The Plot to Seize Russia [2 ed.] 2023937646, 9781662939631, 9781662939648, 9781662939655

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The views and opinions expressed in this book are solely those of the author and do not reflect the views or opinions of Gatekeeper Press. Gatekeeper Press is not to be held responsible for and expressly disclaims responsibility for the content herein. The Plot to Seize Russia: The Untold History Published by Gatekeeper Press 7853 Gunn Hwy, Suite 209 Tampa, FL 33626 www.GatekeeperPress.com Copyright © 2023 by Martin Armstrong All rights reserved. Neither this book, nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review. The cover design, interior formatting, typesetting, and editorial work for this book are entirely the product of the author. Gatekeeper Press did not participate in and is not responsible for any aspect of these elements. Library of Congress Control Number: 2023937646 ISBN (hardcover): 9781662939631 ISBN (paperback): 9781662939648 eISBN: 9781662939655

Dedication To my Parents Martin and Ida Armstrong For always inspiring me to seek the truth and stand up for what is right My Children, Sister, and Cousins Who stood by me

Based on a True Story What I am revealing in this book is based upon a true story that I was in the middle of, which is now confirmed by the declassification of documents I have obtained from the Clinton Administration.

I have endeavored to document absolutely everything in this work with public records. My hope is that we will look at history objectively and, in the process, save lives and the future for our children and grandchildren around the world, just for once in human history.

Acknowledgments I would like to thank the following people for contributing to various sections of this work.

Andrei Nekrasov

A writer and filmmaker who has contributed to the William Browder story. He was the director of

The Magnitsky Act film and The Magnitsky Act - Behind

the Scenes.

Andrei has also been the author of two books published in Russia and a coming novel.

Alex Krainer

The Grand Deception – the Truth about Bill Browder the Magnitsky Act and anti-Russian Sanctions. It A trader and hedge fund manager and author of

probably takes a trader to see through the claims of an investor in Russia.

Robson Viturino

A Brazilian journalist who has contributed to research on the Safra family

Lucy Komisar

An investigative journalist focused on financial and corporate fraud and corruption. Lucy has a special interest in the use of the offshore system, which is why she began to investigate William Browder.

Marcus Vetter

A German documentary filmmaker in Europe who is regarded as one of the very best in the documentary industry. He has a long list of films which includes

The Forecaster on me and The Forum on Klaus Schwab. I would like to thank

Marcus for having the faith in me to first break this story in 2014 before I finally managed to get the declassified documents from the Clinton Administration.

1998: Hardy B. – Psycho gram of a lifer 1999: Life is wonderful – Former pop singers Leismann now touring through construction markets 1999: Megabucks – Day trader’s stock exchange roulette 1999: The Tunnel – About a legendary escape tunnel in Berlin 2000: Where money grows – The EM.TV Story

2001: Broadway Bruchsal – Actors dreams in a little German theatre 2002: War Games – The computer game Counterstrike 2003: Broadway Bruchsal – Actors dreams in a little German theatre 2003: La Florida – The collapse of the banking system in Argentina 2004: From zero to 42 – Docu Soap about amateur Marathon runners 2006: My father the Turk 2006: The Unbreakables – The reanimation of the glass manufacturer Theresienthal 2007: Traders’Dreams – The ebay phenomena 2008: The Heart of Jenin 2009: Hunger – the various faces of hunger 2011: After the Silence – An Israeli woman meets the family of the suicide bomber who killed her husband. 2012: Cinema Jenin – The story of a dream 2013: The International Criminal Court 2014: The Forecaster – The story of Martin Armstrong 2016: Killing for Love – The story of Jens Soering 2019: The Forum - About the World Economic Forum

2nd Circuit Court of Appeals Judges do not Have the Power to Change Transcripts

The Law on Civil Contempt 28 USC 1826 Under no circumstances is someone to be imprisoned for more than 18 months. I was held for over 7 years on contempt until the Supreme Court Ordered the government to explain; they released me instead.

About the Author

W

hat makes me qualified to write this book? I was one of the very first international hedge fund managers since 1985. I was even named by the Wall Street Journal in 1983 as the highest-paid adviser in the world. I traded against all the big boys from Goldman Sachs to George Soros. If you watch the documentary on me from 2015 entitled The Forecaster, in that film, people confirmed that even Goldman Sachs said they thought they could crush me, but I usually won. I was managing public hedge funds for Deutsche Bank and Magnum—retired now. My average annual return was 39.24% with a minimal drawdown of -1%. Such a track record was unheard-of in the hedge fund world. I was named Hedge

Fund Manager of the year in 1998. Most of the banks and hedge funds like Long Term Capital Management lost a fortune, and even Bill Browder admitted to losing 90% during the Russian Financial Crisis of 1998. Only my computer correctly forecasted the event in advance, which the London Financial Times reported in June 1998.

Besides being a hedge fund manager, I was the first International Economist and International Institutional & Geopolitical Advisor. When I testified before the House Ways & Means Committee in Congress in 1996, I was the largest institutional advisor in the world with the equivalent of 50% of the U.S. national debt under contract at that time. I was certainly the first to advise on portfolios of trillions of dollars and perhaps the only person ever to do so.

I rose to the level of advising governments, heads of state, multinational corporations, and even the takeover players during the 1980s, primarily because we were the largest firm specializing in foreign exchange. The fate of nations would rise and fall based upon their currency.

When they were creating the Group of 5 nations (G5) in 1985, I was called in and communicated with the White House during the Reagan Administration. Even when they were creating the euro, the European Commission came to our conference in London to investigate how to create a brand new currency. I was called in by the Brady Commission for the 1987 Crash. I was called in during the 1992 ERM Crisis and the collapse of the British pound. When the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis hit, I was summoned by the central bank of China and flew to Beijing. I was named Forex Person of the Year in 2015, forecasting that the Swiss franc/euro peg would collapse. I have even been directly patched into board meetings around the world and into the middle of an OPEC meeting as well. Hence, I have seen it all for over 40 years. I am not a household name. That never appealed to me. Yet I have been called in for virtually every crisis since 1985. I was smack dab in the middle of the Russian Crisis of 1998/1999. So, what I write here is from firsthand knowledge—not speculation or conspiracy theories. And because of that, they tried to silence me by imprisoning me on civil contempt for over 7 years to prevent this story from ever being told.

Contents Prologue Introduction Battling the Club The Plot to Seize Russia & the Rise of the Oligarchs The Game of Thrones Changes Course Plan B - Blackmail Yeltsin Plan C - Take Down Putin The Rise of the Carpetbaggers The Rise of Putin The Berezovsky Connection Putin’s or Berezovsky’s Assassination List Paul Klebnikov (1963–July 9, 2004)

Denis N. Voronenkov (1971–March 23, 2017) Stanislav Markelov (1974–January 19, 2009) & Anastasia Baburova (1983–January 19, 2009) Natalia Estemirova (1958–July 15, 2009) Anna Politkovskaya (1958–October 7, 2006) Sergei Yushenkov (1950–April 17, 2003) Vladimir Golovlyov (1949–August 21, 2002) Governor Valentin Tsvetkov (1948–October 18, 2002) Yuri Shchekochikhin (1950–July 3, 2003) Roman I. Tsepov (1962–September 24, 2004) Alexander V. Litvinenko (1962–November 23, 2006) Alexander Perepilichnyy (1968–November 10, 2012) Boris Nemtsov (1959–February 27, 2015) Edmond Safra & His Assassination Edmond Safra The Vilification of Putin The Magnitsky Scam The Largest Tax Fraud in Russian History Browder’s Fiction Threatens the World RussiaGate & Neocons The Sabotage of Nord Stream The Minsk Agreement Hoax Exposed The World Economy Understanding Time Artificial Intelligence The Thinking Process

Forecasting Geopolitical Events My Case & Safra The April 2000 Reverse Proffer Session The Abuse of Power Continued Conclusion Index

Prologue

S

ometimes in life, we are confronted by professed facts that are nothing more than outright lies intended to hide from society the political desires of those seeking power. Yes, like the “weapons of mass destruction” used to justify a war or the Senate investigation into Roosevelt allowing Pearl Harbor to take place to justify entering the war, the truth can be a rare virtue and often omitted from the history books. We must understand that no matter what form of government, they always put out propaganda to support

themselves. Wars are created by leaders, and we are merely the pawns on their chessboard. The best we can hope for is to return from battle unharmed and that our family is still there. For you see, always more civilians die in wars than soldiers. War is merely a political contest where words no longer matter, and violence becomes the next step, like two drunks arguing in a bar when the words stop and fists begin to fly. Politicians are merely drunk on power. Perhaps because we lack fangs, venom, or sharp claws, we rely upon our minds to climb the ladder in society. Controlling the thoughts of others for personal ambition is typically inherent in those who want to rule over others. They look out upon the world and do not like the way it functions. They elevate their own importance and set out to make it all function the way they think it should. If it requires deceit, cruelty, and tyrannical methods that are evil, so be it. We are overpopulated anyhow in their world of thinking. Consequently, the ends will always justify the means. I found myself in the middle of perhaps the greatest espionage or attempt at a regime change for Russia in modern history. What was being hidden from the world was a plot to seize control of Russia. That was why Yeltsin turned to Putin on August 9, 1999, with his parting words: “Take care of Russia.”

I was the longest person ever held in prison on civil contempt without any charge for 7 years on a statutory maximum set by Congress of 18 months1 ignored by the courts and the Department of Justice to keep me quiet. To them, the Constitution is more like guidelines. I was denied bail, even putting up the entire $1.3 million in cash, and a public trial, all to prevent this story from ever surfacing. The judge in charge was altering transcripts, throwing the press out, holding a secret closed-door proceeding, and putting gag orders on

me to stop me from helping my clients against the bank, which stole $1 billion from my accounts. Still, I, with my clients, forced the bank to plead guilty and repay my clients in full under a criminal restitution. What unfolded behind the curtain was desperately hidden for a reason. Even the judiciary does what it is told in a political case. For you see, justice is only the will of the government no matter what its form of government, such as communist, aristocratic, democratic, or even a republic. With judges ignoring the statutory limit on civil contempt and refusing ever to provide an order required to imprison a citizen on civil contempt, you realize there is no rule of law in political cases. If it were not for the Supreme Court stepping in and ordering the government to explain why I was in prison, which forced them to release me, I would have died there without ever having a trial. All to protect a plot to seize Russia into NATO, reducing it to a mere vassal state. Federal judges in New York City altered transcripts changing the very words spoken in court even when told by the Court of Appeals2 to stop the practice, yet claiming they lack the power to “order” judges to obey the law. It does not matter what the law may be. If anyone else altered the transcripts, it would be 20 years in prison under 18 U.S. Code § 1519— Destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations and bankruptcy. For even presidents, they claim, that would be obstruction of justice. The Constitution forbids secret trials under the Sixth Amendment. Yet, Judge Richard Owen closed the courtroom and even threw out the Associated Press, causing them to question publicly if I would get a fair trial on April 27, 20003. Judge Owen removed all my lawyers, threatening them with

contempt as well. He threw me in maximum security with the terrorists of the first World Trade Center attack, and yes, they even tried to kill me in the same prison where Jeffrey Epstein supposedly committed suicide. I was beaten and in a coma for days but awoke in the hospital; to their dismay—I survived. The Fifth Amendment states: “Due process essentially guarantees that a party will receive a fundamentally fair, orderly, and just judicial proceeding.” So much for human rights.

Andrew Ross Sorkin of the New York Times and author of Too Big to Fail had come to see me because the same judge in the case of Frank Quattrone was also altering transcripts. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals accused Sorkin of misreporting4 because the transcript did not match what he wrote took place in the New York Times. He told me that what he wrote was accurate. Andrew was taking careful notes and reported what really took place in that courtroom. The press knows what the judges are doing in New York City, but their editors will not allow them to report how corrupt our legal system has become. The corrupt judges in New York City Federal Courts, and there is more than one, went to extreme measures all to prevent this story from ever being told. The court sanctioned me with a gag order to prevent me from helping my own clients against the New York bankers, HSBC, who are protected by judges and prosecutors at all costs—indeed, Too Big to Fail or ever stand trial. Many have asked why not one banker ever went to prison. One New York lawyer laughed and told me,“You don’t shit where you eat!” Suddenly, the America you thought you grew up in turns out to be as corrupt as those nations they accuse of violating human rights (i.e., Russia or China). There is no rule of law. They send in the FBI to take whatever they want and never produce an inventory so they can claim they found whatever they needed. We are about to pull back the curtain to expose the greatest attempt to seize power in modern history, but with the pen rather than armies interlaced with numerous assassinations. What these declassified documents reveal is a plot that has

altered even our thinking to this very day about the relations between the United States and Russia. The thirst for power comes seething through every line of these documents that altered our perception of reality, changed the course of history, and now threatens us with World War III.

Yes, I was tortured, thrown into one cell so cold you could see your breath, and then thrown into one so hot that underwear was too much to wear. Then, I was thrown in with the terrorists of the first World Trade Center attack and held alongside them in maximum security, all on civil contempt, desperate to break me as a former Bureau of Prisons employee admitted in the 2015 film on my case, The Forecaster. They neatly define torture only if it leaves a mark on your body. So, waterboarding is not torture, and threatening to indict your family is fair game.

Standing before Judge Richard Owen when he was taking all my lawyers away, he kept joking about Steven Schiffer in another SEC case, saying he “never took it upstairs—ha, ha, ha!” When I asked my lawyer Martin Unger who Schiffer was, he said, “You don’t want to know.” I said, “Tell me!” Judge Owen stripped him of lawyers and harassed him to the point that he committed suicide. I then wrote to the SEC lawyer Dorothy Heyl and asked, “Is this the way you win trials?” If the government keeps threatening my family, I will commit suicide to protect them, but I will not go as quietly as Schiffer. She told the rest to stop threatening to imprison my children. While the first World Trade Center attackers had drawn the Twin Towers on the wall of their cell with planes going into them well before the 9/11 attack, that was all hushed up. The recreation officer, Mr. Kum, had given them the drawing pens. Did the government know? Were they just complicit? Or did they allow it to take place to use 9/11 to grab more power— Homeland Security? It was an eerie similarity to the accusations against President Roosevelt for allowing Pearl Harbor to occur when they cracked the Japanese code, all to justify entering World War II.

I even met one alleged terrorist who was arrested with box cutters during the Second World Trade Center attack. He was supposedly on his way to Texas on a train to hijack another plane, but the FBI claimed it prevented that from happening. The problem that emerged was that he was a Pakistani Christian, and his parents were desperately trying to find them.

To cover that mistake up, they subjected him to “diesel therapy,” where they move you from prison to prison every day to prevent anyone from contacting you. His parents contacted the New York Times, and when they began to look, he was handed a paper and told to sign it, surrendering all rights to sue the government, remain quiet, and they would put him on a plane that night and send him back home before anyone could find him to report the truth. I met him in the court cell in New York, where you await a hearing. He asked me to read the paper they gave him, for he did not trust even the court-appointed lawyer, and rightly so; they only do as the government always commands. He looked starved, exhausted, mentally broken, and clearly just abused. I read his papers and confirmed that was the deal. He signed and was deported that night before anyone found him. You begin to see that those handed such power will never admit to a mistake. That is why the conviction rate in the USA

is approaching 99%, among the highest in the world. It is also why either Americans are the most dishonest people, or we just arbitrarily have more people in prison than any other country—twice that of Russia. To be thrown in civil contempt, you are supposed to have a clearly defined order—do this, and you get out. Even the court records show no such order ever existed. I was arbitrarily thrown into prison without a trial because it was “civil,” not “criminal,” allowing judges to do as they like without any trial and removing all your lawyers. They claimed it was to turn over the missing $1.3 million assets to dazzle the press, but they never defined the orders. I had friends willing to put up the whole $1.3 million in cash for bail, which the judge denied. I was eventually released and owed nothing in restitution. The bank stole $1 billion to cover their own losses, which were massive in Russia, and had to make all my clients whole.

This was all because Edmond Safra (1932-1999) of Republic National Bank, bought by HSBC, ordered the taking of $1 billion from my accounts. He then tried to claim that the bank had no idea where the money was! The bank lied to the government, for they knew they were my accounts. Their internal memos stated: “These are definitely proprietary assets of the customer.” They were not managed accounts with limited power of attorney. I was buying their portfolios—not managing their money.

Edmond had lost nearly 50% of his entire net worth in Russia. Not one member of the press who was allowed to write about me asked, “How could $1 billion vanish from a bank without a trace?” That was impossible, for there had to be a wire transfer or some record of withdrawal, but there was none. Not one mainstream press journalist asked that question, which was shocking to me.

I did an interview with the Japanese press and told my clients to come to the USA and sue the bank, or they would not see a dime. They did as I told them and sued HSBC, for the bank’s scheme was to keep all the money, blaming me using the standard rogue trader story. That’s when the government put

a gag order on me to prevent me from helping my own clients after their lead lawyer and I came to an agreement. Yet, only because my clients sued HSBC did that force the bank to plead guilty and return 100% of all the money. Of course, no banker was ever sent to prison, as always. My clients were all major public corporations that could not be swept under the rug. The New York Times eventually reported on December 18, 20015 that the bank finally pleaded guilty to fraud in federal court and agreed to pay $606 million in restitution, keeping $400 million of my firm’s profits. It was all nice and neat, and again, nobody in the press bothered to ask how $606 million was sufficient out of $1 billion.

On top of that, the court not only illegally seized my international company, but the judge then installed his former law clerk as the receiver who became a board member of Goldman Sachs, a competitor, and ran my company from their boardroom with the blessing of the courts in New York

City. Of course, on the street, we tended to call them “Government Sachs,” plain and simple. They not only walked on water, they always danced between the raindrops. Between changing transcripts, closing courts, illegally throwing out the Associated Press as they reported on April 27, 20006, and throwing me in with the terrorists all on civil contempt, it made me wonder what country I was really in. Indeed, you quickly learn that the Constitution is just a scrap of paper that is, at best, only a guideline. My father was a lawyer. I grew up listening to legal arguments. I believed in America and the slogan we had to repeat every morning in school “Justice for all.” I thought we were a nation of law and honor. Suddenly you discover, when you are in the middle of a major political case, you have no rights at all. I became America’s #1 political prisoner. The cover-up takes precedent. Justice is only the will of those in power— nothing more. The government MUST win—plain and simple. The FBI, Justice Department, and the courts become weaponized to secure victory.

The contempt was created right after Edmond Safra was assassinated on December 3, 1999. They ruthlessly denied the rights of 240 employees I had at the time. Others offered to put up bail in cash for the $1.3 million in alleged missing assets, but that was rejected by Judge Richard Owen. We were preparing to go public for $3 billion, and they shut down the company for $1.3 million that they never even defined. So this was really about stopping any trial and destroying the company, I believe, to protect the bankers at that point. When now Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor held in my case that the 18-month maximum sentence should have applied, Judge Peter Kevin Castel begrudgingly released me and yelled at the press how dare anyone thinks this man is innocent. Of course, he too altered the transcript, removing his vitriol

against the press from the court record. He too committed a felony there and then altered court records to hide his bias that would be up to 20 years in prison and an obstruction of justice charge. Never will the Department of Justice prosecute a judge for protecting their own ass. You come to see that “justice” is always selective and is far too often a weapon for political objectives. They assert it as their prerogative to charge someone or not in the Department of Justice. Back on July 24, 2015, the New York Times confirmed: “Government investigators said Friday that they had discovered classified information on the private email account that Hillary Rodham Clinton used while secretary of state, stating unequivocally that those secrets never should have been stored outside of secure government computer systems.”7

They never raided her house like that of Trump, who was public enemy number one. How dare Trump talk about Washington, D.C. as a swamp. Equal Protection of the Law is just a joke in reality. They prosecute only those they want.

In fact, NATO had invited Russia to join their club as a member following the 1991 collapse of the USSR. That was one of the reasons behind the coup against Gorbachev, for the old communists saw this as the surrender of Russia, and he was forced to decline. About 8.6 years later, there was a real live plot to interfere in the Russian Presidential Election of 2000 to seize control of Russia and even bring it inside NATO. This time it would involve the oligarchs trying to sell Russia to the

USA and blackmail Yeltsin with the help of a key New York banker—Edmond Safra. The Clinton Administration was well aware that in 1996 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the oligarchs created their Davos Pact to rig the re-election of Yeltsin. The scheme for 2000 was to make Boris Berezovsky Yeltsin’s successor, as he wanted Russia to join the West and NATO based on the fact that they had absorbed their prior enemies, Germany and Japan.

Oh, this is not my opinion or some conspiracy theory I stitched together, nor Russia’s propaganda. The truth has at last surfaced with even a partial declassification of the secret documents from the Clinton Administration. Like the Kennedy Assassination, they no doubt have refused to release the most revealing evidence. The Moscow Times has even regarded Berezovsky’s effort to reelect Yeltsin as critical in 1996. They wrote on January 22, 2014: “The Communists, lead by Gennady Zyuganov, stood to retake power in the coming presidential elections, just as they had retaken the State Duma in December 1995. For Russia’s new business elite, the oligarchs, a communist victory would surely result in the seizure of the assets they had accumulated over the previous few years. And that was the best-case scenario.

Frantically, the oligarchs met on the sidelines of the Davos forum to devise a means of ensuring Yeltsin’s political survival at any cost. This was no small order. At that time, Yeltsin’s approval rating was scarcely 10 percent. In order to protect their riches, a motley alliance featuring the young Mikhail Khodorkovsky, media baron Vladimir Gusinsky, and the outspoken “kingmaker” Boris Berezovsky established a campaign war chest of sorts, otherwise known as the “Davos Pact.” The scheme involved blatant manipulations of the election by leveraging their media assets to torpedo the Zyuganov campaign, while ensuring that the public saw Yeltsin as an attractive candidate.”

Even more shocking, this is also how Vladimir Putin, an unknown back in 1999, came to power as Boris Yeltsin was facing adversaries on all sides in this plot to seize Russia.

Anyone who dares attempt to sort out the facts from the fiction regarding this affair is immediately attacked as a Putin supporter. Why? What are they so desperately hiding? The government and media called Hunter Biden’s laptop fake Russian propaganda, only to later admit it was real. They are praying for Putin’s overthrow with no idea if that would be good or bad. It’s a roll of the dice. Insulting Putin has become anti-Russia prejudice, as was the case with Germans and Japanese during World War II. This has always been the tactic to create war. Bashing Putin is a clever diversion to prevent anyone from looking too closely at the evidence that has surfaced from the declassified documents. We are discouraged from ever looking at the facts, like the “weapons of mass destruction” that never existed in Iraq. That cost the lives of just under 10,000 Americans for that American propaganda. National Geographic reported that a half-million Iraqis died in that war for that fake news.8

Perhaps just once, before you are willing to see your children die in battle or yourself and countless more civilians, can we look a little bit closer beyond the rhetoric, name-calling, and propaganda from both sides? Even President Lyndon Johnson’s tapes revealed that he was skeptical that anything really happened to the Maddox and a sister ship on August 4, 1965. He said on the tapes plainly that have surfaced:

“For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.”9

Some 58,220 Americans died in the Vietnam War, with over 150,000 wounded and some 1,600 missing. Those in power spread lies to cover up their own actions. They are very cavalier with the lives of the people beneath their status. A 1975 U.S. Senate subcommittee estimated that around 1.4 million civilian casualties took place in South Vietnam because of the war, including 415,000 deaths. However, the total death toll for both sides has been estimated between 2,450,000 and 3,595,000 people. The Holocaust death toll

estimate was six million Jewish men, women, and children. The hatred of Ukrainians with regard to Russians goes back to Stalin and the estimated 3.9 million killed in the Holodomor (death by hunger, in Ukrainian). Robert S. McNamara said in a video on YouTube10 that he was wrong:

“I think I see it more clearly today than I did then I think we were wrong. I think my associates and I acted in accordance with what we thought were the divisions and principles and values of this nation. But we were wrong. And therefore, I think we owe it to future generations to explain why and to try to draw the lessons so we won’t make the same mistakes again.”

I have often attended such political events of both sides because it is important, from my perspective, to actually meet heads of state and see how they truly think, unfiltered by the media. I was at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago for dinner over the first weekend of March 2020. I was truly stunned, for Trump said he wanted to bring the troops back from Afghanistan, as he was sickened writing letters to the parents of kids who died in battle there. Trump admitted they have been fighting over borders in the Middle East for 1,000 years. What difference are we going to make?

It was the very first time I ever heard a head of state speak about those killed in battle. The typical Neocon will say anything to win, never thinking twice about the dead bodies they leave behind and the children orphaned. Back in February 2022, Hillary Clinton, a staunch Neocon herself, had praised the supply of arms in Afghanistan to defeat the Russians in another proxy war. She said the same should be done in Ukraine in an interview on MSNBC. Nobody cares about the death toll. To them, it has always been just a war against an opponent they hate.

Interestingly, now with the declassification of these key Clinton Administration documents, it also becomes obvious why Hillary Clinton blamed Putin for interfering in her Presidential Election of 2016. Why would Putin do such a thing? Hillary claimed it was because she said the 2011 Duma election was rigged. Hillary has always been anti-Russia. She was most likely claiming Putin interfered in the election as retribution for

interfering in the 2000 Russian Presidential Election, as we are exploring here. Did Hillary manufacture RussiaGate to deny that she simply lost because of her own policies?

Serious questions have now surfaced thanks to this declassification. Was the United States under the Clintons complicit or a full-fledged co-conspirator in this attempt to seize control of Russia during the 2000 Presidential Election? Who was the real mastermind? Who ordered the assassinations? Putin? Or was someone else killing off people for their benefit to ensure their silence and blaming Putin? There were many assassinations after all that also now warrant a closer look as well. When both sides engage in propaganda, we have to take a step back and look at all of this objectively, for we are the ones who offer up our lives on their altars of political agendas. Numerous questions come rushing to the surface when we read these declassified documents released from the Clinton Administration. I’m sure the most damning have not been released and will remain TOP SECRET. This also adds a new dimension to RussiaGate and the Steele Dossier that Hillary Clinton paid for, and Senator John McCain, another Neocon, conveniently handed to James Comey at the FBI that has also been exposed as all fiction. Curiously, it was also James Comey who kept me in prison indefinitely under civil contempt without any order describing what I was to produce to ensure I would remain there silent. Comey was the U.S. Attorney in New York in 2002, even after the bank pleaded guilty. Comey did not care about the rule of law—that’s just a guideline anyway. They decide who to prosecute and who won’t be touched for the very same actions. How deep did RussiaGate really go? Was Comey told not to release me at any cost because he knew about the blackmail of Yeltsin? Was there another dark side of political interference and a string of assassinations, all to create false

narratives? There are many questions—you will have to judge the answers for yourself. Oh, we will see that there are some very dark figures behind he curtain. One author, who was also a journalist for Forbes in Russia, dared to write a book on one of these players. He was then assassinated. Forbes wrote about this same dark figure:

“People who have stood in his way sometimes met bloody ends.”

Indeed, in 1995, there were about 40,000 people who had been murdered in Russia, and 70,000 disappeared without a trace. It was a modern-day version of Stalin’s Great Purge. The murder rate in Russia was three or four times higher than in New York City. Nevertheless, as Forbes pointed out, assassination had become a tool of business competition in Russia and also a tool of politics.11 Now for the first time, you will get to read even the transcripts of phone calls between President Yeltsin and President

Clinton during these very dark times. You will see, as never before, the dark and sinister involvement of some of the New York bankers in the plunder of Russia and the fake narrative behind even the Magnitsky Act. We all know that every time the bankers have blown up the world economy, nobody is ever prosecuted. When you look closely, what bubbles to the surface is a well-greased system of corruption that is impenetrable, compromising the regulating agencies like the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission), the Department of Justice (DoJ), and even some members of Congress. As we will see, writing on this subject has cost the lives of some other authors to hide the truth. Often, true stories are more compelling than fiction. So, get ready. This is history unfolding where the past is desperately whispering to us a warning for our future. Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831), in his famous work, On War, wrote in the first chapter, “WHAT IS WAR,” his most famous saying—“War is the continuation of politics by other means.” He also correctly warned that war is never an isolated fact, for what lurks behind is always a deeper-seated conflict. We will see that the Neocons could care less if Putin is president; the conflict with Russia began long before.

1

28 USC §1826

2

UNITED STATES v. ZICHETTELLO 208 F3d 72, 97 (2d Cir 2000)

3

AP NEWS. “Jailed Market Guru To Defend Himself,” April https://apnews.com/article/54251508fc681b7fc9ba002bdba88cd8. 4

U.S. v. QUATTRONE | 441 F.3d 153 (2d Cir 2006)

26,

2000.

5

Times, The New York. “Republic New York Pleads Guilty to Securities Fraud.” The New York Times, December 18, 2001. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/18/business/republic-new-york-pleads-guilty-tosecurities-fraud.html. 6

AP NEWS. “Jailed Market Guru To Defend Himself,” April https://apnews.com/article/54251508fc681b7fc9ba002bdba88cd8.

26,

2000.

7

Schmidt, Michael, and Matt Apuzzo. “Hillary Clinton Emails Said to Contain Classified Data.” The New York Times, July 25, 2015. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/25/us/politics/hillary-clinton-email-classifiedinformation-inspector-general-intelligence-community.html. 8

Vergano, Dan. “Half-Million Iraqis Died in the War, New Study Says.” History, May 3, 2021. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/article/131015-iraq-wardeaths-survey-2013. 9

Baltimore Sun. “Release of LBJ Tapes Adds to Tonkin Debate,” August 4, 2002. https://www.tribpub.com/gdpr/baltimoresun.com/. 10

“Robert McNamara Admits Vietnam War a Mistake..Flv.” YouTube, March 13, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0enCCGBW3xc. 11

Forbes. “Godfather of the Kremlin?,” December 30, 1996. https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1996/1230/5815090a.html?sh=d37dde17562d.

Introduction

A

s we get older, perhaps our eyesight weakens, and we may need glasses to read this book. Yet with age, our mind’s-eye on another dimension improves. Amazingly, we begin to see with remarkable clarity right through the

official propaganda of governments from both sides. Then there is also the bullshit of those who pretend to care while they look down upon us as fools to be bribed for votes. The old wise tale, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” comes to mind as they always promise that they feel our pain but are the ones causing it. Far too often, those in power seek to play chess on the world stage of politics. The German Emperor Wilhelm II’s (1859-1941) Imperial Government actually feared that Russia would enter World War I (WWI). The rising communist movement in Russia was anti-war. Germany saw a chance for victory in Europe if it kept Russia out of the war. Hence, Germany supported the communist anti-war sentiment of the Bolsheviks in Russia. Germany permitted Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) to travel in a sealed train wagon from his place of exile in Switzerland through Germany, Sweden, and Finland to Petrograd and welcomed the Russian Revolution in an effort to win in WWI with no thought of the future.

Since the start of the February ’17 Revolution in Russia, Lenin was trying to figure out a way to get back into Russia. Germany aided his return, assuming he was anti-war and would thus keep Russia out of WWI. Lenin returned to Russia on April 16, 1917.

Within months of arriving, Lenin led the October Revolution in Russia as the Bolsheviks seized power, and indeed Russia withdrew from the world war. According to Leon Trotsky, the October Revolution would not have succeeded without Lenin. With the success of the October Revolution in Russia and the dream of a new Marxist Utopia, the Germans entered into a civil war and invited Lenin to please take Germany. Clearly, the scheme of the Imperial German government had backfired. It not only was instrumental in creating the Soviet Union by turning over Russia’s socialist transformation decisively into the hands of the Bolsheviks, but its plan also led to the overthrow of its own hold on power. This is all recorded in contemporary newspapers.

Ironically, Wilhelm II, in supporting the Bolsheviks because they were anti-war, ended up sealing his own fate. The Germans revolted and even asked Russia to take Germany so they too could join the Marxist vision of Utopia. That led to the revolution, overthrowing Wilhelm II, and ushering in the Weimar Republic, unleashing German hyperinflation. Anyone with money fled Germany, and then in December 1922, the Weimar Republic seized 10% of everyone’s cash in the bank and gave them bonds—a forced loan. That set off hyperinflation in 1923 as confidence in government collapsed. Lord Acton (1834-1902), in 1887, said: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” Then Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

chimed in on the subject, saying, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” These are warnings that once people grab the reins of power, something comes over them, and we are looked upon as the vermin beneath their feet. They will never do anything that does not benefit their self-interest. That typically means the next election cycle in a republic. We must realize that those in power far too often see war for their own benefit. Indeed, America has gone through a period of endless wars, one after the other. This has been for two separate reasons, but both lead to the same outcome. First, there is the idea that during times of war, people tend not to change horses in the middle of a stream, as they say. The other reason is simply corruption, as the military machine constantly tempts them to wage war. Unfortunately, there is no profit in promoting peace in this world. Even the Bible recognized this and said: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9, NIV). There are no peacemakers today, only warmongers. Our military establishment and NATO do not seek peace, for that would end their purpose for existence. The only path NATO sees always leads to constant paranoia, fear-mongering, and eventually war.

President Eisenhower, in his famous departing speech, alerted us that the growing military establishment had been ignored,

despite the fact he was also a general in charge of winning World War II. He warned on January 17, 1961, when leaving office: “We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations. This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.”

And so, the war machine pushes on. I was in the middle of the geopolitical plot to seize Russia after they tried desperately to get me to invest $10 billion into Edmond Safra’s Hermitage Capital Management in March of 1999. I warned them their scheme would fail, and my computer had been the only forecaster that Russia would collapse in August/September 1998 during the Russian Financial Crisis.

The London Financial Times reported that forecast on June 27, 1998. So, when Russia collapsed in 1998 after that conference, those behind this plot blamed me. They always complained that I had too much influence, telling the Commodity Futures Trading Commission I was manipulating the world economy and needed to be silenced. Of course, they were the ones rigging the game, bribing everyone they could. So, when they lost what they thought would be a “guaranteed trade,” it had to be me, not them and their hair-brained schemes. Consequently, I was thrown into prison, held even alongside the World Trade Center terrorists, all on civil contempt without any charge for 7 years on a statute that Congress had set the maximum term of imprisonment to 18 months. You quickly learn that the rule of law becomes merely a weapon for

those in charge. Justice is only the self-interest of those in power regardless of the form of government be it democracy, republic, communism, dictatorship, or monarchy. Maximilien Robespierre launched his Reign of Terror in France, executing anyone who might have supported the king.

Even during the American Revolution, we see these colonial Georgia currency notes, which expressly stated that they were backed by confiscating all the property of anyone who supported the king. You quickly see that, besides there being no real “justice” in some definitive sense, history repeats because human nature never changes. Whenever people in the same or similar position are confronted, they will respond in the same manner no matter what culture or century. We are, after all, just human. In my case, had it not been for the Supreme Court12 ordering the government to explain how I could be in prison for 7 years on an 18 months statute, I would have died there. The

object was to ensure my silence to protect the bankers and politicians. This time, it became a whirlwind of geopolitical manipulation and usurpation far beyond just rigging the financial markets for their “guaranteed trade” that they had been doing year after year. Manipulating markets had become standard for them since they did not tolerate losses. The New York bankers and some hedge fund managers always sought that elusive “guaranteed trade.” Profit at any price was the game. This time, however, it was now about seizing control of Russia itself, and the booty would be to control all its natural resources from gold, precious metals, diamonds, and of course, energy. How did I end up in the middle of this craziness? I was one of the largest institutional advisers perhaps that ever existed, with more than the equivalent in value of 50% of the U.S. national debt under an advisory contract back in 1996. They were always trying to get me to join their little “Club” to ensure they always won in the various financial markets. My business depended on helping clients, not trading against them as the bankers specialized in. The client was a source of revenue to trade against for them.

Even out of the mortgage-backed securities scandal of 20082010, it became obvious that deals were structured for clients, and then the firms would trade against the very products they sold. Goldman Sachs was charged with fraud by the SEC in 2010. Yet nobody was ever criminally prosecuted or went to prison. The SEC demands a monetary fine, which is really just their piece of the action, and they move to the next “guaranteed trade.” The structure of my business was exactly the opposite of this group of bankers and hedge fund managers I called “the Club.” I was paid to be independent and correct. I was not selling a product to a client and licking my lips to start trading against it to make the next fortune. As one client in Paris said to me when we were reminiscing about the old days recently, we were dealing in billions while Goldman Sachs was still in kindergarten.

Lloyd Blankfein testified on April 27, 2010, about the investment and trading activities of Goldman Sachs and other investment banks involving residential mortgage-based securities and related products. Questioning arose from senators about electronic mail and other communications by company officers, indicating the firm was pushing the sale of risky derivatives while also betting against the products sold to clients. Mr. Blankfein responded that clients came to the firm for risk, “and that’s what they got.” I relied on my computer model to trade against the “Club.” Yet they paid bribes and tried to control not just the regulators but the politicians, and thus, they thought it was always a “guaranteed trade.” My firm became the largest foreign exchange adviser in the world, for we covered the entire globe. Thus, we were called in by governments and

major international corporations around the globe because currency was always the key.

I was advising Prime Minister Lady Margaret Thatcher (1925– 2013) against joining the euro. She spoke at our annual conference in 1996. They staged a political coup and forced her to resign to get the pound into the euro. Then the British government called me during the ’92 ERM Crisis that made George Soros rich and famous. The pound was overvalued, and the pre-euro peg broke on September 26, Black Wednesday, since it was overpriced by politicians for ego purposes.

The bankers were always paying bribes and would regularly blow themselves up, only then running to the government for a bailout. No one ever goes to prison, as we will explore. They have their get-out-of-jail cards made of pure gold. The very bank at the heart of this intrigue was Edmond Safra’s Republic National Bank which was also the partner in Hermitage Capital Management, the claimed largest investor in Russia. Five nights a week, Safra was in league with the government, shipping billions of dollars in crisp $100 bills to Russia. As New York Magazine wrote in January 1996: “So then why are Republic National Bank and the U.S. Federal Reserve continuing to supply millions of crisp, clean $100 bills to banks that so many money-laundering experts agree are tainted?” They added that the “Criminal Investigation Bureau of the New York State Banking Department learned two years ago that Republic National Bank was selling tens of billions of dollars’ worth of federal currency to as many as 50 corrupt Russian banks.”

Since I was the largest institutional adviser, they always wanted me to join their “Club” and pitch their deals to my clients, and they would pay handsomely. They only saw money and were never concerned about ethics or reputation. They had both the press and the government in their back pocket. The New York Times, Dealbook, on November 9, 2009, reported that Lloyd C. Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs, had actually defended trading against its own clients, saying that Goldman Sachs served a social purpose and was “doing God’s work.” This is not some conspiracy theory made up by someone without firsthand knowledge. I was a trader in the thick of all this intrigue. I saw the bribing of governments, the rigging of markets, and was solicited to join. I did not trade against my clients. That is why they supported me through thick and thin. I built my company by providing the correct advice. On September 9, 1985, Bruce Hager of the International Tribune came to the office and wanted to observe. It was a wild day. The world economy was going nuts. This was the prelude to the creation of the G5 at the Plaza Accord, intent on lowering the value of the dollar for trade purposes. The phones were ringing from around the world. It was so busy that I did not get a chance to talk to him until the markets closed. Bruce then said, “Oh my God! You could make a lot of money. You know what everyone is doing.” I replied that I did not trade for my own account and that nobody in this room was allowed to trade. That is why we are the highest-paid agency to remain neutral and free of any conflicts of interest. He wrote this “36-year-old chairman of Princeton Economics … a consulting firm that serves clients ranging from South African gold mines to national governments.”

A German TV station funded the 2015 documentary on me entitled The Forecaster. Because it raised some of these issues back then, the film was banned in the United States as well as Switzerland. Its debut in London was met by a clever trick of the Evening Standard trying to discourage people from seeing

the film. They used another Martin Armstrong, who was a head hunter for bankers, saying, “bankers are worth every penny,” but used my photo.

I had become the largest international adviser with brickand-mortar offices around the world from the Middle East to China, all because I had specialized in foreign currency exchange and international currency movements. The “Club” saw me as a threat to their “guaranteed trades.” There was no other advisory firm that covered the entire world. That made me and my firm, Princeton Economics International, a serious threat to the NY bankers. For this reason, I found myself in the middle of the global cloak-and-dagger adventure concerning the rise and fall of nations. I was confronted by people who had visions of taking control of Russia and

plundering all its assets in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

There was no interest on their part in even trying to discover how the world economy worked. This was all about making it perform as they desired. There was no such social concern about society, for they never bothered to pay any attention to the consequences of their own manipulations. George Soros said in his 60-minute interview: “I cannot and do not look at the social consequences of what I do.”13 Having clients worldwide, I soon realized that everyone would buy or sell based upon whatever global market may have been in focus, but expressed back in their home currency. A simple forecast that gold would rise in dollars meant nothing

to someone else if they reported profits in yen. Currencies themselves would swing 20% and sometimes 40% in a short span of time.

As an example, here is a chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Index expressed in dollars on the top and in Swiss francs on the bottom. You can see that the pattern is significantly different. The U.S. share market had risen even more dramatically for a Swiss investor than an American because the dollar had also risen. Americans, in general, only see the dollar and are oblivious to the world financial markets. Until now, it has just been my word against the government and the bankers. As always, they will slander me personally, which is the age-old strategy of attacking the messenger when you cannot address the message. They have tried their best to silence me through slander, and search engine results such as Wikipedia have become a political instrument of those in power on political issues. Wikipedia is not recognized as a valued source for students to cite in most universities these days. Three months after my release from prison, I held a conference. I was told I would be lucky if 25 people showed up. Over 1,000 came from all over the world. I was shocked. When I asked why they came from Asia and Europe, I was told to make sure it was really my writing. They said anyone could say it was Armstrong, but to trust it, they had to make sure, fearing the government could be using my name for propaganda. Others said now I know you are not one of those New Yorkers.

David Glovin of Bloomberg News, who never was on my side, was shocked and asked me, “How did you do this? Nobody ever comes back.” This was the difference between my firm and those of the NY bankers. My success depended on the success of my clients. I did not trade against them. I never thought I would return to advising. I assumed that would be hard to do, given all the propaganda. Yet my clients were sophisticated and understood that the bank just lied, for it was impossible for $1 billion to vanish from a bank. Yet, the media always presented the government’s side and never once bothered to ask that simple question. Like the media’s coverage of hurricanes, they never report about the areas unaffected.

Now you will get to see declassified documents from the Clinton Administration that plainly reveal everything I ever said over the past decade about this plot to seize Russia in the film The Forecaster, rigging the 2000 Russian election, was true. The plot was to seize control of Russia by installing their own co-conspirator, Boris Berezovsky (1946-2013), as the new president of Russia and then plundering all nation’s wealth. After all, in 1917, before the Communist Revolution, Russia had the largest gold reserve of any nation in the world. The wealth of their natural resources was the foundation of hard-money advocates.

Berezovsky was the key to everything. He personally wanted to take control of Russia and merge it into NATO, becoming a vassal state of the West, with him as president for life. I believe that when you cross the $1 billion level of wealth, you have entered the realm where money ceases to be wealth and is transformed into power. You see billionaires like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and George Soros all interested in changing the world. That is what happens when you have so much money that it is impossible to spend.

This plot to seize Russia, contrived by Berezovsky and the bankers, used assassins to achieve their goals. The bankers were licking their lips at the very idea of getting their hands on the spoils of wealth just waiting to be strip-mined from Russia. Berezovsky wanted the prestige and power of the presidency that not even money could buy. The intelligence agencies were along for the ride. The Neocons drooled over the idea of driving a stake into the heart of the Russian bear. It did not matter that communism collapsed in 1991—they were still Russian. This was a real-live James Bond-type plot to seize control of a superpower. Interestingly, this time, the plot is confirmed from the declassified documents of the Clinton Administration, as you will read for yourself. This fundamentally changes history as we know it, for this isn’t my opinion. Anyone who attacks me as the messenger is desperately trying to prevent you from just looking at the evidence. It turns out that the plan to seize Russia began in 1991 when NATO and the USA offered to allow Russia to join. Just as America has its hardline Neocons who hate Russians, they too have their Neocons who hate Americas. Both sides never have 100% believers in their governments. Opposition always exists in every government (e.g., blue v red in the United States). The plot to seize the presidency of Russia also involved Ukraine having oligarchs financing Viktor Yushchenko’s 2004 Ukrainian presidential election. Documents emerged showing money transfers from companies controlled by oligarchs to companies controlled by Yushchenko’s official backers. The intrigue behind the curtain is a plot far beyond the fiction of any action film, and it was not confined to just Russia. The Forecaster film touched on the plot to seize Russia. Here, we

now have the official communications even between Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton that were all secret back then. This all sheds light on history that needs to be preserved for our posterity.

LA Weekly reviewed the previous film, The Forecaster, and

called it as “serpentine and fascinating as a John le Carré novel.” So, buckle up, for this is not fiction—history is unfolding before your eyes.

12 13

Armstrong v Guccione 06-1279

“Infamous George Soros 60 Minutes Interview.” YouTube, November 13, 2016. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npvHhGZTSXo.

