 21, 2003
"The stiff prison sentence handed down to Russian businessman and Jewish leader Mikhail Mirilashvili is sending shock waves through Russia’s second-largest Jewish community. On Aug. 1, the Leningrad District Military Court in St. Petersburg sentenced the local business magnate and Jewish philanthropist to 12 years in a high-security prison. Mirilashvili, 43, has spent the last 30 months in jail on charges of creating a criminal gang, kidnapping and attempted murder. The verdict, handed down the same day as the sentencing, cleared the businessman of the attempted murder charge but found him guilty of trespassing, kidnapping and detaining persons against their will ... Mirilashvili has served as president of the [Russian Jewish Congress] RJC’s St. Petersburg branch since the group’s founding in 1996. He retained his post after he was imprisoned in January of 2001. The group says that despite his imprisonment, Mirilashvili still remains the largest local supporter of the Jewish community. Last year, the RJC raised $350,000 in St. Petersburg, according to the group’s 2002 annual report. RJC president Yevgeny Satanovsky said most of the money had been a donation from Mirilashvili. “Despite his imprisonment, he remains one of the most affluent people in St. Petersburg,” Satanovsky said. A native of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Mirilashvili is said to have a wide range of business interests in St. Petersburg, including casinos, real estate, retail, entertainment and hotel businesses. The businessman, who has never been shy about his Jewish background, holds Russian and Israeli citizenship and used to divide his time between St. Petersburg and Tel Aviv. His 18-year-old son, Slava, recently graduated from an English-language high school in Israel and will attend Tufts University near Boston this fall ... A week before his sentencing, Mirilashvili became embroiled in a public argument with another powerful Russian Jew, exiled tycoon Boris Berezovsky — who in the mid-1990s unsuccessfully tried to take over a local television station Mirilashvili ran. In an open letter published July 24 in the Moscow newspaper Kommersant Daily, Berezovsky accused Mirilashvili of being involved in an underhanded deal in the early 1990´s to privatize a St. Petersburg-based alcohol producer ,,, He also denied accusations by Berezovsky and others that he has ties to the criminal underworld. In the same letter, Mirilashvili accused Berezovsky of changing his religion to Orthodox Christianity after Berezovsky failed in an alleged attempt to become a leader of the Russian Jewish community."

[Gusinksky is just one of the Jewish Russian "oligarchs" who looted Russia. Boris Berezovsky is another Jewish media billionaire, also with Israeli citizenship, who fled that country.]
Ex-Russia Media Mogul Arrested in Greece,
By THEODORA TONGAS, Asbury Park Press (From Associated Press) August 24, 2003
"A former Russian media mogul who clashed with the Kremlin and fled under fraud accusations three years ago was in Greek custody after being arrested at the Athens airport. Vladimir Gusinsky, whose former empire included the independent NTV television station, was detained Thursday after arriving from Tel Aviv, Israel, where he has lived since April 2001. His name appeared on an Interpol wanted list for fraud in excess of $250 million, airport authorities said Saturday. Gusinsky, who became one of Russia's best-known oligarchs after the fall of communism, is scheduled to appear before a Greek prosecutor Monday. Russia initially sought Gusinsky on charges of misrepresenting the assets of his company Media-Most to obtain a $262 million loan from the government-controlled gas giant Gazprom. It later added allegations of money laundering ... Gusinsky, who holds Russian and Israeli passports, claims the charges against him are politically motivated. He was arrested in December 2000 at his home in Spain, but a Spanish court refused to extradite him, saying the grounds for the case wouldn't amount to a crime in Spain. Gusinsky then moved to Israel."

[More about the oppressed Jews of "antisemitic" Russia:]
ALONG THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILROAD. Thanks to prominent locals, city sees revival in Jewish expression,
By Adam B. Ellick, Jewish Telegraphic Agency
"Simon Spector has thick, expressive eyebrows and a heavily wrinkled forehead. But the 67-year-old’s portrait won’t be gracing the cover of any fund-raising brochures depicting elderly, impoverished Russian Jews slurping borsht at a soup kitchen. The dapperly dressed Spector is the antithesis of a needy Russian Jew. He is a man in power, representative of a disproportionately high number of prominent local Jews who are revealing their ethnic roots and transforming the face of Russian Jewry — though it’s not clear how willing they are to use their clout in support of local Jewish life. Spector is the deputy governor for the Sverdlovsk region, an influential area of 4.5 million in Russia’s Ural Mountains, where Europe and Asia meet. Yekaterinburg, the regional center and Russia’s third largest city, is home to just 13,000 Jews, or 0.05 percent of the population. “There’s a myth in Israel that Russian Jews cannot be powerful people. Israeli doctors come here and cannot believe I’m Jewish,” says Spector, who heads the local veterans hospital. “The governor tells me to go to Israel, recruit 30,000 Jews and bring them here, because we’re such good leaders.” Three other Jews also serve as deputy governors, including the health and property ministers. There are 10 Jewish cultural directors in the region, including the head of the Yekaterinburg Philharmonic Orchestra and Russia’s Motion Picture Union. Other prominent local Jews include the head coach of the Russian chess team, the dean of the local university, Yekaterinburg’s chief cardiologist, the region’s chief doctor, who oversees 33 hospitals, and dozens of businessmen, including a bank president. Indeed, Yekaterinburg can be seen as a microcosm of Russia, where five of 12 owners or majority stockholders of the largest industrial or financial institutions are Jewish — a considerable number for Russia, where Jews make up less than 2 percent of the population ... Domnich and Yekaterinburg’s Hillel director cannot cite any specific support, but the government gave the ambitious Ashkenazi — a Chabad rabbi who enjoys close ties with the Kremlin — a free, 45,000-square-foot plot of land in the city center to build a $1.6 million community center and synagogue. They currently are under construction after four years of delays. What’s more, the separate Jewish day school that Ashkenazi runs is tax- and rent-free. The new complex will be Russia’s largest Jewish center outside of Moscow and will house two mikvahs, a gym, a weight room, a pool, a medical center, a library, a computer lab, a music studio and study rooms."