Battling the Club

T

he battle against what I came to call the “Club,” a group of banks and hedge funds joining together to manipulate financial markets, ended up costing me years of my life based upon propaganda. However, it also placed me in the center of a geopolitical crisis that today is pushing us closer to nuclear war than at any point in modern history. Our governments have abandoned us and the days

of Woodward & Bernstein are no longer politically correct in this new age of wokeness. The first manipulation I witnessed was that of the metals boom into 1980, with the real focus being silver. New Jersey, where I was based, was the center of gold for the three major refineries: Engelhard, Johnson Matthey, and Handy & Harman. If you submitted scrap gold to be refined, the minimum lot was 100 troy ounces. At $875 an ounce, one 100-ounce bar was $87,500. The time to refine it was about 6 to 8 weeks. A small store buying scrap gold and silver needs an awful lot of capital to keep buying metal before they are paid. I bought and refined a fair portion of all the scrap metal that the public had sold over that decade of what to me was the Roaring ‘70s with OPEC embargos, the worst economic crash since the Great Depression, and the wild inflation set in motion by the energy price shock of OPEC. Ironically, my early days as a market-maker in gold brought me in contact with Philip Brothers and the adversarial culture of trading against your own clients since I was a client, and it was always a confrontation just to do business. It reminded me of haggling in a street bizarre in Iran. Gold and silver may have had an official price on the COMEX exchange, but that was futures—not the cash market.

I was one of the three market-makers during the late 1970s when gold rose to $875 going into January 21, 1980. All the stores that were buying scrap gold and silver needed to sell into the market. Back then, the New York metals exchange was COMEX, and the minimum contract was for 100 ounces of gold. Philips Brothers (PhiBro) was the trading arm of Engelhard, and simply selling the metal into the market introduced me to their style of adversarial trading. It was not a relationship where they sought to help a client. They were your adversary. You had to learn how to trade, for they were not there to help or advise you. They were there to trade against you. Just as Goldman Sachs was criticized during the 2007-2009 Financial

Crisis for creating products to sell to clients and trading against them, this was simply the culture—adversarial trading. I believe it was PhiBro who spread the story that the Hunt Brothers were cornering the market on silver and that it was undervalued, using the silver/gold ratio of the Silver Democrats from the 19th century 16:1, saying silver should be at least $50. I knew Nelson Bunker Hunt. He was a client. He was buying silver from the beginning of the ‘70s at $1.29. I believe it was PhiBro who told everyone about the Hunts drawing in the average retail investor into precious metals. I believe PhiBro took short positions against the Hunts and made a fortune from 1979 to 1980. They made so much money that they then sought to take over the largest bond trading house on Wall Street—Salomon Brother. This was when adversarial trading became standard on Wall Street. Goldman Sachs responded by taking over J. Aron, an old commodity house that began in New Orleans in 1898. It moved to New York City in 1910 in time for the commodity boom of World War I. The firm was named after Jack Aron and was the competitor of PhiBro. It was reported in August 1981 that the Salomon Brothers, one of Wall Street’s most prestigious firms, was being acquired for about $250 million in securities by PhiBro thanks to the metals boom into 1980. Robert I. Friedman (1950-2002) did an in-depth investigation that was published by New York Magazine on January 22, 1996, entitled “The Money Plane,” which coincided with the 1996 Davos event that will become known as the “Davos Pact” of oligarchs, as we will explore later on. Friedman began by stating:

“Five nights a week, at least $100 million in crisp new $100 bills is flown from JFK nonstop to Moscow… State and federal officials believe it is part of a multibillion-dollar money-laundering operation. The Republic National Bank and the United States Federal Reserve prefer not to think so.”

Indeed, Friedman dug deep and found that everyone knew what Republic was doing, but they conveniently looked away. He wrote: “IN BANKING, REPUTATION IS EVERYTHING. So, when agents of the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the New York State Banking Department learned two years ago that Republic National Bank was selling tens of billions of dollars’ worth of federal currency to as many as 50 corrupt Russian banks, they became alarmed. … State banking officials were so concerned by the Criminal Investigation Bureau’s findings, the source says, that they urged federal agencies to probe … [b]ut right down the line” from the FBI to the CIA, ‘basically, the response that we were getting was, ’Yeah, it looks like we’ve got a potential problem here, but you know what? It’s not our problem.’ At the September 1994 conference, a Russian general was asked why Russian banks were buying billions of dollars in U.S. currency. According to a participant at the meeting, he chuckled, and said, ‘’Oh, that’s money laundering.’ Then he went, ’Hey, we’re being ripped off in our country; the money is coming over here, being cleaned, and being brought back.’”

It was the spring of 1998 when Edmond Safra (1932December 3, 1999) and his Republic National Bank began soliciting me to invest in Russia. I warned them that my computer was projecting Russia would collapse in September 1998. I was told that was impossible. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) would never allow that to happen. I warned them that it did not matter. Not even the IMF could prevent that collapse. They kind of chuckled under their breath.

Republic National Bank was in league with the U.S. government to move billions of dollars in U.S. currency notes on skids to Russia by the planeload. Those in the bank would even brag to me about their deal with the U.S. Treasury and how they were involved with this scheme. I was offered a tour of their vault to show me the pallets of money. This became known as the “Money Plane.” It was all to convince me that they had all their bases covered and the government’s support.

Indeed, the U.S. Treasury was involved in this scheme to supply money to Russia.14 There were even Congressional hearings on what the U.S. government and Republic National Bank were doing. Senator Charles Schumer (born 1950) was concerned about the ties between Republic National Bank and Russian banks.15 It was 1996 when Edmond Safra formed Hermitage Capital Management with a curious partner, Bill Browder (born 1964). This was the same time Boris Berezovsky created the “Davos Pact” to rig the 1996 presidential election in Russia to guarantee a Yeltsin victory when he was at a 10% rating in the polls. Interestingly enough, Browder actually got his start in the big leagues under the patronage of Lord Robert Maxwell (19231991), the father of yes, Ghislaine Maxwell (born 1961), who was sentenced to prison for 20 years over the Jeffrey Epstein (1953-2019) sex-trafficking affair. That too, I believe, was a

honey trap scheme to blackmail people into favors since the people involved were all high-profile from Bill Clinton to Prince Andrew. Former Clinton advisor Mark Middleton was found dead under mysterious circumstances in May 2022. Middleton was the main link between Bill Clinton and Jeffrey Epstein. Days after Ghislaine Maxwell revealed she would unveil her client list for a reduced sentence, Middleton suddenly died at the age of 59. However, at the same time, a 47-year-old woman by the name of Ashley Haynes was also found dead. She was connected to Middleton. Of course, the death of Middleton was ruled a suicide after he allegedly traveled 30 miles from his home to a ranch that he never had reportedly visited before. He hung himself from a tree and simultaneously shot himself in the chest with a shotgun. Or was it the other way around? The sheriff at the scene immediately claimed there would be no investigation, and the judge then sealed the case—the classic sign of corruption and hiding the truth. Ghislaine’s father, Robert, was long suspected of being involved in intelligence. He was also fluent in English, German, French, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, and Hebrew. Curiously, Alexander Acosta was a prosecutor who was being considered for the position of secretary of labor in the Trump Administration. What arose was that Acosta struck a secret non-prosecution plea deal back in 2008 with Epstein’s attorneys. Acosta explained his reasoning that he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.”

Even more curious, both Epstein and Maxwell died mysteriously. Epstein supposedly committed suicide in a cell

by himself. The video camera did not work, and the guards claimed they were sleeping. Maxwell died falling off his yacht on November 5, 1991, before he was to testify in London. There were railings. Both deaths were very convenient. I guess owning a yacht does not mean you know how to swim.

Robert Maxwell changed names like someone changes their underwear. He was not really Robert Maxwell at all but was born in 1923 in Czechoslovakia as Abraham Lazby of Mikhail

and Anna Hoch’s family. When the Nazis took Czechoslovakia, his name was changed to Jan Ludvik Hoch to hide his Jewish heritage. During this period, he allegedly was recruited for espionage for a Jewish movement. Itzhak Shamir (1915– 2012) was an activist in the underground Irgun movement. He later became the seventh Prime Minister of Israel and was said to have recruited Jan Ludvik Hoch into the organization using a code name “Little Czech.” Little Czech then ended up in France under the new name Ivan du Maurier. From there, he ended up in Britain under the name Leslie Johnson and was recruited into the British intelligence service. He received a combat decoration from Marshal Montgomery personally, and he had once again changed his name for the last time to Robert Maxwell. Apparently, following the war, Maxwell sought the help of the Soviet military authorities in Germany to find his family. He was told that they had died in a Nazi concentration camp. This was the opening to Soviet intelligence. As the story goes, during the war, his main intelligence service was for Israel’s Mossad.

Maxwell’s service to Israel exposed that his contacts with Czechoslovak Communist leaders in 1948 were crucial to their decision to arm Israel in 1948 during the Arab–Israeli War. Indeed, the Communist Czechoslovak military assistance was crucial for Israel. Shamir had long opposed British control of Palestine. It was claimed that Maxwell smuggled aircraft parts into Israel, which led to the country having air superiority during the 1948 war of independence. He may have also been involved in the 1947 event of the ship Exodus that finally made it to Israel. Maxwell did make an effort to get the Jews out of Europe. On September 7, 1948, a telegram from the vicinity of Poppendorf reached Mossad headquarters in Paris. It was straightforward: “We have sent off the last of the Exodus passengers from Germany...We have kept our promise.”

Finally, in January of 1949, the British were forced by international outrage to recognize the State of Israel. The Jews refused to return to concentration camps even run by the British. The British had sent many to Cyprus. The British Foreign Office had suspected that Maxwell was a secret agent of a foreign government. They began to worry that he was a double agent or even a triple agent while working for British MI6. He had helped finance Russia and had links to the KGB and Israeli intelligence service Mossad. Six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence services attended the funeral when Maxwell died. It was held in Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Shamir delivered the eulogy stating: “He has done more for Israel than can today be told.” Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982), who was head of Russia from 1964 to 1982, invited Maxwell to Moscow, and they would meet regularly. Maxwell remained in touch with all the subsequent leaders of Russia right up to Mikhail Gorbachev.

Viktor Chebrikov (1923–1999) was the head of the KGB from 1982 until he was replaced in 1988. Chebrikov sided with Gorbachev’s rival Yegor Ligachyov (1920-2021), who was a high-ranking official in the Communist Party opposing glasnost and perestroika. This was when Chebrikov was replaced by Vladimir A. Kryuchkov (1924–2007) in October 1988. Kryuchkov had also opposed Gorbachev’s reforms. He defended Stalinism and condemned the reforms in his memoirs.

Gorbachev made the fatal mistake of appointing Kryuchkov as the head of the KGB. Yet, the untold story was that NATO proposed that Russia should join in 1991. This was never

reported in the press because Gorbachev could not accept that proposal, for it put his life in danger as they staged a coup. To the old hardline communists, a merger with NATO would be the surrender of the USSR to the United States. During the first half of 1991, Kryuchkov held two secret meetings with Maxwell knowing he was an Israeli agent. He revealed a plot to overthrow Gorbachev yet wanted to buy Israel’s support from the West to make it legitimate. Maxwell struck a deal with Kryuchkov, the head of the KGB, for the overthrow and arrest of Gorbachev. The deal was allegedly struck whereby Maxwell would use his worldwide media to support the coup, and in return, Kryuchkov guaranteed all Jews would be allowed to depart from the USSR to Israel. The coup failed. Kryuchkov, in his memoirs, conceded that he acted to prevent the death of a great power. He admitted that he was the initiator of the creation of the State Committee on the State of Emergency, which arrested President Mikhail Gorbachev. The KGB plot to restore the USSR began considering a coup in September 1990. On December 11, 1990, Kryuchkov made a “call for order” over the Moscow Program television station. Soviet politician Alexander Yakovlev (1923-2005) began warning Gorbachev about the possibility of a coup coming from the KGB following the 28th Party Congress in June 1990. Joining NATO was viewed as the surrender of Russia.

Kryuchkov, with help from the KGB officers, prepared for a state of emergency to be declared. Later, Kryuchkov brought Soviet Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov (1924-2020), Internal Affairs Minister Boris Pugo (1937-1991), Premier Valentin Pavlov (1937-2003), Vice President Gennady Yanayev (1937-2010), Soviet Defense Council deputy chief Oleg Baklanov (19322021), Gorbachev secretariat head Valery Boldin (1935-2006), and CPSU Central Committee Secretary Oleg Shenin (19372009) into his conspiracy to save Russia. Gorbachev knew there was turmoil, but he did not fully appreciate the extent. These were all elite men of power. So, from their perspective, they were losing power as well as surrendering Russia to NATO. The reforms to them were conveniently viewed as ending a great empire truly created by Stalin by sheer terror and force. Gorbachev was returning the nation to the people. That was unacceptable.

As to be expected, the Russian hardliners (Neocons), led by the KGB, plotted a coup d’état in August 1991 when Gorbachev and his family were on holiday at their dacha, “Zarya” (’Dawn’) in Foros, Crimea by Ukraine. Two weeks into his holiday, the group of Neocons (Gang of Eight), calling themselves the State Committee on the State of Emergency,

cut the phone lines to Gorbachev’s dacha. Three members and General Varennikov informed Gorbachev of the takeover. The coup leaders demanded that Gorbachev formally declare a state of emergency in the country. He refused to comply. The coup members kept Gorbachev and his family under house arrest in their dacha while telling the public that Gorbachev had taken ill and thus Vice President Yanayev was now in charge of the country. Indeed, for 3 days, the world held its breath. In Crimea, Gorbachev assumed that the coup plotters would order him and his family to be executed. He had his guards barricade his dacha as they remained loyal to him. With the people rising up and the military standing down, the coup’s leaders realized that they lacked sufficient support. Their coup collapsed since the people did not want to return to Stalinism. In Moscow, people climbed on tanks on the 20th of August with Boris Yeltsin. The coup leaders, Vladimir Kryuchkov, Dmitry Yazov, Oleg Baklanov, Anatoly Lukyanov, and Vladimir Ivashko, on August 21, 1991, arrived at Gorbachev’s dacha in Crimea and informed him that the coup was ending.

By August 21, most of the coup leaders had fled Moscow, and Gorbachev was “rescued” from Crimea and then returned to Moscow, where he thanked Yeltsin and the protesters for helping to undermine the coup. His supporters around the world subsequently hailed Yeltsin for rallying mass opposition to the coup.

The common theme that was offered to justify the coup was the collapse of the USSR, which they saw as the dissolution of a great power. The eight members of the so-called State Emergency Committee were arrested. They were: 1.    Gennady Yanayev, Soviet vice president; today is a pension fund consultant 2.    Vladimir Kryuchkov, head of the KGB; has since written his memoirs

3.    Dimitri Yazov, Soviet defense minister; now an advisor to an arms exporter 4.    Valentin Pavlov, Soviet prime minister; today is a banker 5.    Oleg Baklanov, of the Soviet Defense Council 6.    Vasily Starodubtsev, member of the Soviet Parliament 7.    Alexander Tizyakov, president of state enterprises, industrial construction, transport, and communications 8.    Minister of Interior, Boris Pugo Interestingly, the very arrangement that Maxwell had struck a deal with Kryuchkov that Israel would support his coup if he let the Jews go to Israel was not public at the time. However, Mikhail Gorbachev, on Sunday, October 6, 1991, agreed to let the Jews migrate to Israel to placate Israel. That contributed to Russia supporting the Arabs against the Jews thereafter. Gorbachev sharply denounced hatred for Jews and lamented their exodus from the Soviet Union for their historical contributions over the years. Gorbachev’s statement was carried by the Tass news agency just before a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the Nazi massacre of thousands of Jews at Babi Yar, in a suburb of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. Maxwell’s attempt to free the Jews was eventually accomplished, but with a cost. However, it was just 10 weeks after the coup and 30 days after Gorbachev freed the Jews that Maxwell died mysteriously after falling off his yacht. Was he killed for his involvement in the coup? Were the bankers also involved, which is why they had to pay back all the missing funds?

Eleanor Berry wrote about the Robert Maxwell she knew. She said that a shortage of oxygen to his brain in later life destroyed his thinking process and caused him to be

autocratic and irritable. It was then that the Mirror pensions funds scandal took place. She believed that he was no longer capable, and it was thought to be the bankers who transferred the funds, covering their own losses as they did to me, adversely affecting the pensioners. Maxwell’s death on November 5, 1991, triggered banks to frantically call in their massive loans, causing the Maxwell companies to collapse and file for bankruptcy in 1992. Maxwell’s use of hundreds of millions of British pounds from the pension funds was claimed to have been involved in propping up the shares of his Mirror Group to save his companies from bankruptcy. However, that story made little sense. Indeed, the pension funds of Maxwell’s company were being used most likely in league with alleged schemes of the “Club” that were possibly linked to Russia and may have been to support the coup financially. The rumor was that this had been the first attempt to cut a secret deal in hopes of controlling the Russian natural resources from gold to energy. After all, this was the time just before the privatization in 1992 and the emergence of the oligarchs. I believe the bankers would have been the oligarchs had the coup succeeded. Was Maxwell assassinated to protect the “Club” and their involvement in Russia? That question has never been answered, and the old standby suicide was preferred, as is always in controversial high-profile deaths. Bill Browder was working for Maxwell but then joined Edmond Safra to target Russia’s wealth still. It was 1991 when the Soviet Union completely collapsed, resulting in massive losses for Russian investments. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, state resources, such as oil, mines, and telecommunications, were up for sale. The

crack in communism in 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, opened the door for the strip-mining of Russian assets.

Maxwell’s collapse clearly involved the bankers. For in truth, the pension funds were replenished with money from investment banks Shearson Lehman and Goldman Sachs. Indeed, Goldman made even limited partners from 1989 until 1991 chip in for the $250 million16 they owed and had to pay to settle lawsuits. There was no way the bankers would pay for Maxwell’s losses without involvement that was never made public. The same took place in my case, but HSBC/Republic National Bank had to return the money in criminal restitution. In addition, there were other costs related to Goldman Sachs’ role in the collapse of the pension funds of Robert Maxwell. Maxwell’s investment bankers included even Salomon Brothers17, which was confirmed by the NY Times.

There were complaints before Maxwell died about dealings between his other public company, Maxwell Communications Corp, and Wall Street bankers at Goldman Sachs, according to The Guardian.18 Lawsuits began to be filed against Goldman Sachs for assisting Maxwell in a money laundering scheme involving the sale of 25 million shares of the Maxwell Communication Corporation, owned by the pension funds and worth about $94 million, to two Swiss companies controlled by Mr. Maxwell on April 26, 1991.

It was alleged that Goldman transferred $94 million to another company controlled by Maxwell and then later that

same day received from that company a transfer of $94 million plus $188,000 for Goldman’s commission.19 The “Club” saw all the natural resources of Russia as the prize. Their next entry to Russia after the death of Maxwell in November 1991 would be the rise of oligarchs. At the time, Boris Berezovsky was selling used cars, including Mercedes imported from East Germany. Berezovsky then founded a car company, LogoVaz, which sold the old Russian car, the Lada. By 1993, Berezovsky had created an automobile empire. General Motors (GM) was then collaborating, and Berezovsky offered bonds to ordinary Russian citizens, which was very well received. However, GM backed out, and thousands of Russians lost their money. This resulted in the first questionable dealings of Berezovsky.

In September 1990, the Soviet parliament granted Gorbachev emergency privatization powers. This included the authority to transform state enterprises into joint-stock companies with shares offered on stock exchanges. No doubt, the bankers saw easy money to be had for the taking.

By the end of 1991, Russia was on the verge of bankruptcy. The dream of Gorbachev‘s planned economy had proved ineffectual. There was not even enough money to support enterprises and pay salaries. The ruble’s purchasing power was collapsing, and the coup merely accelerated the crisis as confidence collapsed. The rate of inflation reached 160% in 1991. It would only move into hyperinflation after the coup reaching 2,508.8% in 1992. The world that emerged with the formation of the “Club” actually began with PhiBro bringing adversarial trading from commodities to Wall Street, creating the new wild west of finance. This trading atmosphere adopted the title of “big swinging dicks,” which is what the firm’s top bond traders called themselves at Salomon Brothers. This became the theme behind the book The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe. Salomon bankers had dominated the game of extraordinary bond trading. This was the culture instilled by PhiBro from the wild commodity trading side that they brought to Wall Street by buying Salomon Brothers in 1981.

John Gutfreund (1929-2016) became known as the “King of Wall Street” back in 1985 for building Salomon Brothers into the number one underwriter in the world. Gutfreund assumed control of Salomon in 1978 but agreed to sell it to PhiBro Corp., the commodities-trading firm that made a fortune on the silver rally into 1980 against the Hunts. Gutfreund was deposed as head of Salomon Brothers after the 1991 scandal of manipulating the U.S. government Treasury Auctions to be replaced by Warren Buffett (born 1930). This is when Buffett becomes involved in the alleged silver manipulations of 1993 and 1998 instigated by PhiBro.

Trader Paul Mozer (born 1955), who had a 12-year career at the firm coming from Morgan Stanley, allegedly submitted illegal bids for U.S. Treasury securities in August of 1990, attempting to corner the market in U.S. bonds by purchasing more than the 35% share allowed per individual transaction. Yet, he eventually pleaded guilty to what was based on only two transactions in the five-year notes on February 21, 199120 for $6 billion, which was $2 billion more than the bank was allowed to buy. The plea did not match the events. Other Salomon employees would later tell the NY Times21 they were shocked: “This was not driven by personal gain, if this is true. There’s a game here. And it was a desire to win the game.”

It was PhiBro who had made the offer to buy Salomon Brothers in 1981, taking commodity trading and rigging the market philosophy to Wall Street. While Michael Lewis’ book Liar’s Poker provided a vivid account of those roaring ‘80s

when he was fresh out of school and landed a job at Salomon Brothers, the premier investment firm on Wall Street at that time. He provides an account of those frenzied years behind-the-scenes of a new trading atmosphere that evolved into what I called the “Club”—adversarial trading.

During the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis, it came out that Goldman Sachs was creating products they expected to blow up and were engaged in this adversarial trading against their own clients, as reported by the Guardian on April 24, 2010.22 As Michael Lewis said, it required a killer instinct that made ambitious young men gamble everything on a highstakes game of bluffing and deception during a period of an unprecedented era of power and the need for guaranteed victories at all costs. During the 1980s, Aristotle Onassis (1906–1975), who had been one of my earliest clients, was also a hard-money man. He had a huge supply of platinum, which he had put into a Swiss bank as capital. I was called in to liquidate that position in the early 1980s. I had to apply for permission from the Commodity Trading Futures Commission (CFTC) because the amount of trading I would need to do was far above the legal limitations. I had to actually prove that such an amount of platinum actually existed.

When I finally obtained approval, all the dealers immediately knew my position thanks to inside information from CFTC. It indeed became a game of high-stakes poker and the CFTC was rotten to the core. The dealers would move the spreads bid and ask depending on the direction they thought I was going to buy or sell. I would have to play the game in order to trade. I would have to buy gold, then silver, and then ask for a market in platinum. They would assume I was going to be a buyer and moved the spreads upward. I would have to have several dealers on the phones at the same time and then say sell. Otherwise, by the time I would call the next dealer, he already knew I had just sold platinum. It was always a poker game. That made it interesting, and I had to hone my trading skills even to exist. This was adversarial trading, where dealers traded against their clients.

The investigation by four federal agencies into Salomon Brothers trading of government bonds scandal of 1991 had raised questions about the workings of the financial markets. There was never a thought about the social impacts around the world. It was also at this time in 1989-1990, when the insider trading scandals of Ivan Boesky (born 1937) and Michael Milken (born 1946) captured the headlines. Eventually, Milken was indicted at the end of March 1989, and on April 24, 1990, Milken pleaded guilty to six counts of

securities and tax violations only after the prosecution threatened to indict his family. Hence, to save his family, he pleaded guilty to a bogus theory of insider trading.

Three of the charges involved dealings with Boesky to conceal the real owner of a stock. However, the theory of insider trading used at that time was illegal. Where during the 1930s, someone knew the company was bankrupt and sold their stock before announcing it to the public, hence inside information. The version used against Milken was that they defrauded others out of the same opportunity to make money. Nonetheless, it was on August 19, 1991, when Treasury Secretary James Baker (born 1930), father of the G5 (Group of 5 now G20), reversed his position to bar Salomon Brothers from participating in the U.S. government bond auctions. Warren Buffett (born 1930) took the chairmanship of Salomon

Brothers to save the firm, and this was when he became involved in trading commodities as a member of the “Club,” if he knew it or not. It was PhiBro’s traders who lured him into the game.

The very first silver manipulation by PhiBro took place in 1993, less than two years after Buffett became the chairman. The CFTC went to PhiBro and demanded the name of the client behind the trade. The CFTC refused to give up the name. As a result, the CFTC bowed to their status in the markets and ordered them to exit the trade. That caused a silver crash hurting all the retail investors.

Anyone else who refused the CFTC request would have been criminally prosecuted. Interestingly, those who worked in government agencies began to take high-paying jobs from the very institutions they regulated. Hence, the CFTC just walked away. Those who were manipulating markets basically bought the very people who were supposed to regulate them. That’s why no bankers ever went to prison for even blowing up the world economy more than once.

In 1997, members of the “Club” paid bribes to Russian ministers to recall all the platinum and palladium to take a claimed inventory. They rigged the market, sending prices soaring. Then at the top, they sold their positions and flipped around, taking short positions and selling the high. This was how they made money in commodities. It was always about creating fake shortages, typically moving the target commodity to an unreported warehouse. That way, the “official” reported inventories would decline, and that was always the battle cry to BUY! It was one of those “guaranteed trades.” I declined as always, never trusting the “Club,” for it was always adversarial trading. My conflict with the “Club” was endless. I believed in trading, and they wanted guaranteed profits. They pulled off

manipulations even in such markets as rhodium. Ford Motors was contemplating filing a lawsuit at the time over the platinum manipulation. I spoke to their lawyer on the subject.

Then again, they also came back to the silver market at the same time in 1997. This time, PhiBro walked across the silver ring to my brokers on the floor, Emerald Trading, showed them Buffett’s orders, and told me once more to join the “Club.” They said they would take silver from $4 to $7 between September 1997 and January 1998. I refused to join, but informed my clients—“They’re back!”

At first, a friend of mine who had been Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s economic advisor, Sir Alan Walters (19262009), became a board member of AIG in London. He called one day and asked if he could drop into Princeton the next morning when he arrived from London. To my surprise, he arrived with the head silver trader from AIG London, who then proceeded to try to convince me to stop talking about the manipulations. I told him I would never reveal any names, and the government didn’t care anyway.

The “Club” decided to try to silence me and made a huge mistake in the process. PhiBro had one of their paid pretend analysts who would talk the markets into whatever direction they wanted. He contacted the Wall Street Journal, claiming I was doing the manipulation. The journalist called and began accusing me, and we argued. He said if silver was being manipulated, then give him the name. I told him, “Warren Buffett. Let me see you print it!” He laughed and said

everyone knew Buffett did not trade commodities. I told him that was how much he knew.

He carefully printed the story about me, claiming there was a manipulation going on, but downplayed it as absurd. The problem was that the CFTC knew who I was, which forced the CFTC to call me, asking where the manipulation was happening. I told them it was taking place in London, out of their jurisdiction. They told me that they could pick up the phone to the Bank of England and find out. I told them that they had to make that call and hung up. A few hours later, my phone rang. It was a good source in London who was also helping to monitor the “Club’s” actions. He told me that the Bank of England had called an immediate meeting of all silver brokers in London in the morning. I was shocked. The CFTC had made the call. Within the hour, Warren Buffett was forced to make a press announcement. He admitted he had purchased $1 billion worth of silver in London yet denied he was manipulating the market. After Buffett came out publicly, which was reported on February 5, 1998, the journalist from the Wall Street Journal called me back and asked—“How did you know?” I told him it was my job to know! Silver thereafter declined and made

new lows going into 1999. So much for the famous Buffett’s long-term investment. The “Club” always had the press in their pocket. The Wall Street Journal reported on December 24, 1997, to push the silver prices higher as the headline read: “Silver Futures Advance as Inventories Plunge.”

On January 13, 1998, the Associated Press reported that silver had crashed. They reported that I had been warning for weeks that silver was being manipulated. They were shipping silver from New York to London, and that created the image that there was a shortage of silver to justify the price rise. However, in truth, they are just moving inventories from warehouses. Hence, they create fictional shortages that never exist. This has always been the #1 scheme in commodities to create false rallies. The CFTC never once investigates, for then an agent will never get one of those high-paying jobs.

By the end of January 1998, everyone was starting to see the real plot. This has always been the game in commodities where anything goes. There was a rather famous connection between Marc Rich (1934–2013) and PhiBro. Rich once worked for PhiBro, but left the firm in 1974, taking the adversarial trading strategy with him. He set up a Swiss operation known as Marc Rich & Co. AG, which would later become Glencore Xstrata Plc.

Rich was indicted for tax evasion and never returned to the USA, staying in Switzerland. Glencore International A.G. (Glencore) and Glencore Ltd., both part of a multi-national commodity trading and mining firm headquartered in Switzerland, pleaded guilty on May 24, 2022, and agreed to pay over $1.1 billion fine for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and a commodity price manipulation scheme.23 The UK also brought charges, dated between July 2011 and April 2016, for paying bribes in Africa to manipulate commodity prices. Those in the “Club” did not believe in my model. They always judged me by themselves, assuming I simply had more influence than they did since I predated them. The “Club” would pay bribes in search of the “guaranteed trade.” They would always attribute their losses to me, complaining that I was the largest international institutional advisor. They even

had the CFTC issue a subpoena to me to turn over a list of all my clients worldwide so they could prove I was manipulating the world economy. My lawyer opposed and asked the court where it was a crime for someone to manipulate the world economy. If so, it was not in the power of the CFTC. He agreed they had no statutory authority and ruled against the CFTC. This agency was always corrupt and was itself beholding to the very people it was supposed to regulate. Their agent Seven Mehan was going to clients like shipping firms, saying I told them I was managing money for them. They taped the conversation and said I only advised them on FX risk. He would say, “Sorry. Perhaps we had you confused with his many clients,” and move on to the next. We handed tapes to the CFTC, and they refused to investigate themselves. The CFTC always protected the “Club.” When I testified before the House Ways & Means Committee before Congress in 1996, we had the equivalent of 50% of the entire U.S. national debt in value under contract on an advisory basis. I was simply the largest foreign exchange advisor who covered the entire world. The banks always sought to manipulate markets in pursuit of that “guaranteed trade” and endless profits.

The “Club” had it all figured out. They were hiring the very people who regulated them in the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) as well as the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). It was a brilliant scheme. For the very people supposed to police those in the “Club” would never charge any of them with anything serious because that would kill their future career for one of those big paying jobs. As we will see, the same scheme was used in Russia.

As the Wall Street Journal reported on June 16, 2010, a Senate panel had asked the Securities and Exchange Commission’s inspector general to review the agency’s “revolving door,” that shuttles many SEC staffers into jobs with the companies they once regulated. Of course, nothing came of it other than short-term headlines that gave the politicians the pretense of being concerned about the practice that they themselves would also seek.

Nevertheless, this was why not a single banker has ever been criminally put in prison. They will level a huge fine on the company that is, at best, 10% of what they made illegally. Nevertheless, that becomes just a bribe or cut in this illegal silent partnership between the “Club” and the regulators. If they charged individual bankers, they would never get such huge fines as their payoff and ruin their personal careers going forward. Everyone is happy, and as one New York lawyer told me about the practice of never charging the bankers with crimes: “You don’t shit where you eat!” The “Club,” which was a group of bankers and hedge fund managers, would typically all jump on the same trade. Consequently, that’s why I called them the “Club.” They all attacked the British pound back in 1993 while George Soros got all the headlines. The entire crew was on that trade, standing in the shadows.

Russia was the hot market to invest in until 1998. The capital flows shifted from Southeast Asia in 1994, resulting in the Asian Currency Crisis of 1997, and the “Club” attacked all the fixedrate currency pegs in Southeast Asia as well. What they failed to comprehend was that everything was connected. Undermining the Southeast Asian currencies undermined Russia, which was also an emerging market. The “Club” turned to Russia and looked at a guaranteed 30% profit in Russia’s debt. It was debatable that government officials were bribed to sell the idea of issuing short-term debt and paying 30% on average was also a good idea. The “Club” was playing Russian roulette with the Russian bonds and was counting on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans that surely would never allow Russia to default—they had too many nukes. The “Club” thought they had the ultimate “guaranteed trade” and threw caution to the wind.

Russian debt became the next “guaranteed trade,” for they convinced themselves the IMF would not let Russia collapse with all those nuclear weapons. Indeed, this is where the “Club” was pouring money into buying Russian bonds known as GKOs, believing the IMF stood behind their trade. The

entire “Club” was all on the same trade, deluding themselves convinced this would be a 30% annual profit—who needed anything else? John Meriwether (born 1947), the supervisor in Salomon Brothers manipulation of the U.S. Treasury auctions back in 1991, left Solomon Brothers after the scandal and started Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund. He, too, allegedly joined this investment scheme in Russia, jumping in with not just his two feet but up to his neck and leveraged to boot. Meriwether took with him the Black-Scholes-Merton model, which was thought to be one of the most important concepts in modern financial theory at the time. This mathematical equation was supposed to estimate the true theoretical value of derivatives based on other investment instruments, taking into account the impact of time and other risk factors. It was awarded the 1997 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. However, it becomes a joke when academics try to theorize free markets with no trading experience. After winning a Noble Prize, the model did nothing to warn about the 1998 Russian Financial Crisis and failed, blowing up the economy and taking LTCM with it. That impacted the banks, forcing the Federal Reserve to bail out the first hedge fund in history.

At the same time, this is when Edmond Safra and his Republic National Bank was in all the way. Bill Browder became Edmond’s partner in creating Hermitage Capital Management during 1996. Browder had previously served as a vice president of the Robert Maxwell’s Central & East European Partnership, where he was responsible for a portfolio of private equity investments in Eastern Europe and the C.I.S.

Following Maxwell’s mysterious death on November 5, 1991, after the Russian coup, Bill Browder also became a vice president at Salomon Brothers from 1992-1995, where he comanaged the Salomon Brothers’ Russian equity portfolio. He joined the ill-fated Salomon Brothers in 1992, where he was until 1995.

After leaving Solomon Brothers, Bill Browder was introduced to Edmond Safra (1932–1999) by Beny Steinmetz (born 1956). Safra partnered with Browder and founded Hermitage Capital Management in 1996 for the purpose of investing in Russia. Beny Steinmetz also became one of the original investors in Hermitage. This all coincided with Berezovsky and his oligarchs who all met in 1996 at the World Economic Forum in Davos and formed, as the declassified documents confirm, the “Davos Pact” to ensure Yeltsin’s re-election. This seems to have impressed Safra to join with Browder to form Heritage Capital Management also in 1996, coinciding with this scheme to reelect Yeltsin. Because Goldman Sachs saw PhiBro merge with Salomon Brothers, they took in J. Arron, another commodity firm, to compete. After watching how Salomon was nearly destroyed

in 1991, they became very politically active. They were not just engaging in lobbying; they pulled off a reverse takeover of the government itself. Goldman set out to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act, also known as the Banking Act of 1933 (48 Stat. 162), which prevented the very thing that Goldman Sachs was involved in during the Great Depression that justified the act.

The stock in Goldman Sachs Trading Company had crashed during the Great Depression by more than anything else in the market, falling from $326 to $1.75 per share. The GlassSteagall Act was intended to prohibit commercial banks from engaging in the investment business. It was enacted as an emergency response to the failure of nearly 5,000 banks during the Great Depression. The accusations that Goldman Sachs had engaged in share price manipulation and insider trading back then contributed to the firm becoming the target of jokes in Vaude­ville. Stephen Friedman (born 1937) joined Goldman Sachs in 1966. He was on the board of Goldman while also Chairman of the New York Federal Reserve Bank from January 2008 until May 7, 2009. This was an outright conflict of interest during the collapse, which was really instigated by Goldman Sachs, creating a mortgage-backed security scandal. When Goldman Sachs became a bank holding company to bail it out in September 2008, Friedman’s position as a member of Goldman Sachs’ board was a violation of Federal Reserve

policy, so he was given a waiver. Alan Cohen, who was appointed the Court’s Equity Receiver in my case, who never once defended the company, also became a board member of my competitor Goldman Sachs and ran my company from his boardroom as well. It was Sun Tzu who is credited with the phrase, “Keep your friends close; keep your enemies closer.” Goldman seemed to adhere to that advice. In total, nearly 30 board members of Goldman Sachs took up positions in government on a global scale in this reverse takeover of government. Even Mario Draghi who became the head of the European Central Bank, and instigated the negative interest rate policy, is connected. He joined Goldman Sachs in January 2002. Draghi was on the board of Goldman when the Goldman-Greece relationship revealed that Goldman was a lead manager of Greek debt issued in the spring of 2002 that blew up the country. “The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs,” Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi wrote in July 2009, “is that it’s everywhere.” Hence, while he called it the “vampire squid,” he looked at the involvement in trading scandals, not their reverse takeover of government.

Goldman lost a fortune during the 2008-2009 financial crash, and they were the primary initiator of the credit default swaps. Amazingly, Stephen Friedman remained on the board of Goldman even as he was supposedly regulating Goldman. Hank Paulson (born 1946) was Secretary of the Treasury, who also got a waiver for the conflict of interest also being a former CEO of Goldman from 1998.

Goldman Sachs, the very firm that was the worst example of corruption during the Great Depression, has risen to the very top of governments around the globe. They installed Robert Rubin (born 1938) under Bill Clinton as Secretary of the Treasury who then moved to repeal the Glass-Steagall Act. Offering those golden parachute jobs to regulators and politicians guaranteed that no banker would ever face prosecution for some of the biggest global meltdowns in history. This time, with Russia, that greed reached a whole new level—the actual attempt by some bankers to seize control of Russia itself.

So, when I stood up at our London Conference in June 1998 and warned that the Russian bond market would crash, giving it about 30 days, the “Club’s” losses were blamed on me because they assumed they paid enough bribes to control events. Their losses were always attributed to me, never themselves. Their theory was consistently that because I had the largest institutional client base, they did whatever I said. This is why they always tried to get me to join and put out fake news, so the “Club” always won. Their losses in Russia were staggering, but they never learned.

The lure of Russia and guaranteed profits attracted many. However, this was also the age of the oligarchs. The “Club” was looking at the scheme of taking over Russian entities and listing them on Western exchanges from anywhere between 10 to 30 times what they could buy them for in Russia. This is what I was being pitched on to hand over $10 billion to Safra’s Hermitage Capital Management in March of 1999. Yet, there was another dimension to the Russian Financial Crisis of 1998 that was not being reported—the global liquidity crisis. The 1998 Russian bond crisis led to the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), forcing the Federal Reserve to step in. This event was the result of the “Club,” and everyone was on the same trade. That meant there was nobody else to sell to in a meltdown, for they all had the same trade.

Consequently, this resulted in a global liquidity crisis whereby they began selling investments everywhere, from Asia and Europe to North America to raise cash to cover their losses from Russia. The Russian government ran a huge budget deficit to pay for public services. It had borrowed $40 billion by issuing threemonth ruble Treasury bills that were promoted by the “Club” in the first place. This meant that they were operating a Ponzi scheme constantly having to roll over the $40 billion of debt to stay afloat. Additionally, Russia had to pay interest rates in excess of 30% to maintain the fraud, and they expected the IMF to blindly fund this scheme indefinitely. I warned them that the IMF would run out of money. They laughed and said, “Never.” On August 17, 1998, the Russian government devalued the ruble and defaulted on domestic debt. With respect to foreign debt, they declared a moratorium on repayment. They devalued the ruble, moving the trading band from 5.3– 7.1 RUB/USD to 6.0–9.5 RUB/USD. They also stated that all ruble-denominated debt would be restructured, yet they did not say exactly how. They also imposed a temporary 90-day moratorium on the payment of bank obligations that included debts and forward currency contracts. The “Club” went into a liquidity crisis, unable to get their money out. A real global panic began to unfold. Bill Browder admitted he lost 90% of his fund—Hermitage Capital Management.

The “Club” had poured money into this single trade without any risk management. They were making 30% guaranteed, and they presumed there was no risk for surely the IMF would never allow Russia to default. While advising Russia to do this insane funding, the “Club” was strip-mining the Russian economy.

The “Club” was never interested in my forecasts. They believed that rigging the market was the goal. Any trader could have seen that Russia peaked with the Asian Currency Crisis in 1997. However, a fool always sees what he wants to see. It was May of 1998 when the Russian share market moved into a full-fledged panic. On May 12, 1998, coal miners went on strike over unpaid wages. On May 29, 1998, Yeltsin appointed Boris Fyodorov (19582008) as Head of the State Tax Service. He vowed to go after the tax-cheating oligarchs and the foreign fund managers such as Bill Browder for using schemes to avoid paying taxes altogether—hence Browder’s criminal conviction in Russia for tax fraud. Magnitsky was the accountant devising the tax-

avoiding scheme of hiring fake disabled employees to get a 50% tax deduction.

Yeltsin tried to prop up the currency and stem the flight of capital that was impacting all emerging markets. Real money was moving to the euro, which was being promoted as the dollar-killer in 1998. In June 1998, Kiriyenko hiked GKO interest rates to 150%, and the bankers loved it. The IMF and World Bank were talking about a bailout loan of $22.6 billion, which was finally approved on July 13, 1998. By August 1, 1998, some $12.5 billion in debt was outstanding to Russian workers. The Observer of London opened its report on the crisis that was brewing on May 31, 1998, reporting: “Dealers in Russian government bonds work in a frantic zone between greed and fear. The risks of dealing the bonds, known as GKOs, are high and the pickings rich. The big players - many working out of London, New York and Frankfurt - are sharp customers. But they hardly deserve the divine status offered by Alexander Livshits, President Boris Yeltsin’s chief economic adviser, as he tried to account for the emergency on Russia’s financial markets last week. “It’s not the Asian Crisis, it’s not foreigners and it’s not a plot,” he said. “If you look, you can always find someone who stands to gain. But to accuse those playing the market of setting up an underground organization—“Destroy the GKO”—is like blaming God for making it rain.’”

Of course, they always blame the short-seller. These people who have never understood markets blame shorts. Yet in every investigation since the Panic of 1907, there has never been some mythical short player pushing the market down. I was giving an institutional conference at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, and an individual had bribed someone in the hotel to let him in. He apologized and said he just had to speak to me. He had bought $50 million of stock the very day of the high in Tokyo in December 1989. He had never bought stock before.

I asked what made him do that. He said brokers had called him every year and said the market goes up about 5% every January. He was in his 60s, and this was his first trade. This is why a market peaks. Everyone who ever thought about possibly buying stocks is now in. Some news happens, and people start to take profit and sell. Because everyone is long, the market crashes, for there is “NO BID” because nobody but a short-seller has the courage to buy in the middle of a panic. Outlaw the short players, and you create a highly dangerous market that can fall faster than a comet entering the atmosphere.

Our conference in London was held at the London Capital Club on June 24, 1998. I warned that Russia was going to collapse, and I gave it about 30 days. The May panic was just the beginning. On July 15, 1998, the State Duma, which was still dominated by left-wing politicians pro-USSR, openly refused to adopt most of the anti-crisis plan that was proposed by Yeltsin. The government was forced to rely on presidential executive order decrees that are common in the United States these days. Then, on July 29, 1998, Yeltsin interrupted his vacation and had to return to Moscow. He then replaced Federal Security Service Chief Nikolay Kovalyov with Vladimir Putin, perhaps fearing another coup as warned by Galina Starovoitova (1946-1998). Any person calling themselves an analyst would have to look at that chart of the market and say Russia was in a bear market. Yet the “Club” was only interested in “guaranteed trades,” and they assumed they had control of the IMF. When you think you own all the key players, risk management is not considered. In the end, we in society paid the price for their greed and corruption.

I had hired Robert Howe who had worked for one of the big hedge funds in New York City. I met him for an interview in the Plaza Hotel in the Oak Room bar on Central Park South in New York City. I was cautious, for the “Club” would often try to get me to hire a mole. That did happen one time when the Rothschilds managed to get someone on my staff and then wanted to buy into the company to secure their future. I declined. Robert Howe was probably the first African American analyst. I asked him why he wanted to work for me. He said his boss told him to bring him “guaranteed trades” or find another job. His boss was one of the top hedge funds in New York. He did not want to get involved in that, and he said he wanted to work for my firm because we were one of the few “clean” houses on the street. Bob worked for me until he died of a heart attack.

The Observer in London called it on October 4, 1998—“Ten days that shook the World.” The meltdown was indeed major. It was the first time the Federal Reserve had to step in and actually bail out a hedge fund, John Meriwether’s Long-Term Capital Management, to save Goldman Sachs.

The Long-Term Capital Management collapse in 1998 has been often referred to as “When Genius Failed.” The collapse of LTCM was instigated by the collapse of Russia, for they were all counting on the IMF to continue supporting the Russian bond market. Everyone and their 5th ex-wife were long on Russian bonds. They were counting on their alleged bribes that would secure IMF support to ensure the loans to Russia would keep flowing for their “guaranteed trade” of 30%+ interest payments on Russian debt. The “Club” was constantly trying to get me to join their schemes, not believing in my model, but simply that I had a lot of influence that could be bought like the IMF and others. I learned they judged me by what they were doing. They were not really traders, in my opinion. They believed in only “guaranteed trades.” When the “Club” would lose, they blamed me, and then ran to the government, greasing the palms of politicians and agencies.

Former chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke (born 1953) told Congress that these “guaranteed trades” that always blow up in everyone’s face had risen to a social risk during the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis. Bernanke testified July 19th, 2013 stating:

“Unsafe practices by large financial institutions pose a risk not just to themselves but to the rest of society.”

Despite all of this, the government constantly protects the “Club.” The offer of personal golden parachutes is just too tempting. The regulators impose fines of hundreds of millions, but that is just getting their 10% of the take, and nobody is ever personally charged.

The IMF was now withholding loans following the Russian Financial Crisis as reported on October 8, 1998. I was invited to the dinner where political pressure was being applied to provide those loans and bail out the “Club.” Edmond Safra

rented the entire National Gallery. I was invited, I believe, to show me they had the IMF and all of Washington in their pocket. Everyone was there. I had a conversation with Paul Volcker (1927–2019) at the time. Edmond did have a deal with the Federal Reserve/U.S. Treasury to send skids of $100 bills to Russia every day—that was obvious. Once more, Edmond said to me, “Why don’t you join us?” This was simply the way the “Club” operated by always securing the guaranteed trade with bribes. Every time, it would blow up in their face. And every time, they held their hand out for bailouts. The Washington Post reported on October 8, 1998:

“While bankers in dark suits are ferried in limousines and pampered at fine hotels, the world economy is at a critical juncture: Economies in Southeast Asia and Russia lie in ruins, financial markets are trembling in Latin America, and hundreds of millions of people face hunger or deprivation. All week, the world’s powerful money men -- and they are almost uniformly men -- have been clogging the streets with their limousines, hogging reservations at the best restaurants and filling up the top hotels. Indeed, while the Saudi bank soiree was on, an even more select group of luminaries attended a reception held by Republic Bank across the Mall at the National Gallery, where police blocked off the street and giant spotlights pointed skyward.

An unusual sobriety dominated the formal meetings amid anxious talks about how to prevent an economic slump from engulfing the industrialized world. Occasionally even some of the seasoned veterans were taken aback by the contrasts between the people attending the meetings and the grave matter at hand.”24

The Russian Financial Crisis of 1998 was the combination of the collapse in share prices and then the collapse in the GKOs. It also impacted Russia bankrupting firms and banks as the ruble collapsed the week of August 17, 1998. This was when the “Club” began to point the finger at me, arguing that their loss was due to my forecast and I had too much influence. They began complaining back then to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) as one source warned me that they said I had to be silenced. They only cared about creating a “guaranteed trade.” I was managing public hedge funds for Deutsche Bank and Magnum. My average annual return was 39.24% with a minimal drawdown of -1%. Such a track record was unheardof in the hedge fund world. I was named Hedge Fund Manager of the year in 1998. I made about 60% on the 1998 Russian Financial Crisis that month. The “Club” did not like that in the least. My gain was their loss.

While Republic National Bank had begun to solicit me to invest in Edmond’s Hermitage Capital Management in early 1998, they put a number of $10 billion asking me again to invest in March 1999 following the 1998 Russian Financial Crisis. There was no mention of losing 90% of the Hermitage Capital Management fund. They were not forthright in explaining that they lost $200 million at the time.25 I had warned them again that my computer took the opposite position on their grand view of Russia. It was only later that I found out that Edmond had lost about 50% of his entire new worth. Of course, the “Club” blew up the world regularly, always in search of their “guaranteed trade.” The next real big financial mess was the Crisis of 2007-2009 and Mortgaged Backed securities. The “Club” was not prosecuted for that one either. When the documentary on me debuted in London, the print edition of the Evening Standard wrote an article on Martin Armstrong, a head-hunter in London for placing bankers. However, in the print edition, they used my photo, and it was timed for the debut of the film that night. The online edition had the correct photo26, yet the headline with my image read,“City bankers are worth every penny of their huge bonuses.” I always wonder how much it cost them to have the Evening Standard pull that one off. So much for the free press.

My lifelong battle with the “Club” was straightforward. I was a trader interested in discovering how the world economy really functioned; they were all about using the markets illegally to create that perfect trade. They treated their clients as adversaries to exploit as much as possible. I built my company by helping clients, not trading against them. What I experienced was that the “Club” always had the press in their pocket. They own the very people who are supposed to regulate them as well as the courts. A friend of mine who was on the House Banking Committee in Congress said politicians always protected Goldman Sachs in hopes of landing one of those high-paying jobs. Thus, they walk on water.

14

Google Books. “New York Magazine,” n.d. https://books.google.nl/books? id=0OICAAAAMBAJ&redir_esc=y. 15

[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 19 (Tuesday, February 13, 1996)]

https://armstrongeconomics-wp.s3.amazonaws.com/2015/11/Money-PlaneCongressional-Record-Volume-142-Issue-19-Tuesday-February-13-1996.pdf 16

Bloomberg News. “Goldman Billing Set In Maxwell Collapse.”

The New York

Times,

April 15, 1995. https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/15/business/goldmanbilling-set-in-maxwell-collapse.html. 17

Times, The New York. “Maxwell Family Sees No Financial Upheaval.”

York

The New

Times,

November 7, 1991. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/07/business/maxwell-family-sees-no-financialupheaval.html?auth=forgot-password. 18

Reporter, Guardian Staff. “How the City Ignored Alarm Bells on Maxwell.”

The

Guardian,

April 1, 2001. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2001/apr/01/theobserver.observerbusiness1 1. 19

“Two Maxwell Pension Groups Sue Goldman Over Funds.” The New York Times, May 2, 1994. https://www.nytimes.com/1994/05/02/business/two-maxwell-pensiongroups-sue-goldman-over-funds.html. 20

AP NEWS. “Mozer Sentenced to Four Months In Salomon Treasury Scandal,” December 15, 1993. https://apnews.com/article/0d843212642571ffe244c82b0b906bd2. 21

Steinberg, Jacques. “It Isn’t the Paul Mozer They Knew.” The New York Times, August 25, 1991. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/25/business/it-isn-t-the-paulmozer-they-knew.html. 22

“Revealed: Goldman Sachs ‘Made Fortune Betting against Clients.’” The Guardian, December 2, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/25/goldman-sachs-senator-carllevin. 23

“Glencore Entered Guilty Pleas to Foreign Bribery and Market,” January 13, 2023. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/glencore-entered-guilty-pleas-foreign-briberyand-market-manipulation-schemes.

24

Mufson, Steven. “BANKERS MEET UNDER DARK CLOUD WITH SILVER-SERVICE

LINING.” The Washington Post, October 8, 1998. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/10/08/bankers-meetunder-dark-cloud-with-silver-service-lining/eb5eaf42-2bf8-471b-8d46a10eb9524490/. 25

Euromoney. “Republic National Bank/HSBC: A US Stepping Stone for HSBC,” July 6, 2017. https://www.euromoney.com/article/b1320g0j7gz5n8/republic-nationalbank-hsbc-a-us-stepping-stone-for-hsbc. 26

Armstrong, Martin. “Martin Armstrong: City Bankers Are Worth Every Penny of Their Huge Bonuses.” Evening Standard, March 31, 2015. https://www.standard.co.uk/business/markets/martin-armstrong-city-bankers-areworthevery-penny-of-their-huge-bonuses-10146288.html.

The Plot to Seize Russia & the Rise of the Oligarchs

I

n 1999, the boldest attempt to take over Russia unfolded, induced by the oligarchs in league with American bankers and American Neocons. There are some documents from the Clinton Administration that have finally been declassified. They confirm that there was an attempt to turn Russia into pro-Western policies using the Russian oligarchy. The main character was Boris Berezovsky (19462013), nicknamed the Godfather of the Kremlin.

Many political analysts have debated for more than 20 years just how the unknown Vladimir Putin (born 1952) came to the Russian presidency handed to him by then President Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007). Newly declassified documents and phone conversations from President Bill Clinton and his administration reveals that there was a fierce battle for power in Russia between pro-U.S. oligarchs and pro-communist conservatives. This battle would define if Russia was to become a vassal state of the United States sold by the oligarchs for the highest price or return to the USSR.

Boris Berezovsky traveled in high circles. He was intricately connected to Western bankers in New York and hedge fund managers, such as George Soros. When Yeltsin was up for reelection in 1996, Berezovsky’s “oligarchy” met at Davos in January 1996 at the World Economic Forum, creating the “Davos Pact” to prevent a return of communists who were beating Yeltsin in the polls at that time. Yeltsin’s re-election in 1996 would be secured with their media control. Berezovsky referred to the oligarchs as Russia’s Seven bankers, controlling 50% of Russia’s GDP. This alliance of the “Davos Pact” was to control the fate of Russia—or so they thought. According to the documents now released from the Clinton Administration, it is confirmed that one of the chief oligarchs was Russian-Israeli banker and media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky (born 1952), who owned a major stake in Most Bank

and TV channel NTV. Between Berezovsky and Gusinsky, they had control of all serious media in Russia, and they would secure Yeltsin’s 1996 re-election.

The documents released show that Gusinsky came to a November 1996 lunch meeting with U.S. embassy officials. He then explained that this oligarchy was the best political

system for Russia, for they would put the country on a pro-U.S. course. Berezovsky’s vision was that his group of the Seven oligarchs would run Russia, and the U.S. need not fear, for they were businessmen. They were there to stay, he asserted. The country was to be run by this group of Seven oligarchs and even join NATO.

Vladimir Gusinsky sought to convince the Clinton Administration. “Our friends in the West” had been right to criticize the oligarchs in the past, he said, but now they had taken on “responsibilities for Russia’s national interests.”

Gusinsky explained the Seven used their media to support Yeltsin in 1996, for he was the “lesser evil.” Their only choice otherwise would have been to flee to the West or go North to a labor camp if his opposition, the hardline communists, seized power.

Indeed, Gusinsky and Berezovsky greatly influenced the 1996 Presidential Election of Yeltsin, who had a prior approval rating of only 10%. The declassified documents state that they indeed had a “growing political influence” and they had

come to realize that they had a responsibility greater than their own self-interest. Yet they emphasized Russia was more of an “Asiatic country” that implied they needed strong leadership. Perhaps this is what fueled Berezovsky’s drive for power and to play what would become a real live version of the Game of Thrones.

Vladimir Gusinsky explained, “Nevertheless, a number of big businessmen had now emerged—for example, Berezovsky’s Seven bankers who were so big and influential that they no longer had to engage in such [illegal] activities and no longer did.” They would seize control of Russia and bring about a new era of peace and prosperity through commerce and trade.

This group of the Seven oligarchs were Boris Berezovsky (19462013), Vladimir Potanin (born 1961), Vladimir Gusinsky (born 1952), Mikhail Fridman (born 1964), Vladimir Vinogradov (19552008), Aleksandr Smolensky (born 1954), and Mikhail Khodorkovsky (born 1963).

The head of the Seven bankers was none other than Berezovsky, who coined the phrase “the Seven” to impress the Americans. Berezovsky rose to the upper echelons of the political system, claiming that his power was based on his control over TV channel ORT (Obshchestvennoye Rossiyskoye Televideniye). The three channels had 90% of all TV influence and concentrated in the top three channels: ORT, RTR, and NTV. Berezovsky was the key to gaining control of Russia, according to the declassified documents. He, above all the

others, had set himself apart from the other oligarchs in terms of his political ambitions. Berezovsky appears to have enjoyed the political high-stakes Game of Thrones, for his primary goal was to take the presidency. He influenced key domestic political issues, including the country’s territorial integrity with regard to its borders, but also directly on Russia’s foreign policy. These documents have made headlines in Russia, for they have confirmed that the oligarchs were trying to seize control of Russia and join the West, but in the West, these documents have been ignored. Nonetheless, they also clearly show that Putin stood against the Seven and was not hand-picked, as Berezovsky claimed in an interview by him with the New York Times published on March 25th, 2013. Following Berezovsky’s death, Masha Gessen wrote:

“On the occasion of his death, I edited the transcript of a very long sit-down interview I did with him five years ago. … his closest allies had been killed by polonium poisoning, Berezovsky himself had a well-founded fear of assassins (at least one plan had been foiled by Scotland Yard), he was on the verge of

starting his downhill financial spiral, and all of this was because of one man — Putin, whom he claimed he had brought to power.”

Masha Gessen (born 1967) appeared very biased against Putin. She was fired from her job, and in 2012 Putin invited her to the Kremlin and had suggested to her boss that she should be rehired. Gessen appeared to have supported Berezovsky. Still, she did not repent about her view of Putin and merely said unrealistically that Putin was probably unaware of her book on him, Man without a Face. That was really absurd. Pyotr Aven (born 1955), former head of Alfa-Bank, confirmed to U.S. diplomats that there was no special tie between Putin and Berezovsky, even “noting that he himself had introduced the two,” U.S. diplomats wrote. “Putin knows no one,” Aven told the diplomats. At the same time, he acknowledged that the oligarchs have “no instrument of influence over him.” As we will see, that was an understatement.

Therefore, according to the declassified documents, Berezovsky’s claim that he had selected Putin as presidential candidate, appears to have been an attempt to improve his own influential status. Putin and Berezovsky seem to have had little contact with each other before Putin became president. Berezovsky himself told U.S. diplomats that he backed the new foreign minister Ivan Ivanov, not Putin, to succeed Primakov as prime minister in 1999. Interestingly, at the height of Berezovsky’s power, he was deputy head of Russia’s powerful Security Council. However, these declassified documents make it very clear that the actual head of the Security Council, Ivan Rybkin (born 1946), was merely his puppet. Indeed, in this respect, Berezovsky was always jockeying for power to elevate his importance to the Western powers.

The plot thickened. What emerges from these declassified documents is that Berezovsky and his group of Seven were in fact looking to take Russia into the arms of the West. They had a taste of real capitalism and the freedom that it produced. Putin was by no means part of this scheme. The conspiracy propagandists painted Putin as evil, which was manufactured by Berezovsky. Putin was neutral, selected to defend his country and Yeltsin against a coup led by the oligarchs or communists on the other side. This eventually led to news in Russia with the headlines that this group of Seven wanted to join NATO. Berezovsky had actively sought U.S. support going back to 1996 for what he promised would be a very “radically proWestern policy,” according to the declassified documents of U.S. diplomats in 1996. This was provided by the Georgian president and former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze (1928-2014). At the time, Shevardnadze was backed in Georgia by Berezovsky.

At this meeting with a U.S. ambassador, which took place in November 1996, Shevardnadze told U.S. diplomats that Berezovsky was an “extraordinary person” who“wanted a radically different foreign policy, putting Russia squarely with the West.” Shevardnadze had also cautioned that “support would have to be done in the right dosages.” In time, “he would develop into a necessary and useful man.”

In particular, Shevardnadze told the U.S. diplomats that Berezovsky was not interested in expanding Russian influence across the post-Soviet space. Obviously, Berezovsky’s clear self-interest did not lie in any scheme to recreate the communist Soviet Union (USSR) or post-Soviet customs union. That was against his self-interest—money and political power.

Berezovsky wanted a pro-Western revolution in Russian foreign policy. His main obstacle was countering the nationalistic foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov (1929-2015), who was the former head of the KGB and was highly skeptical with regard to the West’s views of Russia, given the American Neocon confrontations over the years. Even the Iraq invasion was not well received as the actions of a free democratic policy. Above all, it put John McCain (1936-2018) on the radar as a serious Neocon who always preached war against Russia. Nevertheless, Shevardnadze stressed that Berezovsky intended to undermine Primakov’s position. He was moved from the KGB to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Berezovsky needed to push Primakov out of a position of power. It was Primakov’s investigations of Berezovsky that ultimately led to criminal

charges against him, forcing Boris Berezovsky to flee to London. Shevardnadze assured U.S. diplomats that “Berezovsky felt Russian policy should radically change, and he understood this would be impossible without changes in personnel.” Some called Berezovsky the “Godfather of the Kremlin.” The declassified documents also make it very clear that the U.S. diplomates understood that Berezovsky was involved in various corrupt schemes, from siphoning off funds from the national airline Aeroflot to taking a cut in all the privatizations. The documents do not show that the U.S. diplomats ever agreed to support or deny Berezovsky, but in all fairness, those may not have been declassified.

Pavel Gusev (born 1949), Russian journalist and editor of leading Russian paper Moskovsky Konsomolets, told the U.S. diplomats: “Deputy security council chairman Berezovsky is a dangerous figure.” He added, “He is a pure mafioso, and his appointment is proof that major criminal groups have reached the highest levels of government.” These declassified documents also clearly report that there was deep concern in Moscow about the eastward expansion of NATO from the 1997 period into 2000 among old communists. The hidden agenda to join NATO was the plot of Berezovsky and his group, the Seven, after Gorbachev rejected the 1991 NATO invitation to join.

In a declassified letter dated January 29th, 1999, it stated that: “John Tefft saw Berezovskiy today. Berezovskiy, saying he was meeting tomorrow (January 29) with Summers in Davos, told us the following. He started off by praising the earlier reformers, and knocking Primakov. He claimed that Primakov was trying to consolidate power, getting control over the secret services, media, and ‘cash flow.’ Only after getting complete power would he really turn to the economy, and the methods he was employing to get power showed what he would do to the economy. Berezovskiy cited the letter this week from Primakov to the Duma as showing ‘clearly’ that YMP is aiming to become President. Stating that he had not seen the President personally (but also saying he had spoken to people ‘very close’ to the President), Berezovskiy said that yesterday BNY told YMP that YMP was not going about the BNY-YMP relationship in the right way. Berzovskiy said he did not believe Primakov would last as prime minister more than a few months. Berezovskiy said that he was applying indirect persuasion on the President to can YMP. Berezovskiy said that he wanted the West to be aware of his views and activities, and he wanted to understand the position of the West on supporting the current government. He noted he had met the day before with the British Ambassador, and would see Summers the next day.”

The declassified documents establish that Berezovsky was indeed playing a Game of Thrones behind the curtain. Some people simply lust for power, which most certainly appears to have been at the core of Berezovsky’s character. The New York Times had reported on April 30th, 1998, when Boris Yeltsin nominated Berezovsky, “the tycoon,” as the new

chief executive of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

“Afterward, Mr. Yeltsin was almost gloating over his latest surprise move, relishing the political storm it was bound to raise among Mr. Berezovsky’s many enemies.” Yet Yeltsin knew that it was Berezovsky and Gusinsky who aided his 1996 election. In his attempt to appease the West and seize power in Russia, Berezovsky used his monopoly on Russian TV to demonstrate that he would be the strongest backer in Russia for NATO expansion. After all, Berezovsky was fully into the capitalist lifestyle. He had no nostalgic dreams for re-establishing the old Soviet Union of Stalin. Berezovsky even backed an offer for Russia to join the NATO military alliance. “It was a mistake for Russia not to capitalize immediately on NATO’s invitation to Russia to become a member,” Berezovsky told U.S. diplomats later at a meeting in February 1999.

Berezovsky, when asked about the anti-Americanism in Russia, emphasized that there were “many levels to this.” He explained that the U.S. bombings in Iraq had called into question the positive view of the United States, even among the liberals. They had once believed that the United States was “the carrier of democratic ideals as well as a powerful country with global plans.” Iraq changed that view.

Igor Malashenko (1955-2019) was the co-founder and president of Gusinsky’s flagship NTV television channel. Igor was even more excited about the NATO expansion than the

U.S. diplomats themselves. While U.S. diplomats were prepared to work with Russia to overcome misgivings over the policy, Malashenko simply advised U.S. diplomats at a meeting in 1997 to “do it quietly.” What is fascinating is how some of these Russians viewed the collapse of their country in 1991. Malashenko compared Russia’s position to that of Germany or Japan following World War II. He explained that the country’s leadership failed to recognize this. “Russia lost the Cold War, but you will never hear any of our leaders say this.” It was very clear that there was great enthusiasm among many to become part of the West’s economic freedom.

While Malashenko saw the opportunity for Russia to make the transition to the West like Germany and Japan, he believed that the hardline Russian leadership had not reached that conclusion. Consequently, he believed this stubbornness was holding back Russian advancement economically and politically. This was the view at the top. When I was in Tokyo, and everyone was sending troops to the Middle East, Japan could not send troops because of the 200-mile constraint imposed after World War II. The politicians wanted to change their constitution to be able to send troops. There were hundreds of thousands of people protesting in Tokyo that day, fearing that lifting that restraint would open the door to war. For they saw the military as the culprit for Japan’s destruction—not America and not the emperor.

There is little question that the American Neocons were uneasy about this enthusiasm. That’s not the way an enemy should act. This was expressed to NATO as well, which deepened their suspicion of the Western alliance among conservative figures in Russia. They were concerned that the conservative Russians (communists) might believe that the oligarchs were ready to sell their country to the West. On December 2nd, 1999, John McCain said he would be cautious in dealing with China or Russia.

The declassified diplomatic dispatches show how competing foreign policy positions emerged inside Russia between the pro-U.S. vs. Russia nationalistic view. This was becoming complicated with corruption and the thirst for power during the latter days of the Yeltsin Administration from both camps.

However, the Neocons, who cannot sleep at night without an enemy to hate, saw this all as some sort of a trojan horse. Enemies do not change and they really did not want to hear about a new age of Russia. Despite the fact that they rose up against communism, that was just not enough. It had to be a trick. Even on the Larry King Show, February 15th, 2000, John McCain expressed his hatred:

“What area of international policy would you change immediately?” King asked. McCain responded, “Our policies concerning rogue states: Iraq, Libya, North Korea-those countries that continue to try to acquire weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them. I’d institute a policy that I call ‘rogue state rollback.’ I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically elected governments.”

Nevertheless, in Russia, under Yeltsin and the rise of the oligarchs, things were not as wonderful as the West wanted everyone to believe as the product of democracy. The average life expectancy in Russia actually declined by 5 years during the Yeltsin years. Alcoholism increased dramatically in economic hard times, as did poverty and typically suicide when people see no hope in the face of

rising unemployment and an uncertain future. The transition from communism to capitalism was a disaster on the advice of the Harvard boys, for they relied on academics who simply did not understand they needed to retrain even the people. Organized crime became rampant with the Russian mafia and the Chechnya mafia, who most believed controlled Moscow. Yet the oligarchs and the mafia were competing for politicians. These were the “Good Times” in Russia, according to Western propagandists. This was very opposite of the common Russian’s perspective, and Yeltsin was not very popular as a result. Nevertheless, what is propaganda for anyway?

The Game of Thrones Changes Course

I

t was during the spring of 1998 when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) intervention to bail out Russia was all that brokers and investors could talk about. They wanted to believe the IMF would not allow Russia to default because its nukes would be on the black market, so they could make their 30%+ “guaranteed trade.” Interestingly, the Russian government did not understand the capitalist game itself.

They assumed the IMF would always accept their terms because they also feared of loose nukes being sold to rogue states. It was May 1998 when Larry Summers (born 1954) went to Moscow, and his botched visit helped to spark the collapse of the Russian markets in May 1998 over a misunderstanding.

Consequently, the Russian government also bought into this idea that they were the exception. In mid-May 1998, Larry Summers was the U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Treasury. He took a flight to Moscow to decide how the United States should deal with what appeared to be a catastrophic economic meltdown armed with more nuclear warheads than the United States had. The idea that some of these nukes might find their way into the black market was a real nightmare at that time. Both Larry Summers and the IMF left the country without any agreement in hand. The Wall Street Journal reported that because Summers’ title was “Deputy Secretary” his request to meet with the prime minister was rejected, for they assumed his status was beneath that required for the prime minister.

On June 2nd, 1998, Bloomberg News reported that the ’97 Asian Currency Crisis had eased, and Larry Summers was saying the same thing. Nevertheless, Summers said that “developed nations can’t relax since potential problems in Russia and China could spread to other regions.” The Russian share market plummeted again into the week of September 28th, 1998, following the May 1998 Crash.

The “Club” had also shorted the Asian currencies in 1997 and made a fortune on that manipulation, all joining in together. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia lashed out at George Soros: “For them wealth must come from impoverishing others, from taking what others have in order to enrich themselves. Their weapon is their wealth against the poverty of others.”

Our model forecasted the Asian Currency Crisis as well. I had pointed out that the capital flows shifted in 1994, and had then turned toward Europe, looking at the coming euro in 1998. It was the capital flow shift that set in motion the Asian

Currency Crisis of 1997, which had also been a “guaranteed trade” when governments tried to fix their currency’s value with a peg. People like Soros can bet billions. If they are wrong, they get their money back because the currency is set at a fixed rate (peg), another “guaranteed trade.”

The view was that the U.S., the IMF, and Europe would never allow Russia to default, so profits were secured. The capital flows, which shifted, resulting in the 1997 Asian Currency Crisis, also impacted Russia. This was when the central bank of China invited me to fly to Beijing. They were monitoring our forecasts and said that they agreed and understood that the capital flows shifted. They praised our analysis and said keep up the good work. When I asked why they did not come out and say the same thing, they replied that they could not criticize another central bank. They learned the rules quickly.

The “Club” just ignored my warnings. They believed in bribes, joining together, employing adversarial trading. Then, the firm of Solomon Brothers exited the arbitrage business on July 21st, 1998, which began the process of a contraction in liquidity. The ruble peaked against the dollar on August 17th, 1998, and by now Long-Term Capital Management was in trouble. By September 23rd, 1998, Goldman Sachs, AIG, and Warren Buffett made an offer to buy the LTCM, but they rejected. It was just a matter of days before the entire Russian bond market collapsed. It was less than 60 days from our model’s turning point of July 20th, 1998.

The entire “Club” had underestimated the magnitude of the crisis that they assumed bribes would prevent. Since nobody could sell Russian assets in the face of no bid, they began dumping everything else from Japan, USA, and Europe to raise cash. This became a major global liquidity crisis—a financial pandemic. At the October 1998 IMF dinner, they could not put humpy dumpty back together again. The capital flows had shifted, and the market was too concentrated in Russia. There were no buyers to sell to. They were all rigging the market and became the market themselves. The central bank of China adopted our capital flow analysis back in 2014. On April 3rd, 2014, Bloomberg reported that the People’s Bank of China would “closely monitor” new global and domestic economic and financial developments and changes in international capital flows, according to a statement during a monetary policy committee meeting posted on the PBOC website. They understood our model.

The economic meltdown with nuclear weapons was viewed seriously. President Clinton agreed to a summit with Boris Yeltsin in early September 1998. During that meeting between Clinton and Yeltsin, Larry Summers, who had accompanied Clinton on that summit, met with the “Godfather of the Kremlin”—Boris Berezovsky.

Interestingly, the Chicago Tribune wrote on the front page on September 6th, 1998, that Summers had met with Berezovsky because of “the way real power is accrued and wielded in today’s Russia.”

The Chicago Tribune explained that Berezovsky and his Seven oligarchs are “[s]ometimes … described as pillars of the economy, but more often as robber barons.” They had worked their way into the upper levels of power with the 1996 Davos Pact.

Now, the Russian Financial Crisis unleashed a political crisis in Moscow. In the midst of the Russian Bond Crisis in August/September 1998, Yeltsin attempted to reinstate Viktor Chernomyrdin (1938–2010) as prime minister. The State Duma rejected his nomination on September 7th, 1998, which was leaning much more toward restoring communism, for capitalism had obviously failed.

A serious political crisis now confronted Yeltsin following the rejection of Chernomyrdin. In the middle of the financial crisis, Yeltsin had to be seen as doing something, or he would have been removed from office. So, Yeltsin then turned to Yevgeny Primakov (1929–2015) who was a right-wing conservative and anti-oligarchy communist at heart. Thus, Primakov, who was Berezovsky’s archenemy, was coming to power. Yeltsin presented Primakov as prime minister on September 10th, 1998, three days after the rejection of Chernomyrdin. The Duma accepted Primakov for he was leaning more toward the communists. Thus, Yeltsin formally moved Primakov from minister of foreign affairs to prime minister in the wake of Russia’s default in August 1998. He then called Bill Clinton to explain the situation on September 12th, 1998, where he said: “Primakov is, as we say, an Americanist [we] stand firmly for the continuation of reforms, there should be no doubt about that. ...we have managed to halt the slide of the ruble exchange rate.”

Since the crash had bottomed by September 21st, 1998, and the decline thereafter of the ruble was a gradual churning

move lower, the majority of the panic appeared to have subsided in Russia. The losses were now external to the “Club,” which had counted on a bailout guarantee from the IMF that did not come.

Russia’s new Prime Minister, Yevgeny Primakov outlined his vision of a “socially oriented economy” that was more in line with the communist’s view that the capitalists were to blame for the entire crisis. The wild free market included the oligarchs such as Berezovsky. This was not exactly as Yeltsin presented to Clinton in his phone call. Primakov promised reforms with “social conscience,” which is what won him confirmation with the Duma communists.

Primakov addressed his critics and swore he had no intention of returning the country to Soviet-style central control. He also invoked Franklin D. Roosevelt from the Great Depression. He said: “Nobody criticized Roosevelt when he introduced state controls over the economy after the Great Depression.” Roosevelt was creating socialism with power handed to the state.

Then as prime minister, Primakov pushed through some very difficult reforms mostly concerning tax reform on the rich targeting the oligarchs. One of Primakov’s first actions as prime minister, in October 1998, was to appeal to the United States and Canada for food aid while also appealing to the European Union for economic relief. However, the 1998 harvest, which was the worst in 45 years, had also coincided with the collapse of the Russian ruble. Primakov had no

choice and turned to the West for food aid. This was reported by the New York Times, stating that the European Union confirmed, “There has been a request for humanitarian aid.”

It was on July 25th, 1998, when Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin (born 1952), as director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the primary intelligence agency of the Russian Federation. I believe this was done because of Galina Starovoitova’s criticism of the FSB and to prevent another FSB coup. Putin had worked for the KGB from 1975 until August 20th, 1991. He left because the head of the KGB, Vladimir A. Kryuchkov (1924–2007), was behind the major coup of 1991, arresting Mikhail Gorbachev and trying to return Russia to the USSR, which Putin opposed. Putin resigned in 1991 and

entered civil service to support an old friend moving to be mayor of St Petersburg. However, more significantly, on October 1st, 1998, Vladimir Putin became a permanent member of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.

Indeed, even the October 1998 edition of Russian Life carried the front cover with Yeltsin’s “Don’t Cry for me…” as if this

were Argentina. Meanwhile, Berezovsky was now facing Primakov as prime minister who was targeting the oligarchs. Berezovsky needed a defense in case of criminal charges. On November 13th, 1998, Berezovsky wrote an open letter to Putin, now head of the FSB since July 25th, 1998, in Kommersant, accusing four senior officers of the Directorate of Analysis and Suppression of Criminal Groups of ordering his assassination. They were Major-General Yevgeny Khokholkov, N. Stepanov, A. Kamyshnikov, and N. Yenin.

Then four days later, on November 17th, 1998, Berezovsky pulled another stunt. Alexander V. Litvinenko (1962–November 23, 2006), the spy who died of poisoning in London in 2006,

and four other officers appeared together in a press conference at the Russian news agency Interfax, which was independent and founded in 1989 with the fall of the USSR. They were the colleagues of Litvinenko, who also worked for both FSB in the Directorate of Analysis and Suppression of Criminal Groups as well as Berezovsky, but under the table. This was staged to stop Primakov from claiming that any charges would be politically motivated.

As it struck the press, they called it “bizarre” when the agents appeared in dark glasses and one in a ski mask. This was clearly a stunt set up by Berezovsky, for they were supporting the allegations made by Berezovsky that were part of this scheme to take charge of Russia with his oligarchs. This was Berezovsky’s counter-move against Primakov.

This “bizarre” group of people on Berezovsky’s payroll claimed they were ordered to assassinate him as well as Mikhail Trepashkin who was also present at the press conference. They also claimed they were told to kidnap a brother of Umar A. Dzhabrailov, a Russian politician and ethnic Chechen. The interesting link that surfaced the following year was that Trepashkin was a Russian attorney and former FSB colonel who was also invited by Berezovsky’s head of security, Sergei Yurievich Sokolov, to conduct a pretend inquiry of the Russian apartment bombings in September 1999 in an effort to blame Putin when Berezovsky’s scheme to become president failed. Indeed, this “bizarre” event appeared to be a desperate attempt perhaps to set the stage for claiming any action by Primakov was political.

In 2007, Sergey L. Dorenko (1959–2019), a Russian TV and radio journalist who hosted a weekly news commentary program in

1999–2000, came forward in 2007. Dorenko then provided the Associated Press and Wall Street Journal with the full video of an interview he recorded in April 1998 with Alexander Litvinenko and fellow FSB employees. However, this interview was conducted in April 1998 for ORT, which was controlled and run by Berezovsky at the time. Berezovsky had it filmed, yet it was not broadcast until November 17th, 1998. The original taping was in April 1998, which coincided with Berezovsky’s unexpected political rise and his appointment to the position of executive secretary of the Commonwealth of Independent States. This was his entrance into Yeltsin’s “Family” that raised the possibility that this tape may have been used as a ploy to get Berezovsky into the political center as a backup plan and to blame Primakov. Back in 1991, Alexander V. Litvinenko (1962–November 2006) was promoted to the Central Staff of the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK) of the Russian Federation, which was the main security agency of Russia. The FSK (later changed to the FSB in 1995) was the main successor agency to the Soviet Union’s KGB following the collapse of the USSR. It existed from 1993 until 1995, when it was reorganized into what became known as the Federal Security Service (FSB). This FSB agency specialized in counter-terrorist activities and the infiltration of organized crime. Litvinenko actually met Boris Berezovsky in 1994 when he was investigating an alleged assassination attempt on him by the mafia. Berezovsky then appears to have worked his charm and hired Litvinenko covertly by putting him in charge of his security, yet he was still an employee of the FSK at the time. Berezovsky deliberately created a serious conflict of interest by hiring the man who would be in charge of criminal investigations of organized crime, which would also target

Berezovsky. During this side-employment deal in 1997, Boris seemed to have caused Litvinenko to be promoted to the FSB Directorate of Analysis and Suppression of Criminal Groups. Nothing like having the prosecutor on your payroll. Once Litvinenko was in charge of investigating his boss Berezovsky, his work in the FSB suddenly discovered all the connections between the Yeltsin Administration, the Russian law enforcement agencies, and the Russian mafia. This was the key political chip that Berezovsky needed. The main organized Russian crime syndicate or mafia was the Solntsevo Gang, international in scope, controlling much of Ukraine and stretching around the globe, even into the United States. They were well connected to the Russian political class. Litvinenko wrote a memorandum about this issue for Boris Yeltsin, which most likely aided Berezovsky’s entrance into the “Family” in early 1998. It was Berezovsky who cleverly arranged a meeting for him with FSB director Mikhail Barsukov and deputy director of Internal affairs Ovchinnikov to discuss this issue of Berezovsky’s adversary, the Solntsevo Gang. They did not buy the scheme laid out, probably knowing that Berezovsky was behind the curtain. The declassified documents clearly state: “BEREZOVSKIY IS KNOWN FOR HIS CONFIDENCE AND HIS ABILITY TO GET THINGS DONE.” (Declassified 12-0962-M) Litvinenko appears to have defended Berezovsky’s oligarchs known as the Seven. He adopted the position that the FSB was also corrupted from top to bottom, engaging in the typical protection racket where first the mob provided protection for businesses, then by police, and then the FSB. This was a standard practice of the Yakuza in Japan, who blackmailed CEOs of public companies as well. The same was taking place in Ukraine.

The declassified documents reflect the real crisis that Berezovsky found himself in. Once Primakov took control in September 1998, all hopes for him being pro-West were soon shattered. As Shevardnadze told the American diplomats, Primakov was a great disappointment. He was “captive to old ideas and ideologies” and inclined to lead Russia back to the days of the USSR. My sources at the time were saying Primakov believed the Russian ruble and bond crises were the instruments of capitalists. Primakov blamed Berezovsky and his group of oligarchs.

There was a deeper concern about corruption and violence in Russia. James Meek (born 1962) wrote from Moscow on November 28th, 1998, for the Sydney Morning Herald: “As Yeltsin’s end nears, hidden power battles rage.” He wrote that Russia was:

“looking to the Prime Minister, Mr. Yevgeny Primakov, to extricate Russia from the ugly final months of formal rule by a Yeltsin circle clinging to power from a hospital ward. Much of Russia’s political elite, even within the presidential administration, feels the same.”

Meek reported that “[t]he President’s one-time chief bodyguard, General Alexander Korzhkov, accused Mr. Berezovsky of blackmailing the country’s first family.” The plot was clearly evolving. The declassified documents confirm that Berezovsky was at war with Primakov. He pointed out that Primakov was supposed to be focusing on restoring the economy. That was why Yeltsin turned to him in the aftermath of the ’98 Financial Crisis. As the documents reflect, Primakov was more concerned about seizing power to restore the USSR. My sources at the time stated he was anti-Western free markets and anti-Yeltsin and Berezovsky.

I had long suspected that Primakov may have been behind the assassination of Galina Starovoitova (1946-1998) on November 20th, 1998, just weeks after he took office. Galina was preparing for the State Duma elections that were to be

held the next year in December 1999. Galina tried to prevent the old communists from coming to power and was against the oligarchs. Galina opposed the direction of Russia moving from a communist to an oligarchy state and made this part of her political platform in “Democratic Russia.” I believe she knew the nature of Primakov and saw the same writing on the wall. I believe that, in fact, Galina’s assassination was to remove the head of the democratic movement in the Duma that would have been the major obstacle to the rise of power of Primakov and the restoration of communism under his vision of the USSR.

Galina was gunned down in the entryway of her apartment building in St. Petersburg on November 20th, 1998. At first, the

spin was that she was a puppet of a “Western financier,” who was supposed to be me, simply because her son worked in my London office.

Over 10,000 people had attended her funeral. Galina’s death was the first real politically motivated assassination post-1991. She was a staunch fighter for democracy in Russia. Even Margaret Thatcher sent her condolences. Amy Knight (born 1946) wrote for the Washington Post in December 1998 that the FSB had a poor record of investigating corruption or political crimes. Knight also noted that this assassination took place while Primakov was prime minister. She noted that he was the “former chief of the KGB’s foreign intelligence apparatus, Mr. Primakov retains close ties with the security police Establishment.” Geoff Kitney, writing for the Herald in Berlin, characterized Galina’s death as“a turning point in Russia’s fight to establish a post-Communist society.” Indeed, Galina’s death was a significant turning point. It was clearly the attempt of the old guard and their reminiscent dream of communist power they saw slipping away. It was obvious that her death was an ordered assassination. The fact that the spin claimed Galina was a puppet of a Western financier, meaning me, was indicative of a communist who was Primakov—not Berezovsky. Yet as Amy Knight reported, nobody expected any serious investigation, no less a prosecution. After all, it was a paid assassination with no personal dispute or contact. Moreover, Galina was obviously against Primakov, who needed her out of the way to reestablish the USSR.

That’s where we first begin to hear of Vladimir Putin (born 1952). Primakov was appointed to head of the KGB/FSB following the August coup of 1991 against Gorbachev. He became Minister of Foreign Affairs in January 1996. He opposed the dominance of the United States and supported multilateralism, which was a proposal to create a group of nation-states. Yeltsin turned to Primakov to become prime minister in September 1998 to appease the communists. Yeltsin appointed Putin to head the FSB on July 25th, 1998, a few weeks before, to prevent another coup as in 1991 that was on the recommendation of Galina. Despite the dismal expectation that the FSB would be run, as usual, Putin actually launched a real investigation. Meanwhile, Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin (born 1952), who was to become a prominent future Prime Minister of Russia just

before Putin between May 12th, 1999 – August 9th, 1999, also joined the investigation. They knew this was a communist assassination of Galina, and both were anti-communist. Eventually, in June 2005, two hitmen, Yuri Kolchin and Vitali Akishin, were convicted of Galina’s murder and sentenced to 20 years and 23 years, respectively. Vyacheslav Lelyavin was sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in organizing the murder. However, the person who paid for the assassination never surfaced. Was Primakov behind the assassination of Galina? That was my guess. Eleven years after Galina’s murder, Yuri Kolchin claimed he was prepared to make a deal with the investigators and name the contractor of the murder. Nobody believed he would speak the truth. I never personally met with Galina, nor did I advise her directly on politics. The only connection was her son, and she contacted Margaret Thatcher about me since her son would be working in my firm. She knew of our forecasts, but that did not involve personal guided advice.

Primakov was certainly jockeying for power, and Galina stood in the way. I do not believe that any of the oligarchs would have made the allegation of her being a puppet of anyone in the West. That, to me, pointed to Primakov.

It was then alleged that Viktor Cherkesov (born 1952) accompanied Galina just before her murder because he knew she was due to be killed. Cherkesov was a First Deputy Director of FSB linked to Primakov.

Galina’s assassination also exposed the feud over the reins of power and who would succeed Yeltsin, for he was in the hospital at that time. It raised up the previous assassination of Vlad Listyev (1956–1995), who was the head of the TV station ORT and his 1996 assassination that enabled Berezovsky to take control of the media. That turn of events enabled Berezovsky to manipulate the press to ensure Yeltsin’s reelection, thereby creating his Davos Pact in 1996. There was a 1995 videotape of Berezovsky discussing the assassination of Vlad Listyev, and there was no “apparent reason, why on the day before he handed $US100,000 ($US158,000) to a major criminal.” This was clearly the first assassination that one could attribute to Berezovsky, for as the declassified documents confirm, he took the position to support Yeltsin in 1996, for the alternative would be off to the work camps if the communists won the presidential election.

In early 1999, Primakov was a solid favorite for the presidency, with elections due in March 2000. There was some doubt if Yeltsin would seek a third term in 2000. However, the communists were all lining up behind Primakov to save Russia from the evil capitalists and the oligarchs. Interestingly, under the Primakov government, agencies had carried out audits of Berezovsky’s business empire. Primakov opposed the West over military action against Serbia. It is possible that Primakov was aware of Berezovsky’s idea that Russia could be absorbed, as was the case with Germany and Japan.

Following the first government audits of Berezovsky’s business, he went to a meeting with U.S. diplomats in February 1999. He added that “Primakov would not serve as prime minister beyond May.” Berezovsky said he was moving “indirectly” to oust Primakov and sought assurances from the U.S. that they would support what he called a “soft landing” for Primakov in favor of a new government. According to these documents, Berezovsky directly tried to enlist U.S. support to oust Primakov as prime minister in May 1999, and thus to undermine Primakov’s presidential ambitions. Yeltsin fired Primakov on May 12th, 1999, ostensibly over the sluggish pace of the Russian economy, but in truth, it was because he was a communist.

Indeed, Yeltsin had hinted that he might run for a third term in 2000. However, there was some questions about what he would achieve. The declassified documents suggested that his theory was that his 1991 presidency was under the previous constitution. Thus, he did not complete two terms under the new constitution. However, Yeltsin was afraid that Russia could return to the old days of the USSR, which most likely would produce a civil war and a major confrontation in Eastern Europe.

Berezovsky believed that Primakov was jockeying to overthrow Yeltsin. As a result, Berezovsky directly inquired about U.S. economic support for a new government.

U.S. diplomats were deeply concerned about getting tangled up in domestic political feuding inside Russia. In part, the Neocons would not know what to do with themselves if Russia was no longer an enemy. The documents reveal this hesitancy:

The declassified documents reveal that the ambassador was nervous during a meeting on February 5th, 1999. They believed that the confrontation between Berezovsky and Primakov was far more serious than he admitted. When Yeltsin fired Primakov on May 12th, 1999, this nearly set off a political crisis. It indeed appeared that perhaps Primakov was trying to take the presidency. For communists were pushing to impeach Yeltsin on corruption charges. Thus, firing Primakov, claiming he failed to revive the economy, was a public explanation to disguise the political upheaval between pro-West vs. communist movements.

Berezovsky harbored profound concerns regarding Primakov. The talk of impeaching Yeltsin raised alarm bells that if any person took Russia back into the Soviet Union, it would be Primakov. Berezovsky warned the U.S. diplomats against being taken in by him. Berezovsky also warned that Primakov was actually as “red as a tomato.” That warning appears to have been spot on. There was simply this fear of losing power among the old hardline communists. This loss of power created intrigue and caused self-interests to emerge. The communists were only concerned with power, not the country or the standard of living.