[The two richest Russians today, Roman Abramovich and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, are Jewish. So are the below mentioned Russian billionaire fugitives Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky. All looters of Russia. All "gangster capitalists." All with dual citizenship: Russian and Israeli.]
Boyish Billionaire Turns His Sights Outside Russia As Others Face Probes, Abramovich Sells Assets,
By Peter Baker, Washington Post, September 5, 2003; Page A12
"One sits in prison, another just got out on bail, a third awaits extradition hearings. But while many Russian tycoons face legal pressure from their government, Roman Abramovich passes time in the director's boxes at British stadiums, leaping to his feet in triumph, burying his face in disappointment, relishing each kick by the London soccer team he has just bought. Life as a British sports magnate seems to agree with Abramovich, a boyish orphan-turned-billionaire with designer stubble on his chin. Between soccer matches, he retires to his 450-acre English country estate and considers which British schools his children should attend while accountants back in Moscow unload more of his assets. Abramovich, Russia's second-richest man and the quietest of the men known as oligarchs who once seemed to run the country, appears to be extricating himself from the tangled and untamed business-political world in his home country, where many of his peers find themselves the target of criminal investigations. With Russian parliamentary elections scheduled for December and a presidential election next March, Abramovich hopes to avoid the fate of other business leaders who play the role of villain in many campaigns .. Now 36, he is worth $5.7 billion, according to Forbes magazine, making him one of the world's 50 richest people. President Vladimir Putin's government seems to be renewing a campaign against the oligarchs as the elections draw nearer. Prosecutors this summer opened eight investigations into the Yukos oil company and associates of its chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the only Russian with more money than Abramovich. Khodorkovsky's adviser and fellow billionaire, Platon Lebedev, was arrested on fraud charges and was ordered held until Oct. 30. Khodorkovsky was called in for questioning. Abramovich's estranged partner, Boris Berezovsky, who had fled Russia, faces an extradition hearing in Britain in October. And another self-exiled tycoon, Vladimir Gusinsky, was detained in Greece and released on bond pending a Russian extradition request. For a time, rumors swirled that Abramovich was next, but nothing has come of it. Abramovich eschews public talk of political maneuvering and instead focuses with childlike delight on the joys of buying virtually any soccer player he likes and soaking up the novelty of part-time life in the West ... Abramovich recently said he would not seek a second term as governor of Chukotka, a barren Arctic region across the Bering Strait from Alaska and home to more reindeer than people. Abramovich won the governorship in 2000 promising to transform the destitute wasteland where winter lasts nine months. Since then, he has put $200 million of his own money into reviving Chukotka ... "It's not going to be better up here without him, that's for sure," Alexander Adelshtein, a spokesman for the district government, said by telephone. "It's natural to keep hoping to the end that he will change his mind." His recent transactions are yielding a massive cash windfall, much of it kept abroad. Last year Sibneft, which Abramovich and Berezovsky acquired from the state for $250 million in 1995, paid $1 billion in dividends to Abramovich and his remaining partners. Sibneft recently promised another $1 billion dividend this year. The sale to Yukos will bring in $3 billion more and his Russian Aluminum holdings are on the block for yet another $3 billion ... Abramovich bought the storied Chelsea soccer club in July, paying the equivalent of $94 million and assuming debt of $141 million. Since then he has gone on a spending spree, shelling out $150 million to secure some of the most talented players in the country in pursuit of the team's first league championship since 1955. Britain reacted to the purchase with a mixture of awe and dread. A member of Parliament questioned whether Abramovich was a "fit and proper person" to own a soccer club, given his emergence from Russia's gangster capitalism ... He already owns a Boeing Business Jet, the equivalent of a 737 airliner, and recently bought a 355-foot yacht. He has a 100-acre estate outside Moscow, a luxury apartment in St. Tropez and the estate in West Sussex south of London, with stables for 100 horses, two polo pitches, a swimming pool, tennis court, rifle ranges and go-kart track. He's selling a $7.9 million London apartment so he can get a bigger place."

Russian Jewry’s Point Man Feliks Frenkel is widely regarded as the chief liaison between his community and the Jewish establishment,
by Walter Ruby, The Jewish Week, September 19, 2003
"If any Russian Jew can claim to be an essential bridge between the Russian-speaking community of New York and the world of American Jewish philanthropy, Feliks Frenkel may be that person. Having risen in less than 25 years from a penniless immigrant from Kiev to a wealthy arbitrageur and considerable power within the world of Jewish philanthropy, the engaging 48-year-old Frenkel is widely seen as the Russian Jewish layperson who is best able to explain the needs and the general gestalt of the Russian community to the top leaders of UJA-Federation, and vice versa. Unlike other Russian Jewish millionaires in New York who tend to live and work in a largely Russian-speaking environment, Frenkel, who speaks fluent, lightly accented English, divides his time between his office in a thoroughly American corporate environment in Westchester County and a condominium on the Upper East Side he shares with his wife, Marina, and their two children. Yet Frenkel, who mainly socializes with fellow Russian Jews and has undertaken his philanthropic work within a specifically Russian Jewish context, says he sees his role as “not only bringing the message and expertise of UJA-Federation to the Russian community, but also bringing the soul of Russian Jewry to the mainstream community.” ... Frenkel says he has never had a problem relating to the lay leaders of the American Jewish establishment, in part because he is every bit as wealthy and powerful as they are ... Frenkel says he imbibes his strong ethic of responsibility to the Jewish community in his mother’s milk, noting that both of his parents considered it their responsibility to help fellow Jews in need back in Kiev ... After graduating in 1980, he submitted 100 resumes to Wall Street firms, including Bear Stearns, where someone showed his resume to the firm’s legendary CEO Alan “Ace” Greenberg. According to Frenkel, “Greenberg looked at my resume and noticed that I had studied at the University of Siberia. So he said, ‘I’ve hired people from all walks of life. I’ve had geniuses and embezzlers, undergraduates and PhDs. But I have never had anybody from the University of Siberia. Let’s give him the job.’ ” Just over a year later, however, Frenkel left Bear Stearns and joined the predecessor of OTA Limited Partnerships, a trading firm that specializes in corporate takeovers, as a research analyst in risk arbitrage ... Frenkel has always made it a point to live in Manhattan, which he calls “a lemon from which my wife and I try to squeeze as much juice as we can.”