The economic collapse of the ruble in the fall of 1998, as the result of the Russian default, naturally set off civil unrest as well. Russian miners began blocking railways in protest against the Yeltsin government, which was unable to pay them. This opened the door for Gennady Zyuganov (born 1944), the head of the Communist Party. Zyuganov had run against

Yeltsin in the 1996 election and lost. Yet before Berezovsky created his Davos Pact to fund Yeltsin’s election and use the media, Yeltsin was at 10% in the poll thanks to the First Chechen War fought from December 1994 to August 1996. Zyuganov was at about 30% in the polls in 1996. So, there was a history there, and Zyuganov now appealed for the impeachment of Boris Yeltsin. Zyuganov declared in the Duma:

“We have heard what is going on in all mining regions, petitions from miners ... who consider Mr. Yeltsin responsible for the collapse of the country and the coal-mining industry.”

Zyuganov threw the gauntlet down, declaring that “our faction and our allies will formally sign the impeachment

request tomorrow” on May 21st, 1999—nine days after the dismissal of Primakov, who was the communists’ greatest hope. The move was not popular, as the Associated Press quoted one person. However, those attacking Yeltsin were far worse.

A serious political battle was shaping up inside Russia, and the old party line was deeply against what they considered organized crime, which was Berezovsky’s group of the Seven oligarchs. It is debatable to the extent Zyuganov was aware of their scheme to merge with the West.

Yeltsin turned to Sergei Stepashin (born 1952) to succeed Primakov, who was his First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia from April 27th, 1999, until May 19th, 1999. The Duma approved his choice just as Congress must approve cabinet positions in the United States. John McCain spread propaganda, insisting that Russia was an authoritarian regime, but this was just the nonsense of an American Neocon.

The new Russian Constitution required the approval of cabinet positions. Stepashin appeared to have been selected just to placate the politicians pushing for the impeachment of Yeltsin. Clearly, Stepashin was cast from a similar mold as Primakov being conservative and anti-oligarch. Yet perhaps he was not jockeying to replace Yeltsin as was the case with Primakov.

In his acceptance speech, Stepashin warned that the government was swimming in debt; the shadow economy (oligarchs) was almost as strong as the legal economy. Economic crime and corruption were rampant, and industrial production had fallen to the point where Russia was sometimes said to be rich only in raw materials. Stepashin further warned that there was a “high degree” that power would be seized and that criminal organizations (oligarchs) could do that if key “resolute measures are not taken.” Zyuganov was clearly pushing for Yeltsin’s impeachment. Yet the declassified documents also show that there was still jockeying to replace Yeltsin in the upcoming 2000 election. Zyuganov knew he was not a popular figure to stand for election. So he was trying to maneuver a way to seize power without an election.

The documents make it very clear that Zyuganov was concerned about the popularity of Yeltsin’s economist Anatoly Chubais (born 1955), who was in charge of the

privatization of Russia after communism. He deeply opposed this man, as did most of the hardline communists.

The communists were turning to Viktor S. Chernomyrdin (1938– 2010), who had been the second-longest-serving prime minister of Russia (1992–1998), as their opposition to Chubais. Yeltsin was sick a second time, and they were undoubtedly hoping he would just die. They began to distance themselves

from Chernomyrdin when he was in favor of a peace agreement with Chechnya.

Chernomyrdin had declared that there were two governments in Russia. That of the state and that created by Chubais—the free market dominated by the oligarchs of Berezovsky.

In July 1999, there was rising concern that Yeltsin would run for a third term in 2000. He was hinting at joining with Belarus, which had split from the USSR, but was not adopting an electoral process that would require a new constitution. Yeltsin appeared to many as unstable. Berezovsky had previously warned that there were those in Russia who believed in confrontation with Europe. Belarus maintained that there had to be a common economic standard to justify a union—the end of oligarchs. Berezovsky’s Plan A for the Seven to take control of Russia appeared further out of reach by the day. Then, there was a sudden shift in July 1999. Yeltsin was talking about a union

with Belarus, and most believe he would run again in 2000. The feud with Primakov necessitated a new plan in the face of the rising communist revival threats. This was when the new Plan B of attack was formulated. The thirst for power took on the attempt to blackmail Yeltsin, forcing him to name Berezovsky as his new heir and step down. It would be the only way to realize his dream of rising to the throne and seizing Russia’s presidency.

Plan B - Blackmail Yeltsin

B

oris Berezovsky was accused of tapping Yeltsin’s and his family’s phone lines in February 1999. He reportedly spent $3 million on very sophisticated technology to tap into the conversations of Yeltsin’s daughter and several other senior officials. It was said Berezovsky wanted to collect

material to blackmail Yeltsin in hopes of protecting his own business interests. He also had Alexander Litvinenko using his position in the FSB to gain all the dirt on Yeltsin.

Blackmail was simply a part of politics. Even in 1997, the communists tried to blackmail Yeltsin to dismiss reformers. In March 1998, Yeltsin blackmailed the Duma to approve Sergei

Kiriyenko (born 1962) as prime minister, or he would dissolve the Duma under the constitution.

It was in July 1999 when Yeltsin was considering running for a third term in 2000. He was also toying with the idea of a merger with Belarus, which did not adopt a democratic process. Meanwhile, the communists were sniffing around to seize power once again by impeaching Yeltsin. Confronted with these developments, Berezovsky feared that his dream of becoming president was slipping away. It was painfully clear to Berezovsky that he had to take action in order to realize his dream. Plan A had failed despite his pleas for support from the United States. No doubt Primakov poisoned the well, so to speak, against Berezovsky and his group of the Seven oligarchs insofar as Yeltsin was concerned. Yet, at the same time, Yeltsin also reflected on his own position, and the corruption he and his

family participated in that began to surface in February 1999. In addition, Yeltsin was not very popular among the Russian people. When Yeltsin fired Primakov on May 12th, 1999, it also set in motion Primakov’s revenge against Berezovsky. Criminal investigations were directed towards Boris Berezovsky, and the allegations that he siphoned tens of millions of dollars from the state-controlled airline Aeroflot made the press. They also targeted a top Kremlin aide, Pavel Borodin (born 1946), who was suspected of taking bribes for state contracts and stashing the money in Swiss bank accounts. Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov (born 1952) was the instigator of the criminal investigation who may have been tipped off by Primakov. He was forced to resign after a sex scandal he called a setup. In April 2000, he was suspended for accusing top officials of corruption on February 2nd, 1999. Nonetheless, he was helping the Swiss prosecutors even after he left office, possibly for revenge. On March 17, 1999, the RTR state-owned channel aired a video of a naked man, very similar to Skuratov, in bed with two young women. The following month, then-FSB Chief Vladimir Putin and Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin held a news conference where they discussed the video that had aired nationwide.

Skuratov claimed the affair was a setup because he had been investigating numerous corrupt officials, including Pavel Borodin, and began looking into charges of corruption involving Yeltsin and his associates. He ran in 2000 for president, claiming he was a family man and asserting everything against him was fake in a desperate measure to rehabilitate his reputation. As noted earlier, Yeltsin dismissed Primakov on May 12th, 1999. Moreover, Yeltsin was considering a reunion with Belarus and a third presidential term in 2000. This appears to have been the catalyst that compelled Berezovsky to realize that he needed Plan B.

The seed of Berezovsky’s Plan B was planted on February 5, 1999, when he met with the U.S. ambassador and declared Primakov would be removed as prime minister by May. Berezovsky then appears to have turned to Edmond Safra (1932-1999) and used the allegations of corruption to force Yeltsin to resign. Then Berezovsky could seize the throne of Russia as his heir. First, he needed Safra to launch a U.S. investigation that would expose Yeltsin as a bank filing a suspicious transaction report on the Bank of New York. From 1996 when the Davos Pact was established and Hermitage Capital Management between Edmond Safra and Bill Browder, Edmond was well aware of the objective to seize control of the natural resources of Russia. I know for a fact that when Edmond would telephone his bank in New York, he first called into the metals desk to ask what was going on in gold and then would be transferred to whomever he needed to talk to in the bank. Berezovsky didn’t need to explain a sales pitch. Edmond was well-informed with regard to the

designs of the oligarchs. The claimed object of Hermitage Capital Management to clean up corruption was a smoke screen. The real object was to list Russian companies in the West and make a windfall profit of at least 10x their investment. The plot included Edmond as an integral part and was launched in July 1999. Edmond was a key player, for his firm reported to the Bank of New York, which led back to Yeltsin. I had a meeting in March 1999 at Republic National Bank in New York City. I was again solicited to invest $10 billion into Hermitage Capital Management. I was offered an AA guarantee from the bank’s holding company. I knew Edmond had lost about $1 billion, which caused me to inquire about the bank’s stability. After all, the link between Republic National Bank and Russia was common knowledge at the time. Even Bill Browder eventually admitted in his book Red Notice that Safra took a major loss during the 1998 Russian Financial Crisis, so much so that he began to consider selling his bank. I sent an email to my Tokyo office explaining the offer and the AA letter of guarantee, but I expressed my opinion that it would be unwise. I then flew to London to meet with our European clients. It was at that time when HSBC wanted a meeting. I had addressed the board of directors on several occasions in Hong Kong during the ‘90s. One of their former board members came to my London office in Piccadilly Circus and asked my opinion about buying Republic National Bank.

I warned him I was having problems with Republic National Bank’s accounting and to count his fingers after shaking hands. The next month, May 1999, it was widely reported that Edmond Safra had sold Republic National Bank to HSBC for $10 billion. I believe Russia was the biggest loss in Edmond’s life, and he just capitulated, selling his bank because of the huge losses in Russia. Edmond Safra did not like to lose money. Safra lost 90% in Hermitage Capital Management with Bill Browder. Browder

mentions in his book Red Notice that his personal losses, I believe, were about $1 billion, which had been my concern about the survival of Republic National Bank at the time. The lure of Russia and a deal with Boris Berezovsky probably lit up Edmond’s eyes. The idea of gold, platinum, diamonds, rare earths, and energy was too much to pass up for any hardmoney advocate. I felt uneasy when I was asked to invest $10 billion into Hermitage Capital Management in March 1999. I did not know the full extent of Browder’s loss of 90%. I did not consider Browder a real fund manager. He was allegedly trying to buy in on “guaranteed trades” with the “Club” like everyone else. In my opinion, a real manager would never lose 90% of his fund on a single trade. Again, I was told I should reconsider. There would be a shooin for Russia’s presidency and a new friendly atmosphere installed in 2000. It became clear with hindsight that the shooin was Berezovsky.

The play to blackmail Yeltsin was underway sometime in June/July of 1999, and now the takeover of Russia by the Berezovsky would be by force following Yeltsin’s meeting in Cologne on June 20th, 1999 with Clinton. I saw a document that Republic National Bank reported the money laundering at the Bank of New York and claimed one transaction went to an account they had. It looked like Edmond was distraught over the losses in Russia and allegedly saw this as a way to score a home run. The Plan B was to convince Yeltsin to take money from the IMF loans. Apparently, as soon as the wire took place, Republic National Bank ran to the Department of Justice, alerting them to a money laundering transaction that took place at the Bank of New York. CNN reported that “Republic Bank alerted authorities about unusually large wire transfers … from Russia.”27 In July 1999, officials at the Republic National Bank of New York filed a suspicious activity report regarding Benex to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Berezovsky delivered the blackmail himself sometime in mid to late July 1999, which instigated retaliation from Yeltsin. Yeltsin now understood that Berezovsky was playing hardball. He probably at least suspected that Berezovsky and his oligarchs may have been seeking power by selling Russia to the West. It’s hard to say how much Yeltsin knew at the time. However, he knew that he stood between two adversaries seeking to overthrow him.

On one side, Yeltsin had the communists attempting to impeach him. On the other, Yeltsin had Berezovsky also plotting to take control. Yeltsin was surely besieged on two fronts. On top of that, he had also been corrupted and funneled money to his family, leaving himself very vulnerable to criminal prosecution. If either Primakov or Zyuganov had gained power, Yeltsin would face prison along with his family. Once Yeltsin realized he was set up with the Bank of New York, the outcome would be treacherous regardless of who won. He was not sure he could last until July 2000 or if he would be able to run in 2000 at all under his theory that his first term was under the old constitution and thus did not count. Yeltsin’s daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko (born in 1960, now known as Tatyana Yumasheva), was her father’s personal advisor in 1996. In Yeltsin’s memoir, he credited her with advising against “banning Communist Party, dissolving Parliament and postponing presidential elections” in 1996. She became very influential following 1996, becoming a member of a group of advisors known as “the Family,” yet not all with blood relations since that included Boris Berezovsky and other oligarchs.

Tatyana closely communicated with Boris Berezovsky, Roman Abramovich, Anatoly Chubais, Oleg Deripaska, and Alexander Mamut. In general, she played a key role in her

father’s inner circle, which was called the “Family” by the media. In addition, she advised on all appointments and removals from a post in the Yeltsin Administration. Tatyana Dyachenko was involved in a scandal that exploded in 1999, connecting her with the so-called case Mabetex, which was a Swiss constructing company headed by Beget Pakolli (born 1951). There were bribes to the higher ranks in the Kremlin for contracts on the refurbishment of the Kremlin. The bribes for the refurbishment contract were kept in offshore accounts. Authorities in Switzerland suspected Tatyana’s involvement as well as her sister Elena Okulova who did not work in the government. However, Elena’s husband, Valery Okulov, had an account in the Bank of New York involving multi-millions in dollars. The Kremlin’s operating officer Pavel Borodin was also implicated in the bribe scandal. It was alleged that in 1993, the company Mabetex opened the accounts in Dyachenko’s and Okulova’s names just before the contract conclusion on the reconstruction of the Kremlin, and Pakolli transferred money there. A series of articles appeared beginning in July 1999, which seem to have been sourced from Berezovsky. The Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that investigations had been launched into Mabetex granting credit cards to Yeltsin’s Family. The story alleged that credit cards were issued to Boris Yeltsin and his daughters, Tatyana Dyachenko and Yelena Okulova.

Mabetex, which received $335 million worth of contracts for the restoration of the Kremlin and other government buildings, had transferred millions of dollars to the private account of Pavel Borodin at a Budapest bank. Borodin was in charge of the project at the Kremlin and was considered the number two man after Yeltsin. He was alleged to have received a million dollars in compensation. War began to appear in the open in early August 1999. Berezovsky acquired full controlling interest of the Kommersant publishing house. This gave him editorial control in the leading business newspaper and several magazines where he was planning to exploit the Yeltsin Family to force his resignation and appoint Berezovsky.

On the offensive, Yeltsin launched billboards, renting them in Moscow, targeting Berezovsky for trying to take over the nation. They pictured him in a cryptic fashion pretending to clean out the corruption. Some initially thought it was an environmental ad. But there was the coded message that seemed to be more of a warning to Berezovsky—“booBAB”— Boris Abramovich Berezovsky. The LA Times quoted a woman on the street who said, “It’s an appeal to uproot and destroy him.”

Another billboard messaged Berezovsky’s enemy Roman Abramovich said: “Roma thinks of The Family, The Family thinks of Roma. Congratulations. Roma has chosen a cool spot.” Abramovich’s response: “There are two groups in the population: the first, who are trying to make ends meet, and the second, who are on top fighting for power. The first group will

never recognize the hidden meaning in this ad, while those who are fighting on top will catch the meaning straightaway.”

Yeltsin had little choice. Articles were starting to appear about the Bank of New York, and they would only get worse. This was a serious power play to take control of Russia. So Yeltsin turned to Vladimir Putin, a political unknown with no connection to Berezovsky and his oligarchs or the communists. He was neutral and stood between Yeltsin’s two major adversaries, precisely opposite of John McCain’s claims. On August 9th, 1999, Yeltsin sacked Stepashin, who had been Premier from May 12th until August 9th, 1999, and he then turned to the little-known Vladimir Putin, who had been recently made the head of the FSB to prevent any coup. Yeltsin appointed Putin as the new prime minister. Yeltsin also announced that he wanted Putin to succeed him as president. This was a total shock to both sides. It came two days after Berezovsky gained control of the print press. On August 16th, 1999, the State Duma approved Putin’s appointment as prime minister with 233 votes in favor, 84 against, and 17 abstained. All that was needed under their rules was a simple majority of 226 votes. Putin thus became Russia’s fifth prime minister in less than eighteen months. The scuttlebutt at the time was that few expected Putin would last very long. He was politically unknown, not a member of any party, and had resigned from the KGB back in 1991 because of the coup against Gorbachev. He was also unknown to the general public.

Putin did not even choose his own cabinet ministers. They were all selected by the presidential administration. Putin’s appointment was a direct blow to Berezovsky and the entire Plan B blackmail scheme with the aid of Edmond Safra and Republic National Bank. The appointment of Putin appears to have shaken the New York bankers’ confidence that they would no longer gain control of Russia’s natural resources. The view was that Putin was neither a threat to the communists nor the oligarchs and would be approved by the Duma.

Wikipedia, which is politically written on critical issues, reported: “Vladimir Putin’s meteoric rise from relative obscurity to the Russian presidency in the course of a few short months of 1999 has been attributed to his intimacy with the “Family” as a protege of Berezovsky and Yumashev.”

Obviously, Wikipedia is just a political tool. The declassified Clinton documents clearly show that this was the Berezovsky’s fake news. Berezovsky would always pretend that he picked Putin to boost his own importance. Yet, further evidence established that Berezovsky had nothing to do with recommending Putin for the presidency. Obviously, the billboards of the first week of August 1999 after the July blackmail targeting “BAB” made that clear since Berezovsky delivered the blackmail personally. The declassified telephone conversation between Yeltsin and Bill Clinton reveals that Putin was introduced as a “solid man.” This spoke volumes, but the Neocons seem to have supported

Berezovsky for pure power, perhaps conspiring with him in seizing Russia to become a vassal state.

Yeltsin turned to Putin because he was neither linked to Berezovsky nor the communists. He needed someone who stood between his two enemies to save himself and his Family. Additionally, it had to be someone who would not lead the country back into communism. Yeltsin stated: “It took me a lot of time to think who might be the next Russian president in the year 2000.” Yeltsin explained: “I explored his bio, his interests, his acquaintances, and so on and so forth.”

Clearly, at this point, the blackmail scheme was not on the radar in Russia. The politicians had no idea of the events behind the curtain yet did see the August 1999 billboard attack on Berezovsky, and the scandal was corruption. The only positive aspect of Putin was that he had no contact with Berezovsky and his oligarchs, and he was not connected to Zyuganov’s communists who wanted to restore the USSR. In that respect, he was the perfect choice and a middle-ofthe-road unknown person owing no favors other than to Yeltsin. As a result, the consensus had been skeptical about Putin. Yet as more and more came out about the corruption of Yeltsin, they assumed that was the reason for Putin, but still, they did not understand the full backdrop.

The situation worsened when the New York Times published reports on nine bank accounts with the Bank of New York, through which up to $10 billion was laundered for the alleged Russian mafia with Yeltsin’s knowledge. Other reports put the total amount of laundered money at $15 billion. Even IMF funds were alleged to have flowed into the pockets of the Russian mafia. According to USA Today, Yeltsin and his daughter Tatyana were involved in addition to 12 former or current Russian cabinet members. Yeltsin’s name surfaced in a series of articles in Switzerland about the seizure of Boris Berezovsky’s bank accounts instigated by Primakov. Berezovsky, operating in league with one of Yeltsin’s sons-inlaws, also surfaced defrauding the Russian airline Aeroflot of $250 million. The entire affair began to backfire on Berezovsky. Swiss investigators were looking into this scandal with a Swiss construction company Mabetex. They were looking for bribes in return for a contract to refurbish the Kremlin.

Berezovsky’s blackmail took on a life of its own. Putin became prime minister only because Yeltsin had enemies on both sides. The scandal involving IMF funds prompted the swift approval of Putin despite his unknown status. Most importantly, Putin’s distance from Berezovsky gained even the support of the communists. Yeltsin was playing the communists against Berezovsky.

The political heat was turning up. On August 26th, 1999, Yeltsin was forced to publicly deny the allegations of kickbacks on refurbishing the Kremlin. This was about two weeks after he had appointed Putin as his heir and about 10 days following his approval by the Duma.

Then the following day, August 27th, 1999, even the French newspaper Liberation was reporting the scandal. This entire affair was now grabbing headlines worldwide. The whole

world was now watching this scandal unfold, yet still not knowing the real dynamics behind the curtain. On September 1st, 1999, CNN broke the story that the money appeared to have also been diverted from IMF loans to Russia. Then two days later, on September 3rd, the Italian press, Corriere della Sera, published a report listing 24 names and addresses of Russians at the heart of the Mabetex scandal. Among them were Pavel Borodin and family, Anatoli Kruglov, the government official responsible for the lucrative area of customs, and Oleg Soskovez, who was vice-premier responsible for building, energy and health until his dismissal in 1996. All of this information was supplied by Berezovsky. The newspapers and press agencies were falling all over themselves to report the latest scandal. Articles began to appear with increasing details. Even the renowned Rudolph Chimelli (1928-2016) wrote a powerful article, The Last Superpower in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which appeared on August 28th, 1999.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the IMF, the World Bank, and the key majority of governments in the West pursued a policy in Russia, providing billions in foreign currency aid. This only funded corruption in Russia to the surface for the entire world to see. Western leaders always throw money at a problem and expect it to be solved magically. This affair also proved Western leaders to be fools who had simply funded corruption in Russia to pretend to be doing something to grab the latest political headlines.

In that same conversation on September 8th, 1999, Yeltsin brought up the Bank of New York money laundering scandal. He said he was sending a full team to New York, and the Minister of Interior Vladimir B. Rushailo (born 1953), an independent, was going to be in charge. Yeltsin was also sending the FSB, Russia’s equivalent of the CIA, to investigate. He made it clear that this was “political” because of the 2000 election coming up, which was code for back-off. Indeed, the prosecution was seriously reduced to protect Yeltsin, the IMF, and U.S. politicians. After these revelations of corruption and redirection of money from the IMF, Richard (Dick) Armey (born 1940), the majority leader of the U.S. Republicans, demanded an immediate halt to payments and an examination of all cash transfers to and from Russia. The representatives of the IMF and U.S. government protested, claiming there was no proof that IMF funds were involved in the money laundering scandal and insisting that payments to Russia continue with September’s tranche of $640 million. Along with the scandal came the growing pressure against President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, who was the leading Democratic Party candidate in the upcoming 2000 presidential elections. The real danger increased significantly, whereby Russia would receive no more foreign money. Some feared this would open the door to communists.

Then the Washington Post published that Al Gore might have problems since he had been advocating continued IMF loans to Russia. Gore took a leading role in forming the “GoreChernomyrdin Commission.” It had become a question if the Clinton Administration and Al Gore simply looked the other way when billions vanished from the IMF loans. The United States developed the commission at a summit in Vancouver in April 1993 between Bill Clinton and Yeltsin.

By September 4th, 1999, the news spread all over the world that money had been stolen from the IMF loans. The Russian envoy of the IMF resigned on September 3rd, 1999, as the scandal was pointing fingers at him. Berezovsky had pushed the story in a desperate attempt to pull off Plan B. However, it took on a life all of its own. The Swiss began to look into Berezovsky, which he never counted on. Putin promised to provide Yeltsin and his family immunity from prosecution as part of the deal that put Putin in the chair of president. He understood that prosecuting Yeltsin would have led to the entire collapse of Russia back into the hands of the communists who would demand a return to the USSR. Obviously, Yeltsin needed a clean-cut heir between being blackmailed by the Berezovsky and the communists who wanted nothing but to imprison him and his family. Yet they would not stop there. The communists wanted to restore the USSR, which meant arresting all the free-market people who

were changing Russia and killing their dream of restoring communism.

In the documentary that was done on me by Marcus Vetter (funded by the German TV station), I laid out what had taken place before these documents were ever declassified. My sources were always top-notch, and I knew all about the Kremlin refurbishing scam. I also knew it all led back to Yeltsin and was a deliberate plot facilitated by Berezovsky and Safra. What was interesting is that the film was blocked in the United States and Switzerland, yet it was celebrated around the world. To this day, you can see it on Amazon Prime, but only if you are not in the United States.

This LA Times review said: “The Forecaster is as serpentine and fascinating as a John le Varre novel.”

Now that documents have been declassified, the story of what happened suddenly becomes a real political thriller. It appeared more like a James Bond plot of some mastermind seeking to take over the world. But, in this case, it was just Berezovsky confronting the communists. The allegations then interestingly expanded as if intentionally trying to divert attention from the involvement of the IMF, Western leaders, Yeltsin, and his Family. Suddenly, the Bank of New York allegations included Semion Mogilevich (born 1946), who in 1994 obtained control over Inkombank, one of the largest private banks in Russia, in a secret deal with bank chairman Vladimir Vinogradov (1955-2008). This gave him direct access to the world’s financial system. The bank eventually collapsed in 1998 under suspicions of money

laundering. Nevertheless, this was caused by the ’98 Russian Financial market collapse.

Semion Mogilevich, the alleged Russian mob kingpin, claimed that the FBI was behind the scandal. In an interview with the Moscow daily newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets, Mogilevich denied wrongdoing. “All charges of laundering money, drug trafficking, control of prostitution, organized hits made against him are wild ravings, delirium of the FBI, which is trying to get additional funds from Congress to fight the Russian Mafia,” the paper reported. He insinuated that the FBI was using him to cover up the political truth behind the Bank of New York scandal. Mogilevich was an Israeli citizen who was actually living in Budapest, Hungary. He claimed he was not involved in money laundering at all. He confessed to washing a $5 note in the laundry that was still in the pocket of his pants. He insisted that laundering $15 billion was “nonsense. Russia doesn’t have this kind of money.” He elaborated that if you took all the money from all the oil produced in Russia and sold everything without returning a cent to the country, it would still not reach the $15 billion total. On this score, he was actually correct. He said that the FBI had repeatedly asked Hungarian secret services why they couldn’t arrest him. He said the Hungarians replied that they would if the FBI had provided them with any real evidence. Mogilevich then retorted, “Surely a single Jew from Kiev isn’t stronger and more cunning than all the secret services in the world?” Of course, others claimed that Mogilevich was “the most dangerous mobster in the world.” As a result, the Brits barred him in 1995 from entering Britain. Still, the FBI could never provide proof. Back in April 1992, Vladimir V. Vinogradov (1955-2008) was the owner and president of Inkombank, one of the largest banks

in ‘90s Russia. He was ranked 12th on the list of the top 20 richest Russians in 1996. However, the collapse of the Russian bond market in 1998 with Long-Term Capital Management sent his bank into bankruptcy. That resulted in lawsuits against the Bank of New York. The federal appeals court allowed the lawsuit against executives of the Bank of New York Company who were accused of looting assets from Inkombank reported by the New York Times on January 15th, 2002.28

Vinogradov declared his support for Moscow’s Mayor Yuri Luzhkov (1936–2019) and the city government, defending them both from accusations of corruption, and was opposed to Putin. He was supported by Vladimir Gusinsky, Leonid

Nevzlin, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky (born 1963) of Yukos. Interestingly, Khodorkovsky was later Putin’s alleged political prisoner who wanted to run against him. However, Khodorkovsky was one of the Seven oligarchs, and the declassified documents reveal they bragged about using him in their plot to seize Russia. By 1998, Khodorkovsky had built an import-export business with an annual turnover of 80 million rubles (about $10 million USD). In the 1998 Russian crash, however, his bank went under, and Yukos had serious problems caused by the oil price drop. He realized that “business could no longer be just a game” and that “capitalism could make people not only rich and happy but also poor and powerless.” We must realize that Khodorkovsky had different incentives in August 1999 compared to years later when the price of oil rebounded, and the money rolled in.

Remarkably, from 1992 onward, Edmond Safra’s Republic National Bank of New York held Inkombank’s correspondent bank accounts. What emerged from the Bank of New York’s case was that Inkombank, through March 1998, was the “largest and most active commercial relationship” with the Bank of New York.29 In May 1998, Chase Manhattan Corp. arranged its first commercial paper program for a Russian bank with a $50 million program for Inkombank, reported to have $5.1 billion of assets at the time. However, in September 1999, within weeks of Putin being appointed by Yeltsin, the United States Congress held hearings into alleged illegal activity associated with Vinogradov and Inkombank. This was when Larry Summers testified on September 21st, 1999, about this crisis and the involvement of money being diverted from the IMF.

“Mr. Chairman, during the past six and a half years we have faced very difficult choices with respect to Russia even as we have sought to intensify our efforts to combat global corruption and money laundering. There are clearly no simple answers on how best to support perhaps the most complex economic transformation of our time, and the process of change in Russia is still ongoing.

In many respects, the challenge has been to find the best economic policy when confronted with difficult choices. The difficulty of those choices has hardly diminished in the wake of developments that have taken place in Russia since August 1998. As I have described, since the economic and financial collapse at that time, the financial aspect of our engagement with Russia has been pursued on very different terms and with much constrained objectives. The present program, built around the very rigorous safeguards that restrict how Russia can use any financing that the IMF makes available, implies a continued reduction in Russian debt to the IMF. It has always been clear that Russia’s complex transformation from a centrally planned communist empire to a democratic market-based economy would take a great deal of time. And it has been equally clear that the United States has a great stake in the success of this process. As Russia’s transformation proceeds, we will need to continually assess and adjust our strategy in light of our interests as events in Russia evolve. Discussions like the one we are having here today will be important to help guide our thinking on this crucial national issue as Russia’s transition continues.”

Most geopolitical analysts did agree that the worst thing that could happen was chaos in Russia. Ending IMF credits would dramatically accelerate Russia’s economic crisis following the 1998 bond crash. Nevertheless, most of the Russian establishment, both left and right, objected to international criticism. Grigory A. Yavlinsky (born 1952) was a renowned Russian economist best known as the author of the 500 Days Program, which was the plan for the transition of the Soviet regime to a free-market economy. Yavlinsky came out and said:

“[H]ysterical imputations that Russia is a kleptocracy are just as far from reality as the euphoric praise for Russia’s restorationist course a few years ago.”30

From the outset, Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov (1936-2019; in office 1992-2010) guaranteed Yeltsin’s “personal security for the period after his presidency.” The reason for this was simple; if Yeltsin went under, the others involved in the network of “business, politics and the Mafia” could be pulled into the abyss along with him. Thus, as Luzhkov explained to the press on September 2nd, 1999, the investigation of ex-general public prosecutor Yuri Skuratov (born 1952) has purely domestic significance. “I doubt that ... amounts in the billions were defrauded from international accounts by the Russian Mafia.”

In the spring, the prosecutor Yuri Skuratov was twice dismissed by Yeltsin, who also clearly had a personal political agenda. Skuratov, in retaliation, became one of the main leaders of the campaign against Yeltsin. Skuratov claimed he had proof indicating Yeltsin obtained funds from Felipe Turover, a former

associate of the Swiss Gotthard Bank. This allegation would have benefited the communists and his own political ambitions. In the midst of this Game of Thrones engulfing Russian politics, the Russian population was not benefiting under Yeltsin, which did not make him a very popular president. The population was declining, and Putin tried to address the declining birth rate by subsidizing families to have children once he came into power. In addition, the Socio-Economic Research Institute reported that 60 million Russians lived below the poverty line, up from the previous estimate of 42 million. The average wage had dropped to US$33 per month while Berezovsky’s oligarchs were rolling in billions and playing the Russian Game of Thrones. Civil unrest was also on the rise in Russia. This was the backdrop that Putin faced coming to power. The US State Department site report on the corruption reads: “In 1999, money laundering exploded onto the front pages of the world’s newspapers. In August, news headlines claimed that $15 billion in funds from Russia might have been laundered through banks in New York. Newspapers have continued to follow this story. In September 1999, U.S. Treasury Secretary Summers testified before the House Banking Committee on this issue, placing international money laundering directly into the spotlight. The investigation continues and indictments of a former bank official, two other individuals and the three companies have been filed. As the 2000 INCSR goes to press, guilty pleas from two of the individuals and the three companies have been entered. The large movements of money out of Russia and through American banks continue to focus the attention of the world on the problem of money laundering. Around the globe, there were both positive and negative developments in this field.”

Eventually, Pavel Borodin, one of Yeltsin’s closest confidants, was arrested in the USA on an international warrant from Switzerland. Borodin was facing extradition to Switzerland on charges of money laundering and belonging to a criminal organization.

Borodin took the brunt of the plot because he was the only one who possessed the right to sign the documents under the financial obligations of the Russian Federation. He apparently stuffed millions in foreign banks he opened for his relatives. He was suspected of paying Mabetex using two sets of books for the financing, involving public funds. Then excess money was sent to Switzerland. Borodin was alleged to have taken at least $25 million in kickbacks from construction companies that won contracts to work on Kremlin property. Additionally, he was accused of helping open illegal credit card accounts for Yeltsin and his daughters. On January 17th, 2001, Pavel Borodin was arrested in the USA at the demand of the police of Switzerland. He was released on bail after spending two months in prisons in the USA and Switzerland. On March 4th, 2002, the Swiss Office of Public Prosecutor closed the case; Pavel Borodin was fined $180,000 for stealing $30 million dollars. This was part of the cover-up, as they did not have to address how this led to Yeltsin or that IMF funds were diverted. Clearly, this entire scandal had implications for not just Yeltsin, but the IMF. The very idea that American, British and Russian police were all suspecting that Yeltsin’s government was engaged in money laundering was a political nightmare. The New York Post reported31: “The officials said the money – at least $5 billion more than previously linked to the money-laundering scandal involving the Bank of New York – could include $10 billion in International Monetary Fund loans.”

The blackmail plot had serious international implications that nobody ultimately wanted to become public. Cutting off IMF funds to Russia would lead to political chaos and a lot of loose nukes that might find their way into the black market. They had to now allege that the money was not just from the IMF loans. Suddenly, it was now ransoms, drug money, prostitution, and just criminal activity in general, amounting to $15 billion. In 2000, the oil exports of Russia were between $5 and $6 billion. The figures were greatly exaggerated to pretend IMF money was not involved.

What is clear is that dragging in Semion Mogilevich, one of the alleged Solntsevo criminal group (mafia) leaders, was really to cover up the IMF diversion. Western leaders had to kill the IMF links or look like fools. The claims were shifted to allege Mogilevich was the culprit and his Inkombank and Bank Menatep of Khodorkovsky of Yukos participated in a US$10 billion money laundering scheme through the Bank of New York. Mogilevich was accused of large-scale tax fraud that impacted the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland. They also alleged the involvement of prostitution rings and murders, as well as attempted assassinations. In 2003, the U.S. FBI placed Mogilevich on their wanted list for participation in the scheme to defraud investors in Canadian company YBM Magnex International Inc. They also alleged he was involved in arms trafficking, but they could never provide any evidence to charge him. Instead, they continued to consider him the most powerful Russian mobster of all time. Finally, Mogilevich was arrested in Moscow on January 24th, 2008, for suspected tax evasion. He was released on bail on July 24th, 2009. The Russian interior ministry then came out and stated that he was released because the charges against him “are not of a particularly grave nature.”

The United States did not give up. On October 22nd, 2009, the FBI named Mogilevich as the 494th fugitive to be placed on the Ten Most Wanted list. The Bureau quietly removed him from the list in December 2015. They claimed that he no longer

met the criteria to be on the list. After more than 10 years of trying to get this guy, Mogilevich lived freely in Moscow. Mogilevich would never again travel to the West. In a last desperate attempt to get their man, on April 6th, 2022, the FBI offered a reward of up to $5 million for any information that they could possibly use that would lead to his “arrest and/or conviction.”

Then the New York Times broke the story on August 20th, 1999. They reported: “The suspensions of the two women, Natasha Gurfinkel Kagalocsky of New York and Lucy Edwards of London, followed an inquiry by The New York Times. The employees have been suspended pending completion of the investigation.”

On October 6th, 1999, it was reported that an indictment was issued. There were charges against a former vice president of the Bank of New York, Lucy Edwards, her husband, Peter Berlin, and an associate, Aleksey Volkov, accused of conspiring to take deposits illegally and transfer money without proper licenses. The indictment declared that the three people and their companies moved almost $7 billion through the Bank of New York over three and a half years. To further cover up the entire affair, the indictment then altered the time and alleged that the scheme took place over three years rather than a single event in July 1999. CNN reported on September 3rd, 1999: “The saga that’s brought money laundering issues to the fore this summer allegedly began back in 1994, when Russia’s International Monetary Fund representative, Konstantin Kagalovsky, left the organization to join Menatep Bank in Moscow. Over the next three years, it’s alleged, Kagalovsky arranged to funnel billions of IMF money meant to help transfer Russia’s communist economy into a capitalist one through a private company called Benex Worldwide Ltd. Eventually, the money went into and back out of Bank of New York (BK) and Republic National Bank, a unit of Republic Bancorp (RBNC), as well as several institutions in Europe, including the Union Bank of Switzerland AG and Deutsche Bank AG and its Bankers Trust Unit.”

The entire Bank of New York’s $7 billion money laundering scandal was swept under the rug despite the fact that it was Safra’s bank that blew the whistle about a transaction in July. Suddenly, there was a lot more bubbling to the surface. On February 16th, 2000, at 10:00 AM, before District Judge Shirley Wohl Kram (1922–2009), Peter Berlin and Lucy Edwards pleaded guilty. Judge Kram knew this was a political case they could not allow to go to trial. She read Count 1 into the record:

“…the illegal money-transmitting scheme was also used to facilitate other criminal activity, including the payment of $300,000 in ransom on behalf of a Russian businessman who had been kidnapped in Russia. Ultimately, as alleged in the information, a total of more than $7 billion of funds was deposited in and transmitted through the Benex, BECS and Lowland accounts at the Bank of New York.”

They clearly were confusing the record to pretend this was not a blackmail case involving funds stolen from the IMF. They used a 1998 incident when Russian police had asked the FBI to help find a Russian businessman‘s $300,000 ransom payment. The money had been transferred from the victim‘s San Francisco bank through the Bank of New York to an offshore account and finally to Sobin Bank in Moscow. Aleksandr Mamut, head of administration for President Boris Yeltsin, controlled Sobin. BoNY-to-offshore-to-Sobin was alleged to have been a well-traveled money-flowing route.

Therefore, when the August 1999 money laundering made international headlines, U.S. investigators acknowledged that Russians had laundered at least $7 billion through accounts at the Bank of New York when they were alerted by Berezovsky’s friend Edmond Safra and his Republic National Bank. The only mention in the court transcript of the money tracing to any illegal activity is this $300,000 ransom. And then, by the way, there was this other $7 billion without explanation. I have the transcript of that hearing, and nowhere do you find the name of Yeltsin or his Family mentioned at all. Nor is there any mention of an account opened under the name “Svetlana Dyachenko.” Furthermore, the names “Mogilevich” and “Pavel Borodin” do not appear in the transcript. When you read the transcripts of the pleas of Peter Berlin and Lucy Edwards, the charge also seems to be a whitewash. It is all about Russians using U.S. banking facilities without appropriate licenses. No actual criminal transactions were

mentioned besides the $300,000 ransom for a businessman. Here is the prosecutor explaining the charge to Judge Kram. COURT: Mr. Stein, would you give me a summary of the 20 government’s evidence against these defendants. MR. GARY STEIN PROSECUTOR: Yes, your Honor.

Your Honor, the summary of the information that you previously provided essentially summarizes the evidence that the government would be able to prove. Specifically, the evidence which shows that Mr. Berlin and Ms. Edward did engage in a conspiracy with others to accomplish the various illegal objectives described by the court in Count I and it would also show that they helped Russian banks set up illegal banking operations here in the United States without the approval of the Federal Reserve. The government would prove those charges through a variety of different kinds of evidence. The evidence includes, among other things, bank records from the Bank of New York concerning the transactions through the Benex, BECS, Lowland and related accounts; records obtained from the Queens office and the Jersey City office; testimony from witnesses knowledgeable about the operations of those offices; evidence gathered concerning the nature of the transactions that went through those accounts and the reasons why the transactions were made, including evidence concerning the transaction referred to in paragraph 20 of the information which relates to the payment of $300,000 in ransom money to the BECS account in June of 1998 in connection with the kidnapping of a Russian businessman. The evidence would also include documents and materials obtained through a search warrant executed by British law enforcement authorities on Mr. Berlin’s and Ms. Edwards’ residence in London in August of 1999. In addition, the evidence would include account records for defendants’ offshore accounts in the Isle of Man and in London showing their receipt of the commissions that they earned through this scheme which totaled approximately $1.8 million, the tax returns filed by the defendants here in the United States in 1996 and 1997 which failed to report that income or the foreign bank accounts that they controlled during those years, and finally statements of the defendants themselves as well. That’s a summary of the types of evidence the government has.

Lucy Edwards and Peter Berlin entered their guilty pleas in February 2000, as reported by the BBC. However, they were strangely not sentenced until six years after they pleaded guilty. They were sentenced to five years probation after they admitted to conspiring to use the bank to launder more than $7 billion from Russia. They had to pay restitution of $685,000 to the Internal Revenue Service for back taxes they owed, and they were fined just $20,000 each. The sentence for the other Bank of New York employee they paid $500 a week, Svetlana Kudryavtseva, got 2-weeks imprisonment and house arrest for five and a half months. None of the dialogue nor the sentences imposed on any of these people reflected a real $7 billion money-laundering scheme. This was simply burying the entire affair. In October 2003, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft (born 1942) tried to get tough on crime and issued a new directive to federal prosecutors to eliminate most plea bargaining as

an option while dealing with defendants. He wanted everyone to do the full sentence. That produced an uproar, for suddenly, they would never be able to prosecute most crimes that were charged as conspiracy without cooperating witnesses.

Ashcroft had no real experience and was obviously just a staunch religious right-winger who did not believe in letting God do the punishing to sort out the guilty from the innocent. Ashcroft ordered federal prosecutors to pursue maximum criminal charges.32 Worst still, Ashcroft demanded everyone go to prison. He denied prosecutors credit for a conviction unless someone did jail time. The United States imprisons more people than any other country, including Russia and China, thanks to Ashcroft. Americans must be prone to becoming criminals more than any other society, or it has the most tyrannical legal system.

Hence, the sheer act that Edwards and Berlin never spent a single day in prison and even waited for six years to be sentenced spoke volumes that this case was “political,” precisely as Yeltsin had told Clinton on the phone on September 8th, 1999. Thus, Plan B failed. They failed to blackmail Yeltsin while indirectly impacting all Western leaders and Al Gore for the 2000 election. The entire Bank of New York scandal had to be whitewashed for Yeltsin and Russia, as well as the Democrats facing the 2000 election in the United States.

27

“Is the U.S. Banking System Fraud-Proof? - Sep. 1, 1999,” September 1, 1999. https://money.cnn.com/1999/09/01/worldbiz/russia_banking/. 28

Bloomberg News. “Bank of New York Suit Revived.” The New York Times, January 15, 2002. https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/15/business/bank-of-newyork-suit-revived.html. 29

https://archive.ph/20121209074840/http://russianlaw.org/Morgent1.htm

30

(Süddeutsche Zeitung, September 4th, 1999).

31

Guart, Al. “YELTSIN’S AIDES DIRECTED MOB $$ LAUNDER: REPORT.”

New York

Post,

August 26, 1999. https://nypost.com/1999/08/26/yeltsins-aides-directedmob-launder-report/. 32

Lichtblau, Eric. “ASHCROFT LIMITING PROSECUTORS’ USE OF PLEA BARGAINS.”

The

New

York

Times,

September 23, 2003. https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/23/us/ashcroft-limiting-prosecutors-use-of-pleabargains.html.

Plan C - Take Down Putin

T

he West did not know if it should celebrate or cry with the appointment of Vladimir Putin as prime minister on August 9th, 1999. The Russian people rejoiced, for they saw Putin perhaps as a Trump-type figure, someone who was not an oligarch nor a communist or a career politician. There was much confusion internationally when Yeltsin turned to the unknown Putin. However, the hot-tempered, fast-talking, blunt, and very smart tycoon Vladimir Gusinsky (born 1952) thought he was more powerful than the Kremlin. Gusinsky and Boris Berezovsky (1931-2007), through their Davos Pact of 1996, secured Yeltsin’s 1996 re-election against the communists. Yet this event appeared to go to Gusinsky’s head, and he seemed to believe he was the real kingmaker who could make anyone president with his Media-Most. Many say Gusinsky was arrogant and his stubborn refusal to leave the spotlight once Yeltsin handed the Kremlin to Putin was perhaps his view of political war—how dare Yeltsin bring in this unknown without his approval! Nonetheless, there was more to that than just the surface. The New York Times had quoted a Kremlin official off the record saying: “This is an issue of who will run the state. … They thought that with the help of the TV, you can run the entire country. They had this poorly understood notion of Western democracy.”33

The New York Times added that: “Gusinsky found it increasingly difficult to distinguish the vast influence of his television and print holdings from his own.”

They also quoted another billionaire oligarch Mikhail Fridman (born 1964) who said Gusinsky “was addicted to influence -that was his god.” Fridman was a Ukrainian-born, Russian– Israeli who co-founded Alfa-Group and now lives in Lviv,

Ukraine. Alfa-Bank was the largest private bank in Russia. According to Forbes, Fridman was the seventh richest Russian as of 2017. They reported that another oligarch who had known Gusinsky for many years said: “He had to be influential. It was far more important than money for him.”

As the LA Times reported: “The consensus in Moscow seems to be that, despite Yeltsin’s designation of Putin as heir, the succession is far from assured.” Instead of being rational, Gusinsky was also on the verge of bankruptcy. This appears to have caused him to sever his agreement with Berezovsky and his oligarchs because he had made some grave mistakes in business decisions that would cost him his empire. Gusinsky found himself in trouble and on the brink of bankruptcy. Given the failure of Plan B, he wrongly assumed his influence could prevail. Gusinsky had shifted his investments into one sector—media. After the 1998 Russian Financial Crisis, he was desperate for money and began defaulting on his loans. It was alleged that in early August 1999, Gusinsky demanded vast economic and financial concessions from Yeltsin, which were rejected. Gusinsky was not part of Berezovsky’s Plan B, which would have made Berezovsky president, as he wanted power for himself.

Gusinsky supported the anti-Putin side in both elections, aligning with the hardliners and breaking with the other oligarchs. After the elections, Gusinsky attacked Putin, even blaming him for sinking the submarine Kursk in August 2000.

On August 10th, 1999, the day after Putin was made Yeltsin’s heir, the news was searching for anything that could explain his sudden rise to power. They admitted that the previous two prime ministers were also selected from the same FSB. Yet, Putin did not rise through the ranks at the FSB and was simply installed as its head on July 25th, 1998, partly to prevent another coup. Putin did not have the loyalty of those in the FSB as Primakov did. The West misunderstood what was taking place and assumed that Putin’s position in the FSB was a selling point. They did not grasp the plots behind the curtain that were taking place or that they were being manipulated by Gusinsky, who was quite good at it. The press reported Putin was just 46, had a “ramrod-posture,” and was viewed as “tougher” rather than mild-mannered. “Perhaps I have little experience as a politician,” Putin said. “I did not engage in politics.”

Indeed, that was the real key. Putin was not on the side of the communists, nor was he with the oligarchs. Nobody knew the plots or the attempt to blackmail Yeltsin. They noted that Putin was a “bureaucrat rather than a national leader…He has no charisma.” Putin immediately declared he would run for president. That was a shot across the bow of the oligarchs and communists. Putin declared there would be “no revolutionary changes,” meaning no return to communism, for the people wanted freedom. That was throwing down the gauntlet against the communists who wanted the USSR back and the oligarchs who were trying to sell Russia to the highest bidder. Putin said he was there for the country and “improving the life of the people,” which he was intent on achieving. Putin kept his word to Yeltsin and indeed took care of Russia.

On September 8th, 1999, Yeltsin called Clinton and brought up the Bank of New York money laundering case, which was making worldwide headlines. “I have to speak, unfortunately correctly that the U.S.-Russian relationship suffers from the fact that re-election campaigns are in progress in our two countries. I believe it is our task, yours and mine, to try our best to protect and limit interference in our relationship from attempts to play out political domestic cards and intrigues. There are some who even try to think of using these in order to affect international relationships. I am sure that you and I will continue to be above those attempts made in this area, and we’ll deal with this issue in the spirit of cooperation in order to counter such intrigues or rebuff these challenges.”

Yeltsin also brought up Chechnya and Dagestan and mentioned the apartment bombings, which would be used politically by Gusinsky against Putin, that this area “has increasingly become the international center of terrorism.” Yeltsin continues: “Our Interior Minister has agreed with the Director of the FBI September we will send a high-ranking delegation to Washington that matter, and that delegation will include representatives of Intelligence Service, the Minister of the Interior, and the Tax Police. must let them jointly look into the initiatives.”

that on 13 to look into the Foreign So, now we

Putin embarked on an initial reform period from 2000 to 2003, increased the state’s revenues, attacked the oligarchs, and eliminated the budget deficit ending the reliance on foreign debt—the source of the 1998 Financial Crash. The propaganda against Putin that he was consolidating his power and seizing control of the media was entirely false. The fact that Putin said that Masha Gessen, who was very biased against Putin, should be rehired after being fired by her editor undermined Gusinsky’s propaganda that claimed Putin would assassinate all his critics—Gessen was still alive. The Gusinsky plot to prevent Putin from becoming head of Russia began immediately. The Second Chechen War actually began on August 7th, 1999, two days before Yeltsin

nominated Putin, and thus, it was not a war begun by Putin. The war took place in Chechnya and the border regions of the North Caucasus between the Russian Federation and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria from August 1999 to April 2009. In August 1999, Islamist fighters from Chechnya infiltrated Russia’s Dagestan region, declaring it an independent state, and calling for a religious holy war. This is why Putin was against the Islamic Fundamentalists and told Obama they had a common enemy.

Once Gusinsky realized he was on his own and that his alleged blackmail/demand for a bailout was rejected by Yeltsin (Plan B), his ego appears to have triumphed over experience. He now very strangely supported the antiPutin/Kremlin side in both elections, aligning with the antiDemocrats. Obviously, that would have been against his own

self-interest. Yet he appears to have thought bringing Primakov to power would create immunity, as took place with the Davos Pact in 1996 supporting Yeltsin. Indeed, many often said that Primakov was the man who should have been president and not Putin. Gusinsky painted Putin as this sinister man from the FSB despite the fact that he was only appointed on July 25th, 1998, to prevent a coup. He kept calling Putin this KGB guy, but Putin was never high-ranking and resigned in 1991 with the collapse of the USSR 9 years before. Yet, all the Western press immediately began to call Putin an “exspy chief,” which traced back to Gusinsky. The West ignored any conflict of interest Gusinsky had at that time.

Indeed, the split between the oligarchs began to appear to be an outright war between Berezovsky and Gusinsky. They split and supported the opposite sides for the 1999 December parliamentary elections and the 2000 presidential election. Gusinsky supported Luzhkov and Primakov, and thus he had a direct incentive to attack Putin, who vowed there would be no revolutionary political change. This breach became a feud that erupted at the very start of September 1999. The New York Times reported on September 5th, 1999, that the feud between Berezovsky and Gusinsky exploded on TV. Both had their top news anchors, and they took sides—Putin vs. Primakov. The New York Times called it a journalistic rendition of “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.”34 The New York Times reported: “It is a competition between two journalists, between two TV channels, between media magnates, all this against the background of a battle between the existing party of power and the future party of power.” The New York Times said that Dorenko was Berezovsky’s heavy artillery. Dorenko had once compared the size of the skulls of top Communist Party leaders and alleged that was proof of their supposedly subhuman intelligence. Kiselyov and Dorenko insisted that they had no stake in Russia’s political fight. They would provide neutral coverage of events involving war in the Caucasus and the unfolding scandal linking the Kremlin and the Bank of New York. This TV battle revealed that it was politics, and they were waging war for their respective leaders. Gusinsky floated conspiracy theories and even blamed Putin for the apartment bombings to gain political support for the

upcoming election. The apartment bombings took place September 4-16, 1999, and were far too early for Putin to use to manufacture support he did not need. He was already popular as a non-politician/oligarch. In addition, Putin did not have the loyalty of the FSB, but Primakov did. Plus, it was not a single event. Yet, at least the planting of explosives was likely staged by Primakov to blame Putin, while others were genuine terrorist attacks.

As Maureen Orth wrote in Vanity Fair on August 14th, 2008, “Muscovites believe downtown Moscow is controlled by the Chechen Mob.” They were seen as the local mafia. She added in Vanity Fair that Putin was seen as a young, strong leader.“Putin’s instant popularity took Kremlin image-makers totally by surprise,” she wrote.

Gusinsky used his media, claiming that a group of neighbors residing in an apartment building found a large number of explosives in the basement of their building and reported it to the FSB. Gusinsky manufactured this story to claim that this proved the FSB was involved and, therefore, Putin directed the attacks. All the declassified documents confirmed that nobody knew Putin. Indeed, following the collapse of the USSR in August 1991, Primakov was appointed First Deputy Chairman of the KGB and Director of the KGB First Chief Directorate. This is the spy chief who was responsible for foreign intelligence. It was Primakov who reshaped the KGB as its First Chief Directorate. Any FSB loyalty would have been to Primakov, who preserved the old KGB foreign intelligence apparatus. He also did not engage in any personnel purges, nor did he carry out any structural reforms. He thus was the face of the spy chief from 1991 until 1996. If anyone staged the bombing other than terrorists, it would have been those loyal to Primakov. Gusinsky’s NTV claimed to launch an in-depth public journalistic investigation under the theory that the explosions were staged to influence the upcoming elections. The sole goal was to attack Putin. The Game of Thrones was in full play. At the time, Putin was in Auckland, New Zealand, for his first face-to-face with Bill Clinton on September 12/13, 1999, when the apartment bombings were taking place. The declassified telephone conversation between Yeltsin and Bill Clinton, where Putin was introduced as a “solid man,” called into question whether the American Neocons’ supported Plan A or B. John McCain had access to the same documents you are reading today.

President Clinton and Russian Prime Minister Putin exchanged complaints at their second meeting in Oslo, Norway, on November 2nd, 1999. Putin delivered a message from Yeltsin warning that it was “extremely dangerous” to amend the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty as part of its plans for a new missile defense system. CNN reported: “Clinton characterized the Russian military campaign in Chechnya as an overreaction and urged restraint. In turn, the officials said, Putin told the president the Russian offensive in the rebel region is a legitimate response to a domestic terrorist threat and said Moscow was doing its best to limit civilian casualties.”

According to the case filed by Gusinsky in the European Court of Human Rights on January 9th, 2001, he alleged that back on November 2nd, 1999, he was interviewed by the senior special case investigator of the General Prosecutor’s

Office (the GPO), Mr. Nikolayev. It concerned an investigation into a state-owned enterprise known as FGP RGK (“Russian Video”) transferring a broadcasting license to a limited liability company, the Russian Video–11th Channel, which violated various provisions of the Civil Code. In January 1996, Vladimir Gusinsky was elected president of Russia’s Jewish Congress. That was the same year Gusinsky joined Berezovsky in forming their Davos Pact to support Yeltsin. It was also the same time that Edmond Safra of Republic National Bank and William Browder began Hermitage Capital Management.

There are numerous declassified documents where even by December 1996, Gusinsky was telling his plans to the Americans, perhaps in hopes of raising money, but certainly after feeling his power following Yeltsin’s re-election. The connection of Hermitage Capital Management to Berezovsky’s oligarchs was made at Davos in 1996. To put this in perspective, on January 27th, 1997, after joining the Davos Pact, Gusinsky officially quit his post as chairman of Most Bank, which he founded in 1992. He went on to become the general director of Media-Most, a holding company created for all his media operations. His decision appeared based on the intoxicating thought that the media was about power. As a whole, Gusinsky owned about 70% of all the shares in Media-Most personally. Three of the founders of the NTV television network were Igor Malashenko, Yevgeny Kiselyov, and Oleg Dobrodeyev. Gusinsky founded NTV in 1993, the very year he founded Most Bank, which he then used to finance the creation of a political daily newspaper Segodnya, attracting journalists who were leaving a competitor, Nazavisimaya Gazeta. That was expanded into a new group in 1994 he called “sem dney” (seven days), and the weekly political Itogi, and entertainment magazines “sem dnei” and “caravan,” which were all targeting politics for power. In 1995, Gusinsky’s Media-Most acquired a controlling stake in the popular Moscow radio station Ekho Moskvy. That was followed in 1996 with financing the creation of the weekly Itogi and obtaining from the American Newsweek the right to use its logo on the cover page.

Then, in 1996, and the success of using the media to boost Yeltsin, Gusinsky’s media NTV was then granted the right to broadcast nationwide. This boosted Gusinsky’s ego and led him to resign as president of the Most Bank and become head of Media-Most the following year. He believed this was more prestigious than acting as the head of a bank. That was his downfall. All his assets were now in media. NTV became Russia’s first privately owned station with an audience of 102 million, covering about 70% of Russia’s territory, including former Soviet republics. He also took control of the Segodnia newspaper and some magazines. This was the strategy agreed upon in Berezovsky’s Davos Pact, where they supported Yeltsin as the lesser evil. The declassified documents reveal that they supported Yeltsin, for a return to communism meant they would end up in a work camp.

WIRED Magazine reported on April 24th, 1998:

“Vladimir Gusinsky with characteristic immodesty boasted: ‘My contribution to the new society is vital for its survival.’ An exaggerated claim, perhaps, but at 46, with a personal fortune said to be approaching US$1 billion, Gusinsky has enjoyed a meteoric rise.”

Then on November 22nd, 1998, Gusinsky launched his dream satellite, Bonum 1, from Cape Canaveral in Florida. This was the first private commercial satellite in Russia. It was also the first time the U.S. launched a satellite controlled from Russia. This satellite then provided Direct to Home (DTH) satellite delivery services for Gusinsky’s NTV Plus. The perfect propaganda to control the opinion in Russia.

This gave rise to the concern that Gusinsky’s entire media operation of had been compromised by the CIA. It was no doubt approved by the CIA, raising the question if there was a connection between Gusinsky and the well-known journalist, alleged spy, given David Satter’s (born 1947) promotion of whatever Gusinsky put out and his own relentless anti-Putin position that ignored all the antics of the communists.

Many believed that Gusinsky broke with Berezovsky following the 1998 Financial Crisis and the other oligarchs because his media empire had fallen on hard times. Media-Most was valued at around $2.5 billion before the crisis. Afterward, it was said to have fallen to about $1.5 billion and halted its planned IPO. He had borrowed so much that his net worth was virtually zero. Gusinsky’s dream was grand, too grand, and now he needed money. Advertising revenues collapsed after the 1998 Russian Financial Crisis. It was alleged that in early August 1999, Gusinsky demanded vast economic and financial concessions from Yeltsin. When that was rejected, he appears to have broken ties with Berezovsky, if not before.

By the first quarter of 2000, Gusinsky began to default on millions in loans. He was not making the money to service US$42 million in loans to Vneshnekonombank. His open hostility toward Putin, constantly calling him the former KGB spy while supporting Primakov, only revealed his hypocrisy. Gusinsky was in desperate straits and was counting on Primakov to save him. Gusinsky’s break with Yeltsin, Putin, and Berezovsky was partly his own ego and financial crisis. Nonetheless, others speculated that he was then compromised, taking orders from the CIA and/or the Clinton Administration. The Western media ran with this propaganda put out by Gusinsky when the real plot was the attempt to seize power in Russia, as confirmed by the declassified documents. The entire world press had been fed propaganda and began to support Gusinsky’s views. When Putin’s KGB file was declassified in 2019, it showed that he was seen as worthy, serious, and reliable but not as a high-flier, spy, or leader.35 Perhaps the most profound journalist who repeated allegations made by Gusinsky was David Satter. Interestingly, Satter supported the storyline of Gusinsky, ignoring the background of Primakov or Gusinsky’s financial troubles. He claimed there was overwhelming evidence that Putin orchestrated the apartment bombings, but Putin was already popular and had no need for such an event.

Satter later supported the Magnitsky Act when that was also about a false proposition that Putin killed Magnitsky, who would have been a star witness who could have exposed Plan A and B publicly. We now know that Plan A was in play thanks to the declassified documents. It was also Satter who proclaimed the Steele dossier was “classic” Russian propaganda—not Hillary Clinton. It is not beyond reason that Satter was an alleged undercover CIA agent. Perhaps that was the real reason he was kicked out of Russia in 2014—14 years after Putin came to power. The CIA had its own ZIP code, so it did not matter

what name you put on the envelope as it still went to the CIA. I know, for I was recruited after our forecast of the ’98 Russian Financial Crisis, and I was told back then how to communicate.

The Moscow Times wrote on June 19th, 2014, that during the Cold War years, most journalists from the West simply produced articles based on rewrites of Tass official reports. Satter, on the other hand, would meet with Soviet dissidents

and “traveled to parts of the country that no other Western correspondent had ever visited. The KGB agents assigned to follow him had to hustle to keep up.” The Moscow Times asked why it took so long to finally hold that Satter was an “undesirable” person to be in Russia. However, many saw this as a confirmation that Satter was engaged in espionage, for there was rarely a positive article that he ever did about Russia, and he always supported the Gusinsky position. Satter was the first U.S. journalist to have been denied a visa by Russia since the days of the USSR. The last time a journalist was banned was in 1986 when U.S. News & World Report journalist Nicholas Daniloff (born 1934) was accused of espionage. He was arrested in Moscow and exchanged for a Soviet spy in the United States. If Satter was indeed a spy, in the face of these declassified documents, was he behind the scenes promoting the oligarchic’s Plan A to take over Russia? Was this why he was anti-Putin? Satter’s constant attack on Putin made little sense, for the risk of the communists regaining power was what Yeltsin faced. Moreover, Gusinsky backed Primakov, and the declassified documents stated that he was “as red as a tomato.” Attacks on Putin made no sense with a Primakov alternative. On the other side of the political street was Berezovsky, who wanted to sell Russia to America with his group of the Seven, which had included Gusinsky, under Plan A. Given all the years Satter was working in Moscow, it is hard to imagine that he had no idea of these schemes. The rivalry between Berezovsky and Gusinsky played out vividly on TV stations after August 9th, 1999. Even I knew of these schemes back in 1999.

Gusinsky was desperate. December 3rd, 1999 came and his Media-MOST lost its long-running fight with the state-owned Vneshnekonombank. The court ruled that Gusinsky had to pay back the $42 million he owed to the bank either in cash or through a seizure of assets. Gusinsky said he would pay the debt in cash.

Gusinsky was more obsessed with his political power through media than making money, which appears to have been his undoing. He believed he could win the presidency for Primakov through media manipulation. Gusinsky simply saw his

media empire as having the freedom to manipulate people with his version of the news. What was emerging in Russia was that the press was biased. State-owned or not made no difference. Gusinsky moved entirely into media because he believed it was power.

A few days later, on December 10th, 1999, Gusinsky’s MediaMOST was desperate. Gazprom had been an investor in Gusinsky’s media since 1996. He told the press that he might count the gas monopoly among its owners. Media-MOST was close to concluding a deal to sell between a 13% to 15% stake to Gazprom for an undisclosed price.36

The Observer, of London, England, published on December 12th, 1999, the epitaph of Gusinsky and the real picture of his pretend independent news NTV organization. They explained the bribery and corruption. “In this war, TV is the heavy artillery” they wrote. They noted that Luzhkov was suing Dorenko for libel, and the communists moved to freeze the bank accounts of Berezovsky’s ORT station that was supporting Putin. Gusinsky’s NTV only puts out anti-Yeltsin propaganda. The Observer reported: “This is a war to the death. The financial crash last August devasted advertising revenues and left media groups struggling. Oligarchs such as Berezovsky, who had oil interests, were less badly scathed. But Gusinsky’s business empire, the only one based mainly on media, is in trouble.”

The bribery has expanded with what became “article to order,” where they would write an article in return for advertising. They concluded by quoting a commentor who believed that “access to honest reporting is now little better than in Soviet times.” It is hard to see why Satter pushed whatever Gusinsky said in the Western press. The mere fact that any Western media would take Gusinsky’s side and his claims against Putin demonstrates the lack of honest journalism.

The press portrays a feisty confrontation between Yeltsin and Clinton over Chechnya. However, the declassified documents from a meeting in Turkey on November 19th, 1999, show the truth about how politics is often theatre. At the same time, the U.S. was funding the very terrorists Yeltsin complained about, noting that they are armed to the teeth. Yeltsin pulled out a map and showed Clinton where the terrorists were. He asked Clinton: “Aren’t you in charge of those? I have the details, ... I want to show you where the mercenaries are being trained and then being sent into Chechnya. They are armed to the teeth … Bill, this is your fault.”

Of course, the press never reports what is really taking place behind the curtain. Yeltsin then says in the meeting: “I know we are not upset at each other. We were just throwing some jabs.”

This is the real face of diplomacy.

The Economist wrote on November 19th, 1999, that the media was indeed controlled by Berezovsky, who owned a big stake in ORT, the most-watched television channel. Then there was Gusinsky’s NTV, the second-most-watched TV station. The Economist noted that Gusinsky was vulnerable, for he lost a fortune during the 1998 crash, and television advertising revenues had dropped by an average of 70%. Gusinsky had spent $142 million on a satellite to distribute NTV+. He also bought 17% of CME, the biggest television company in Central and Eastern Europe. Gusinsky claimed that he would sell 17% of NTV to “a foreign investor” who expressed interest. That investor was none other than Ted Turner, the founder of CNN. However, Gusinsky was not interested in allowing other investors to have any control over paying the $42 million loan to Vneshekonombank. Early in December 1999, Media-MOST suffered a blow to its television station NTV when Video International, one of Russia’s biggest advertising agencies, announced that it was giving up its exclusive rights as an advertising agent for NTV. Instead, the ad company switched allegiance to another television station, ORT. Gusinsky’s attempt to support Primakov was not in the best interests of the Russian people. Gusinsky was supporting the non-Democratic faction, who were the communists. Gusinsky attempted to claim that NTV was independent. The news was used to promote Gusinsky’s vision and propaganda. Putin announced on November 24th, 1999, that “as a citizen” he would support the recently formed pro-government bloc Interregional Movement “Unity,” which was then headed by

General Sergei Shoigu (born 1955). Shoigu has been a member of the Russian government since 1994.

On Monday, November 29th, 1999, Boris Yeltsin was rushed to the hospital for the third time with pneumonia. Moscow was still in a political crisis with the war in Chechnya, and the U.S. and Europe demanded a ceasefire. Then on December 20th, 1999, the U.S. threatened to sanction Russia with the removal of its “favored nations” trade status but would not publicly admit its arms were flowing to Chechnya. Plans A and B failed—the prejudice against Putin began the day Yeltsin appointed him. The United States was not going to absorb Russia as they dreamed. Thus, Putin became this evil person for fighting against separatists. It is similar to how

Zelensky supported the Ukrainian civil war to fight against the Donbas separatists. The image depended on who the Western press and American Neocons wanted to support.

The hypocrisy in political views is truly astounding. When Islamic terrorists took down the World Trade Center, it was perfectly acceptable for President George W. Bush to go after them in the Middle East. When Russia took the same action against Islamic terrorists after the apartment bombings, Russia became a hawk showing unacceptable behavior. Was this really about the failure of Plan A and B?

It appeared that the American Neocons justified the appointment of Putin to resume the Cold War since Berezovsky failed. Surely, they did not prefer Primakov. Therefore, the only choice was Putin or Berezovsky, implying the USA did want Berezovsky to succeed. On December 10th, 1999, the Associated Press reported that Boris Yeltsin “[lashed out] at President Clinton yesterday for criticizing Russia’s war in Chechyna, bluntly reminding Clinton that Russia remains a nuclear power.” Clinton shifted to a new Cold War policy once Putin was appointed. It implied that Clinton was well aware of the prospect of Plan A and Plan B, and appeared to be adopting a clear anti-Russia policy. The rising tension seemed to be over Chechyna, but there was evidence that the United States was funding the very Islamic terrorists against Russia, as they did in Afghanistan.

In fact, Hillary Clinton boasted that the Russian military operation in Ukraine was similar to that of the Soviet Union’s 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Hillary stated that a similar outcome might be achieved by helping to arm Kiev’s resistance just like Washington backed Mujahideen fighters against Russia. Creating proxy wars against Russia has been a longstanding hobby of the Neocons. The legislative election was held on December 19th, 1999, when 450 seats in the State Duma, the lower house of the Federal Assembly, were up for vote. There was a rising popularity of the Fatherland-All Russia bloc, which was led by the Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov and the former Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who were not supporting reforms. They

were capitalizing on the rising news of Yeltsin and his Family’s corruption from the Bank of New York scandal. They thought this was their to overthrow Yeltsin and seize Russia with Gusinsky on board with his Media-MOST. The election was fair. However, even the London Evening Standard commented that Primakov was the “old communist technician” who Gusinsky had been promoting. The people were happy to have more than one candidate to vote for, and the communists under Gennady Zyuganov won only 24.29%. Putin’s Unity Party, led by Sergei Shoigu, won 23.32%, and Gusinsky’s Primakov OVR Party won only 13.33%. The handwriting was on the wall for Gusinsky.

Nevertheless, the Guardian wrote on December 20th, 1999, under the headline “Kremlin hails ‘peaceful Russian revolution’”: “Hailing a ‘peaceful revolution’ in Russian politics for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kremlin officials and Putin supporters relished a relatively harmonious relationship between the legislature and the executive.”

Gusinsky was up against the wall. His options were diminishing despite his rhetoric against Putin. So then, on December 24, 1999, Gusinsky announced he was selling a small stake in his NTV and TNT television stations to American Funds, a Los Angeles-based family of mutual funds controlled by the Capital Research and Management Company. Once more, Gusinsky told the press that “NTV is Media-MOST’s flagship station and vies with state-controlled ORT to be the country’s most influential and popular television channel.”37 Gusinsky only saw the power to manipulate society embedded in the media. There was no real difference between the government manipulating the news and his version. Both acted in their own self-interest. Yet he loved to pretend he represented the free press. Yeltsin shocked the world on December 31st, 1999, and formally resigned, according to the Constitution of Russia. “Today, I am speaking to you for the last time as your Russian President,” Yeltsin said. That made Putin Acting President of the Russian Federation right then and there.

The very first presidential order he signed, like Biden’s Executive Orders, was titled “On guarantees for the former president of the Russian Federation and the members of his family.” This was effectively amnesty for Yeltsin and his family, who were also accused of the Mabetex bribery case linked to the Bank of New York. This was when allegations surfaced about money laundering through the Bank of New York tied to Yeltsin, his daughters, and other women. John McCain claimed this was the only reason Putin came to power and insisted he was a communist who wanted to restore the USSR, contrary to all the evidence. McCain’s outright lie about Putin had no basis in reality, for it was the communists who wanted to seize control. McCain’s comments made no sense unless he was counting on Plan A or B. Otherwise, his constant attack on Putin may have been in hopes he would be overthrown, and the communists would seize power. Was that McCain’s objective to get his war at

last? The U.S. vs. Russia, regardless of its political leader or character? President Bill Clinton was shocked. He called Yeltsin and said: “I know this has been a tough but courageous decision… I’m sad, but I am very proud of you.”

Yeltsin also asked for forgiveness due to all the scandals, including the Bank of New York. I believe that Putin’s deal was not merely to address the amnesty for Yeltsin and his family. Yeltsin was deeply concerned about the fate of Russia. Putin wanted to save Russia from the communists and the corruption of the oligarchs. He fully informed Putin of all the schemes of the oligarchs. Hence, on December 31st, 1999, at noon Moscow time, Vladimir Putin became acting head of state when Yeltsin resigned, strategically ensuring that Putin would begin to run the country, helping him to establish himself ahead of the election. Hence, the constitution required elections within 90 days of such an event. This also forced the election forward by three months, reducing the time for the opponents to prepare.

The famous last words from Yeltsin to Putin as he walked out the door: “Take care of Russia.” Given the plots from both sides, Putin was the only possible choice to save Russia from the communists and the oligarchs.

Bill Clinton received a declassified assessment of Putin that painted a different picture than the Western press’ hardline

image they were promoting from Gusinsky and even Satter. “The Putin administration is walking a very fine line between laying down new, more modem “rules of the game” and reverting to old methods of centralization, arbitrariness and intimidation ~ thus chilling the investment climate and damaging Putin’s reputation abroad. While criticism of Putin’s tough guy methods and highly elastic political value system is mounting in the liberal Russian press, his approval rating is still over 75%. Sound Thinking on Economics. Putin continues to say all the right things on the economy, but he has trimmed his sails somewhat regarding international assistance. Putin’s chances of success depend on taking advantage of the current fragile economic upturn, galvanizing the rusted and suspicious bureaucratic apparatus behind his plan and selling the reforms politically. The boldness of his government’s economic plan and the key economic themes of Putin’s recent state of the nation address is unmistakable. Implementation is everything. He recognizes that Russia must create a more inviting business climate that protects investor and property rights, collects reasonable taxes, enforces a predictable rule of law, and promotes competitiveness and growth. He also wants to rationalize public finance at all levels of government, to reduce opportunities for corruption and state interference in the economy, and to establish a sustainable social safety net. The likely timing of a new IMF program is slipping to fall 2000. But Putin knows the importance of good relations with the IMF. He is likely to appeal for more flexibility from the Fund on structural reforms in recognition that Russia is setting its own economic priorities. In view of Russia’s strong current financial position and strong resistance from key creditors, Putin is unlikely to make panhandling for debt relief (particularly reduction) a high priority at Okinawa. In his speech to parliament, Putin decried Russia’s reliance on foreign handouts and beneficence.” Declassified 12-1021-M

From the Russian perspective, Yeltsin’s selection of Putin proved to be a wise decision putting Russia first. He was a Russian version of Donald Trump since he was not a politician. Putin shouldered the historical mission of transforming the Russian economy from the “Kleptocracy” days of the oligarchs.

The people rejoiced. Putin stood up against the communists, preventing a return to the old days of the USSR. Putin reversed

the economic decline of the Yeltsin era and targeted the oligarchs. The people saw Putin as draining the swamp for real. The stock market immediately rejoiced with a new president who was not the standard politician, communist, or oligarch.

Putin also stabilized the situation in Chechnya and stood his ground against the United States in diplomacy. Had he been an American president, he would be remembered as a man who stood for the people against corruption. Yet the American press always took the opposite position of Putin publicly. It was as if they were handed the storyline to carry that agenda forward, irrespective of the facts. It is hard to fathom how they preferred Primakov. It appeared to be a choice between Berezovsky and Putin simply on the hope that Berezovsky would have seized Russia.

The Western press seems to have gotten their marching orders to paint Putin and Russia as a failure in 1999. Perhaps at first, this was in hopes that they could still change Yeltsin’s mind to take Plan A or Plan B. Facts have proven that Yeltsin’s choice of Putin was the correct decision for Russia economically. Insofar as Chechnya was concerned, President George W. Bush, or should I say, President Cheney, invaded Iraq with the excuse of 9/11. Washington then switched gears, claiming

Saddam Hussein (1935-2006) may not have been involved in 9/11, yet he had weapons of mass destruction. Gusinsky’s propaganda assault on Putin and his support of Luzhkov and Primakov, who were the main opposition to Yeltsin, backfired. Gusinsky had been connected to Moscow’s former deputy mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, because he had helped Gusinsky expand his MOST Bank and gain control of key media enterprises. Gusinsky had known Luzhkov when he was in charge of handling Moscow’s cooperative licenses. The two became friends and even toured the United States together.

Luzhkov and Primakov were backed by Gusinsky and the country’s biggest oil company, Lukoil. Vagit Y. Alekperov (born 1950) is a Russian–Azerbaijani businessman who served as the CEO of the oil company from 1993 until 2022. Primakov and Luzhkov were considered the frontrunners for the presidency originally before the December 1999 elections for the Duma.

Both were critical of Yeltsin, and they made it known that they would probably prosecute him and his family for corruption. Primakov went as far as to suggest that he would be “freeing up jail cells for the economic criminals he planned to arrest.” That most likely included Berezovsky. This became Gusinsky’s fatal mistake, for he aligned himself with these two in hopes of achieving immunity in the prosecution of what would have no doubt included the oligarchs. Gusinsky was desperate and probably believed they would spare him since he would control the media that brought them to power. Election reform became a new law that was passed in December 1999. Now it would require candidates to gather a million signatures to be nominated. However, because Yeltsin’s resignation required an election in 90 days, this was reduced to 500,000. A majority in the first round was enough to win, much like the American election process. If nobody achieved that, a second round would occur with the top two candidates like the French system. It also imposed stricter campaign finance provisions. This was why Yeltsin resigned, forcing an election within 90 days to protect Russia from Berezovsky and the communists on the other side. This reform effectively cut off Gusinsky’s hope of Yevgeny Primakov becoming president, but also it killed the aspirations of Grigory Yavlinsky and Sergei Kiriyenko. As for Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, Gusinsky’s buddy, he too had to announce that he would not compete for the presidency. Primakov was forced to pull out two weeks after the parliamentary elections in December. Gusinsky’s scheme collapsed.

In February 2000, veteran TV journalist Yevgeny Kiselyov, who had been anti-Putin, was appointed as NTV general director. He performed this function until his ouster in April 2001 in what became known as the boardroom coup by Gazprom. As for the election held on March 26th, 2000, Putin won 53.4% as an independent candidate yet was endorsed by Unity, OVR, and SPS. The real shocker was that the communist candidate, Zyuganov, came in second, which called into question Gusinsky’s theory that his media could rule Russia. After the election, Gusinsky defaulted on a $211 million loan from Credit Suisse First Boston, payable in March 2000 yet guaranteed by Gazprom. Putin decided to clean house of all the corruption, fully understanding that if he did not go after the oligarchs, they would come for him, as was the case with Gusinsky. Berezovsky’s disagreements with Putin became public just three weeks into Putin’s presidency. On May 8th, 2000, Berezovsky and Abramovich were at Putin’s invitation-only inauguration ball in Moscow. By the end of that month, Berezovsky criticized the constitutional reform proposed by Putin, allowing him to dismiss elected governors, which included Berezovsky.

After the election, on May 31st, 2000, the Washington Post pushed the story: “Berezovsky was a key player in the small group of Kremlin aides and financiers who helped bring Putin to power.” Of course, that was partially true only to the extent that Berezovsky supported Putin in the press against Gusinsky. It would later emerge that Yeltsin’s bodyguard said Berezovsky asked him to assassinate Gusinsky. In June 2000, the Prosecutor General office launched an investigation against Gusinsky under the allegation of a misappropriation of funds in connection with a company, Russian Video. The Western media took a rather diverse view of the event. The London Financial Times wrote it was “to clip the wings [that is, reduce the powers] of his country’s formidable business barons.” The Wall Street Journal in Europe said: “[E]ither the first salvo in a Kremlin war against [the] oligarchs or a return to the Soviet-era practice of taking political prisoners. It was either carried out with the

knowledge of the Russian president, or it was done behind his back while he was on a foreign trip. However, you [view] it, it doesn’t look good.”

The New York Times wrote in its editorial on Gusinsky: “While [Mr.] Putin is traveling through Europe this week extolling the virtues of Russian democracy, his colleagues in the Kremlin have been acting like Stalinists. [Gusinsky’s] arrest and detention [is] an assault against the principle of a free press.”

The Boston Globe expressed it best:

“Yesterday, they knew better than anyone that Vladimir Gusinsky’s arrest a day earlier was not just about the Kremlin cracking down on press freedom. They understood that Gusinsky has become a victim of a system he helped create where loyalty to the authorities often matters more than accuracy.”

The BBC noted on June 16th, 2000, that Gusinsky had denied reports accusing him of concentrating his business interests in media to boost his political influence. Everyone knew that was true and that the Davos Pact with the declassified documents confirmed this was precisely the goal. Gusinsky did not want to allow any foreign control from investors in his media operations that might require a real free press. This was undoubtedly based on his vision that the media could control politics. However, his attempt to support Primakov failed. This only furthered the speculation that Gusinsky was taking orders from the CIA, the Clinton Administration, or striking a covert deal with Primakov to be bailed out with amnesty in his purge, which was more likely.

On June 13th, 2000, Gusinsky was arrested for his alleged involvement in embezzling more than US$10 million in state funds through the St. Petersburg company Russkoye Video. Gusinsky had voluntarily appeared for questioning at the Prosecutor General’s Office about ammunition for a pistol he received several years ago as a reward from the government. This was not on the orders of Putin. Gusinsky had been seen as a traitor to the people for siding with the communists. So, there were plenty of people who certainly cheered his fall.

Gusinsky and Berezovsky polarized Russia just as America has become polarized between red and blue under the Biden Administration. It turned out that Putin was traveling around Europe. When he heard of the arrest, knowing the image that Gusinsky would portray, he ordered the charges dropped. Putin said jailing Gusinsky was excessive but denied the arrest was politically motivated. Gusinsky would indeed exploit this to his advantage. After only three days, Gusinsky was released from prison, and he was placed under house arrest on June 16th, 2000, promising not to leave Russia. However, the Prosecutor General’s office said it reversed its decision because Gusinsky had been “honored by the government,” implying that he was released on Putin’s orders. The press was there waiting for Gusinsky’s release, and he made a statement: “I want to express my deep gratitude to all people who supported me.”

The media immediately portrayed this as Putin attempting to silence a critic since Gusinsky had promoted the hardline Primakov for president, who vowed to arrest Yeltsin and his family. Of course, they use this to confirm that anything Gusinsky had ever reported on Putin must have been true without any independent investigation. Gazprom insisted that Gusinsky’s company, Media-MOST, make good on a large loan that Gazprom guaranteed, some US$211 million he owed to Credit Suisse First Boston, that was payable in March 2000 since he was now three months in default. Gusinsky had pledged 20% of his company as collateral, and Gazprom paid the loan to prevent MediaMOST from going bankrupt. Hence, they now demanded that Gusinsky pay the US$211 million.

Gusinsky pretended he was arrested solely because he was critical of Putin, thus, it was an assault on the free press. It was a clever defense since the world wanted to hate Putin and overlooked the basic explanation that Gusinsky was already three months in default and had been conspiring with Primakov. Gusinsky’s attack on Putin drove potential advertisers away. Even Gazprom complained before the election and seized the board in April. Gazprom’s chief executive, Rem Vyakhirev (1934-2013), called for Gusinsky to take a more neutral stance in covering the war in Chechnya, saying the critical anti-Putin coverage gave Gazprom serious reason to reconsider extending any financial support in the future. Gusinsky’s coverage of everything was anti-Putin regardless of the facts.

Gusinsky was causing internal problems at Gazprom. Deputy Chairman of Gazprom Sergei Dubinin (born 1950) argued that they should sell all their media shares and exit the business. Gusinsky was driven solely by his ego and neglected his fiduciary duty to the company. This made his company vulnerable because it was heavily in debt to Gazprom. At the beginning of 2000, Gazprom held only 30% of MediaMOST. Gusinsky’s mismanagement of his company forced Gazprom to salvage his company or watch NTV collapse. This resulted in paying off the Credit Suisse loan, moving their stake up to 54%, and thus they were the majority shareholder. Gusinsky argued they only had 50% to pretend he was still in charge.

This was when Gusinsky was looking for a foreign investor who could help ease the pressure from Gazprom, but he did not want to yield any management control. His NTV only held, at best, about one-third of Russia’s television advertising market. That would total at most about US$150 million annually. With the collapse in advertising revenue and debts far exceeding gross revenue, the handwriting was on the wall. Hence, while Gusinsky claimed his company was worth US$2 billion, Gazprom disagreed, and he could not raise the cash to pay off even a US$211 million loan. By the start of 2000, Gusinsky was dead broke. He had borrowed a lot of money and revenues collapsed because of his support for Primakov. He had also chosen the wrong side of politics, an anti-free market, which contributed to the public turning away from his brand of news. Gusinsky forgot about the advertisers. Alfred Koch (born 1961) served as a deputy prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin and was an ally of economic reformer Anatoly Chubais. Koch was the head of Russia’s State Property Committee in 1996. However, in June 2000, Alfred Koch became head of Gazprom-Media, a subsidiary of Gazprom. He oversaw the controversial takeover of Gusinsky’s NTV because he owed Gazprom US$211 million. Gazprom had taken another stake of 16% of the NTV television network but also took shares in all subsidiaries as collateral equal to 25%. Gazprom was under pressure, thanks to Gusinsky twisting his debt crisis into an assault on his fake free press.

“We want the money first and foremost,” Koch demanded. “We haven’t taken the collateral yet, and we aren’t sure that we want it.” Gazprom had already held a 30% stake in NTV since 1996. This meant that they now took at least a 46% ownership position in Gusinsky’s Media-MOST. In addition, Gazprom guaranteed

that Media-MOST would pay back another debt of $260 million. Gazprom received another 19% more NTV network shares as security in return for that guarantee. This was on top of the 25% they took in other Media-MOST companies. Koch had then told the press that Gazprom would assure that reporters at NTV would be independent of the state and any tycoons, inferring to Gusinsky, since no one would hold a controlling interest in the network. The attack on Gusinsky was purely economic and had nothing to do with Putin retaliating. Gusinsky did not have the power he had anointed upon himself.

Then, on July 17th, 2000, the fortunes of the oligarchs were declining rapidly. Berezovsky would not be able to smooth talk his way out either. Berezovsky resigned from the Duma, still taking his knife to stab Putin in the back for his own failed judgment, saying he “did not want to be involved in the country’s ruin and the restoration of an authoritarian regime.” The authoritarian dream was his own. Putin was cleaning out the oligarch’s hold on government as he promised Yeltsin. Once again, Berezovsky fed the press

was being fed stories. They were promoting the attempt to take over Russia through Berezovsky’s schemes.

On July 17th, 2000, the Guardian38 ran a story taking Berezovsky’s side, saying he was quitting the Duma in protest over Putin’s constitutional reforms. The Western press were now supporting the oligarchs’ hold over the government. Did the West’s deep state feed the Western press that storyline? Or was the press repeating whatever Boris told them? Berezovsky had also called for amnesty for all business leaders during the transition period. The Western press also supported this self-serving position. The actual government investigators alleged that Gusinsky had looted US$10 million in state funds in a privatization deal. The charges were not completely dropped when he was released on June 16th, 2000. The Russian government closed the case on July 26th, 2000, and Gusinsky’s lawyer, Pavel Astakhov, said that his client flew to Spain the same night the charges.

When Gusinsky was arrested, Bill Clinton played the game. Clinton claimed that he did not think people should be arrested for criticizing the Kremlin. The declassified document made it clear that Clinton knew the truth—Gusinsky and Berezovsky were deep into a conspiracy to seize Russia. The briefing memo dated July 13th, 2000, for Okinawa made it clear that they were using the pretense of free press to protect Gusinsky and Berezovsky. There was no way these publications were the free press. Sure, the government did not

direct the news content, but these two oligarchs did. The news was always to be turned in the direction that best suited their personal self-interests. In the United States, the First Amendment’s intent wrongly assumed that news bias would be confined to the state. That has proven to be seriously mistaken in a republic compared to an absolute monarchy. The media in the USA also reports cases on the slant of the owners.

Putin does not appear to have ordered the arrest of Gusinsky. Indeed, this was probably the reason for his quick release. The declassified documents suggest that he was informed on June 13th, 2000. Therefore, it appears that Putin called to have Gusinsky released on June 16th, 2000. Indeed, the night charges were dropped on Wednesday, July 26th, 2000, Gusinky flew to Spain. Interestingly, Boris Nemtsov,

the anti-Putin activist, drove Gusinsky to the Moscow airport on that final trip. This was very strange, for Nemtsov was not only a political leader who opposed Putin and tried to run against him in 2000, but he was also supposed to be against the oligarchs. About five years later, on February 27, 2015, Nemtsov was assassinated near the Kremlin, so people attributed this to Putin. However, his assassination was staged for political purposes, as we will explore.

Putin turned against all the oligarchs clearly aware of their scheme to sell Russia to the United States. The government owned 51% of Berezovsky’s TV and had not interfered in the journalism. Then on September 10th, 2000, the LA Times reported that the government canceled the show of Berezovsky’s pit bull, Borenko. Of course, Dorenko then

claimed this was Putin attacking the free press, jumping on the same wagon as Gusinsky. However, Dorenko was canceled to suppress the oligarchs for their scheme. Dorenko would support Berezovsky, which was by no means the free press.

On July 11th, 2000, Putin publicly stated that he was targeting the oligarchs who he implied made their fortunes illegally. The LA Times covered the July 28th, 2000, meeting called by Putin, gathering the 18 most powerful oligarchs in Russia for an unprecedented discussion. The LA Times commented that this new war that Putin is waging against the oligarchs is more popular than the retaliation against Chechnya terrorists. They also noted that the oligarchs were getting “underserved sympathy” in the Western press. The book Kremlin Rising Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the end of Revolution by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser noted on page 51, “Berezovsky tried to slip Putin money anyway, but he refused.” This was the beginning of Putin’s campaign to undermine and reduce the power of the oligarchs. He took Yeltsin’s last words seriously: “Take care of Russia.”

In an article in The Independent39, Berezovsky argued that in the absence of a strong civil society and middle class, it may sometimes be necessary for capitalists “to interfere directly in the political process” of Russia as a counterweight to ex-

communists “who hate democracy and dream of regaining lost positions.” Putin came to a truce, and the terms were very clear given this declassification of the Clinton documents. I believe Putin probably knew about Plans A and B. The deal was that he promised to spare them government investigation into alleged frauds, but they, in turn, would end their “excessive political and financial influence” in government. Bill Browder has claimed the opposite. He tells everyone that the oligarchs had to give Putin 50% of their wealth, helping him to amass $200 billion.40 Why Browder keeps bashing Putin is a mystery, but some believe he now works for the CIA in return for protection from extradition to Russia. Nothing in all the declassified documents suggests Browder’s story is remotely trustworthy.