[The Jewish Telegraph Agency noted that "Chubais is not ... open about his Jewish roots." [KRICHEVSKY, L., 5-23-99] You'll note that the blueprint for economic destruction and looting of Russia seems to have been a largely Jewish job. Chubais, Sachs, Lipton, Summers, Soros, etc. etc. etc.]
The Harvard Boys Do Russia,
by Janine R. Wedel, The Nation, May 14, 1998
"After seven years of economic "reform" financed by billions of dollars in U.S. and other Western aid, subsidized loans and rescheduled debt, the majority of Russian people find themselves worse off economically. The privatization drive that was supposed to reap the fruits of the free market instead helped to create a system of tycoon capitalism run for the benefit of a corrupt political oligarchy that has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars of Western aid and plundered Russia's wealth. The architect of privatization was former First Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Chubais, a darling of the U.S. and Western financial establishments. Chubais's drastic and corrupt stewardship made him extremely unpopular. According to The New York Times, he "may be the most despised man in Russia." Essential to the implementation of Chubais's policies was the enthusiastic support of the Clinton Administration and its key representative for economic assistance in Moscow, the Harvard Institute for International Development. Using the prestige of Harvard's name and connections in the Administration, H.I.I.D. officials acquired virtual carte blanche over the U.S. economic aid program to Russia, with minimal oversight by the government agencies involved. With this access and their close alliance with Chubais and his circle, they allegedly profited on the side. Yet few Americans are aware of H.I.I.D.'s role in Russian privatization, and its suspected misuse of taxpayers' funds. At the recent U.S.-Russian Investment Symposium at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Yuri Luzhkov, the Mayor of Moscow, made what might have seemed to many an impolite reference to his hosts. After castigating Chubais and his monetarist policies, Luzhkov, according to a report of the event, "singled out Harvard for the harm inflicted on the Russian economy by its advisers, who encouraged Chubais's misguided approach to privatization and monetarism." Luzhkov was referring to H.I.I.D. Chubais, who was delegated vast powers over the economy by Boris Yeltsin, was ousted in Yeltsin's March purge, but in May he was given an immensely lucrative post as head of Unified Energy System, the country's electricity monopoly. Some of the main actors with Harvard's Russia project have yet to face a reckoning, but this may change if a current investigation by the U.S. government results in prosecutions. The activities of H.I.I.D. in Russia provide some cautionary lessons on abuse of trust by supposedly disinterested foreign advisers, on U.S. arrogance and on the entire policy of support for a single Russian group of so-called reformers. The H.I.I.D. story is a familiar one in the ongoing saga of U.S. foreign policy disasters created by those said to be our "best and brightest." Through the late summer and fall of 1991, as the Soviet state fell apart, Harvard Professor Jeffrey Sachs and other Western economists participated in meetings at a dacha outside Moscow where young, pro-Yeltsin reformers planned Russia's economic and political future. Sachs teamed up with Yegor Gaidar, Yeltsin's first architect of economic reform, to promote a plan of "shock therapy" to swiftly eliminate most of the price controls and subsidies that had underpinned life for Soviet citizens for decades. Shock therapy produced more shock--not least, hyperinflation that hit 2,500 percent--than therapy. One result was the evaporation of much potential investment capital: the substantial savings of Russians. By November 1992, Gaidar was under attack for his failed policies and was soon pushed aside ... Print this article E-mail this article Write to the editors .I.I.D. had supporters high in the Administration. One was Lawrence Summers, himself a former Harvard economics professor, whom Clinton named Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs in 1993. Summers, now Deputy Treasury Secretary, had longstanding ties to the principals of Harvard's project in Russia and its later project in Ukraine. Summers hired a Harvard Ph.D., David Lipton (who had been vice president of Jeffrey D. Sachs and Associates, a consulting firm), to be Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary for Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union. After Summers was promoted to Deputy Secretary, Lipton moved into Summers's old job, assuming "broad responsibility" for all aspects of international economic policy development. Lipton co-wrote numerous papers with Sachs and served with him on consulting missions in Poland and Russia. "Jeff and David always came [to Russia] together," said a Russian representative at the International Monetary Fund. "They were like an inseparable couple." Sachs, who was named director of H.I.I.D. in 1995, lobbied for and received U.S.A.I.D. grants for the institute to work in Ukraine in 1996 and 1997 ... Andrei Shleifer, a Russian-born émigré and already a tenured professor of economics at Harvard in his early 30s, became director of H.I.I.D.'s Russia project. Shleifer was also a protégé of Summers, with whom he received at least one foundation grant ... Another Harvard player was a former World Bank consultant named Jonathan Hay, a Rhodes scholar who had attended Moscow's Pushkin Institute for Russian Language. In 1991, while still at Harvard Law School, he had become a senior legal adviser to the G.K.I., the Russian state's new privatization committee; the following year he was made H.I.I.D.'s general director in Moscow. The youthful Hay assumed vast powers over contractors, policies and program specifics; he not only controlled access to the Chubais circle but served as its mouthpiece ... With help from his H.I.I.D. advisers and other Westerners, Chubais and his cronies set up a network of aid-funded "private" organizations that enabled them to bypass legitimate government agencies and circumvent the new parliament of the Russian Federation, the Duma. Through this network, two of Chubais's associates, Maxim Boycko (who co-wrote Privatizing Russia with Shleifer) and Dmitry Vasiliev, oversaw almost a third of a billion dollars in aid money and millions more in loans from international financial institutions ... The device of setting up private organizations backed by the power of the Yeltsin government and maintaining close ties to H.I.I.D. was a way of insuring deniability. Shleifer, Hay and other Harvard principals, all U.S. citizens, were "Russian" when convenient. Hay, for example, served alternately and sometimes simultaneously as aid contractor, manager of other contractors and representative of the Russian government ... Against the backdrop of Russia's Klondike capitalism, which they were helping create and Chubais and his team were supposedly regulating, the H.I.I.D. advisers exploited their intimate ties with Chubais and the government and were allegedly able to conduct business activities for their own enrichment. According to sources close to the U.S. government's investigation, Hay used his influence, as well as U.S.A.I.D.-financed resources, to help his girlfriend, Elizabeth Hebert, set up a mutual fund, Pallada Asset Management, in Russia ... After Pallada was set up, Hebert, Hay, Shleifer and Vasiliev looked for ways to continue their activities as aid funds dwindled. Using I.L.B.E. resources and funding, they established a private consulting firm with taxpayer money. One of the firm's first clients was Shleifer's wife, Nancy Zimmerman, who operated a Boston-based hedge fund that traded heavily in Russian bonds. According to Russian registration documents, Zimmerman's company set up a Russian firm with Sergei Shishkin, the I.L.B.E. chief, as general director. Corporate documents on file in Moscow showed that the address and phone number of the company and the I.L.B.E. were the same. Then there is the First Russian Specialized Depository, which holds the records and assets of mutual fund investors. This institution, funded by a World Bank loan, also worked to the benefit of Hay, Vasiliev, Hebert and another associate, Julia Zagachin. According to sources close to the U.S. government's investigation, Zagachin, an American married to a Russian, was selected to run the depository even though she lacked the required capital ... Anne Williamson, a journalist who specializes in Soviet and Russian affairs, details these and other conflicts of interest between H.I.I.D.'s advisers and their supposed clients--the Russian people--in her forthcoming book, How America Built the New Russian Oligarchy. For example, in 1995, in Chubais-organized insider auctions of prime national properties, known as loans-for-shares, the Harvard Management Company (H.M.C.), which invests the university's endowment, and billionaire speculator George Soros were the only foreign entities allowed to participate. H.M.C. and Soros became significant shareholders in Novolipetsk, Russia's second-largest steel mill, and Sidanko Oil, whose reserves exceed those of Mobil. H.M.C. and Soros also invested in Russia's high-yielding, I.M.F.-subsidized domestic bond market. Even more dubious, according to Williamson, was Soros's July 1997 purchase of 24 percent of Sviazinvest, the telecommunications giant, in partnership with Uneximbank's Vladimir Potanin. It was later learned that shortly before this purchase Soros had tided over Yeltsin's government with a backdoor loan of hundreds of millions of dollars while the government was awaiting proceeds of a Eurobond issue; the loan now appears to have been used by Uneximbank to purchase Norilsk Nickel in August 1997. According to Williamson, the U.S. assistance program in Russia was rife with such conflicts of interest involving H.I.I.D. advisers and their U.S.A.I.D.-funded Chubais allies, H.M.C. managers, favored Russian bankers, Soros and insider expatriates working in Russia's nascent markets ... Despite exposure of this corruption in the Russian media (and, far more hesitantly, in the U.S. media), the H.I.I.D.-Chubais clique remained until recently the major instrument of U.S. economic aid policy to Russia. It even used the high-level Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, which helped orchestrate the cooperation of U.S.-Russian oil deals and the Mir space station. The commission's now-defunct Capital Markets Forum was chaired on the Russian side by Chubais and Vasiliev, and on the U.S. side by S.E.C. chairman Arthur Levitt Jr. and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. Andrei Shleifer was named special coordinator to all four of the Capital Markets Forum's working subgroups. Hebert, Hay's girlfriend, served on two of the subgroups, as did the C.E.O.s of Salomon Brothers, Merrill Lynch and other powerful Wall Street investment houses. When The Nation contacted the S.E.C. for information about Capital Markets, we were told to call Shleifer for comment. Shleifer, who is under investigation by U.S.A.I.D.'s inspector general for misuse of funds, declined to be interviewed for this article. A U.S. Treasury spokesman said Shleifer and Hebert were appointed to Capital Markets by the Chubais group--specifically, according to other sources, by Dmitry Vasiliev."