Even the Washington Post reported Tycoons Take the Reins in Russia in August 1998.41 On November 17th, 1998, Berezovsky’s paid agent staged a TV conference to claim there was a plot to kill Berezovsky. This raised his status and public sympathy and acted as a counter-move against Primakov.

On April 16th, 2000, the London Guardian ran the story that Berezovsky was pulling all the strings in Russia. The declassified documents show that he was approaching Princeton University and maybe Harvard to have something named after him. Berezovsky always had grand plans.

This is what Putin was up against and his move to target the oligarchs was far more than merely silencing critics. He was putting Russia first. This was not about personal critics nor the free press when the oligarchs deliberately used their hold on the press to influence politics. They were never impartial news organizations. Instead, just like today, we have Big Tech canceling anyone they disagree with. That is certainly no more free press than what Gusinsky or Berezovsky had been carrying out.

In April 1999, Prosecutor General Yuri Skuratov had constructed a criminal case against Boris Berezovsky, claiming his Aeroflot earnings were in Swiss banks. A warrant was issued for Berezovsky’s arrest. The allegation was that he siphoned off US$250 million of Aeroflot money through a company named Andava. He denied the allegations claiming they were politically motivated by Primakov, which was probably true, but he could never shake them. They predated Putin.

The arrest warrant was dropped a week later after Berezovsky submitted to questioning by the prosecutors. No charges were ever brought. Still, Yeltsin sacked Primakov as Prime Minister shortly thereafter and replaced him with Sergey Stepashin. Yuri Skuratov was then dismissed, but he continued working with the Swiss prosecutors against Berezovsky and Yeltsin. Berezovsky, therefore, was able to sidestep all the criminal charges prepared by Skuratov. He told the Americans in the declassified documents that he was not worried, for he would have Primakov fired. Still, they noted he appeared shaken. Berezovsky then took a seat in the Duma (Russian parliament), representing a small republic close to Chechnya. Noticeably, Berezovsky portrayed himself as the peacemaker and Putin as the warlord when Yeltsin turned to Putin on

August 9th, 1999. The nomination of Putin as Yeltsin’s heir appears to have been a declaration of war against both the oligarchs and communists. As a result, Berezovsky’s efforts to seize the throne came crashing down. He now put in every effort to undermine Putin in a desperate attempt to overthrow him. Berezovsky began publicly attacking Putin, saying that he was enslaving the Russian people. With Putin’s reforms to clean house, Berezovsky resigned his seat in the Duma in July 2000. When the Kursk submarine sank, killing 118 sailors in August 2000, Berezovsky once again blamed Putin. Berezovsky had indeed employed his media empire to influence politics and undermine Putin at every moment due to the delusional idea that he could still become president. Again, this was by no means a free press. During September 2000, Berezovsky alleged that the Kremlin had attempted to expropriate his shares in ORT. On September 5th, 2000, again, the Washington Post was reporting the one-sided propaganda of Berezovsky without ever noting that he and Gusinsky had been using the media to manipulate the government.

On October 19th, 2000, the prosecutors seized Berezovsky’s 6,000-square-foot dacha west of Moscow and government plates on his limo. He was told to collect his personal effects from the dacha. He then said he had to stay in a hotel. Putin announced he would no longer allow the oligarchs to control the media. He made that very clear in Le Figaro on October 26th, 2000. Putin obviously knew Berezovsky and Gusinsky were manipulating the news for political purposes. Berezovsky and Gusinsky boasted of their power to the Americans, which can be seen in the Clinton Administration’s declassified documents. Thus, Putin warned, “if necessary, we will destroy those instruments that allow this blackmail.”42 This was not something to shut down the free press, for the press was still not free in the hands of the oligarchs and the Davos Pact. Then in October 2000, the new prosecutors renewed the demand to question Berezovsky on the Aeroflot allegations. In late October 2000, Berezovsky boarded his private jet to Nice, and never again did he return to Russia. On November 7th, 2000, Berezovsky refused to appear for further questioning back in Russia and announced that he would not return. He claimed that the government was continually increasing the pressure on him. “I’m being forced to choose whether to become a political prisoner or a political emigrant,” Berezovsky stated. He blamed Putin, but the allegations surfaced under Primakov. In early December 2000, his associate Nikolai Glushkov (1949–2018) was arrested in Moscow.

On October 26th, 2000, Putin was interviewed by the French publication Le Figaro. Question: That is true. On the other hand, Berezovsky’s remark – “Boris Yeltsin pretended he wasn’t there and Putin pretends he is there,” – shows that all is not that well in the relations between business and the Kremlin. Vladimir Putin: Of course, after the revolutionary events of the early 1990s some people took advantage of the fact that government structures had not yet jelled and were not functioning effectively. Having amassed capital, they took advantage of the state and would like the situation to continue. And of course, they don’t want to vacate their comfortable perches.

One of the instruments they successfully used and are still trying to use is their monopoly on the mass media. They want to continue to influence the state, the decision-making, to scare the political leadership and to blackmail it to make it more amenable. But I wouldn’t say that the state and the oligarchs are confronting each other dagger in hand. This is more in line with the West European tradition. We wield a big stick, called “palitsa” in Russian, which can clinch an argument with one fell swoop. But we have not used it yet, we are simply holding it in our hands, and that has had some resonance already. But if we are provoked, we will have to use it.

Berezovsky fled from Russia to France on October 30th, 2000, after he read Putin’s comments. He obviously knew that Yeltsin briefed Putin and that Putin would target him and Gusinsky, knowing that they were the most dangerous. Not only did these men wish to seize Russia, but they were meeting with the Americans all along. This was why Yeltsin told Putin on leaving office: “Take care of Russia.” The British government intentionally withheld the circumstances surrounding the grant of asylum in Great Britain

to Boris Berezovsky as well as the death of Alexander Litvinenko. Berezovsky illegally obtained asylum in Britain in September 2003 based on the false petition claiming there was, again, a scheme to assassinate him by the Russian intelligence services in London in the summer of 2003. The asylum was granted under false pretenses, which we will investigate, and the British must have known that at the time as well. In the October 26th, 2000 interview with Le Figaro before his trip to France the following week, Putin said that Moscow had “no misgivings” about the planned expansion of the European Union (EU) but welcomed the prospect. Moscow’s position, he affirmed, was that EU enlargement would harm “neither our relations with today’s united Europe nor with our traditional partners in East and Central Europe.” Putin was trying to improve relations and economic ties, undoing the damage of the oligarchs. That would raise the living standards for the Russian people. Boris Berezovsky was stubborn. Even after he fled Russia, he continued attacking Putin as if this would restore Plan A or B. He then established the International Foundation for Civil Liberties (IFCL) in New York. It seems to be a standard reaction for people in such a position to establish a pretend charity or foundation. Many have done such things, from Pulitzer for starting the Spanish-American War, George Soros, John McCain Foundation, and the Clinton Foundation. Both Berezovsky and Gusinsky used the badge of a free press to claim that Putin was silencing the free press when, in fact, he was cleaning the press of corruption and manipulation. The New York Daily News reported on September 24th, 2000, regarding Gusinsky and how he flew to New York to raise

money to buy out Gazprom. However, on Friday, September 22nd, 2000, the Moscow prosecutors declared that they wanted Gusinsky for questioning once again. The Daily News quoted Igor Malashenko, the deputy chairman of Media-MOST, who simply stated, “Of course, he’s not coming.” Malashenko has personally flown to Washington to pitch this as freedom of the press when it was about debt. Gusinsky just said that he was jailed the last time he was called in for questioning. At the same time, a freeze order was entered when they realized Gusinsky was trying to sell shares in New York. This is what prompted the prosecutors to recall Gusinsky for questioning. The freeze forbids any sale or transfer of shares. It was to cut-off Gusinsky’s search for a foreign investor. That would be like Russian TV buying ABC news. Gusinsky always blamed Putin, but his claims were commercial with Gazprom.

Meanwhile, Gazprom officials came out and said they took the step in an attempt to force Gusinsky to fulfill an agreement he signed in July 2000 to sell control of his company to Gazprom for US$773 million in cash and debt forgiveness. Gusinsky then claimed that he had only signed the agreement under duress, fearing the state would step up attempts to prosecute him if he disagreed. In addition to filing a lawsuit demanding that Gusinsky make good on his pledge to sell control of his company to Gazprom, the gas company, on Thursday, September 21st, 2000, filed a second lawsuit that demanded payment of the $211 million loan. Again, it was simply about debt and mismanagement. While Gusinsky claimed he signed papers under duress, Malashenko stated that Berezovsky was then under pressure to sell his minority shares to the state, and this would give Putin control of the media. Gusinsky claimed that while Gazprom paid down about US$211 million in debt, side-

stepping everything else, the government insisted that Gusinsky relinquish control to Gazprom. They interviewed the Americans Gusinsky visited in New York, and they responded that there was no incentive for a foreigner to get involved since there would be no economic gain.

Gusinsky, who perhaps never saw an event he could not spin to his favor, claimed that representatives of the Kremlin forced him to sell Media-MOST to Gazprom-Media at a price that Gazprom-Media set at US$300 million in return for his freedom. That was clearly not the case. There was no other buyer. The Western press still rallied at Gusinsky’s side, never mentioning all his debts and mismanagement because he was trying to seize the power of the government. Alfred Koch of Gazprom further explained that they could not go through with any agreement since Gusinsky had fled Russia and was then charged with fraud in absentia. So now Gusinsky was declared a wanted man, and Gazprom backed out of the initial agreement to bail out Gusinsky. Gusinsky was broke. His company could not pay its bills. It would have been seized by creditors. Nevertheless, Gusinsky

spun the news and called it the “shares for freedom” transaction that he was forced to sign as if he had any other alternative. He insisted that he was given an ultimatum to remove his claimed “independent investigation” from NTV, but he refused. Even that made no sense when there was a lack of any evidence. All of this was great theatre. When the declassified documents exposed the magnitude and audacity of the political schemes, the Western press continued their hated of Putin because Gusinsky had spun this version. In truth, they were supporting the communist Primakov. They continued to claim Putin was just an ex-KGB spy chief and would never admit to this mistake, implying they knew all along. The claim that Putin staged the terrorist attacks on the apartment buildings to win the election also made no sense when he was so popular. The agenda was to seize Russia with Berezovsky. The Western press also overlooked that Gusinsky was broke from his mismanagement. He had turned against Berezovsky because he allegedly cut his own deal with Primakov trying to save his company when Yeltsin would not come to his aid. Gusinsky had risked it all and lost. His company was in fiscal ruin.

Alfred Koch also assured reporters that Gusinsky had not been forced to sign the agreement “at gunpoint,” as Gusinsky was telling the world. Without Gazprom, his company would have simply folded. Evidence began to surface, and Gazprom suspected that Gusinsky had also embezzled money from the company. Gusinsky, in late November 2000, finally agreed to the transfer of shares to Gazprom. However, due to embezzlement concerns, prosecutors continued to press charges of fraud

and repeatedly summoned the tycoon to appear for questioning in Moscow. Then, on December 4th, 2000, the Russian prosecutors issued an international arrest warrant for Gusinsky, who was on a self-imposed exile abroad, refusing to return to Moscow for questioning regarding a case of alleged fraud of over US$250 million. On December 13th, 2000, Gusinsky was arrested in Spain.

It appears that Spain got one of those dark phone calls (i.e., “We have a favor…”) regarding the travel restrictions on Vladimir Gusinsky that were suddenly lifted after Russian extradition attempts failed. Frustrated Russian prosecutors noted that not a single document alleging his innocence was ever submitted to them to deny the extradition, implying Western intelligence intervened.

The BBC reported on April 24th, 2001, that Vladimir Gusinsky had fled Spain to Israel “apparently in a new bid to escape the clutches of Moscow prosecutors.” Obviously, none of this had anything to do with the free press issue. This was straightup embezzlement.

Finally, in 2001, Putin moved to end the oligarchs’ manipulation of the news. He ordered a systematic takeover of privately owned television networks. The oligarch targets were Berezovsky, Gusinsky, and Badri Patarkatsishvili (19552008). Badi is the one who wrote a letter to the New York Times claiming that Russia was “turning into a banana republic” that was published on January 30th, 2002, under the title Off the Air in Russia. Berezovsky and Patarkatsishvili sold their stake in ORT to Roman Abramovich, who ceded editorial control to the Kremlin.

In April 2001, the government took control of Vladimir Gusinsky’s NTV. Putin was obviously briefed by Yeltsin when he agreed to become his heir. Putin knew the blackmail scheme and who was behind it. At NTV, Gazprom imposed a new director, Boris Johnson, and a new management board. Journalists who refused to

accept the changes were fired. Gusinsky was in default and could no longer pay his debts. What jumps out from these declassified documents is that Berezovsky and Gusinsky were plotting to prevent Putin from becoming president. The false claim that the FSB was behind the apartment building explosions to boost Putin for the election was absurd.

The people were behind Putin from the first day they heard his name because he was neither an oligarch nor a communist. The people wanted freedom, which is what Putin represented rather than a step backward into communism. They knew Primakov was indeed authoritarian and was as “red as a tomato.” The U.S. diplomatic dispatches establish that Berezovsky’s longstanding feud and fear of Primakov eventually set in

motion the criminal charges against him. Even Berezovsky would have to admit that Putin was better than Primakov. In contrast to Primakov, Putin had said he would not reverse the controversial privatizations of the 1990s, through which the oligarchs acquired ownership of key assets in the resource industries. That was a reassurance for the oligarchs. Berezovsky’s thirst for power was his downfall, and the same for Gusinsky who appeared to be a far worse business manager than Berezovsky. This Game of Thrones saw them both cascade into their own self-destruction. Berezovsky, on the surface, appears not to have anticipated that Putin would clip the oligarchs’ political wings. Yet, Gusinsky’s direct attack on Putin brought it all crashing down. Putin’s ideological mix of capitalism and conservative views on Russia’s history was why Yeltsin picked him. Perhaps the glimmer of patriotism for his mother country, in combination with self-interest, motivated Yeltsin in his final act, even resigning to force elections within 90 days to cut off both the oligarchs and the communists. Berezovsky underestimated Putin, assuming everyone would sell their soul for money. He admitted to offering Putin money, but he refused. Money was not Putin’s motivation—it was the dignity of mother Russia.

Putin was nostalgic and a patriot, believing Russia had been a great empire before the USSR of the Tsars. Putin stood against the oligarchs, and I believe he was well aware of Berezovsky’s plot with the Americans. Yeltsin came clean with him about Berezovsky’s blackmail. That was the very reason for the billboard campaign, but it was also the reason Putin granted him and his family amnesty. So, in the end, Berezovsky was wrong. The declassified documents were clear; they knew Putin was neither a communist nor an oligarch. Everything put out in the Western press and by the American Neocons, such as John McCain, was nothing but hatred and propaganda in the form of a

character attack to keep Russia as an enemy. They could not sleep at night without someone to hate. Putin was neither a Primakov nor a Gennady Zyuganov communist. Yeltsin was correct, as he knew Putin would defend Russia against both.

Putin’s vision of the Great Empire was that of the Tsars, not that of Lenin and Stalin. Putin was the only leader in Russia ever to criticize Lenin. McCain accused him of trying to resurrect the USSR when he had never made any such attempt in over 20 years.

Newsweek and the Guardian reported that Vladimir Putin

denounced Lenin and his Bolshevik government for their brutal repressions and accused him of placing a “time bomb” under the state. Putin’s criticism spoke volumes, for it demonstrated that the American Neocon propaganda misrepresenting Putin’s character and his desire to resurrect the USSR was just fiction. Putin was the first president to level any criticism whatsoever against Lenin. Many diehard communists still revere Lenin, including Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum, who keeps a bust of Lenin in his office. Putin is a historian. Yet he also realized that removing Lenin’s body would raise internal civil unrest. There were those who still romantically remember communism for relieving them of decisions they had to make about the future in a free society. Putin carefully weighs the past against the present. He signaled that he had no intention of taking Lenin’s body out of his Red Square tomb. Putin was wisely warning against “any steps that would divide society.” He said before the world that he was no communist or USSR revivalist, but nobody listened. As Sun Tzu noted in his Art of War, unless you know your enemy, you will lose every battle. The West clings to false beliefs and propaganda instead of trying to listen, observe, and understand the Russian culture and mindset. Not everyone in Russia loved communism.

In 2000, Tatyana Yumasheva, Yeltsin’s daughter, was implicated in the corruption investigation but received immunity from Putin when he succeeded her father. Tatyana remained Putin’s staff and advised him during his 2000 election campaign since she had experience in that role from advising her father. After the election, Putin dismissed her later that year, and she eventually moved to Austria.

There was no question that the 1998 Russian Financial Crisis was a watershed moment that led to intrigue and plots. Nevertheless, this scheme to take down Putin in a desperate attempt to seize the throne of Russia ended in the collapse of Berezovsky’s and Gusinsky’s empires. They both simply refused to accept that their grand scheme had failed. As for the American Neocons, they continued spreading the same propaganda, especially John McCain, who was relentless in calling Putin an “Old KGB Colonel Apparatchik,” meaning a communist. Nothing was further from the truth. There is no support for this view of Putin in any of the declassified documents from the Clinton Administration. This implies that the real motive was to support Berezovsky’s grand plan to seize Russia in this Game of Thrones or outright hatred of Russians and the desire to create war.

Perhaps we have been the victims of Berezovsky’s plot of greed and power to take the presidency of Russia at all costs, combined with John McCain, who was always too fond of war. King Louis XIV (1643-1715) lamented on his deathbed: “I have been too fond of war.” Neocons on all sides push for

war, but they are never the ones on the battlefield sacrificing their lives and their family’s future for their vitriol.

33

“Russian Media Magnate Wins One, Loses More.” The New York Times, April 21, 2001. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/21/world/russian-media-magnatewins-one-loses-more.html. 34

Bohlen, Celestine. “In Russia, a Power Play Acted Out on Television.”

The New

York Times,

September 5, 1999. https://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/05/world/inrussia-a-power-play-acted-out-on-television.html. 35

Galeotti, Mark. “Putin’s Declassified KGB Record Shows He Was No High-Flier, but

a Solid B.” The Moscow Times, January 18, 2023. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/11/04/putins-kgb-declassified-recordshow-that-he-was-no-high-flier-but-a-solid-b-a68024. 36

Fossato, Floriana. “Russia: Media-MOST Strengthens Partnership With Gazprom.” RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty, April 9, 2008. https://www.rferl.org/a/1092864.html. 37

Arizona Republic, December 24, 1999, pg E2

38

Gentleman, Amelia. “Tycoon Resigns from Duma as Relations with Kremlin Cool.” The Guardian, April 12, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/jul/18/russia.ameliagentleman. 39

Williamson,

Marcus.

“Boris

Berezovsky:

Businessman

Who

Profited

from

Communism’s Fall but Made an Enemy of Putin.” The Independent, March 25, 2013. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/boris-berezovskybusinessman-who-profited-from-communism-s-fall-but-made-an-enemy-of-putin8547568.html. 40

Celarier, Michelle. “Bill Browder Warned Westerners Not to Take Russian Oligarch

Money. They Should Have Listened.” Institutional Investor, April 13, 2022. https://www.institutionalinvestor.com/article/b1xl56hsvs2qv7/Bill-Browder-WarnedWesterners-Not-to-Take-Russian-Oligarch-Money-They-Should-Have-Listened. 41

Hoffman, David. “Tycoons Take the Reins in Russia.” The Washington Post, August 28, 1998. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wpsrv/inatl/longterm/russiagov/stories/oligarchs082898.htm.

42

RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty. “Newsline - October 27, 2000,” June 20, 2008. https://www.rferl.org/a/1142270.html.

The Rise of the Carpetbaggers

F

ollowing the American Civil War, opportunistic charlatans from the North invaded and exploited the South, which had been devastated following the war. They became known to Southerners as the “carpetbaggers.”

They exploited the local populace for financial, political, and social gain. The term came to broadly mean individuals who sought business and political opportunities because of the chaotic state of the local economies and politics following the war. Of course, there were also those pushing Republican politics and advocating the end of the Democrat’s slavery policy during the Reconstruction Era (1865–1877). The collapse of slavery was similar to the collapse of the USSR insofar as the people were suddenly free to pursue their own life. Interestingly, we find the same motivations during the Great Russian Privatization Rush to exploit business opportunities. However, some also sought to exploit the political situation and seize control of Russia. The fund managers and bankers saw natural resources and sought to control the gold, diamonds, and of course, the energy sector. During the American Civil War, they also used the term “scalawag,” which referred to the outright criminals seeking to cheat the Southerners. Here too, we find the same human traits applied to many who rushed into Russia to exploit as much as possible and conspired with the local oligarchs.

This cartoon dealt with the Compromise of 1877, an informal agreement between southern Democrats and allies of Rutherford Hayes, a Republican who helped settle the 1876 disputed presidential election. The southern Democrats compromised with the Republicans, provided it ended the Reconstruction Era. This cartoon suggested that the carpetbaggers should get on the next train home. Putin has taken similar action in Russia with the oligarchs.

Curiously, just as many free blacks and enslaved people had escaped to the North, and returned to the South after the war, the same trend unfolded with respect to Russia. There was a massive influx of Westerners looking to make it rich and returning Russians who fled the communists. Let’s be realistic. This Great Russian Privatization Rush was no different from the carpetbaggers pouring into the South following the American Civil War. This was about buying the assets of Russia and strip-mining the country along with the oligarchs. Then we have the ultimate arrogance—the quest to seize the very office of the president for greed. There is no doubt that the oligarchs were engaging in stripmining Russia, joined by foreign investors lining up for the great giveaway. These new Russian carpetbaggers engaged in looting and plundering government assets right down to its gold reserves. Berezovsky’s oligarchs looted the Russian assets, including the gold reserves that simply vanished under the Yeltsin administration.

Interestingly, even going back to the overthrow of the Tsar in 1917, Russia had the largest gold reserves in the world before the Communist Revolution. They once stood at 1,311 tonnes. The number of troy ounces per metric ton is 32,150.7, making

it 42.1 million ounces. Today, the United States’ gold reserves are reported at 261.4 million ounces or about 8133.4 metric tonnes, showing a sharp increase in production over the past 100 years or so.

Russia was rich in resources that astounded the entire world. Today, besides its wealth in gold, diamonds, and even platinum, Russia is rich in rare earths and energy. In fact, Russia even issued coins in platinum, which is extremely rare today.

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the German bankers insisted that the communists should turn over part of the gold reserves following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Other than that, there is virtually no mention of what happened to the gold reserves of the Tsar in the English language literature. Most of the reserves were in coin form, both Russian and foreign, while a small portion was in gold bars. People have been searching for those missing gold reserves of the Tsar akin to searching for the missing treasure of the Knights Templar. Unfortunately, nobody has ever found any trace. Some believe the gold was buried in the woods. Others think the gold was thrown into Lake Baikal to prevent the communists from using it. That is the world’s largest freshwater

lake by volume and the deepest in the world. It contains more than 20% of the entire world’s fresh water. It is bigger than all of the North American Great Lakes combined. Still, in 1923, the communists issued gold coins to trade internationally.

Interestingly, gold bars of the USSR have survived, but they appear tied to the more recent plunder of Russia’s gold reserves following 1991. The fact that they exist implies they were, in fact, stolen and sold on the black market during the plunder of Russia.

In addition to the great plunder of Russian gold reserves, people often wondered how these oligarchs got so rich. When communism fell in 1991, the government owned everything. This was when President Mikhail Gorbachev publicly resigned, but no successor existed. The Soviet Union ended that day, and the very next day, the Russian flag was flown over the Kremlin. Boris Yeltsin became the new President of Russia. Irina Virganskaya-Gorbacheva was the daughter of the first president, Mikhail Gorbachev. She was interviewed by Russia Beyond43 in 2011. She said: “After Papa resigned, the telephones in our house stopped ringing. They didn’t ring and didn’t ring… Some people cut us off. Including close friends. But you see how it works? New people appear, new friends. And the ones who remain are the ones who would never cut you off. It’s always like that: some cut you off, others remain… But no one ever cuts you off completely.”

How could the former communist transition to a free economy when the government owned everything? With funding from the Bush Administration and research from a Harvard University think tank, Yeltsin was advised to put the Russian economy in shock therapy. He removed all price and currency controls and lifted barriers on international trade. Yet property had to be privatized.

The privatization took shape whereby every Russian citizen was to be issued a voucher that could be exchanged for shares in any government business that was to be privatized. The idea was for workers to convert their vouchers for shares in the companies they worked for. In theory, everyone was to

benefit. The people did not understand free market capitalism, no less corporate share ownership. The oligarchs and foreign investors duped the people during the massive Great Russian Privatization Rush in search of guaranteed trades.

As the Boston Globe reported on September 22nd, 1992, Harvard advised Russia and American carpetbaggers flooded the place. The scheme provided that ideally, the state would keep one-third of the shares, the workers would get one-third through the voucher system, and the final third would be reserved for outside investment. However, people were not paid wages, so they typically exchanged their vouchers for cash, which was about one month’s wages at that time. In this manner, the assets of Russia were bought for nothing. This is what really attracted the Western carpetbaggers. They could not get in line fast enough to exploit the people who were ignorant of the real potential value. The privatization was decided by assigning a value to all state property of 150 billion rubles back in 1991. That was clearly

arbitrary and influenced by the fact that the population was 150 million. This conveniently meant that 10,000 rubles would be given to each individual, which became the face value of the voucher.

Two-thirds of this arbitrary valuation of 150-billion-ruble was excluded from the privatization completely. This left one-third that was then divided in two. Once again, one-half of this division was excluded. Therefore, one-third of the remaining half was property that was privatized during 1992-1994. Local property, such as municipal holdings, was auctioned for cash. Thus, the remaining portion of that small last division was subject to voucher privatization. This is where the split became 46%, which went to workers in that operation, 5% went to the management, 29% was sold at cash auctions, and the remaining 20% was retained in the state’s hands. Therefore, at the end of the privatization process, the state retained control with the largest shareholding. Consequently,

it created the image of privatization in this new world of capitalism, but the state was still in control. This was the demand of the hardline communists. The critical underlying problem was that wages were not being paid, and people needed food. The typical Russian individual sold their vouchers for cash to buy food. The people who emerged as oligarchs offered to buy the shares of the few workers who had converted their vouchers into shares instead of selling them. After seven years of economic Harvard-directed “reform” financed by billions from the U.S. and other Western governments, the plan utterly failed. They carried out subsidized loans and rescheduled debt to prevent default. They wanted to pretend their academic advice had not failed. The privatization that was said to hand the fruits of the free market to the people created a system of oligarch capitalism that many called a “kleptocracy” that never benefited the people.

As Russia Beyond wrote on June 22nd, 2022: “The ideological proponents of privatization promised that, over time, one voucher issued to the population would be equal in value to two Volga cars. In the end, some people managed to exchange their vouchers for Gazprom shares, while others just swapped them for a pair of jeans or some vodka.”

Indeed, the money pouring from the West fueled the corruption with pallets of US$100 bills shipped every week. All the idealistic benefits created a corrupt political oligarchy. It did manage to convert some communists into dishonest capitalists, but there remained a hardcore faction of communists who were opposed to Yeltsin with every breath they took and did want to resurrect the old USSR.

This was how the “New Russians” emerged that we know today as oligarchs. Yet the majority of Russian people found themselves worse off economically. So, when Vladimir Putin was selected in 1999, the people rejoiced, for he was neither an oligarch nor a communist. The oligarchs and Western financiers appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars of Western aid and plundered Russia’s wealth. Republic National Bank’s money plane in 1996 was flying in skids of US$100 bills, for Russia was dominated by American dollars funding all the corruption. Assassinations became commonplace, and they were being paid in cash with American dollars. Worse still, some oligarchs had a thirst for even more than just money. Their egos drove them to seek political power, for they had more money than they could possibly spend personally anyhow. When you are playing with billions, money suddenly transforms from cash to raw power. It is no longer a quest for material wealth; it is power that draws them in like flies on a dead corpse. The oligarchs made their fortunes by dubious means. They often cheated the workers by withholding wages unless they sold their privatization certificates to be exchangeable for shares. All was fair in the game of financial war. Bill Browder, Edmond Safra’s junior partner in Hermitage Capital Management, was the grandson of Earl Browder (1891-1973) the head of the American Communist Party during the 1930s and 1940s. Bill Browder’s grandfather, Earl Browder, traveled back and forth to Soviet Russia and was said to have even shaken hands with Lenin himself while using a fake passport to hide his travels. Bill Browder would justify relinquishing his American citizenship because he claimed

that his family was persecuted in America, but that would also have a tax benefit—no worldwide taxation. Earl Browder was born in 1891 in Wichita, Kansas, and was forced to leave school before the age of ten when his father went bankrupt. He became a self-taught individual, but his Marxist dreams turned him into a supporter of communism. The evil became capitalism, and the greed people had for material wealth had to be stopped.

Now a political radical in America, Earl Browder, traveled to the Soviet Union in 1921, a few years after the revolution. The

dream of communism filled his head. It was there in 1926 when he married Raisa Berkman, a lawyer from Leningrad. Their first two sons, Felix and Andrew, were born in Moscow. Felix later became Bill Browder’s father. When Earl left Moscow for America, he brought along a nanny, who stayed with the family for the rest of her life for about 40 years. It was alleged that she was a spy working for the KGB. Earl had returned with his family to America in 1932 when his third son was born in Yonkers, New York, in 1934. Then two years later, Earl ran for president in 1936, getting 80,000 votes as a communist. He ran again in 1940 and gathered only 50,000 votes. With the rise of the Nazis in Germany, the Soviets reached an agreement with the USSR during the summer of 1939. The communists in America were now linked not only to Russia but to the rise of Hitler. This created a profound image of communists in America as traitors.

Un-American Activities Committee in the House was chaired by Martin Dies (1900-1972). This was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives, created in 1938 and directed to investigate alleged disloyalty and subversive activities on the part of anyone with either fascist or communist ties. During the war, in early 1941, Earl Browder was sent to prison for using forged passports to travel undetected. His case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which upheld his conviction. Before testifying in front of the Dies Committee, Earl admitted that he obtained a false passport in 1934 and used it to travel back and forth to Russia. He apparently believed this was beyond the statute of limitations, but that was not supported by the courts.

It was that summer on June 22nd, 1941, when Hitler doublecrossed Stalin by breaking the non-aggression pact to keep Russia out of the war until he took Poland and France, which resulted in the tripartite arrangement of Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill to confront Hitler. Only then did Roosevelt commute Browder’s sentence as a goodwill gesture to Stalin. That in itself proved that Earl Browder was linked and important to Stalin politically. After the war, Browder got on the wrong side of the American Communist Party and was expelled after leading it for 14 years, and his brother William Browder was treasurer. Earl died in 1973, living with his son William in Princeton, New Jersey, located at 21 Maple Street. Bill Browder (born 1964) was nine years old when his grandfather died. For whatever reason, he had his eyes on Russia to return perhaps to the place his father was born, like the blacks who escaped to the North and turned to the South. Yet those that knew him viewed him as disliking Russian people.

Bill Browder maintains that his father, Felix, was not a communist but a hardcore leftist professor. Nevertheless, because of Felix’s dad Earl and uncle William, Felix was drafted into the Army, yet none of them were ever trusted based on family connections. Bill Browder says he does not have a mathematical mind, for he is “the dummy in the family.” He also claims he resigned his American citizenship because the family had been persecuted for being communists, but that coincided with launching investments in Russia that would then not be subject to American worldwide taxation. Nevertheless, besides being attracted to Russia to seek advantages and those “guaranteed trades,” Browder convinced Edmond Safra to be his partner. Edmond was very suspicious of people in general. Therefore, Browder had a great sales pitch— the Great Russian Privatization or giveaway. Thus, Hermitage Capital Management was formed in 1996 after Bill Browder was invited to the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos that year when the oligarchs created the Davos Pact. That was the guarantee that they would then control the politics of Russia as well, thereby securing the guaranteed trade by controlling the media. Bill Browder attended Davos with Marc Holzman, who was vice chairman of Barclays Capital, vice chairman of ABN Amro Bank, and a senior adviser to Salomon Brothers. Holzman worked in Eastern Europe and Russia since the fall of Communism in 1989. Holtzman began serving as Executive Director of Citizens for America, former U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s national issues advocacy group. In 1989, President Reagan also nominated Holtzman to the Peace Corps National Advisory Council. That appears to have been the

Browder connection to American politics. apparently knew Ronald Reagan as a teenager.

Holtzman

Marc Holtzman was friends with Vaclav Klaus (born 1941: President 2003–2013), who became president of the Czech Republic. He told the Denver Post “he hung out with Boris Yeltsin’s top advisers.”44 Boris Yeltsin’s top advisers were Berezovsky and Gusinsky. His tennis buddy was then-Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski (born 1954), who was in power from 1995 until 2005.

Holtzman tried to run for governor of Colorado in 2006. However, the Colorado Supreme Court refused to hear his arguments that he should be allowed onto the primary ballot despite failing to get the required signatures in two districts. That ended his long, and very strange campaign for the

governor of Colorado in 2006. Holtzman may have also opened the door for Browder into the inner circle of Senator John McCain. Between 1996 and 2007, Bill Browder focused on taking advantage of the privatization of Russian state-owned companies. During those years, Hermitage was the largest foreign investment fund operating in Russia with assets of over $4 billion dollars. As a result, Browder became extremely wealthy. Browder admits in Red Notice that he lost 25% in January 1998 on the back of the Asia Crisis and concedes that Safra, a born trader, questioned him.45 Browder was clearly not a trader. He admitted that Edmond was correct and he was “dead wrong,” for during the May 1998 stock crash, he was already down 50% for the year. In his book, he told Edmond to hold out for the IMF bailout. Then in August 1998, Russia defaulted, and the ruble was in free fall. He states that his fund was down $900 million—a 90% loss.46 Browder was simply an investor, not a trader. He was looking for the “guaranteed trade,” and when you look for that, you abandon all risk management.

At the end of March 1999, I was solicited by Edmond’s bank to invest $10 billion in Hermitage Capital Management. I was offered a AA letter of guarantee from Edmond’s holding company. I was told it was supposed to be a “guaranteed trade” that I rejected. I warned them that my computer did not agree with their view of Russia. Curiously, Bill Browder mentions the death of Edmond Safra on December 3rd, 1999, in his book, Red Notice, just in passing. He merely claims that he received a call after Safra’s death from his right-hand man stating that his nurse, Ted Maher, faked a break-in and started a fire to elevate himself as a hero to Safra, who died in the blaze. Browder merely comments that “[t]his felt like the last straw.” After Edmond’s death, Browder apparently turned to the Ziff brothers who were billionaires from the Ziff Davis Publishing Inc, including PC Magazine. The Ziff brothers then invested with Browder in 2000 after the disaster of 1998. In this case, the “guaranteed trade” violated Russia’s laws. For you see, the privatization, as I stated, was one-third each of the shares of government-owned companies that were to

then be allocated for (1) the government, (2) the Russian people, and (3) foreign investors. However, the foreign investors could buy shares only in London as ADRs (American Deposit Receipts). ADRs traded at a premium to the local shares on Russian exchanges by many multiples. A foreigner was prohibited from buying shares on the Russian market, for they could not be registered to a foreigner. To avoid that legal hurdle, the accounting and legal firm Firestone Duncan registered 30 Russian shell companies to hide Browder’s purchases. Hermitage would then lend money to these shell companies, and the domestic shell company would, in turn, lend that cash to another that would buy Gazprom shares. This was clever money laundering whereby a Russian company bought the shares after borrowing from another Russian shell company that took the loan from Hermitage Capital Management.

So, why buy local shares intended for the Russian people rather than the ADRs in London if they rise and fall generally on the same percentage basis? Was it to get more shares, just cheaper? Not quite. For you see, then enters the claim of being a white knight. This claim of championing corporate governance and to clean up corruption had to deal with Gazprom. Gazprom was trading at about $3 per barrel of oil reserves whereas British Petroleum (BP) traded at $20 per barrel. So, if Browder could push the company to list directly on Western exchanges with Western accounting standards, he was looking at a vast profit. This would mean that the discounted local shares would suddenly be worth many multiples of the purchase—hence the “guaranteed trade” to get investors in on the exploitation of Russia.

Perhaps now, you can see that the white knight story does not exactly play out to be just magnanimous. There was no way someone like Edmond Safra was interested in cleaning up Russian corporate governance. There had to be a huge profit involved. Lucy Komisar, an investigative journalist, interviewed the founder of Browder‘s accounting firm, Firestone Duncan. He admitted that his firm helped Browder circumvent the laws to buy Gazprom in Russia. Konstantin Ponomarev told Lucy that in 1996: “The firm developed for him a strategy of how to buy Gazprom shares in the local market, which was restricted for foreign investors.”47

Therefore, Gazprom’s charter and a 1997 presidential decree banned direct purchases by foreigners, including foreign companies and any investment funds. The government saw

the company as strategic. This was to benefit the Russian people. Foreigners could buy those shares only through ADRs in London. Obviously, the entire structure of using shell companies to buy local shares was outright circumventing the privatization laws. On top of that, they hired fake disabled “stock analysts” to reduce the taxes significantly. We will explore this ploy in further depth. Fascinatingly, Bill Browder initially supported Putin because he was not a communist and vowed there would be no drastic alteration to the free market. So, this clearly meant that a Russian company would be able to list on a Western exchange, and its value would rise at least tenfold. The scheme was not to expose corporate corruption in Russia but to force companies to be listed in the West, to take a 747 loaded with cash all offshore and tax-free. Browder decided to acquire shares of Russian companies, in violation of Russian law, for Hermitage Capital Management. To implement this scheme, Firestone Duncan provided the means. Magnitsky and others helped to develop an illegal scheme to purchase shares of large Russian companies locally. One of the shell companies was Saturn Investments Limited (“Saturn”). Sergei Magnitsky was named general director of one of these companies, Saturn (as Magnitsky later admitted). Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky (1972-2009) was an accountant and tax advisor who headed the tax practice at Firestone Duncan, assisting the firm’s clients to minimize tax liability. He was not Browder’s lawyer.

These Russian shell companies of Hermitage were registered at the same address—301 Lenins str., Elista, Republic of Kalmykia. However, they were actually managed by Hermitage and Firestone Duncan from their offices in Moscow. It was alleged that between 1999 and 2004, Hermitage had unlawfully acquired at least 131,574,722 shares of Gazprom.

The companies were set up in the Republic of Kalmykia, a Buddhist region about 1,400 km from Moscow. To promote the hiring of disabled people, Kalmykia was giving large tax discounts to companies that had over 50% of their employees disabled. They also had an additional tax benefit if you invested in the local region. None of Hermitage’s shell companies hired disabled people. There were no investments made by Hermitage in the Kalmykia region, just trading in shares back in Moscow. The tax benefit was allegedly a sham. In the trial of Browder in absentia and Magnitsky posthumously, it was held that Magnitsky was by no means a whistleblower but was part of the alleged employee tax fraud. The scheme alleged by prosecutors, as reported by the Moscow Times48, asserted that it allowed Hermitage Capital to pay a tax of 5.5% on its profits instead of 35% using the tax cuts designated for disabled workers. It was Sergei Magnitsky who recruited disabled persons and claimed they were “financial analysts” with no such qualification. One of the men, Alexei Bukayev, confessed during the investigation that he was paid to do nothing. Yulia Chumakova, a co-worker of Sergei Magnitsky at Firestone Duncan, admitted that Magnitsky directed her to handle the health certificates provided by the disabled employees. These were used to reduce the taxes owed by Browder’s companies. The government alleged that Browder’s employee tax fraud, assisted by Magnitsky at Firestone Duncan, amounted to 2.9 billion rubles. Moreover, the companies set up in the Republic of Kalmykia also did not meet the criteria since they did not conduct business in that territory. It was further alleged that the documents were forged containing false signatures of the Minister of Economy of the Republic of Kalmykia. Nothing was

real! Sergei Magnitsky allegedly designed this scheme to benefit Browder, which was 522 million rubles for the year 2001. It was also alleged that Browder had left Russia and avoided questioning, which was why his visa was canceled. In 2013 and 2017, Browder was sentenced to two nine-year prison sentences for employee tax fraud. A third case involving another 5.4 billion rubles ($230 million) remains open. Browder alleged his companies were stolen. Browder has been oddly protected by the West initiated by John McCain who handed the Steele Dossier to James Comey at the FBI. Curiously, it was Comey who had kept me in civil contempt and denied any trial indefinitely to prevent my case from exposing all the Russian connections that included Berezovsky, Safra, and his Republic National Bank.

The entire characterization of being an activist in corporate Russia was a clever promotional pitch—the white knight. It was a brilliant strategy to gain press. Hermitage was buying local shares intended for Russians and then pushing companies to adopt Western accounting standards. The goal was to have those shares listed formally on Western exchanges. That would most likely bring a 10-fold increase in profit, which would not have been the case for the ADRs. This was by no means a magnanimous activist endeavor. It was a whitewashed scheme to profit from Russia just as the oligarchs and the carpetbaggers did during the American Civil War.

Bloomberg reported on March 26th, 201349 that HSBC Holdings Plc closed Hermitage Capital Management Ltd. because Bill Browder was being sued for libel in London and tried in absentia for tax evasion in Moscow. They quoted Eric Kraus, a fixed-income manager at Rolnes Ltd. in Moscow at the time, who said: “HSBC has decided to jettison him because Browder is considered radioactive in Russia.”

The libel suit, Karpov v. Browder, [2013] EWHC 3071 (QB), was about the entire narrative Browder released about Magnitsky’s death. HSBC had frozen the fund in August 2012 to assess how much money to set aside for Hermitage’s legal battles because of Browder’s claims. Former Russian Ministry of Interior investigator Pavel Karpov had filed a libel suit against Browder and Hermitage Capital in the U.K. over allegations that Karpov was involved in Magnitsky’s death and that he stole the corporate seals to pull off the $230 million tax refund fraud. If he did that, then why try to sue Browder for libel? You would have expected that he was living well on some taxfree island.

Remarkably, the judge seemed to side with Karpov against Browder on the question of whether the defendants could justify their supposedly defamatory statements: “[T]he Claimant has achieved a measure of vindication as a result of the views I have expressed on his application. The Defendants are not in a position to justify the allegations that he caused, or was party to, the torture and death of Sergei Magnitsky, or would continue to commit, or be party to, covering up crimes.”

The judge, however, weighed all the factors and held that the claim should be stricken as an abuse of process. The venue was Russia, not England. Nevertheless, the judge agreed that the claims of Browder were not founded.

43

Gazeta, Novaya. “A Daugther Remembers...” Russia Beyond, April 5, 2011. https://www.rbth.com/articles/2011/04/05/a_daugther_remembers_12340. 44

The Denver Post. “Profile | Marc Holtzman,” June https://www.denverpost.com/2006/06/03/profile-marc-holtzman/.

3,

2006.

45

Browder, Bill. Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice. Reprint. Simon & Schuster, 2015. P. 31. 46

Red Notice. 136.

47

Komisar, Lucy. “On Fault Lines: How Ziff Brothers Participated in Browder‘s Illegal Russian Gazprom Buys & Tax Evasion.” The Komisar Scoop, December 21, 2019. https://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2019/12/on-fault-lines-how-ziff-brothersparticipated-in-browders-illegal-russian-gazprom-buys-tax-evasion/. 48

Kravtsova, Yekaterina. “Witnesses in Magnitsky Trial Questioned Over Illegal Tax Breaks.” The Moscow Times, January 18, 2023. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2013/04/21/witnesses-in-magnitsky-trialquestioned-over-illegal-tax-breaks-a23450. 49

“Bloomberg - Are You a Robot?,” n.d. https://www.bloomberg.com/tosv2.html? vid=&uuid=c249e6a4-975c-11ed-8986-

687271645249&url=L25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZXMvMjAxMy0wMy0yNi9oc2JjLXNodXR0ZXJzL Whlcm1pdGFnZS1mdW5kLWFzLXJ1c3NpYS1jaGFzZXMtYnJvd2Rlci1pbi1jb3VydHM=.

The Rise of Putin

T

he declassified documents of the Clinton Administration give us a new perspective of history. There was a battle in the Kremlin to seize the throne of

Russia, hence the reason Yeltsin turned to Putin. Yeltsin had no choice as he was confronted on two sides. Yeltsin’s phone call to then-President Bill Clinton on September 8th, 1999, made it abundantly clear, for Yeltsin stated: “It took me a lot of time to think who might be the next Russian president in the year 2000…I explored his bio, his interests, his acquaintances, and so on and so forth.”

Yeltsin turned to Putin because he was not linked to Berezovsky and the oligarchs, nor the communists. Berezovsky was blackmailing Yeltsin on one side, and the communists were moving to impeach him on the other. Russia would either be sold to the West under Berezovsky and oligarchs, or returned to the days of the Soviet Union under the communists. It became a battle for the very soul of Russia itself. During that very same conversation of September 8th, 1999, Yeltsin brought up the Bank of New York money laundering scandal and tells Clinton he was sending a team to New York headed by the Minister of Interior. Yeltsin was also sending the FSB, Russia’s equivalent of the CIA, to investigate the affair. He knew this was instigated by Berezovsky and Edmond Safra. Yeltsin also explained to Bill Clinton that this was a political issue because of the upcoming 2000 election in Russia. Moreover, the declassified documents further illustrated the turmoil internally within the Yeltsin Administration:

What is also very clear is that Berezovsky engaged in a covert plot to assassinate the character of Vladimir Putin, for he now would occupy the position of power that Berezovsky had been maneuvering all this time. Everyone was expendable to Berezovsky. That included Alexander Litvinenko, who could have resulted in Berezovsky being thrown out of Britain. In 1975, Putin joined the KGB under the Soviet Union. In May 1990, Putin took the position as an advisor on international affairs to the mayor of Leningrad. Then on June 28th, 1991, after resigning from the KGB, Putin became head of the Committee for External Relations of the mayor’s office. He was then in charge of promoting international relations and foreign investments. Then in March 1994, Putin was appointed as the first deputy chairman of the government of Saint Petersburg. By May 1995, Putin had organized the Saint Petersburg branch of the pro-government, Our Home – Russia, which was a rising political liberal party founded by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. The following year, he managed the legislative election campaign of that party until June 1997. None of this even hinted at him working as a KGB agent.

This is what brought Putin into the political arena. In June 1996, Putin worked on the re-election campaign in Saint Petersburg. When his candidate lost, Putin resigned from the city administration and moved to Moscow. He was then appointed as deputy chief of the Presidential Property Management Department where he was responsible for the foreign property of the state and remained in that position until March 1997. Clinton and Yeltsin met in Finland on March 20th, 1997, where the concern was NATO expansion. Upon return from that summit, on March 26th, 1997, Yeltsin appointed Putin as deputy chief of the presidential staff, where he remained until May 1998. It was a clear sign that Yeltsin turned to Putin, for he was not a communist or compromised by the privatization with bribes from the oligarchs. A little more than a year later, on July 25th, 1998, Yeltsin appointed Putin director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) for two reasons. First, Galina Starovitova was concerned

about potential coups from the heads of the FSB. Secondly, because of the coup against Gorbachev from the KGB, he, too, installed Putin rather than selecting someone rising through the ranks. This was in response to the IMF-backed emergency aid for Russia on July 20th. The IMF had approved a $17 billion rescue plan but trimmed the first payment because of Russia’s reform delays. Putin was moved to the FSB to ensure reforms would take place to satisfy the IMF.

Some argued that Yeltsin’s appointment of Putin to the head of the FSB was illegal because someone of the rank of general should only fill such a position, whereas Putin was only a lieutenant colonel. In truth, that may have been the precedent, but the Russian law governing the FSB makes no mention of rank, and only states that the president shall appoint the head. Yeltsin appointed Putin to the FSB because he was not tainted, and there was concern about corruption or a coup instigated by perhaps Primakov. Then there was the entire issue of foreign money pouring into the Russian market and meeting the IMF reform demands. The Russian Financial Crisis

hit on August 17th, 1998, just two weeks after Yeltsin appointed Putin to run the FSB. Indeed, Berezovsky appears to have been very concerned that Putin was appointed to run the FSB to replace Nikolay Kovalyov (1949–2019), who headed the agency from June 1996 until Putin’s appointment on July 25th, 1998. Kovalyov appears to have warned Putin about Berezovsky and his schemes, and then he left for the 1999 election for deputy to the State Duma of the Russian Federation. Yeltsin signed the austerity measures on July 31st, 1998, approving actions adopted by the Duma to bolster the failing economy. Russia’s foreign debt negotiator persuaded international bankers to have faith in the efforts by Russia to shore up its weak economy.

When Berezovsky blackmailed Yeltsin in July 1999, he had no choice but to turn to Vladimir Putin on August 9th, 1999. After Bill Clinton met Putin face to face, in a conversation on November 19th, 1999, he admitted that Putin “is very smart.” Yeltsin responded: “He will continue the Yeltsin line on democracy and economics and widen Russia’s contacts. He has the energy and the brains to succeed.” Yeltsin added that Putin is “a democrat, and he knows the West.’”

The propaganda line that Putin was KGB was just not supported. He was a junior staff member and never rose high in the ranks of the KGB. His employment documents revealed that he was a reliable staff member but was never a high-flier or a major leader in the KGB. It was simply a job, he was no James Bond. Unfortunately, that characterization has prevented many from understanding Putin and what motivates him.

The Berezovsky Connection

B

oris Berezovsky was a very devious, extraordinarily cunning man. Besides using assassinations as a tool both in business and politics, he shocked the world when he was caught using the most sophisticated covert surveillance on all the elites of Russia, which even enabled him to develop the blackmail plot against Yeltsin (Plan B).

Undeniably, Berezovsky had the most sophisticated equipment to tap into Yeltsin’s phone calls, and it appears even the West had no idea of his sources. That all exploded internationally in April 1998. Moscow police raided a security firm, Atoll, in July 1998 and stunned the world. They uncovered a spying operation on Moscow’s most powerful people, including the Yeltsin family. The police found an arsenal of bugging devices, scanners, and hidden cameras with a file labeled “Tanya,” Yeltsin’s daughter, and one marked “The Family,” being all of Yeltsin’s advisers. As the Guardian reported, this was a blow to the ”bedrock of Berezovsky’s power — his access to the Kremlin — was shaken.” As the Guardian wrote, the Russian thinker viewed that a novel on Russia could actually be the rise and fall of Berezovsky during the ‘90s.

It was even alleged that Berezovsky had Yeltsin’s bedroom bugged and was also spying on Yeltsin’s closest advisers. In addition, he had the FSB in his pocket with Alexander Litvinenko (1962-2006) on his payroll investigating Yeltsin and his family. The plot was well-defined, and the mastermind was Berezovsky. He had made more than $3 billion, but often people who long to be rich just see the money and do not comprehend what happens when you reach the $1 billion marker. When we get into that billionaire club, money ceases to be money; it becomes only a tool for power. Some use it to compel political change like George Soros or Bill Gates. In the case of Boris Berezovsky, he became obsessed with political power, and with every action he took, the end goal was to deliver him to the new throne of power in Russia under a democracy—the presidency. Yet some called Berezovsky Rasputin being the adviser to Yeltsin after 1996, and others called him the Godfather of the Kremlin. To understand Berezovsky, we must understand the difference between plain money to run out to buy the latest flashy new car or a huge flat-screen TV. We are talking about money far beyond that. This is more of the game of monopoly, buying assets for power. He was not seeking that position of president to displace Yeltsin simply for money. He envisioned Russia as merging into the West as Japan and Germany had been absorbed after World War II. On that level, Berezovsky was not trying to change human nature as Karl Marx, Bill Gates, or George Soros. He had no grand scheme to rule the world.

No one else is more responsible for the West’s hatred of Russia than Boris Berezovsky. Boris Berezovsky supposedly committed suicide on March 23rd, 2013. His security agent, Sergei Sokolov, disputed that claim and said he was killed by the British MI6, presumably because, Berezovsky wrote to Putin apologizing and asking to return to Russia. Some speculated that the MI6 assassinated Berezovsky for fear that he would return to Russia and flip the entire story, claiming Western intelligence agents pushed him to overthrow Yeltsin. Sokolov, Berezovsky’s former head of security, was arrested on an illegal arms possession charge in 2018, but was then questioned for his role in allegedly planning terrorist attacks on the apartment buildings that Berezovsky and Gusinsky tried to blame Putin.50 That was a false flag trying to overthrow Putin, as we will explore.

The International Business Times, on April 10th, 2013, reported that Litvinenko’s wife did not believe Russian billionaire Boris Berezovsky committed suicide. She expressed concerns about her safety at the forthcoming inquest about her husband’s death. Alexander Goldfarb (born 1947) allegedly influenced

her to think that the culprit was Putin. In Russia, Putin accused the British of covering up Berezovsky’s and Litvinenko’s deaths. Of course, the West laughed. In a stunning revelation, Berezovsky’s closest friend was Badri Patarkatsishvili (1955–2008), a business partner originally from Georgia. Badri made a statement to police following Litvinenko’s death. He revealed how closely he and Berezovsky had co-operated on media matters and the extent of their support for both the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine the following year. Berezovsky was living up to the nickname “Godfather of the Kremlin.” Officials also said that Berezovsky had legally changed his name to Platon Elenin in 2003 and would be identified by that name at the inquest.

The Kremlin kept an eye on Berezovsky’s dramatic fall. Nikolay Kovalyov and Yeltsin had both warned Putin about Berezovsky. If Putin had actually assassinated anyone, it would have been Berezovsky and Gusinsky. It was clear that Putin had understood that Berezovsky was constantly feeding the Western press stories to blame him for everything, always claiming he was ex-KGB when he had resigned following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Putin never rose above the rank of lieutenant colonel in the KGB and just followed orders. Putin was said to be upset when Britain granted Berezovsky political asylum in 2003, turning down any request for extradition. Putin interpreted the U.K. court ruling as a personal snub from Tony Blair (born 1953; PM 1997-2007). The government’s failure to accommodate Moscow’s extradition request did create a rift in U.K.-Russian relations. Yet based on these declassified documents, it is very clear that Berezovsky was always plotting to overthrow Putin. The only reason Tony Blair would have for protecting Berezovsky would be due to the involvement of Western intelligence agencies, which have not been declassified.

Putin is in power because of the antics of Berezovsky and the New York bankers in the wake of the Bank of New York money laundering case and Berezovsky’s attempt to blackmail Yeltsin in July 1999. Berezovsky even told the Americans he brought Putin to power when that was nothing more than an attempt to maintain his image of importance as the Godfather of the Kremlin. Even when in exile in Britain, Berezovsky never stopped trying to overthrow Putin and seize Russia. He again tried Plan C in February 2006. Berezovsky did an interview on a Moscow radio station that he wanted to replace what he called Putin’s “anti-constitutional regime.” Indeed, back in April 2007, after Litvinenko’s death on November 23rd, 2006, Berezovsky was playing it up big. He went as far as to tell the press that Putin had to be removed by force. It certainly appeared that Berezovsky was using

Litvinenko’s death to boost his own asylum position in Britain and his never-ending thirst for the presidency of Russia.

Then on April 13th, 2007, the Guardian published51 an interview with Boris Berezovsky entitled “I am plotting a new Russian revolution.” Berezovsky said there was a “need to use force to change [the Russian] regime.” Berezovsky further elaborated: “It isn’t possible to change this regime through democratic means.” When Berezovsky was asked if he was effectively fomenting a revolution, he said yes! Subsequently, he was forced to issue a statement saying he did not advocate or support violence. Berezovsky’s interview prompted a fresh extradition request from Russia. Tony Blair had been supporting Berezovsky. Still, an investigation by the U.K. authorities was launched. On July 5th, 2007, when Gordon Brown (born 1951: PM 2007–2010) became prime minister, he too decided that no case should be brought against Berezovsky to protect British intelligence— MI6. The excuse was that he could prove that he had expressed support only for non-violent action. Nevertheless, Russia had charged Berezovsky with conspiring to seize power, which all the declassified documents confirm is true.

Berezovsky pushed the British authorities to the limit. Then Home Secretary Jack Straw (born 1946; HS 2007-2010), apparently came down on the whole Berezovsky asylum issue. In a letter made public in 2006, Straw warned Berezovsky that his asylum could be reviewed. He was very forthright and stated that he would act “against those who use the UK as a base from which to foment violent disorder or terrorism in other countries,” as reported on February 28th, 200652.

The Independent on March 18th, 2015,53 further reported that the Litvinenko inquiry also recorded a statement from Andrei Lugovoy, who said: “During our dinner at one of the Chinatown restaurants in London, Litvinenko... touched upon the resumed negotiations between Russia and the UK regarding Berezovsky’s extradition...”

This was in October 2006, the month before his poisoning. Was Litvinenko a risk to Berezovsky losing his asylum status? That was far more plausible than Putin ordering his assassination rather than Berezovsky. Litvinenko was a has-been by then. The death of Litvinenko and pointing the finger at Putin worked for the Western press. They always bought

Berezovsky’s claims and never once bothered to investigate independently. It turned the relationship between Russia and the U.S. back toward a new Cold War that became a deep freeze.

Berezovsky remained in Britain, and he used it as a base to further his quest to overturn Putin. However, in 2012, Berezovsky lost his high-profile claim against Roman Abramovich in a verdict that depleted his shrinking resources and damaged his credibility publicly. Berezovsky alleged that back in 1995, he had made a contract with Roman Abramovich where they agreed that they would share in half the profits each generated by Sibneft, a Russian oil company. Berezovsky then claimed that in 2001, he was forced to sell his stake in the company because of threats made by Abramovich when Vladimir Putin’s government came into power. Abramovich denied all allegations. Additionally, there was an absence of any credible evidence that an agreement had been made.

The judgment held that Berezovsky was not a credible witness. The court found that there had never been a certain agreement intended to be enforceable, and there were no threats. This called into question everything, including Berezovsky’s whole basis for asylum. Was everything he had been claiming about Putin a lie as well? The declassified documents suggest that Berezovsky schemed in a failed attempt to seize control and force Yeltsin to step down, thereby becoming president of Russia. Even his claims that he was the one who elevated Putin were a lie. He plotted against Putin simply as Plan C. Plan B had failed once Yeltsin realized Berezovsky and the group of oligarchs had set him up. Berezovsky was trying to sell Russia to the West. Yeltsin’s last words to Putin: “Take care of Russia.” This was Yeltsin’s reason to turn to Putin; the documents showed he stood in the middle between the oligarchs on one side and the communists on the other both after the presidency. In a very rare candid interview with Anne McElvoy of the Evening Standard, she remarked how Berezovsky showed up at her house and made all sorts of demands from scanning the house for bugs to throwing her cat outside. Anne explained how Berezovsky was manipulating the press. If he did not want to answer, his bodyguard would suddenly walk between her and his boss. Back in early 1999, Boris Berezovsky had called my office and wanted a meeting regarding our forecasts. This was following the Russian Financial Crisis of late 1998. However, it was also just after my refusal to invest $10 billion in Hermitage Capital Management with Safra and Browder.

All of my sources back then warned me about dealing with Berezovsky. There was the unspoken view behind the curtain that he used assassination as a tool both in business dealings as well as in politics. The recommendations I heard back then were as clear as a bell—stay far away from Berezovsky. Nonetheless, I knew he was at least friends with Safra. I cannot recall or be certain, but I believe he was also at the dinner Safra put on for the IMF in October 1998 at the National Art Gallery in Washington, DC.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press spokesman, said Berezovsky had written to Putin two months before his death. Berezovsky allegedly begged to come back to the motherland and apologized for “previous mistakes.” Obviously, if Berezovsky

had really been in fear for his life, he would not write to Putin to ask if he could return. Indeed, if Putin truly wanted to assassinate Berezovsky, he would have said, “Yes, come home!” However, that never happened, which calls into question the whole story of his life being threatened from the outset to get asylum. That entire TV stage claiming the FSB had instructed Alexander V. Litvinenko to assassinate Berezovsky was a political ploy. If Putin were really that dangerous, they would have kept their mouth shut and hopped on the next plane. Staging a TV press conference was not something one would do in the middle of exposing the FSB to assassinate Berezovsky. Berezovsky had fiercely criticized Putin for the previous 13 years but then asked to come home—why? Investigators in Russia had opened dozens of criminal cases against Berezovsky, so he was trying to buy a pardon in return for information. Would that have been the full story of Plans A and B? Berezovsky’s asylum was simply to escape criminal prosecution and was not politically motivated. A year before his death on the eve of Putin’s re-election, Berezovsky wrote an open letter to the Russian people, asking for their forgiveness for helping the “greedy tyrant” gain power. Sergei Markov, a former State Duma deputy with United Russia, told the Moscow Times that the problem might have been that Berezovsky never openly extended any respect to Putin himself or received Putin’s respect in return.

Yeltsin’s personal bodyguard was Alexander Korzhakov (born 1950). Alexander made it very clear about Berezovsky. He explained that Berezovsky had urged him to kill Vladimir Gusinsky, another powerful oligarch who controlled a rival television station, NTV. Korzhakov stated that he refused. Gusinsky was Berezovsky’s main competitor for both media power to control public opinion and in this Russian Game of Thrones. Nevertheless, assassination was always Berezovsky’s tool of choice. He used it quite frequently and strategically for his own benefit in business and to blame his political opponents for murder. Berezovsky was obsessed with becoming the head of Russia. In that respect, that was one thing he had in common with Hillary Clinton, who wanted to be the first woman president also at all costs. He succeeded in his propaganda to assassinate people and blame Putin. Even MI5, MI6, and GCHQ all claimed that Putin had him assassinated at first. They claimed this was a direct policy of the Russian state to kill off dissidents. However, when his begging letters became public, they had to claim it was suicide.

The Independent - London, England – March 25th, 2013

Indeed, granting asylum to Berezovsky poisoned U.K.-Russia relations. As Mary Dejevsky wrote of Berezovsky in the Independent concluding on March 25th, 2013: “In a decade, he

did almost as much damage as the Cold-War HGB ever managed.”

Lugovoy’s relayed statement made by Litvinenko that negotiations concerning Berezovsky’s extradition had “resumed … between Russia and the U.K.” may have hinted that there were darker considerations behind the curtain involving the relations between the West and Russia. What is known is that Putin submitted another extradition request soon thereafter Berezovsky’s Moscow interview. The Brits denied that request yet warned Berezovsky he could lose his asylum status. For about 13 years, Berezovsky strived with every fiber of his being to overthrow Putin and seize the presidency of Russia in this version of Game of Thrones. Berezovsky’s incentive to orchestrate Litvinenko’s death was that he could use this to boost his asylum renewal. There were also rumors that he was planning to blackmail Berezovsky. If there were any incentive to assassinate anyone from Putin’s perspective, it would have been Berezovsky who he was trying to extradite—not Litvinenko. Then, Goldfarb was at Litvinenko’s deathbed to get him to sign a statement that it was Putin who ordered his assassination benefited Berezovsky, not anyone else.

Berezovsky did, however, give Forbes’ Russian magazine his last interview. lya Zhegulev, a commentator with the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, met the 67-year-old oligarch in the restaurant of the Four Seasons hotel on Park Lane. Berezovsky told him that he had lived through “many disappointments” in London. He said: “I’ve lost the point… there is no point [or meaning] in my life. I don’t want to be involved in politics. I don’t know what to do. I’m 67 years old. And I don’t know what I should do from now on.”

He added that he wanted to return to Moscow: “I want nothing more than to return to Russia. Even when they opened a criminal case against me, I wanted to return to Russia… that was my main

miscalculation: that Russia is so dear to me that I cannot be an émigré.”

Unquestionably, soon after, losing the lawsuit against Abramovich and publicly being declared to be not a credible witness injured his self-image. That was just weeks before Berezovsky supposedly committed suicide. He had penned two personal letters to Vladimir Putin, pleading for “forgiveness” to be allowed back to his native Russia, which became known as his “begging letter.” When Berezovsky died, Goldfarb made a statement to the press, keeping up the propaganda that “Putin will personally rejoice at the news [of Berezovsky’s death].” Goldfarb continued, “He’s a vindictive little man. Politically, they [Russia’s ruling elite] will have to find someone else to be the bogeyman, and to play the role of Trotsky.” Clearly, Goldfarb was preaching the Soros/Berezovsky storyline.

So who really killed Berezovsky? If Putin honestly was interested in killing Berezovsky, he could have let him return home and imprisoned him. It made no sense to blame Putin. His own

bodyguard blamed MI6 British intelligence. Berezovsky was much more likely to be killed by the West’s intelligence out of concern that he would return to Russia and claim it was the CIA and MI6 that tried to take over Russia. He could have claimed they were behind the blackmail of Yeltsin in 1999. He was always a master of stories. There was obviously deep concern that Berezovsky may have been preparing to give Vladimir Putin evidence of a plot involving the West or other leading oligarchs to topple him in a coup. Perhaps he was going to spill his guts to Putin about the New York bankers and the attempted takeover of Russia so he could return home at last. It was far more likely that Berezovsky overstayed his welcome and was a major liability to the Western Secret Services, whereby he would allege it was their plan, not his, to overthrow the Kremlin. Now that we have the declassified documents from the Clinton Administration, we know the truth about the oligarchs’ plot to seize Russia. Berezovsky’s former long-time head of security, Sergei Sokolov, disputed the version of death provided by British police that the ex-billionaire took his own life at 67 in Berkshire, England, in March 2013. It was 13 years following the 2000 election in Russia. If Putin wanted him dead, he had plenty of time, given 13 years.

50

The Moscow Times. “Berezovsky’s Security Chief Arrested for Illegal Arms

Possession.” The Moscow Times, January 18, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2018/01/17/berezovskys-security-chiefarrested-for-illegal-arms-possession-a60205. 51

2023.

Harding, Luke, Matthew Taylor, Ian Cobain, and Matthew Taylor. “‘I Am Plotting

a New Russian Revolution.’” The Guardian, November https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/13/topstories3.russia.

26,

2017.

52

Al Jazeera. “UK Threatens to Expel Russian Tycoon.” News | Al Jazeera, February 28, 2006. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2006/2/28/uk-threatens-to-expelrussian-tycoon. 53

Dejevsky, Mary. “The Weird World of Boris Berezovsky: Alexander Litvinenko’s

Inquest.” The Independent, March 18, 2015. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-weird-world-of-borisberezovsky-alexander-litvinenko-s-inquest-has-provided-an-intriguing-insight-intothe-dead-tycoon-10117927.html.

Putin’s or Berezovsky’s Assassination List

P

utin’s alleged assassination list was published in 2017 by the Washington Post.54 The assassination list included 10 targeted people plus an additional person who had been supposedly assassinated. In that list, there was no mention of Edmond Safra or Vladimir Gusinsky. I found that very curious as well. It seemed to me that they were hiding the entire scheme to take over Russia that certainly would have made Berezovsky, Safra, and Gusinsky the main targets.

Yeltsin explained what took place to Putin and reminded him in his last words: “Take care of Russia.” When I read the article in the Washington Post, I suddenly saw how intensely the press was attempting a character assassination of Putin. That is the hallmark of political manipulation since the first thing they always do is attack the opponent’s character. This raised a red flag for me, as the press seemed to be turning assumptions into facts. A cursory investigation of this list of 10 people allegedly assassinated by Putin revealed this was wild speculation. The 10 people did not include Bill Browder, who likes to call himself Putin’s #1 enemy. Mikhail Khodorkovsky was in prison, but Putin pardoned him, yet he was supposed to be a threat to Putin, as he wanted to run against him for president.

The list omitted the people Putin actually had the incentive to assassinate. It also made no mention of the assassination of Paul Klebnikov in 2004. Then, there was Masha Gessen (born 1967), who was an opened critic of Putin and wrote the book, Man without a Face. The publisher fired her in 2012. Putin had invited her to the Kremlin and told her boss that she should be rehired. Instead of reconsidering her bias against Putin, she simply said he probably did not know about her book. Obviously, Putin did not have her killed for being a critic and writing a book about him.

The list that the Washington Post published was propaganda. It clearly lacked any investigation whatsoever. Once more, if we are to understand Putin, we cannot do that with speculation, biased opinion, and assumption simply because everyone else is bashing Putin. The truth never lies in peer pressure.

The list was as follows: 1.    Denis Voronenkov, 2017 2.    Boris Nemtsov, 2015 3.    Boris Berezovsky, 2013 4.    Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, 2009 5.    Sergei Magnitsky, 2009 6.    Natalia Estemirova, 2009 7.    Anna Politkovskaya, 2006 8.    Alexander Litvinenko, 2006 9.    Sergei Yushenkov, 2003 10.  Yuri Shchekochikhin, 2003 There were indeed a number of assassinations during Putin’s reign, but the Washington Post failed to offer valid motives for the aforementioned assassinations. The following list is a glimpse of those who died under mysterious circumstances or were simply murdered. We will explore the death of Sergei Magnitsky later in this book as his death created a ripple effect that has permanently altered international law.

Paul Klebnikov (1963 –July 9, 2004) The most famous assassination insofar as the press was concerned involved one of their own. Paul Klebnikov (1963– July 9th, 2004) was an editor of Forbes-Russia and also wrote the book on Berezovsky, The Godfather of the Kremlin. Paul was assassinated contract style, shot nine times from a semiautomatic pistol as he walked out of his Moscow office. He had exposed Berezovsky, which he did not take kindly to at the time. As soon as Paul was dead, Berezovsky commented that he was “a dishonest reporter.”55 As Forbes wrote on March 24th, 2013: “Klebnikov was (and remains) the only investigative reporter who exposed Berezovsky for what he truly was: a corrupt, dangerous thug, a chronic (now court-certified) liar, and – as Paul wrote in Forbes magazine and in a 2000 biography of Boris — the ‘Godfather of the Kremlin.’”

Klebnikov’s book on Berezovsky went into his business career and his meteoric rise to wealth. In just six years, he managed to seize control of Russia’s largest auto manufacturer, largest TV network, national airline, and one of the world’s biggest oil companies. Berezovsky’s only failure was not getting the presidency. When Moscow’s gangster families battled one another in the Great Mob War of 1993-1994, Berezovsky was in the thick of it.

He was badly burned by a car bomb; his driver was decapitated. He was said to have evened the score. Nevertheless, only one year later, Berezovsky emerged as the prime suspect in the assassination of the director of the TV network he acquired. Without that assassination, Berezovsky would not have controlled the media, his key to political power. Although plagued by scandal, he enjoyed President Yeltsin’s support, serving as the personal “financial advisor” to Yeltsin and his family for his support during the 1996 election. He used his media to get Yeltsin elected when he was at 10% in the polls. While Berezovsky and his Davos Pact organized the 1996 election of Yeltsin, that financing of Yeltsin’s re-election campaign was his ticket inside. The campaign was marred by fraud, embezzlement, and attempted murder. Berezovsky became the president’s most influential political advisor, playing a key role in forming governments and dismissing prime ministers. Having labored to privatize the economy, Berezovsky privatized the state.

Klebnikov’s book was based on hundreds of taped interviews with top businessmen and government officials, as well as on secret police reports, contractual documents, and surveillance tapes. Godfather of the Kremlin was both a gripping story and a unique historical document. However, it cost him his life. Paul Klebnikov walked out of his office late on a Friday in north-eastern Moscow when a car pulled up and fired many rounds at him. Klebnikov, a U.S. citizen of Russian origin, died in the elevator at the hospital. Two different caliber shells were found, suggesting two assassins had opened fire. Klebnikov was the first American reporter murdered in Russia.

Denis N. Voronenkov (1971–March 23, 2017) Denis N. Voronenkov (1971–2017) was a Russian politician who served in the Duma from 2011 to 2016. They indeed claimed he was killed under mysterious circumstances and naturally blamed Putin. The assailant also had wounded Voronenkov’s bodyguard, who fired back and was said to have wounded the gunman. However, if we look closer, Voronenkov had been a member of the Unity party from 2000 to 2003, which Putin supported. Yet he then switched 11 years later, joining the Communist Party from 2011 to 2016. He left the military and entered politics. He became a Deputy Mayor of Naryan-Mar and Deputy Governor of the Nenets Autonomous District. This was when Voronenkov suddenly joined the Communist Party and was elected to the State Duma in 2011. He lost the election in 2016, renounced his Russian citizenship, and emigrated to Ukraine with his wife. The rumor was that Denis Voronenkov was a Russian dissident who was gunned down in March 2017 because he was said to have been involved in corruption and fled Russia for that reason. Fraud charges were filed against him. The allegation was that he intended to testify against former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort (born 1949) in a treason trial in Ukraine. This could not be proven. Nonetheless, it was the talk surrounding his assassination. He may have been involved in selling fake information for Hillary Clinton’s Steele Dossier. Ukraine and Russia both blamed Putin, saying it was a

contract hit. Was he assassinated because he would expose the truth behind the Steele Dossier?

While Voronenkov became a vocal critic of Putin and Russian foreign policy toward Ukraine, so were many other people. That did not justify assassinating him when he was no major threat to Putin. However, Voronenkov also told Radio Free Europe that he was helping Ukrainian prosecutors prepare their case against Yanukovych for treason, claiming he allowed Russia’s annexation of Crimea after he fled Ukraine. He had enemies in every corner, especially inside Ukraine, over Crimea. Interestingly, Voronenkov had actually voted for Russia’s annexation of Crimea when he was in the Duma in 2014. When he went to Ukraine, he curiously switched sides and declared that the annexation of Crimea was suddenly illegal. He never addressed the fact that Khrushchev (1918-1964) had no authority to give Crimea to Ukraine when he came to power in 1954. Khrushchev did so because he grew up in the Donbas, which Ukraine now says it not Russian territory, yet it always was. So Khrushchev was the former head of Russia who was also Ukrainian? If so, then was Khrushchev, as a Ukrainian, also responsible for the Cuba Missile Crisis of 1962 and not Russia? Strange questions surface when you play with borders. We encounter even more yet to come. In 2017, there was an investigation into Voronenkov’s possible corruption. A private anti-corruption activist Russian lawyer, Alexei Navalny (born 1976), uncovered that Voronenkov possessed significantly more assets than his officially-declared income would allow. We will hear more about Navalny. When Voronenkov was shot dead in Kiev by a Ukrainian NeoNazi nationalist, Pavel Parshov, Ukrainian prosecutors tried to say it was a contract killing arranged by an FSB officer to shift the blame to Russia. Yet Pavlo Parshov was previously

suspected of being involved in a money-laundering case. He magically died in custody in an intensive care unit from wounds sustained at the scene. He was a far-right nationalist who hated Russians, fought in the War against the Donbas against Kiev, and had a long list of prior arrests for various crimes. Other than the vague claim that someone in the FSB wanted him dead, no evidence exists that his opposition to Crimea would have warranted his assassination on Putin’s orders.

Stanislav Markelov (1974-January 19, 2009) & Anastasia Baburova (1983-January 19, 2009) Stanislav Y. Markelov (1974–January 19th, 2009) was a Russian human rights lawyer. He represented a number of high-profile cases, which included those of left-wing political activists. He was murdered on January 19th, 2009, in Moscow. Some alleged that he was killed by the Russian FSB on orders of Putin, of course. His killer also mortally wounded Anastasia Baburina, a journalist for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta. The 25-year-old Anastasia, who had been walking alongside Markelov, died in the hospital several hours after the shooting.

Again, the attack was by a single gunman in broad daylight. Once more, the gun had a silencer, which was the hallmark of a contract hit. However, the fact that they hit the journalist walking with him, suggested it was not a professional hit. There were clearly nationalist Neo-Nazi youth groups who took their view of his defense of left-wing activists as a threat to their political beliefs. They attributed this to Putin despite there was clearly no incentive that made him a personal threat to Putin. Nobody ever looked to see if Anastasia was the target.

Natalia Estemirova (1958–July 15, 2009) Natalya K. Estemirova (1958–July 15th, 2009) was a Russian human rights activist. She was abducted by unknown persons on July 15th, 2009, around 8:30 A.M. from her home in Grozny, Chechnya. They alleged that she was working on “extremely sensitive” cases of human rights abuses in Chechnya by Russians. Two witnesses reported they saw her being pushed into a car shouting that she was being abducted.

Natalya was found dead in a forest with bullet wounds in her head and chest area. The allegations began with the BBC’s Moscow correspondent, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, who reported that she was involved in “very important and dangerous work.” He said that Natalya was investigating many cases of alleged kidnappings, torture, and extrajudicial killings. He reported that these were alleged to have been

carried out by Russian government troops or paramilitaries, so that had to be Putin. However, it may have been militias in Chechnya who were also acting in the same manner, and Yeltsin had previously warned Clinton that he was funding the terrorists in Chechnya. The BBC also reported that insofar as Putin was concerned, there was “no evidence of that has emerged so far, but that it was the government-sponsored militias that had most to fear from her work.”56 Those who supported Chechnya would always blame Putin and ignore the facts. Independent sources reported that the local militias had been far more active in such local killings than Russian government troops. There were internal disputes, and religion was certainly not a minor issue.

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev (born 1965) was outraged. Some believed the murder was a false flag by Chechens to put pressure on the Russian government as it occurred a day before Medvedev was set to visit Germany. Others proposed that Berezovsky paid for the hit to undermine Putin further. However, Medvedev believed that the timing of the crime, one day before his trip to Germany to meet with then Chancellor Angela Merkel, showed a motive to undermine those negotiations that indeed had the hallmark of Berezovsky. Merkel said she expressed her “outrage” over the killing in her talks with Medvedev “and made clear that everything must be done to solve this crime.” The press worldwide carried headlines that she was a critic of Putin, which was just too convenient. This was the standard manner that Berezovsky had also managed the international press, always whispering in their ear. They simply bought his claim that he was in exile only because Putin wanted to shut down the free press. As always, the press never looked at Berezovsky with investigative eyes except for Paul Klebnikov, which cost him his life. They had no idea of Berezovsky’s scheme to blackmail Yeltsin and seize power for himself. Neither were they aware of his plot to seize Russia and sell it to the Americans. The death of Natalya did not benefit Putin, but it certainly did benefit Berezovsky, who used assassination as a tool. Yet it also benefited the Chechen rebels funded by Americans.

Anna Politkovskaya (1958-October 7, 2006) Anna S. Politkovskaya (1958–October 7th, 2006) was a Russian human rights activist and journalist who reported on the Second Chechen War (1999–2005). Her book, A Russian Diary, was published posthumously. It covered extracts in particular

from her notebook. It was subtitled A Journalist’s Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin’s Russia, which gave her view covering the period from December 2003 to August 2005. She called this period the “death of Russian parliamentary democracy,” the Beslan school hostage crisis, and the “winter and summer of discontent” from January to August 2005.

She was murdered during the translation, so she did not complete the book. Once more, the press was whipped up into a frenzy by Berezovsky. Channel 4 in the U.K. boldly declared that her death “prepare[d] the way for the unmasking of the dark forces at the heart of Russia’s current being.” They even proposed that her book should be

dropped from the air over Russia. Yet it was written posthumously and may have been manipulated for political purposes. Berezovsky had controlled Aeroflot. Anna fell violently ill and lost consciousness after drinking tea given to her by an Aeroflot flight attendant. She had reportedly been poisoned, with some accusing the former Soviet secret police poison facility. Yet the pattern matched that of Berezovsky and not the FSB. However, she survived. Anna was eventually found dead in the lift in her apartment building in central Moscow on October 7th, 2006. She had been shot with a silencer twice in the chest, once in the shoulder, and once in the head at point-blank range. Of course, Berezovsky helped to spread the story worldwide. The only person to benefit from these types of assassinations was Berezovsky. They may have been a desperate attempt to undermine Putin in Berezovsky’s never-ending desire to seize control of Russia.

Sergei Yushenkov (1950-April 17, 2003) Sergei N. Yushenkov (1950–April 17, 2003) was an elected member of all Russian Parliaments from 1989 to 2003. He was also linked to opposing Berezovsky in yet another interesting curiosity. April 23rd, 2000, was the beginning of the political movement “Liberal Russia” that was formed to oppose Putin. The founding leaders were Boris Zolotukhin, Sergei Yushenkov, Viktor Pokhmelkin, Sergei Shokhin, and Galina Sartan.

In 2001, the Democratic Choice of Russia (DVR) party dissolved in connection with the creation of a new right-wing party, the Union of Right Forces (SPS). Some of the DVR members split and were funded and encouraged by Berezovsky to oppose the Union of Right Forces, where Vladimir Putin was running for the post of President of the Russian Federation.

In May 2001, State Duma deputies from the Democratic Choice of Russia Sergei Yushenkov and Vladimir Golovlyov refused to join the Union of Right Forces party, for they were in league with Berezovsky. They moved to create an opposition party on the basis of “Liberal Russia.” Then in December 2001, Viktor Pokhmelkin and Yuly Rybakov both left the Union of Right Forces to join Berezovsky’s new party. On December 22nd, 2001, a congress of the Liberal Russia movement was held in Moscow. At the congress, Boris Berezovsky was elected co-chairman of the movement. As things progressed, on October 4th, 2002, Yushenkov announced that Liberal Russia was refusing Boris Berezovsky’s

money. He then questioned if he would continue as cochairman of the party. Five days later, Boris Berezovsky was expelled from the Liberal Russia Party. Berezovsky did an interview with the editor-inchief of the newspaper Zavtra with Alexander Prokhanov. Berezovsky called for unification with the national-patriotic opposition. Once again, Berezovsky was always plotting for his personal gain—not for the benefit of Mother Russia. Berezovsky said they “had no right to expel me from the party, as well as to dismiss the co-chairman. I was elected co-chairman by the congress, not by the political council.” On December 7th, 2002, Berezovsky’s supporters demanded he be reinstated and for the removal of Yushenkov, Pokhmelkin, and Zolotukhin from their positions. Berezovsky’s partner Mikhail Kodanyov was elected as the new party chairman. The party’s former leaders were dismissed from their posts, but they declared this congress was illegal. Yushenkov said, “The congress of Berezovsky’s supporters has no prospects. They faced the Criminal Code: forgery, falsification and bribery.”

The political coup organized by Berezovsky, where he hoped to overthrow Putin with bribes and schemes, ended on December 16th, 2002, when the political council of Liberal Russia expelled all 18 heads of regional branches who participated in Berezovsky’s coup. This led to the split in the party forming two wings—Berezovsky vs. Yushenkov, Pokhmelkin, and Zolotukhin. Berezovsky resorted to his standard contract assassination tactic and pinned the blame on Putin. The party became drenched in contract killings of its leaders. On August 21st, 2002, one of the leaders of Liberal Russia, Vladimir Golovlev, was killed. Then on April 17th, 2003, party leader Sergei Yushenkov was killed. Yuly Rybakov did not join the new party, as he did not agree with Berezovsky and abandoned the party altogether. Sergei Yushenkov was shot dead near his house in Moscow on April 17th, 2003, just hours after finally obtaining the registrations needed for his Liberal Russia party to participate

in the December 2003 parliamentary elections in 55 regions. Berezovsky tried to spread the rumor that Yushenkov was murdered because he was a leader of an opposition party to Putin that openly challenged the power of the FSB. Yet again, Berezovsky, not Putin, had an incentive. Putin was ahead in the polls anyway. It was pointed out that Mikhail Kodanev was unknown in Russian politics until he was named by Boris Berezovsky, and was considered to be ostensibly his puppet. This entire political jockeying was again to undermine Vladimir Putin. Some began to believe that it was Boris Berezovsky who organized the murder of Sergei Yushenkov through his agent Mikhail Kodanev. On March 18th, 2004, the court found Mikhail Kodanev guilty of organizing the murder of Sergei Yushenkov. Aleksander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer whom Berezovsky was paying on the side, suggested that Sergei Yushenkov had been killed because he knew that FSB organized the Moscow theatre hostage crisis. Every assassination was always turned around to blame Putin.

Vladimir Golovlyov (1949-August 21, 2002) Vladimir Golovlyov (1949-August 21st, 2002), who also opposed Berezovsky, was assassinated on August 21st, 2002. The constant story pushed by Berezovsky was that Putin’s rise to power represented a successful coup d’état organized by the FSB, which was entirely false. Yet, Putin was not in the FSB until Yeltsin appointed him on July 25th, 1998; the following year, he became Yeltsin’s heir on August 9th, 1999. Putin was not in the FSB long enough to even get to know the names of everyone in the leadership, no less earn their loyalty; Litvinenko was loyal to Berezovsky.

Once more, Berezovsky tried to blame Putin. Golovlyov was walking his dog in a park on Wednesday, August 21st, 2002, when he was assassinated on the spot. He was the eighth member of parliament to be killed since 1994 at that time. The trail always seemed to be linked in one way or another back to Berezovsky. Golovlyov had been investigated for the alleged misappropriation of £6.5m of state money earmarked for social benefits and investment in the area he represented in the southern Ural region of Chelyabinsk. Others suggested that revenge was the motive for Golovlyov’s role as a possible state witness in corruption trials to prevent his future testimony. They called for unified crossparty support for the investigation into the killing. Berezovsky made the comment: “The criminal case against Golovlyov was started the day after he joined Liberal Russia. This [murder] is very simple: it is a message to the political classes of Russia that anyone who crosses the red flags of the existing powers will be killed.”

Even Boris Nemtsov, the Union of Rightwing Forces leader, told Russian media that he believed the contract killing was linked to the corruption inquiry and the fact that he became a state witness. Putin called a meeting on October 25th, 2002, demanding an investigation because he was a key witness, and rumors claimed he was going to be a witness against Berezovsky.

Governor Valentin Tsvetkov (1948-October 18, 2002) Then in mid-October 2002, the Serbian Governor Valentin Tsvetkov (1948-2002) of the gold-rich Russian region was assassinated. He was killed in the very same bold style. He was not a critic of Putin. The contract killer used a silencer, shot

three times, dropped the gun, and jumped into a waiting car. This took place in broad daylight in the shopping district. Putin insisted on cracking down on these gangland-style murders.

Police said the killer was waiting behind a billboard. He shot Tsvetkov in the head as he emerged from buildings near the Magadan regional headquarters in the capital. Police said the killer also tried to shoot Magadan’s vice governor, who

was with Tsvetkov, but missed. There were allegations that this too was connected to Berezovsky and gold that led back to the bankers in New York City for money laundering through Safra’s Republic National Bank. Others claimed that the motive was due to the distribution of fishing quotas in the region where organized criminal groups were trying to control the government, including the Magadan Oblast gold mines. Alexander Zakharov and Martin Babakekhyan fled Russia yet were arrested in July 2006 in Marbella, Spain. In 2011, a jury found Babakekhyan, Anisimov, Zakharov, and Akhunts guilty and sentenced them to 13.5 to 19 years in prison. The connection to gold and Berezovsky was never resolved.

Yuri Shchekochikhin (1950–July 3, 2003) Yuri P. Shchekochikhin (1950–July 3rd, 2003) was a Russian investigative journalist who became a liberal politician in the Russian Duma. Shchekochikhin wrote against the growing influence of organized crime and political corruption. His last book, Slaves of the KGB, was about those who were informants of the old KGB. Shchekochikhin became a journalist for the newspaper Novaya Gazeta (NG), and was investigating the apartment bombings that Berezovsky and Gusinsky had alleged were directed by the Russian secret services as a false flag.

He was also investigating the Three Whales corruption scandal, a Moscow furniture company that was avoiding import taxes. On August 13th, 2000, Russian customs inspectors seized 400 tons of furniture smuggled into Russia after falsifying the price and weight of the imported goods. On October 20th, 2000, Captain Pavel Zaitsev filed a criminal case against the group that sparked an Internal Affairs investigation on September 7th. The corruption was so overwhelming involving the FSB that when in Shanghai, President Vladimir Putin told journalists that he had asked Vladimir Loskutov, a prosecutor from Leningrad, to take on the case for the local authorities were all compromised. Shchekochikhin was also investigating a lead that may have connected the scandal with money laundering through the Bank of New York. That probably cost him his life, for that involved Berezovsky in league with Safra. Shchekochikhin died suddenly on July 3rd, 2003, from a mysterious illness some believed was poisoning, a few days before his scheduled departure to the United States. He was supposed to meet with FBI investigators linked to the Bank of New York case. Interestingly, his medical documents somehow vanished. The symptoms of his illness fit the same pattern of poisoning by radioactive materials. It took 16 days for him to die. The manner of his death was similar to the symptoms of Nikolai Khokhlov, Roman Tsepov, and Alexander Litvinenko. This once more implied a single source for all of these assassinations. Berezovsky tried to imply that these were all political assassinations directed by Putin. Yet, the common benefactor was always Berezovsky, who commonly engaged in assassinations, which was how he managed to get his TV station.

A tissue sample from Yuri’s corpse was sent to an independent foreign specialist. However, the result was inconclusive. This caused widespread speculation that the cause of his death was poisoning, and this came after the assassination of Sergei Yushenkov. The legal counsel and investigator of the commission, Mikhail Trepashkin, was arrested by Russian authorities. However, Sergei N. Yushenkov was clearly a threat to Berezovsky, not Putin. Here too, Shchekochikhin was investigating the connection of the apartment bombings with that of the Bank of New York, which Berezovsky used to blackmail Yeltsin. Had Shchekochikhin discovered the path that led to Berezovsky’s attempt to seize the presidency of Russia? Some blamed Putin and drew connections to Alexander Litvinenko and Roman Tsepov, Putin’s former bodyguard, as both men died of poisoning.