Greek Court Rejects Russian Extradition,
Yahoo! News (from Associated Press), October 14, 2003
"A Greek appeals court on Tuesday rejected a Russian extradition request for media tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky, accused in his country of fraud and money laundering. In a hearing that lasted one minute, an appellate court judge threw out the Russian request after ruling that under Greek law the accusations did not constitute a crime as he had no outstanding debts to the Russian state. "I am satisfied with the court's decision," Gusinsky said without further comment. Gusinsky left the downtown Athens court in a jeep. He was expected to return to Israel, where he lives, later Tuesday, lawyers said. One of his lawyers, Antonis Vgontzas, said the court decision saved Greece from "an insane adventure." Gusinsky claimed the Russian accusations were part of a politically motivated vendetta for criticizing Moscow's leaders and their policies. He was arrested on Aug. 21 on his arrival from Israel. He was released on bail a week later and had since been staying at a luxury hotel in Athens. His $117,000 was returned. Last week Russian prosecutors — acting on the Greek court's request — sent additional documentation to bolster the extradition bid for Gusinsky, who once controlled Russia's influential NTV television network. Gusinsky contended the charges were engineered in retaliation for NTV's critical coverage of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Chechnya. During a Sept. 29 hearing, a Greek prosecutor had described the extradition request as "unclear." Russia initially sought Gusinsky on charges of misrepresenting the assets of his company Media-Most to obtain a $262 million loan from the state-owned gas company Gazprom. It later added allegations of money laundering."

[Khodorkovsky -- along with Berezovsky, Gusinsky and other billionaire Jewish Russian robber barons wanted by Russian police -- is Jewish.]
Russia Arrests Head of Largest Oil Co.,
By DEBORAH SEWARD, Daily News, October 25, 2003
"Camouflaged special forces arrested Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, at a Siberian airport on Saturday, and he was ordered jailed on charges of tax evasion and fraud. The dramatic arrest of the head of Russia's largest oil producer alarmed the country's business and political elite, with many analysts saying the actions against the oil company, Yukos, are a Kremlin-directed campaign to keep him out of politics. Khodorkovsky, who has openly funded opposition parties, is the latest of Russia's superrich oligarchs to be pursued by President Vladimir Putin's government. Tycoons Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky have gone into self-imposed exile to avoid criminal prosecution. For months, Russian prosecutors have been investigating officials and shareholders at Yukos, looking for evidence of tax evasion and theft of state property. With the pressure against him intesifying since the summer, Khodorkovsky has vowed that he would not be driven out of Russia like Berezovsky and Gusinsky, who also allege the Kremlin targeted their companies for political reasons."

Hard-labor sentence for Jewish tycoon,
by the Foreign Staff, Jewish Chronicle (UK, paper copy), August 8, 2003, p. 9
"The Deputy Head of the Russian Jewish Congress, Mikhail Mirilashvili, has been sentenced to 12 years in a hard-labor colony for kidnapping. He was found guilty by a military court in St. Petersbourg of organising the abduction of two Georgian businessmen alleged to have been involved in the August 2000 kidnapping of his father. Miralashvili's father was freed unharmed after one day. The Georgian's mutiliated bodies were found a year lter on the outskirts of the city ... The 12-year sentence came at the end of a two-and-a-half-year trial -- during which Mr. Mirilashvili, who also has Israeli citizenship, has run extensive local gambling, hotel and construction interests, and continued to help fund a variety of Jewish charities, from a jail cell."

[Here we have it clearly: Jewish international tribalism at its ugliest. Jewish power in the Pentagon/Washington translates into world defense of Jewish corruption, and punishment for countries that dare to notice Jewish criminals. Perle, as any reader of this web site knows is Jewish. As is the Russian oligarch he defends, Khodorkovsky. The anti-American world in all corners grows because the U.S. has been so deeply poisoned by Zionism and Judeocentism.]
Throw Russia out of G8: US defence advisor,
" Senior Pentagon advisor Richard Perle said Russia "should be excluded" from the Group of Eight (G8) industrial nations for its arrest at gunpoint of its top oil baron, it was reported. "Not one of the G8 countries would allow itself to behave in such a way with one of its leading businessmen," the US Defence Department advisor said of the arrest last Saturday of the head of the Yukos oil giant Mikhail Khodorkovsky in an interview published Thursday in the business daily Kommersant, warning that Russia was "heading in the wrong direction." Khodorkovsky, whose oil group is the centre of a wide-ranging fraud investigation, was surrounded by armed security forces in a dawn raid at an airport in Siberia while he was on a business trip and flown back to Moscow. He was charged on seven counts of fraud, including one of embezzling the state of more than one billion dollars, and imprisoned. The arrest has been widely seen in Moscow as politically motivated, with Khodorkovsky having financed opposition parties ahead of December 7th parliamentary elections. As quoted by Kommersant, Perle said he hoped "the US administration will not allow Russian companies to return" to Iraq, noting that Washington had "liberated the Iraqis from the monstrous regime of Saddam Hussein with which Russian had fruitfully cooperated for a long time."

[Apologetics for the Jewish oligarchy/capitalists' rape of Russia.]
Kremlin Targets Jewish Tycoons In War on Critics,
By S.A. GREENE, [Jewish] FORWARD, October 31, 2003
"Oil titan Mikhail Khodorkovsky is not the first Jew who has risen to become Russia's richest citizen. Before him Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky had their stints, while Vladimir Gusinsky got close. In Russia, however, life at the top is not all that it's cracked up to be. Berezovsky and Gusinsky are now in exile, facing prosecution if they ever return to Russia, while Abramovich, having cashed in much of his Russian oil and metals empire and bought a British soccer team, is a frequent guest of Berezovsky in London. As for Khodorkovsky, he's in jail. Russian authorities arrested Khodorkovsky at gunpoint October 25 on a snowy Siberian runway. He is being held on charges ranging from tax evasion to fraud. The charges concern post-communist privatization deals for the companies that went on to become Yukos, the oil behemoth that Khodorkovsky founded and recently merged with Sibneft, another firm that he bought from Abramovich. If a court so decides, both companies could end up back in state hands. The crackdown caused a sharp drop in Russia's stock market this week and has prompted warnings that foreign investors might back away. It's not only the economy that took a hit, though. Russian antisemites are in trouble, too. Their favorite bogeymen, the Jewish "oligarchs," as the country's tycoons are called, are becoming an endangered species. In the eyes of most Russians, the oligarchs are clearly guilty, of theft and corruption in the best case, and probably a lot worse. That much of their wealth is ill-gotten, no one really doubts. And what is to be done? Most Russians would answer: Lock 'em up, ship 'em out. There's plenty of room in Siberia. This, of course, is not what's happening. As Khodorkovsky sits in Moscow's most notoriously disease-ridden prison, most non-Jewish oligarchs are still riding high, even if a few are not likely to step foot in Russia again. The metals empire of Vladimir Potanin — who, along with Berezovsky, most brazenly boasted of his influence over Boris Yeltsin's Kremlin — is thriving, as are Vagit Alekperov's oil wells. The list of safe oligarchs goes on, but there are only a few Jews still on it: Mikhail Fridman of Alfa Bank, for example. What are we to make of the fact that almost all of the major oligarchs in jail or exile are Jews, while almost all of those still in business are not? The answer is not as obvious as it may seem." [Oh, yes it is.]

[Khororkovsky, Rothchild, Nevslin: Jews all.]
Stockholders may take government to human rights court,
By Andrew Jack, Financial Times, Nov 2 2003
"Key Yukos shareholders are considering launching high-profile international and domestic challenges in the coming days to the actions brought by the Russian authorities against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, according to advisers to the company. Lawyers are studying the possibility of appealing abroad as well as within Russia over the validity of the freeze brought by prosecutors last Thursday on more than 42 per cent of Yukos' shares, which they claim are controlled by Mr Khodorkovsky. Another specialist legal team, which includes attorneys from North America, is examining options for seeking an emergency ruling from the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg in relation to procedural violations in the criminal cases brought against Mr Khodorkovsky, who was arrested last month, and other key Yukos shareholders. Russian lawyers are nervous about taking their legal battle abroad, as it is likely to irritate the Kremlin. Such a move could escalate diplomatic tensions between the Russian authorities and foreign countries, which have already openly criticised the conduct of the investigation and argued that it may be political. It could also make any attempts to reach a negotiated settlement with Mr Khodorkovsky still more difficult. Advisers to Mr Khodorkovsky say that ownership of his shares, including voting rights and the possibility of selling them to third parties, was transferred after his arrest, in accordance with a trust document that he made public last year. One of his advisers firmly denied reports that control of his shares had passed to the influential British financier Jacob Rothschild, and indicated that it was instead held by Leonid Nevzlin, Yukos's second-largest shareholder and a long-standing partner of Mr Khodorkovsky who is now based in Israel. Mr Rothschild may play an intermediary role in the legal and lobbying battle in the weeks and months to come. He is a trustee of the British branch of Mr Khodorkovsky's Open Russia philanthropic organisation, and has got to know him over several years"

[When one reads this headline below, the natural response is to wonder: "Well, which corrupt Jewish Russian tycoon does this refer to, of the Jewish Russian oligarchy criminal pack? Berezovsky, Gussinsky, et al already HAVE Israel citizenship, after looting Russia as Russian citizens. Get in trouble in Russia? Play the "I'm a persecuted Jew" card and look to get to Israel.]
Israel Grants Russian Tycoon Citizenship,
Earthlink (from Associated Press), November 5, 2003 10:01
"Israel has granted citizenship to a Russian tycoon who could be targeted in Russia's tax evasion and fraud investigation of oil giant Yukos, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday. Israeli authorities said becoming an Israeli would not automatically shield Leonid Nevzlin from possible extradition to Moscow. Nevzlin is the top aide of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who resigned earlier this week as head of Yukos, the world's fifth-largest oil company. Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, has been in a Russian prison since Oct. 25 on charges of tax evasion and fraud. Critics say Khodorkovsky is being targeted because of his growing financial and political clout and his funding of opposition parties. Russian media have reported that Khodorkovsky assigned to Nevzlin "beneficiary rights" to 50 percent of shares in Yukos holding company, Group Menatep. That would make Nevzlin a key figure in protecting the company's multibillion-dollar assets from the authorities who might try to seize them. Nevzlin, who is Jewish and as such entitled to citizenship in the Jewish state, was questioned by Russian police in July, but no criminal charges have been brought against him. He arrived in Israel on a tourist visa two months ago and was granted citizenship on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said. Israeli opposition legislator Colette Avital said it appeared the process was unusually quick. "Suddenly, overnight he became a dedicated Zionist and he got citizenship in a speedy manner and we have to ask why?" Avital told The Associated Press. The ministry said Nevzlin went through the proper procedures and was not given preferential treatment. Nevzlin is No. 386 on Forbes magazine's list of the world's richest people, with an estimated wealth at $1.1 billion. Forbes ranks him as the 11th richest Russian. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, meanwhile, brought up his concern about recent arrests of Jewish businessmen in Russia during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday. "He said that as a Jew and as prime minister he is worried that there is persecution" of Jews, said Sharon adviser Raanan Gissin. Sharon fears the arrests could lead to greater anti-Semitism, Gissin said. Putin assured Sharon that the cases were purely criminal, according to Gissin. Neither leader mentioned Khodorkovsky or Nevzlin by name. Khodorkovsky has said his father is Jewish. Nevzlin was formerly head of the Russian Jewish Congress - the group once headed by Vladimir Gusinsky, another oligarch who found refuge in Israel. According to the Israeli newspaper Maariv, another Yukos shareholder, Vladmir Dubov, was in Israel until recently and stayed in the same Tel Aviv hotel as Nevzlin."

[Ho! Surprise! Kukes is ALSO Jewish.(See The Economist, August 21, 1999) Jewish billionaire George Soros steps in to suggest (Jewish-led) pressure on the U.S. to pressure Russia to lay off its criminal Jewish billionaires.]
Yukos names Kukes as new CEO,
By FT Reporters, Financial Times, November 3, 2003
"Simon Kukes, a US citizen and former head of Russian oil company TNK, was on Tuesday named as the new chief executive of Yukos. Russia's largest oil company moved swiftly to reassure investors after its former chief executive, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, resigned on Monday only a week after being arrested on charges of tax evasion, embezzlement and theft. Mr Kukes said shortly after his appointment that he would not change Yukos's strategy. "We will keep everything the way it is, we will continue merging with Sibneft and we will keep our obligations to shareholders," he said. His appointment may help revive negotiations with US oil companies ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco over the purchase of a strategic stake in Yukos. "Kukes has two competitive advantages: he is a US citizen which makes it harder for Russian prosecutors to touch him and he led TNK through a merger with BP," one person close to the company said... Mr Putin also said that the Yukos affair had played a "catalysing role" in changes at the top of his administration. Alexander Voloshin, the former chief of staff, was replaced last week by Dmitry Medvedev as the head of the presidential administration in a move seen as reinforcing Mr Putin's powerbase. ... . Speaking in London on Monday, George Soros, the US financier whose Open Society Institute has been deeply involved in Russia, said that "the crackdown by [Russian President Vladimir] Putin sends an unmistakable message that independence of action will not be tolerated. It's the end of an era, the end of the era of robber capitalism and the beginning of that of state capitalism. "The only chance of stopping this trend taking root is pressure, especially from Europe. Unfortunately, the US is too wedded to its Russian alliance to protest. The price of strengthening democracy in Iraq is weakening democracy in Russia. If there is popular pressure from the west against this, we could see Russia being forced out of the Group of Eight [industrialised nations]." Lawyers representing Mr Khodorkovsky on Monday stepped up their diplomatic and political offensive in European capitals ahead of Thursday's summit between the EU and Russia."

Arrested oil tycoon passed shares to banker,
Washington Times (from Agence France-Presse), Novebmer 3, 2003
"Control of Mikhail Khodorkovsky's shares in the Russian oil giant Yukos have passed to renowned banker Jacob Rothschild, under a deal they concluded prior to Mr. Khodorkovsky's arrest, the Sunday Times reported. Voting rights to the shares passed to Mr. Rothschild, 67, under a "previously unknown arrangement" designed to take effect in the event that Mr. Khodorkovsky could no longer "act as a beneficiary" of the shares, it said. Mr. Khodorkovsky, 40, whom Russian authorities arrested at gunpoint and jailed pending further investigation last week, was said by the Sunday Times to have made the arrangement with Mr. Rothschild when he realized he was facing arrest. Mr. Rothschild now controls the voting rights on a stake in Yukos worth almost $13.5 billion, the newspaper said in a dispatch from Moscow. Mr. Khodorkovsky owns 4 percent of Yukos directly and 22 percent through a trust of which he is the sole beneficiary, according to Russian analysts. From the figures reported in the Sunday Times, it appeared Mr. Rothschild had received control of all Mr. Khodorkovsky's shares. The two have known each other for years "through their mutual love of the arts" and their positions as directors of the Open Russia Foundation, Yukos' philanthropic branch, it said. Russian authorities Thursday froze billions of dollars of shares held by Mr. Khodorkovsky and his top lieutenants in Yukos — throwing control of the country's largest oil company into limbo and causing frenzied selling on financial markets. Russian prosecutors said owners of the shares are still entitled to dividends and retain voting rights, but can no longer sell their stakes. They said the freeze was necessary as collateral for the $1 billion that Mr. Khodorkovsky and his associates are accused of misappropriating during the 1990s. Mr. Rothschild is the British head of Europe's wealthy and influential Rothschild family, and runs his own investment empire."

[Interesting article in juxtaposition with the ones above, no?]
Israeli Pipeline to Move Russian Oil,
Earthlink, November 5, 2003
"Russian oil will begin flowing through an Israeli pipeline in late November, the pipeline's director said Wednesday, signaling a new chapter in rapidly improving relations with Moscow. The announcement came on the same day Prime Minister Ariel Sharon returned from a three day visit to Moscow, where he discussed political and trade ties, and the Middle East peace process with President Vladimir Putin. The Russian oil will move through the Eilat-Ashkelon Oil Pipeline Co., according to its director, Emmanuel Sakal. He said the oil was earmarked for markets in the Far East, a major focus of Russia's developing export strategy. Sakal would not say how large the shipments would be, which companies were providing them, or give a dollar value on the deal. Oil analyst Valery Nesterov of Troika Dialog in Moscow said Lukoil and Rosneft, which have production facilities in southern Russia, would be the likeliest candidates to exploit the facility."

[Khodorkovsky is of course Jewish, he is a billionaire criminal, and the international Jewish Lobby is currently trying to save him from the arm of Russian justice. The door to Congress and the White House is through the Jewish/Zionist Network. Jewish money and Jewish crooks, everywhere.]
How Russian Oil Tycoon Courted Friends in U.S.,
By TIMOTHY L. O'BRIEN, New York Times (International Edition), November 5, 2003
"In early 2001, as George W. Bush's administration moved into the White House, one of Russia's wealthiest men, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, sought a meeting with the new national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. According to a former staff member, National Security Council analysts were asked to perform a background check. Mr. Khodorkovsky did not get the meeting — part of the tycoon's efforts to secure approval from the American establishment — because of "allegations of past business improprieties," the former staff member said, also noting that Mr. Khodorkovsky spent heavily in Washington to court the Capitol's inner circle. But Mr. Khodorkovsky's steady efforts to win access to other influential Americans have paid off. Last July, he met with Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham to discuss America's oil policy. Former President George H. W. Bush traveled to Russia in September and spoke at a dinner attended by Mr. Khodorkovsky. That event prompted Moscow newspapers to speculate that the visit was part of an effort by American companies to secure a merger with Yukos Oil, where Mr. Khodorkovsky was chief executive until he quit on Monday in a swirl of fraud and embezzlement charges. His replacement, a Russian-born American [who the times discretely neglects to mention is also Jewish, Simon Kukes], was confirmed yesterday. The Carlyle Group, an investment bank that retained the elder Mr. Bush as an adviser until a few weeks ago, has a close business relationship with Mr. Khodorkovsky. Although Mr. Bush was in Russia as a Carlyle representative, the bank said, his visit had nothing to do with oil deals and he did not meet privately with Mr. Khodorkovsky. Last summer, too, Mr. Khodorkovsky traveled to a meeting of business leaders in Sun Valley, Idaho, as a guest of a former senator, Bill Bradley, a New Jersey Democrat. Mr. Bradley also advises the Open Russia Foundation, a Russian philanthropy based in Britain that is bankrolled by Mr. Khodorkovsky. Henry Kissinger, secretary of state in the Nixon administration, is on the foundation's board, a position he said he accepted at the invitation of Lord Rothschild, another board member. Mr. Kissinger said he had only met Mr. Khodorkovsky twice, briefly and in a group. "It is in no sense an endorsement of Mr. Khodorkovsky's business practices," Mr. Kissinger said of his board seat, adding that Mr. Khodorkovsky exercised "no particular influence" over the foundation's grants. He declined to comment further on Mr. Khodorkovsky. In his efforts to carve out contacts and make his name, Mr. Khodorkovsky has also donated substantially to philanthropies in Russia and to American think tanks. People close to him said he had three motives: improving his own reputation after surviving Russia's scandal-plagued privatizations; refashioning operations and perceptions of Yukos Oil in preparation for a merger with a Western company; and the furtherance of economic and political changes in Russia. "He wanted to have ties to the United States and he had a goal of exporting oil to the United States," said Sarah Carey, a Washington lawyer who sits on Yukos's board and is a close adviser to Mr. Khodorkovsky. "In order to do that you need to develop constituencies here in Washington." Philanthropy, she added, "is what smart guys do when they get rich." Foreigners are not allowed to donate money to American politicians or political parties, and most of Mr. Khodorkovsky's charitable giving has centered in Russia, where Yukos reports philanthropic donations of more than $50 million annually across a broad range of causes. Through Yukos, however, Mr. Khodorkovsky has given handsome sums to American organizations, including a $1 million donation to the Library of Congress and a $500,000 pledge to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a think tank that is home to some of the most often quoted analysts of Russian affairs ... The American Enterprise Institute, another Washington think tank that has weighed in on Mr. Khodorkovsky's behalf, declined to address financial dealings with Yukos, citing the institute's policy not to comment on such matters. Fiona Hill, a Russia analyst at the Brookings Institution, said many think tanks, needing money for Russia studies programs, had courted Mr. Khodorkovsky zealously. She said that Brookings, however, decided not to accept his donations. "The think tanks were all joking about who wanted to take money to fund the Mikhail Khodorkovsky chair of good corporate governance," Ms. Hill said. "There were still questions about his business dealings and whether he really made the transition from being a robber baron and now wore a white hat." Others in Washington said that influence is not so easily purchased and that Mr. Khodorkovsky had traction in the United States because of an authentic commitment to corporate and political change in Russia." [This is false. Khodorkovsky has "traction" because he is the richest man in Russia, he is a powerful swindler, and he is Jewish with the attendant tie to the international Jewish Lobby.]

[A comment from a critic in cyberspace: "Laura Silber of course is responsible for the BBC documentary 'The Death of Yugoslavia' which has become the 'official' version of history with respect to the Balkan wars. I wasn't aware of the Silber-Soros link till I read this." The person who forwarded this to JTR titled it: "The Jew-Jew connection." (Both Soros and Silber are Jewish, as well as Khodorkovsky.)]
Soros offices shut down in Moscow George Soros: Campaigning for rule of law in eastern Europe,
BBC News (UK), November 7, 2003
"Camouflage-clad men have forced staff to leave the Moscow offices of the Open Society Institute founded by the US billionaire George Soros. At least 30 men stormed the offices and seized computers and documents in the raid, which began late on Thursday, the foundation's lawyer Pavel Kuzmin said. Mr Soros' senior policy adviser Laura Silber told BBC News Online that the foundation had responded by filing criminal charges. She said the 100 staff were locked out and "it is impossible to work in Russia now"... Mr Soros, whose institute aims to promote a civil society in post-communist Russia, sharply criticised the recent jailing of Yukos chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky. On Tuesday he warned that Russia "may now be entering a phase of state capitalism, where all the owners of capital realise that they are dependent on the state". His comments came in an interview with the weekly Moskovskiye Novosti, recently acquired by Mr Khodorkovsky. He denounced the 25 October arrest of the oil tycoon as "persecution".

[Russia is apparently cleaning house on the many corrupt Jewish capitalists who have looted that country.]
Soros building in Moscow raided,
By Andrew Jack, Financial Times, November 7 2003
"Up to 40 armed men in camouflage last night took control of the national headquarters of the Soros Foundation in central Moscow, damaging the interior and taking away documents. The action, by a private security company while police looked on but refused to interfere, appeared to be the latest escalation in a two-year commercial dispute over control of the building. It is set to disrupt work by several charities active in Russia, including the country's recipient organisation for the Global Fund for Aids. Senior Soros Foundation officials in New York played down any link with the action by the Russian authorities against the oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, although George Soros, the US financier, has been outspoken in his criticism of the Yukos crisis as politically motivated ... Mr Soros has announced that he is winding down his philanthropic activities in Russia, shifting his priorities to other parts of the world. But he has established 11 regional groups, which receive support as they move towards self-sufficiency and which were using the headquarters. The Soros Foundation had a lease on the building and a sale and purchase agreement to buy it for about $4m, but Mr Paperin said a Russian and a Canadian-British businessman then attempted to seize the property."

[JTR contributor's commentary: "Jewish commentary on a Jew -- what's new?" No Jewish Russian capitalist billionaire oligarch/robber baron can be elected President of Russia. Poor things! "Anti-Semitism!" I don't think I'll be elected President of anywhere either, but who cares?]
The Struggle for Russia,
by Stephen F. Cohen, The Nation, November 6, 2003
"The arrest last month of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the principal owner of Russia's biggest oil company, Yukos, and the richest of the country's seventeen state-anointed billionaire oligarchs, on charges of fraud and tax evasion has put Russia back in the forefront of US media attention. But is the story being reported the full, or essential, one? It's being told as follows. Although Khodorkovsky, like all of Russia's "wealthy businessmen," acquired his company (currently valued at roughly $45 billion) at little if any cost to himself through "murky" insider dealings in the 1990s, when the enormous natural resources of the former Soviet state were being privatized under then-President Boris Yeltsin, he has since transformed Yukos into a model for a new capitalist, democratic Russia--"transparent," exceedingly profitable, even philanthropic. So much so that it has helped fuel a Russian "economic rebound" while becoming a potential source of oil for the United States. Unlike other, less "clean" oligarchs, the story continues, Khodorkovsky is being persecuted by President Vladimir Putin chiefly because the oil baron became active in Russia's democratic politics, funding opposition parties in next month's parliamentary elections and even aspiring to the presidency. To crush Khodorkovsky and make an example of him, Putin is relying on a Kremlin faction he has recruited largely from the KGB, where he began his own career, which wants Yukos's wealth for itself. The result will therefore be a grievous blow to Russia's "booming economy" and democracy, replacing free-market-oriented "liberal oligarchs" with much worse and less efficient ones and driving away needed foreign investment. Some elements of this story, which relies very heavily on Moscow sources associated with the "liberal oligarchs," are plausible, but others are not. Democracy in Russia has been failing ever since Yeltsin made oligarchical privatization possible by destroying an elected parliament in 1993, and neither side is interested in truly reviving it; the oligarchs are zealous monopolists, not free-market reformers, and Western investors interested in Russia's huge oil reserves have already indicated that they care about official guarantees of the contracts, not who signs them; Putin now controls elections sufficiently to get substantially the legislature he wants; and no one of Jewish origin, as are Khodorkovsky and most of the other oligarchs, can be elected president of Russia. Above all, however, the prevailing media account omits the essential background and context. Privatization--or "piratization," as it is often called in Russia--did not take place in an economic or social vacuum. It was accompanied in the 1990s by the worst economic depression of modern times and the impoverishment of a great many Russians, probably the majority of them. In the process, it created the oligarchical economic system that exists today."

[Khodorkovsky, and most of the arrested or fugitive billionaire Russian oligarch "crooks" (Boris Berezovsky, "the Godfather of the Kremlin" (fugitive);Vladimir Gussinsky (fugitive); Mikhail Mirilashvili (Deputy Head of the Russian Jewish Congress, now in jail; Arkady Angelevich, who heads Moscow's Montazhspetsbank and is a member of the presidium of the Russian Jewish Congress, imprisoned for embezzlement) are Jewish, as are many of their American advisors/networks (Mark Rich -- pardoned by President Clinton, et al). Note also, per the below piece, that the New York Times and Boston Globe are controlled by the Jewish Sulzberger family and that journalistic "blowjob" expert Leon Aron is also a member of the tribe.]
Oligarchs R Us. Deep politics swirl behind the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
by Matt Taibbi, New York Press, Volume 16, Issue 45
"There is big news brewing in Russia this week, and America is being sold a line of goods about what’s happening there. The coverage of the arrest by the Vladimir Putin administration of "businessman" Mikhail Khodorkovsky has featured such grossly, shockingly transparent propaganda that it could hardly have been worse during the Cold War. What’s more, some of my old friends—they know who they are—are participating in it. This story, about the politically motivated arrest of Khodorkovsky, the Croseus-rich tycoon who heads the oil company Yukos, is in fact an important story for the ordinary American. The clash between two of the world’s baddest gangsters—Putin and Khodorkovsky—is also a great symbolic battle, each side representing one of the two great remaining pretenders to global rule. Putin represents the past, which also happens to be the American present: the fictional democracy, in fact a ruthless oligarchy of corporate interests, with the state as the castrated referee. Khodorkovsky represents the future: no referee. Which is why our media establishment has chosen to take up arms for him. They are making his case into an open referendum on the neo-con revolution that until now has been fought in a largely clandestine manner here at home. The backstory to this scandal is far too involved to get into in any detail here, but the outlines are as follows. Khodorkovsky is one of about a dozen major "entrepreneurs" who emerged from the collapse of the Soviet Union to dominate the Russian economy. A series of corrupt privatization deals organized and overseen by American advisors basically ensured that ownership of the assets of the Russian state would go to this small handful of crooks. The basic story is that the U.S., in conjunction with the Yeltsin administration, decided to create a super-wealthy class of oligarchs who would ruthlessly defend their assets against any attempt to renationalize the economy. In return—and this is the key point—they were to support, financially, the ruling, Western-friendly "democratic" government. It is through such machinations that we were able to bring about a compliant Russian state, wholly dependent on corporate support, that would answer the bell whenever we needed something ugly out of them—for instance their assistance in our bombing of their traditional allies, the Serbs. The key moment in this story was the winter of 1996. Polls showed that Yeltsin was certain to lose a reelection bid against the idiot communist Gennady Zyuganov. So the state, in conjunction with U.S. advisors, sold off the crown jewels of the Russian economy to these crooks for pennies on the dollar. In return, these beneficiaries massively funded Yeltsin’s reelection campaign. This is how Khodorkovsky, then the chief of a bank called Menatep, came to control the precious Yukos empire that is now under siege. It was given to him. His bank was put in charge of the auction for 78 percent of the company, and he actually excluded other bidders at will. He "paid" around $300 million (whether or not he ever paid even that money is still a matter of dispute) for his controlling 78- percent stake. The company is now valued at about $15 billion. That doesn’t begin to tell the Khodorkovsky story. Even in the group of fantastic individuals who participated in this mass robbery, he stands out. He is the Bad Bad Leroy Brown of Russia. You know that opening scene in Goodfellas where Ray Liotta says, "All my life, I wanted to be a gangster"? Just imagine the fleshy, bespectacled Khodorkovsky slamming that trunk shut. In a nation of mobsters, he is king, a stone-cold ruthless genius. It would take a hundred thousand pages to detail all of his schemes, but they make the work of Professor Moriarty seem like a game of Chinese checkers. I’ll set down one example, from a story I did many years ago about Russian minerals company called Avisma, which eventually filed suit against its owners here in the States, naming Khodorkovsky’s Menatep as the chief villain. Menatep (allegedly, I have to say in America) bought the company, then forced its directors to sell its commodities to a Menatep shell company called TMC at pennies on the dollar. TMC then sold the goods (mainly titanium) to Western investors at cost. To make matters worse, TMC then (allegedly) induced Avisma to buy materials from them above cost. Readers are invited to imagine what words like "forced" and "induced" mean in this context. In the end, nothing was left but a skeletonized carcass. Any Brooklyn restaurant owner who has been taken over by the Lucchese or Gambino families will recognize this technique. This was what was described as "the encouraging emergence of market capitalism" in the new Russia, and for many years it was cool with everybody—the press, the Russian state, the American diplomatic effort. Until this year, that is, when Khodorkovsky broke the rules of the gangster-arrangement implicit in the new Russian state. He decided he no longer wanted to pay the piper—Putin. Instead of ponying up the agreed-upon tribute, he started making noise about wanting to be president himself in 2008, and then, even worse, he started to fund opposition parties ... How anyone can find morality in any of this is beyond me. But it is not beyond the New York Times, and it is not even beyond the Boston Globe. These papers, along with the vast majority of Western media outlets around the world, have cast this smarmy fight over assets long ago stolen from the Russian people as a battle between the evil forces of nationalization and the good, industrious representatives (Khodorkovsky) of the people-friendly market economy. Here is how Steven Lee Myers of the Times described the resignation of Kremlin chief of staff Alexander Voloshin, who has apparently thrown in his lot with Khodorkovsky: "On Mr. Voloshin’s side is a coterie of aides who favor greater freedom for the economy. On the other are those advisors who, like Mr. Putin himself, served in the K.G.B. or other security services and favor a stronger role for the state…" Myers leaves out here the fact that Khodorkovsky himself, like most of the tycoons, is a creature of the security services, having once been a chief of the Komsomol in Moscow. He goes on: "That faction, known collectively as the siloviki—or as Chekists after the old Soviet-era word for intelligence operatives—is widely believed to have initiated or supported the prosecutorial assault on Yukos, though exactly why remains unclear." This is outright bullshit. Everyone in Russia knows why. It’s because Yukos didn’t pay the piper. This is typical of the Times, casting mafia disagreements in the garb of an ideological dispute ... Alongside the Myers piece, the Times ran an editorial entitled, "Crime and Punishment for Capitalists." The piece was written by Leon Aron, the author of one of the most shameless blowjobs in the history of biographical art: Yeltsin: A Revolutionary Life. In the piece, Aron actually details many of the same facts I’ve set down here, but he argues, against all available fact, that the tycoons are actually wonderfully productive people who are doing their darndest to lift Russia to its feet ... Many of us who spent the 90s in Russia became aware over time that the aim of the United States was to create a rump state that would allow economic interests to strip assets at will. The population in this scheme was to be good for consuming foreign goods produced abroad with Russia’s own cheaply sold raw materials. The aim was a castrated state, anarchy, a vast, confused territory of captive consumers, cheap labor and unguarded oil and aluminum. Some of us who came home after seeing this began to realize that the same process is underway in the United States: the erosion of the tax base, the gradual appropriation of the tools of government by economic interests, a massive, disorganized population useless to everybody except as shoppers. That is their revolution: smashing states everywhere and creating a scattered global nation of villas and tax shelters, as inaccessible as Olympus, forbidding entry even to mighty dictators. That’s what this Khodorkovsky business is all about—preserving that dream. Ask yourself what other reason there could be for the American press to defend a thief with eight billion dollars."

PUTTIN' PUTIN ON THE SPOT OVER ANTI-SEMITISM,
By URI DAN, New York Post, November 7, 2003
"Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon used part of his three-hour Kremlin meeting with Vladimir Putin this week to ask if anti-Semitism is coming back strong in Russia. Sharon told the Russian president there's an impression that his arrest of oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky is part of a crackdown on Russia's new class of Jewish billionaires. Although Khodorkovsky doesn't regard himself as Jewish - only his father is Jewish - his arrest follows the persecution of other oligarchs such as Vladimir Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky, who are Jews. And there are media reports that Putin's next target may be another Jewish Russian expatriate - Roman Abramovich, the London-based billionaire and soccer club owner who was a partner in Khodorkovsky's oil empire. Putin vehemently rejected the accusations of anti-Semitism. "I am a great friend of the Jewish people," he told Sharon. In fact, he said, the head of Russia's still-significant Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, "just lately published a book about me in which he accuses me of 'Zionizing' my leadership with Jews and Zionists." Meanwhile, two of Khodorkovsky's chief deputies are already in Israel. Leonid Nevzlin, the 11th-richest Russian according to Forbes, with an estimated wealth