Roman I. Tsepov (1962–September 24, 2004)

Roman I. Tsepov (1962–September 24th, 2004) was a Russian businessman who worked with Vladimir Putin during his days at the Saint Petersburg City Administration. In 1992, Tsepov founded the security firm Baltik-Eskort, which became the largest private security firm in St. Petersburg. The firm provided protection to high-ranking Saint Petersburg officials. Tsepov apparently also provided security services to a number of criminal king-pins. It was in 1994 when Tsepov was arrested on charges of illegal storage of weapons and drugs. Many people assumed the real charge was demanding “protection” money. There had been at least five attempts to assassinate him by the end of 1993. He was charged again in 1998 with extortion. Tsepov fled Russia and went to the Czech Republic. The claim was that on September 11th, 2004, Tsepov visited colleagues at a local FSB office where he drank a cup of tea. There were unconfirmed rumors that he had information against Berezovsky. If he was at the FSB to offer info for dropping charges on him in return for Berezovsky, it was suggested that Litvinenko could have pulled strings for Berezovsky inside the FSB. He was poisoned and died on September 24th, 2004. The investigation failed to identify the poison. His symptoms were similar to Aleksander Litvinenko, who died two years later in 2006. Tsepov also co-produced Vladimir Bortko’s (born 1946) miniseries, My Honor (2004). The series won the highest television award in Russia as best film. Bortko supported Putin and was against the oligarchs. He was a member of the State Duma between 2011 and 2021 and a member of the Communist Party. But, again, this was a threat to Berezovsky, not Putin.

Alexander V. Litvinenko (1962–November 23, 2006) Alexander V. Litvinenko’s (1962-November 23, 2006) poisoning made worldwide news on November 1st, 2006. Litvinenko was a so-called spy allegedly assassinated by Putin’s order. Three

people had the hallmark of a 2006 plot of Berezovsky (assassinations) in his desperate attempt to overthrow Putin as Plan C. However, this also extended Berezovsky’s asylum, which was about to be terminated as he claimed Putin would assassinate him like those others. While the poisoning and death of Alexander Litvinenko made headlines worldwide, and everyone pointed the finger at Putin once more, something was just not right. Anatoly B. Chubais (born 1955) is a Russian politician and economist who was responsible for privatization in Russia. He was a key adviser to Boris Yeltsin’s administration during the early 1990s. Chubais was very popular for introducing a market economy and the principles of private ownership to Russia post-1991 and the fall of the Soviet Union. Chubais himself was seen as a potential future candidate for president, and as such, he was deeply hated by the hardline communists. Indeed, the declassified Clinton Administration documents reveal how the communists viewed Chubais and were still scheming to overthrow the Yeltsin government to restore the USSR.

It was Anatoly Chubais who put Litvinenko’s death in context by connecting the dots. He called what became the triple poisonings: “The deadly triangle - Politkovskaya, Litvinenko and Gaidar - would have been very desirable for some people who are seeking an unconstitutional and forceful change of power in Russia.”

All three poisonings would not have served as the pretext to overthrow Putin. Assassination was Berezovsky’s tool of choice for political change, often through poison. Curiously, a friend of Litvinenko living in Virginia, Yuri Shvets (born 1953), a former Soviet intelligence officer born in Ukraine, said he gave police the name of the person he believed was behind the mysterious poisoning of his friend. Shvets said he had been a friend of Litvinenko for four years and spoke with him on November 23rd, 2006, the very day he died of radiation poisoning. “I happen to believe I know who is behind the death of my friend Sasha and the reason for his murder,” said. Shvets. Sasha was Litvinenko’s Russian nickname. “This is firsthand information; this is not gossip. I gave them the firsthand information that I have,” he declared.

Shvets was interviewed by both the FBI and Scotland Yard. He declined to reveal the suspect’s name publicly, saying it might disrupt the investigation. He also would not hand the press the documents in question. However, the London Observer reported that Shvets had drafted a dossier of damaging intelligence data that Litvinenko planned to use to blackmail Russian spies and business executives. The London Observer quoted one of Litvinenko’s associates, an academic named Julia Svetlichnaja, who said that Litvinenko had told her that he planned to make tens of thousands of dollars from the scheme. She said:

“He told me he was going to blackmail or sell sensitive information about all kinds of powerful people, including oligarchs, corrupt officials and sources in the Kremlin, … He mentioned a figure of 10,000 [British] pounds that they would pay each time to stop him broadcasting these documents. … Litvinenko was short of money and was adamant that he could obtain any files he wanted.”

Svetlichnaja was a political science student at the University of Westminster. She said that she had interviewed Litvinenko for a book she was writing about Chechnya and received 100 e-mails from him. She then said he asked her to enter a business deal with him and “make money.” This was reported in the Guardian57 on December 2nd, 2006: “Litvinenko proved he had sources in the heart of the Russian security services by producing what he said was a 100-page confidential FSB report from 2005 and forwarding it to Svetlichnaja, a politics student at the University of Westminster.”

A business associate of Shvets also confirmed that the former KGB major wrote the dossier, saying it contained damaging material about the Kremlin and its relationship with Russia’s Yukos oil company. Yukos was once owned by Russian business tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who served nine years behind bars for tax evasion and fraud. The rumor that he was blackmailing Berezovsky suddenly had legs. There was nothing that pointed to Putin.

Former Yukos executive Leonid Nevzlin, who now lives in Israel, also had confirmed that Litvinenko had given him a

document about the oil firm and that it could have provided a motive for the ex-spy’s poisoning. He seemed to be desperate for money. Rumors were flying that Berezovsky had stopped paying him. The connections with MI6 and Berezovsky are very interesting, and the one person who would have benefited from this attempted coup was none other than Berezovsky once again. Litvinenko was a former Russian FSB operative and was on Berezovsky’s payroll. The Western press loved to blame the assassination on secret orders given by Putin as the story was circulated in the press by Berezovsky.

However, once more, the facts do not add up. Alexander Litvinenko teamed up with Yury Felshtinsky to publish an article in 2001 and then a book funded by thenexiled Boris Berezovsky, entitled Blowing Up Russia, published in English in 2007 after his death. It was naturally against Putin. While Berezovsky tried to pin the assassination of Litvinenko as a Putin hit for his book, in truth, his coauthor continued to write books against Putin, such as The Age of Assassins, where Felshtinsky points to Putin in particular and oligarchs, but curiously not Berezovsky. The Russia that Felshtinsky described was “brutal as it is ugly. Corruption has gone to a different level. Russia’s fabulous wealth has created a criminal class so rich, so powerful and so malevolent in their aspirations that the Western World in particular should be scared,” as one reviewer wrote. Putin did not assassinate him, and neither did Berezovsky. Yet he was a public critic of Putin. Berezovsky issued a three-volume edition of articles, interviews, statements, and letters, claiming he was in exile from Putin. The work portrays the political struggle between the past and the present in Russia, and this fictional reformist Boris Berezovsky facing the authoritarian Russian president Vladimir Putin. It was always to support his seizure of the Russian presidency.

Berezovsky also presented the exaggerated conflict between Alexander Litvinenko and the FSB (Russian Security Service) from 1998 to 2005 while Litvinenko was secretly on the payroll of Berezovsky. Even more curious is that the ghostwriter, or at least the editor, was none other than Yury Felshtinsky. What clearly appears to be a fabrication was that on the very day that Putin was appointed to the FSB, July 25th, 1998, Berezovsky claimed to have introduced Litvinenko to Vladimir Putin. Litvinenko thereafter claimed that Berezovsky said, “Go see Putin. Make yourself known. See what a great guy we have installed, with your help.” This is not supported by any of the declassified Clinton Administration documents. It is also unlikely that Putin would have had the time to meet Litvinenko on the very day he was appointed. Litvinenko claimed that Putin was not concerned about the corruption in the FSB. Litvinenko then told his wife, “I could see in [Putin’s] eyes that he hated me.” Litvinenko then asserted that Putin tried to stall his investigation to save his own reputation. This made no sense when Putin was against corruption, targeting the oligarchs. Moreover, while briefly

working at the FSB, Putin also would have known that Berezovsky was paying Litvinenko. After all, Putin was put there by Yeltsin to clean it up and to prevent any possible coup. In the phone call following his resignation on December 31, 1999, Yeltsin stated that selecting Putin was “for Russia, for the sake of Russia, for its future.”

Curiously,

from

the

very

outset,

an

article appeared, Lieutenant Colonel Putin Illegally Heads Up FSB. This propaganda was to paint Putin as evil when all the declassified documents reveal that it was Berezovsky who was trying to take over Russia. In Peter Baker’s book, Kremlin Rising, he reports that “Berezovsky tried to slip Putin money anyway, but Putin refused.” That was even contrary to Bill Browder’s false claim that Putin demanded 50% of the oligarch’s wealth, putting his own wealth at $200 billion.58 Clearly, Berezovsky had immediately begun an anti-Putin campaign because he knew Putin was there to clean up the FSB. He tried but could not buy off Putin. Berezovsky was the real threat to Russia and its future. This much I know from constantly being solicited to join the “Club” for vast riches waiting in Russia.

Litvinenko was dismissed from the FSB after holding a press conference that Berezovsky likely promoted. Putin commented: “I fired Litvinenko and disbanded his unit ...because FSB officers should not stage press conferences. This is not their job. And they should not make internal scandals public.”

Putin was well aware of the links between Litvinenko and Berezovsky. It was becoming clear that Berezovsky had been funding what amounted to treason. Then, in October 2000, Litvinenko and his family fled Russia and traveled to Turkey. This was 23 months after the staged TV conference to boost Berezovsky politically. It was there that Litvinenko applied for asylum at the United States embassy. However, his story of fleeing Putin was rejected, for there was no evidence of his allegations of fleeing suddenly for political reasons. The Americans knew this was all a scam orchestrated by Berezovsky. Consequently, Litvinenko’s U.S. asylum application was denied. Based on the Clinton declassified documents, the U.S. authorities knew of his connection with Berezovsky and his various schemes that had been unfolding. He was not a threat to Putin.

Alexander D. Goldfarb (born 1947), a Russian-American microbiologist who fled Russia in 1982, was also allegedly on the payroll of Berezovsky. Goldfarb, at the request of Berezovsky, went to Turkey to get Litvinenko and provide air tickets from Turkey to London. Goldfarb also worked for George Soros in the 1990s, and it was through Soros that Goldfarb became connected to Berezovsky. It was Goldfarb who organized Litvinenko’s escape. Again, Litvinenko asked for political asylum from the British upon arriving at the Heathrow Airport on November 1st, 2000. The British granted him political asylum on May 14th, 2001, with Berezovsky’s backing (e.g., bribes) paving the way. They claimed it was granted on humanitarian grounds since he had no intelligence to sell them. Again, it appeared that Berezovsky was pulling all the strings. While in London, Litvinenko joined his benefactor Berezovsky, and they then began campaigning against Putin’s government. They needed to maintain the appearance that Putin was evil to justify Berezovsky’s British asylum and avoid criminal prosecution for corruption if extradited back to Russia. Finally, in October 2006, Litvinenko was granted British citizenship. Two years after fleeing Russia, he was put on trial and sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for corruption in Russia. Litvinenko had been working for Berezovsky on the side when he was in charge of investigating him, calling into question the entire plot. Any charges filed on corruption in Russia were always ignored in the West despite the fact that the Clinton declassified documents proved that such charges were fully justified. The West needed Putin to be evil and was not interested in the truth.

Despite Litvinenko’s claims for political asylum, there was obviously no security concern for him that he was in any danger of assassination by Putin. He often traveled overseas with no security arrangements. The Associated Press reported on December 14th, 2012: “Shortly before his death, Litvinenko was due to travel to Spain with former KGB bodyguard Andrey Lugovoi to provide intelligence to Spainish authorities ... citing information from” his wife.

Litvinenko was an active member of the Russian community in London. His widow, Marina Litvinenko, admitted that he was a “registered and paid” agent recruited by MI6 to provide useful information about Russian organized crime. Litvinenko was clearly a mouthpiece for Berezovsky. He accused the Russian secret services of staging the Russian apartment bombings in 1999, which was a Berezovsky false flag to overthrow Putin. He pushed Berezovsky’s claim that it was this act of terrorism that brought Vladimir Putin to power. Yet this is not supported by the Clinton declassified

documents and took place following Yeltsin turning to Putin in the aftermath of being blackmailed. Putin was already extremely popular, for he was not a communist nor an oligarch. He did not need the apartment bombings to boost his position for the 2000 election. Others were pointing the finger at Berezovsky and Gusinsky, who were desperate to stop Putin from becoming president. Then there was the billboard campaign against Berezovsky launched in Moscow by Yeltsin in August 1999 because he attempted to blackmail Yeltsin in July 1999 with the Bank of New York scandal. The investigation into Alexander Litvinenko’s poisoning and death produced a 338-page report written by Judge Sir Robert Owen (born 1944). However, it appears politically motivated and quite a speculative political whitewash. The report hid any connection to any other issues whatsoever. It was clearly designed to blame Putin and cover up all the real problems. This raised questions that MI6 and the CIA were indeed involved in Berezovsky’s attempt to seize power in Russia, suggesting other documents remain hidden from view as top secret.

Dmitri V. Kovtun (born 1965), a Russian businessman yet a one-time ex-KGB agent pre-1991, was accused of murdering Alexander Litvinenko in London despite the fact that his 8year-old son shook Litvinenko’s hand when they left after the alleged poisoning. Kovtun was also hospitalized with radiation poisoning. Owen attributed that to being a sloppy

professional contract killer, pointing to Berezovsky.

while

ignoring

all

evidence

The second person named by Judge Owen was Andrey K. Lugovoy (born 1966), a Russian politician and deputy of the State Duma. He was also a businessman. He too was in the former KGB as a bodyguard pre-1991. Judge Owen also accused him of the murder of Litvinenko on secret orders from Putin that nobody could verify or produce. These two scapegoats were alleged to have followed secret orders given by Putin personally. Judge Owen allegedly just made up these stories. This appeared to be very speculative, for there were two other poisonings that did not involve them nor any meeting with a Russian. The other poisonings at that time were also in tea and handled by a server. Yet again, there is no motive on Putin’s part, and Litvinenko’s death was six years after he left Russia. This report appeared to be predetermined with its outcome to cover up the only benefactor—Berezovsky. He wanted to retain his asylum status, implying the West was part of his conspiracy to seize control of Russia. The British report by Judge Owen claimed that the pair poisoned Litvinenko, not through “personal animus” but “on behalf of others” as if they were hitmen. The report claimed that the pair knew they were carrying poison but didn’t know “what precisely the chemical they were handling was, or the nature of all of its properties.” Lugovoi traveled with his eightyear-old son and encouraged him to shake Litvinenko’s hand. What contract killer takes his eight-year-old son on a hit? The report claimed that the polonium, which was the poison, was “splashed around in hotel bedrooms.” Owen claimed

they were careless and had no idea what chemical they possessed. In interviews, both men had claimed they were victims of a setup. Lugovoi and Litvinenko had first met in the 1990s when they were both members of the oligarchs in Boris Berezovsky’s entourage. Nevertheless, the report insisted that Putin and his spy chief, Nikolai Patrushev, “probably approved” Litvinenko’s murder. It appeared to be largely driven by secret evidence heard in closed sessions, some of which they hint at in the report, but would never publish. The BBC wrote on November 13th, 2013, that it was “quite revealing of how far the senior judiciary will go to protect information which ministers say cannot be disclosed.” Indeed, Judge Owen “confirmed that the hearings would look at Russia’s involvement in the death,” according to the BBC. The BBC continued: “In a written ruling in May [2013], he [Owen] agreed that the government had to keep some information under wraps on grounds of national security including information relating to Russia and whether the British security and intelligence services could have prevented the death.”

The BBC further reported that Owen admitted, “Those hearings would exclude Mr Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, the public and the press.” This left her in the dark and subject to manipulation.

Owen eventually claimed that secret evidence was discussed in “closed hearings” over several days. The only people there were the judge, the home secretary’s legal team, and the counsel and solicitor to the inquiry. Several nameless witnesses

gave evidence. “There is a considerable quantity of closed documentary evidence in this case. I have also received a number of closed witness statements, some of which are lengthy,” wrote the inquisitor Robert Owen. The witnesses, one can only assume, were from MI6 and possibly other intelligence departments that could have included even the United States. Yet, no such conclusive evidence has ever been released. It was all a bit of just trust me. Judge Owen conceded that such evidence is not in itself proof. He noted that in the years since 2006, “the Russian state in general, and President Putin in particular,” have bestowed particular favor on Lugovoi, including giving him a medal for “services to the fatherland” while the inquiry was happening last year. Clearly, he observes, “the Russian state approves of Mr Litvinenko’s killing, or at least ... wishes to signal approval for it.” This all seems biased and very one-sided to mask the real events. For example, why would Putin target Alexander Litvinenko rather than a real enemy of Russia such as Berezovsky or Gusinsky? How about Bill Browder, who claims to be Putin’s #1 enemy?

Andrei Lugovoy called a press conference on June 1st, 2007, and alleged that he had evidence of MI6 involvement. He also accused Berezovsky of the murder for the rumor was that Alexander V. Litvinenko would come clean about Berezovsky’s plans. Based upon the Clinton declassified documents, it seems much more plausible that Litvinenko had

conflicts over money working for Berezovsky. After all, Litvinenko was granted citizenship in Britain, whereas Berezovsky was not. Therefore, he no longer needed to keep up the façade to retain a fake asylum.

What did emerge from Owen’s investigation was that it was a ploy to get Litvinenko to blame Putin on his deathbed. Alexander Goldfarb was the man visiting Litvinenko as he lay on his deathbed along with Litvinenko’s British lawyer. They drafted the deathbed statement that accused Putin of his murder. Was that the final straw of Berezovsky’s Plan C? Litvinenko was simply not a threat to Putin. He was just on the payroll of Berezovsky, as was Goldfarb. The famous picture of Litvinenko on his deathbed was promoted by Goldfarb as well. Andrey K. Lugovoy revealed that Judge Owen’s accused assassin was not even connected to Putin. He actually organized security, through his private company, for both Berezovsky’s Russian media empire and members of his family after he left. The records showed that Berezovsky invited Lugovoy to his 60th birthday party, held at Blenheim Palace, in January 2006, which is the seat of the Dukes of Marlborough and the only non-royal, non-episcopal country house in England to hold the title of palace. This evidence demonstrated that it was unlikely that Lugovoy would have taken secret orders from Putin rather than Berezovsky. Any suggestion that Berezovsky might have hired Lugovoy to kill Litvinenko was dismissed. The cover-up was directed by Western intelligence, given that the Clinton declassified documents exposed the scope of Berezovsky’s plan to seize control of Russia. Sources have suggested that Putin has retained power, not as a dictator, but to prevent oligarchs and communists from seizing power if he stepped down.

The Independent reported on March 19th, 2015:

“…Litvinenko and Berezovsky fell out in the summer before he died … According to some, the dispute stemmed from a reduction, or even the severing, of Litvinenko’s stipend … a recurrent theme of some testimony was that Litvinenko held a crucial secret: at least some of the death threats against Berezovsky, it was said, had been concocted for the sole purpose of obtaining UK asylum.”

As the Independent explained, there was concern that Litvinenko was perhaps blackmailing Berezovsky. That certainly could have provided an even greater incentive for ordering his assassination. Nevertheless, the intent of the report was simply to protect the West’s intelligence services at the expense of perpetuating Berezovsky’s propaganda about Putin. Russia had to remain the enemy, or NATO was irrelevant.

Litvinenko was not suddenly a threat to Putin. Moreover, Litvinenko had been traveling freely in Europe and was not afraid of being assassinated by Putin. His death benefited Berezovsky, not just in renewing his asylum. The fact that Berezovsky wrote a letter to Putin before he died asking to come home also demonstrated that he did not fear Putin. It was all a charade. Owen’s report omitted too much, and the secrecy involving MI6 along with any connection to Berezovsky was critical to maintaining NATO. Moreover, the secret sessions were obviously hiding Berezovsky’s attempt to take over Russia in league with Western intelligence agencies.

The Associated Press reported on December 1st, 2006, just after Litvinenko’s death on November 23rd, 2006, that the British called in the American FBI, despite the fact that there was no connection to the United States. Why? Once more, this reflected the plots revealed by the declassified documents concerning the seizure of Russia. This is why they waited more than 20 years to reveal such documents that I am reporting now. The Associated Press also reported that former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar (1956-2009) had been poisoned. Gaidar vomited and fainted during a conference in Ireland on November 24th, 2006, just 23 days after Litvinenko fell ill. He was the second attempted poisoning, for he had been the architect of the controversial shock therapy reforms administered in Russia in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Anatoly Chubais pointed out that Gaidar had been the acting prime minister during the second half of 1992. Was this, too, an obvious plot of Putin? Some questioned if Chubais would also cast doubt on Berezovsky and his false claim for asylum. Berezovsky was spreading the rumor that this was somehow attributed to Putin since these two plots so close together suggested a single source. Yet there was no connection. Putin was in the St. Petersburg administration.

Alexander Litvinenko accused Vladimir Putin of ordering the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya just two weeks before his own poisoning. Litvinenko claimed that Irina Hakamada (born 1955), a Russian economist, who had run against Putin for president in 2004, warned Politkovskaya about threats on her life from Putin. Litvinenko claimed he had warned Politkovskaya to escape from Russia immediately. Interestingly, to say the least, Hakamada denied any such involvement in passing any specific threats and said that she warned Politkovskaya only in general terms more than a year before. Again, this appeared to be fabricated by Berezovsky to paint Putin behind everything. Litvinenko was putting out the propaganda of his boss. It was Boris Berezovsky who had claimed that Boris Nemtsov, a former Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, was the one who received word from Hakamada that Putin made the threats. The entire Litvinenko affair and how he was on Berezovsky’s payroll even when he was in the FSB is shocking. No investigative journalist ever looked closely at these events. Nothing pans out right down to the TV appearance by Litvinenko claiming there was a plot to kill Berezovsky, who

was paying him on the side. The entire affair appears to have been part of Berezovsky’s manipulation to seize the Russian presidency.

RT reported that Chechnya’s acting President Ramzan

Kadyrov told the press that Boris Berezovsky was behind the deaths of the former Russian security officer Alexander Litvinenko and journalist Anna Politkovskaya. Boris Berezovsky filed a lawsuit in London for libel after being named on Russian state television as the man behind the murder of Litvinenko. He won in February 2010 and was awarded £150,000 in libel damages against both the TV channel RTR Planeta and Vladimir Terluk, the man who made the allegations that were broadcast on satellite television in the U.K. in April 2007. Was that court also rigged, as was Judge Owen’s inquisition? Alexander Litvinenko’s father told British investigators that he believed his son’s former boss, Boris Berezovsky, and one of his associates had killed his son. RT reported that on May 31st, 2012. The Western press was squarely in the hands of Berezovsky. Anyone who did not point the finger at Putin was considered a Putin supporter.

The widow of Alexander Litvinenko, Marina, joined Goldfarb in creating a book that blamed Putin, Death of a Dissident. Nicholas Blincoe, an English author of about six novels and a critic as well as a screenwriter, noted that this book was a memoir of Goldfarb, an employee of Boris Berezovsky. Blincoe points out the problem that “if everyone, including Goldfarb, is in Berezovsky’s pay, there are no disinterested accounts, only potential apologists for his world-view.” Blincoe further alleged that the fact that Berezovsky was the mastermind behind Putin’s rise to power is evidence that no KGB-sponsored coup d’état took place, contrary to what was claimed in the book. Also, Putin was never very senior in the

KGB and resigned in 1991. Berezovsky’s propaganda war against Putin knew no bounds.

self-serving

Alexander Perepilichnyy (1968-November 10, 2012) Alexander Perepilichnyy died in November 2012 amid claims his sorrel soup had been spiked with a deadly vegetable poison. He was poisoned with a heart-shaped leaf from a

plant found in the Amazon. At the time, he was helping Browder to search for this $230m tax fraud scheme. Thus, Browder blamed Putin. Since Browder is the one all over the global press asserting that he is Putin’s #1 enemy, why is he still alive?

Perepilichnyy’s girlfriend on the side, Elmira Medynska of Ukraine, said he was sick after they ate in a Parisian restaurant the night before he died. After arriving back home the next day on November 10th, 2012, he collapsed and died near his mansion in Weybridge, Surrey. Speaking after the verdict, Browder said, “The judge was working on a puzzle with only 20% of the pieces because of the Surrey Police incompetence in investigating.” Buzzfeed immediately reported claims that the multimillionaire businessman was likely assassinated on the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, his staff who discovered Mr. Perepilichnyy’s body in his high-security estate saw nothing suspicious about his death, and paramedics said it looked like a “textbook cardiac arrest.” Neither the medical examiner nor the immediate paramedics found any evidence other than natural causes. Perepilichnyy became involved in money management, currency trading, and many other questionable areas of the black market. Vladlen Stepanov, who was a low-wage earner on the books, gave him money to invest during the mid-

1990s. Stepanov claimed that Perepilichnyy was a financial wizard. As the story goes from Browder, it was in late December 2007 when his shell companies were used to pull off the biggest known tax refund fraud in Russian history totaling $230 million. It turned out that the applications went to Tax Office No. 25 and No. 28, which Olga Stepanova, the wife of Vladlen Stepanov, operated. The bulk of the refunds were approved within a single business day on Christmas Eve 2007. The money was quickly wired out of Russia, and it just so happened that nearly $6 million was routed through Moldova and Latvia before reaching a company registered in the British Virgin Islands in the name of Alexander Perepilichnyy. Then, Perepilichnyy used another one of his companies to send money back to Stepanov, and bought properties for him, including a pair of luxury condos on the Palm Jumeirah, a man-made island in Dubai. Perepilichnyy was one of the few people who knew where some of the money went. Alexander Perepilichnyy had fled Russia and relocated with his family to the U.K. after falling out with Vladlen Stepanov over money. Browder’s lawyers used Perepilichnyy’s information in a complaint to the attorney general of Switzerland, and the Swiss responded by freezing two accounts, which together contained at least $10 million. They later vacated everything since they lacked any proof. Some have speculated that the only person who benefited from Perepilichnyy’s death was Browder. If people in the government stole $230 million, then after a decade, YouTube postings, and many millions of dollars Browder has spent, even if he discovered the money, it belonged to the Russian government. If Browder and Magnitsky pulled off the tax fraud, then Perepilichnyy would have been a possible witness.

Boris Nemtsov (1959-February 27, 2015) Boris Nemtsov (1959-2015) was assassinated on the 27th of February 2015. He was involved with Bill Browder and Hermitage Capital Management, which was named in a 1999 RICO suit Avisma Titano Magnes v. Dart Management. That lawsuit alleged that Bank Menatep, owned by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, one of Berezovsky’s Seven oligarchs, had a controlling interest in titanium producer Avisma. They forced Avisma to sell its titanium below market price to offshore companies that they secretly controlled. They then sold the titanium at market prices, funneling the profits back to the defendants and Bank Menatep.

The suit was eventually dismissed, but everyone paid their own legal fees. Even Browder had to submit a declaration in this case, which included Hermitage Capital Management. Yet interestingly, Bank Menatep was involved in the Bank of New York scandal, sending money out of Russia to avoid taxes between 1996 and 1999. Curious how the same names always surface. Browder said that Nemtsov was his “indispensable ally” in pushing his Magnitsky Act, which indeed in itself created countless enemies by targeting private individuals in some sort of revenge scheme. There are plenty of people who have criticized Putin. If he had reason to assassinate anyone, it should have been Bill Browder and Vladimir Gusinsky. But they are still standing. Others believe that Nemtsov was killed because he was too close to the Seven oligarchs of Berezovsky. The attempt to inflict harm using the Magnitsky Act on private oligarchs and organized crime, which in Russia plays hardball, made no sense. Neither was the claim that Hermitage Capital Management was concerned about making companies ethical, as that was just propaganda. The true agenda was to put Russian companies on Western exchanges where their value would be 10 to 30 times that in Russia. It was never about ethics. Yet what was inconsistent here was that Boris Nemtsov had served as a deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin. He became one of the most prominent opponents of Putin who waged war on the oligarchs trying to seize Russia’s political power. It was Nemtsov who aided. He may have also become an opponent of Berezovsky since he was closer to Gusinsky.

Radio Free Europe reported on August 9th, 199759: “war of words between some members of the Russian government and the country’s financial and media tycoons has taken a new turn with President Boris Yeltsin’s criticism … of Security Council Deputy secretary Boris Berezovsky … having offended Chechen politicians. The two men have publicly alleged that top Chechen officials might have been involved in the recent wave of kidnapping of Russian journalists.”

Yeltsin lashed out because, as always, Berezovsky made the news public only one day after Yeltsin met the Chechen President Aslan Mashkhadov for talks about future relations between Moscow and Grozny trying to seek peace. Yeltsin’s remarks fueled speculation that Berezovsky may be politically sidelined and could even be ousted. That is when Nemtsov told the press that Berezovsky “is not a person in the right job” in the Security Council and hinted that the government might soon act to restrict the influence of that businessman-turned-politician.

Nonetheless, there may have been some involvement between the oligarchs and the looted Russian assets, including the gold reserves that had vanished under Yeltsin. Nemtsov became First Deputy Prime Minister of Russia (March 17th, 1997 – April 28th, 1998) under Anatoly Chubais. He then became Deputy Prime Minister of Russia (March 17th, 1997 – March 23rd, 1998) under Prime Minister Sergey Kirienko. Nemtsov was clearly there as part of the privatization of Russia that made the oligarchs fabulously rich. Even the Washington Post estimated the looted assets reached as high as $50 billion in hard currency alone, not including an estimated 200 tonnes of gold, silver, and platinum.60 The interesting connection here is that Nemtsov was in the government on the side of the oligarchs and became a Putin critic because he was targeting his friends or benefactors. Nemtsov had even curiously driven Vladimir Gusinsky, one of Berezovsky’s Seven, to the airport the day he fled Russia.

If Nemtsov was this great champion against corruption who was killed for criticizing Putin, then why was he friends with people who you not merely must count your fingers after shaking hands, but you better make sure you still have your arm! It was commonly alleged that these very oligarchs stole even the Russian gold reserves. Yet Nemtsov drives Gusinsky to the airport the day he flees Russia? The declassified documents show that Gusinsky was one of the Seven oligarchs planning to take over Russia, which I believe was why Safra created Hermitage Capital Management in 1996 to join the party with Bill Browder after the World Economic Forum in Davos back in 1996. That was when Berezovsky and Gusinsky formed the Davos Pact to rig the 1996 presidential election in Russia. The declassified documents confirm they feared being sent to a work camp in Siberia if Yeltsin lost the election and the communists seized power again.

Browder may claim that he is Putin’s #1 enemy, but if that were true, I believe he would be gone a long time ago. I can confirm that when Safra was killed, Republic National Bank asked the U.S. mafia if they could find out who had killed Safra. They were unsure if there was a Russian mafia motive involved, Putin, Berezovsky, or Western Intelligence services. Sammy the Bull’s brother-in-law, Eddie Garafola (1938-2020), told me that personally. Nemtsov’s political career began as one of the “young reformers.” In 1991, President Boris Yeltsin appointed him, at the age of 32, as governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region. Since he was part of the privatization that created the oligarchs post-1991, why would he be friends with the very people that looted Russia? Granted, Nemtsov was criticizing Putin for the Ukraine seizure of Crimea in 2014. Yet, the Duma voted for this measure, and it was not Putin’s decision unilaterally. That was the least of

the issues that Nemtsov had criticized Putin for over the previous years. In March 1997, Nemtsov was actually appointed First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation under Viktor Chernomyrdin. He was given responsibility for reforming the energy sector. He was put in charge of restructuring the government monopolies in addition to reforming the housing and social sectors. He used the limelight to gain visibility, as Gusinsky and Berezovsky had given him a high profile. Nemtsov had his eyes on becoming president of Russia in the 2000 election, which Putin eventually won. However, he could not gather even the basic signatures to win a spot to run for office. Three weeks before his assassination, on February 10th, 2015, Nemtsov wrote on Russia’s Sobesednik News website that his 87-year-old mother was afraid Putin would kill him. Interestingly, she was also afraid because the former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky (born 1963) was granted a pardon by Putin in 2013 and given a passport. He then traveled to London. There was no explanation as to why he should fear Khodorkovsky. However, that answer lay deep in the maneuvers in buying up oil shares locally and rumors that he aided Browder and his Hermitage Capital Management fund against Khodorkovsky.

In 1987, Khodorkovsky was involved in importing and reselling computers. He claimed to have made enough to then, in 1989, found Bank Menatep, which ended up in the Bank of New York scandal of 1998. Apparently, employees of the Bank of New York, linked to Bruce Rappaport, helped Menatep list its stock in the United States. The wife of a former senior executive at Bank Menatep, Konstantin Kagalovsky, had supervised the Bank of New York’s Eastern European business back in 1992. Vladimir Kirillovich Golitsyn had previously been the head of the Eastern European business at the Bank of New York. Bank Menatep was often linked to money laundering capitalizing on Khodorkovsky’s import-export operations. The curious link here is that the government granted Bank Menatep the right to manage funds allocated for the victims

of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, which may have been thanks to kickbacks. This was the foundation that then allowed Khodorkovsky to acquire the Yukos oil company for about $300 million through a rigged auction. Khodorkovsky subsequently went on a campaign to raise investment funds abroad, borrowing hundreds of millions. The 1998 Russian Financial Crisis left Khodorkovsky defaulting on some of his foreign debt and taking his Yukos shares offshore to protect them from creditors. In October 2003, he was arrested by Russian authorities and charged with fraud. That began the real downfall of Yukos. In the United States on December 17th, 2004, Yukos shareholders threatened to sue any western business that supported a bid by Gazprom to buy the company’s major production unit at a bailiff’s auction. After his arrest, his Yukos oil company was crushed when a court in Moscow declared the company bankrupt in 2006 and ordered its assets to be sold. As typical, Khodorkovsky did not understand markets and always leveraged himself higher and higher, expecting the markets to always rise. While Putin granted Mikhail Khodorkovsky a pardon in December 2013, perhaps Nemtsov’s mother fearing him may not have been so farfetched. He was one of Berezovsky’s Seven, so he was not unaware of assassination as a tool in Russia. A Russian court in 2015 placed Khodorkovsky on an international wanted list over the 1990s murder of a Siberian mayor.

Khodorkovsky was living in exile in Europe since President Vladimir Putin pardoned him in 2013 after his jail term for fraud. In an interview with the BBC, he told them that he was considering applying for political asylum in Britain as one of several options. Khodorkovsky was accused of ordering several of his employees to kill the mayor, and a businessman who managed to survive his assassination attempt. The allegation

was that Vladimir Petukhov (1949 – June 26, 1998), the mayor of Nefteyugansk, Siberia, was assassinated on June 26th, 1998, after demanding that Yukos pay taxes that the company had been avoiding. Petukhov actually went on a hunger strike demanding a criminal case should be initiated against Yukos and their failure to pay taxes between 1996–1998. He also demanded that the tax official who had been protecting Yukos, who had probably been bribed, be removed from office. Petukhov’s hunger strike lasted a week and ended after the promise of the governor of the region to investigate and take action.

However, just a few hours after the end of the hunger strike, on the morning of June 26, 1998, on his way to work, he was gunned down. His bodyguard was wounded. The murder occurred on the birthday of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which many observers saw as a gift for his birthday. His wife sent a statement to President Boris Yeltsin after the murder, saying

her husband’s attempt to force Yukos to pay its taxes could be a motive. After Petukhov’s assassination, people rallied, accusing Yukos of murder. There were serious protests with residents blocking roads and demanding an investigation. A mob stormed the Yukos’ office and broke all the windows by throwing rocks. So, it was an important event that forced an investigation. Curiously, Yukos was also abusing low-tax regions and using shell companies in a complex transfer pricing scheme designed to increase profits and illegally minimize taxes paid on Yukos’ production and sale of oil. This seemed to be the same scheme Magnitsky created for Browder and Hermitage Capital Management. Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s fate: 2003 - Arrested for tax fraud 2005 - Found guilty on six of seven charges; jailed for eight years 2007 - Yukos declared bankrupt 2010 - Convicted of embezzlement and money laundering 2013 - Pardoned by President Putin after a request for clemency; leaves Russia for Germany 2015 - Charged with ordering the murder of Siberian Mayor Vladimir Petukhov in 1998 The oligarchs have convinced the West that Putin is evil. If there were a video of the oligarchs killing their own mothers, they would never be extradited because Putin is evil and behind every crime. Khodorkovsky’s trouble began because he broke his agreement with Putin: “Stay out of politics, and you can keep your ill-gotten gains.”

Khodorkovsky had given millions of dollars to the opposition parties for the upcoming parliamentary elections and was starting to interfere in politics, as did Berezovsky and Gusinsky. His reasons may have been because of his tax scheme. Eventually, Khodorkovsky was put on trial, and it was broadcasted on TV to demonstrate that the trial was fair. The assassination of Nemtsov on February 27th, 2015, sparked major protests. Since it was on a bridge close to the Kremlin, they blamed Putin, saying he must have personally given the orders. However, it was interesting that Nemtsov’s mother was concerned about Khodorkovsky. The curious coincidence was that Berezovsky was dead on March 23rd, 2013. Putin pardoned Khodorkovsky on December 19th, 2013, after Berezovsky was found dead. I suspect that confirmed that Putin knew the real mastermind was Berezovsky. However, the BBC interviewed Nemtsov on February 10th, 2015, 17 days before his death. He again repeated what he said in the Sobesednik newspaper. When asked if he himself feared for his life, he answered: “Yes, not as strongly as my mother, but still ...” Following that interview, on February 25th, 2015, Sobesednik posted an extended version of the original interview. There, Nemtsov had added:

“I am just joking. If I were afraid of Putin, I wouldn’t be in this line of work.”

In addition, his mother was also afraid of anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny (born 1976), the same activist who uncovered the corruption of Voronenkov. Did his mother understand more than what she was saying? Why was she afraid of one person who was part of the Yeltsin entourage and the other claiming to be against corruption? Nemtsov was assassinated on February 27th, 2015. He too was shot several times from behind, as was Voronenkov in the same contract-style killing. He was near the Kremlin walls and Red Square, so that was good enough to blame Putin. Anyone with 10% of a brain would realize Putin, if responsible,

would have done this quietly rather than in a public place to gather the headlines for a political purpose. Yet Berezovsky was already dead in 2013. So, we cannot look as him as the culprit. Nemtsov also died at the scene. BBC reported: “In his last tweet, Mr. Nemtsov sent out an appeal for Russia’s divided opposition to unite at an anti-war march he was planning for Sunday.” BBC News also quoted him as saying: “If you support stopping Russia’s war with Ukraine, if you support stopping Putin’s aggression, come to the Spring March in Maryino on 1 March.”

The prosecutors were tracing leads that led to “Muslim” extremists in Chechnya who resented Nemtsov’s positive comments on the cartoons that Charlie Hebdo published in France that was seen as disrespectful of the Prophet

Muhammad. Other leads were possible links to corruption and jealousy of his business activities. However, there were also links involving Ukrainian Russian volunteers returning from the Donbas battlefield that saw him as supporting the Neo-Nazis of Ukraine and believing Putin should withdraw. RT television also reported Nemtsov’s death may have been “a sort of ‘sacral sacrifice’ by those who don’t hesitate to use any methods to reach their political goals.”

The Ukrainian connection may be more valid than many suspect. U.S. politician Lindsey Graham called for someone to assassinate Putin. In March 2022, President Joe Biden said, “For God sake, this man cannot remain in power.” such bold statements can inspire the worst of extremists. In the case of the recent assassination of a pro-Putin supporter, Daria Dugina, the hatred in Ukraine against both sides certainly cannot be ruled out. U.S. intelligence now believes that it was

a Ukrainian order to kill him that was even approved by Zelensky himself.

The BBC asserts that new evidence has come to light that Nemtsov was being tailed by FSB agent Valery Sukharev and asserted that he probably killed him. That too is speculation. He was following him for months but took no action. Why, when he was by the Kremlin, shoot him?

Nemtsov had criticized Putin for taking Crimea in 2014. However, the week he was assassinated, he was planning a peace rally, according to his last tweet, asking for everyone to join his anti-war march that Sunday. This certainly would have invoked the potential for the anti-Neo-Nazis in Ukraine to assassinate him. They would not have thought about the connection to the Kremlin by assassinating him on the bridge close to the Kremlin. This was undoubtedly the opposing side responsible for assassinating Daria Dugina, who would have been a Neo-Nazi. The one thing I can say about Ukraine, knowing fried in Kiev and the Donbas, is that they really hate each other to the core. Others were even pointing to Nemtsov’s involvement in the privatization that created the oligarchs. Some argued it might have been some sort of personal vendetta. He did drive Gusinsky to the airport when he fled Russia.

Still, others were alleging that Nemtsov was murdered by the CIA or MI6 to make Putin look bad since Berezovsky was no longer around. There was no shortage of theories. It was just curious how his mother mentioned Khodorkovsky and Navalny.

Nevertheless, the main direction of the investigation focused on the “Muslim” connection of the Chechens extremists. All the suspects in the assassination were targeted Chechens. The alleged shooter was Ramzan Kadyrov. Five Chechens stood trial, and in June 2017, they were found guilty by a jury in a court in Moscow for agreeing to kill Nemtsov in exchange for 15 million rubles (US$253,000). However, nobody identified the person who had paid for the assassination. Nemtsov’s relatives and supporters accused officials of failing to identify and prosecute the mastermind or masterminds. It is hard to believe that they would have been connected to Putin, given his stance against the Muslim extremists and his attempt to get America to join the fight against Islamic terrorism. If they were paid, it might have even been someone impacted by the Magnitsky Act, which he helped Browder pull off.

Indeed, the Democrat in the Congress House from Maryland, Steny Hamilton Hoyer, stood up on the floor on March 4th, 2015, and declared: “Mr. Nemtsov was a political leader who had fought for democracy inside the system. His murder took place against the backdrop of Putin’s continued suppression of the rule of law, political debate, and human rights in Russia.”

There were so many who had grounds to go after Nemtsov that it was hard to decide, honestly. The shooters may have been Chechens, but they were most likely the hired guns. It was long feared in Moscow that the Chechen mafia ran the crime in Moscow.

The West went after Putin. On March 12th, 2019, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution, and the Senate passed it on June 10th, 2019. The resolutions were non-binding but were intended to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin accountable for his country’s actions, including a measure condemning the Russian leader and his government for their alleged roles in covering up the 2015 assassination of Putin’s

political opponent Boris Nemtsov. Anyone who criticized Putin has been alleged to have been assassinated, despite the fact that they were of no serious consequence. Nevertheless, when the House member of Congress, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, stood up on the floor on March 6th, 2018, she said: “I was lucky enough to have known Boris and met with him several times over the years. I had the great privilege to work with him on getting the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act passed into law in 2012. In fact, I met with Boris right after the House passed that bill. That day, Boris told me something that resonated with me, Mr. Speaker. He told me that Putin had made stopping the Magnitsky Act his utmost priority.”

Senator Steven Daines of Montana moved for the U.S. Senate on June 10th, 2019, to pass a resolution: “CALLING FOR ACCOUNTABILITY AND JUSTICE FOR THE ASSASSINATION OF BORIS NEMTSOV Congressional Record Vol. 165, No. 96.” It called for:

“the Government of the Russian Federation to allow an impartial international investigation of the assassination of Boris Nemtsov and to cooperate with the Parliamentary Assembly of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in their ongoing inquiries over this case.”

Most recently, the death of Dan Rapoport, a “prominent critic of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine” who lived in

Washington’s West End neighborhood, is yet another death attributed to Putin. Police say they don’t suspect foul play in Dan Rapoport’s fall from an apartment building on the night of August 14th, 2022. Immediately, Bill Browder and David Satter pointed their fingers at Putin simply because Rapoport was a critic of Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine. Browder said:

“Whenever someone who is in a negative view of the Putin regime dies suspiciously, one should rule out foul play, not rule it in.”

Countless critics of Putin, including the very vocal Satter and Browder, are alive. One must wonder why everything is always blamed on Putin. Dan Rapport’s friend in Washington, Yuri Somov, publicly said that he thinks the suicide story is plausible. He added that Rapoport said, “It has been a very difficult three months,”

which Somov observed, “From him, particularly, that’s saying a lot. More than notable, it was extraordinary.”61

54

Filipov, David. “Here Are 10 Critics of Vladimir Putin Who Died Violently or in

Suspicious Ways.” The Washington Post, March 23, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/23/here-are-tencritics-of-vladimir-putin-who-died-violently-or-in-suspicious-ways/. 55

Behar, Richard. “Did Boris Berezovsky Kill Himself? More Compelling, Did He Kill

Forbes Editor Paul Klebnikov?” Forbes, March 25, 2013. https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardbehar/2013/03/24/did-boris-berezovsky-killhimself-more-compelling-did-he-kill-forbes-editor-paul-klebnikov/? sh=3196a5336729. 56

BBC. “BBC NEWS | Europe | Russian Activist http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8152351.stm.

Found

Murdered,”

n.d.

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Doward, Jamie, Tom Parfitt, and Mark Townsend. “‘I Can Blackmail Them. We Can Make Money.’” The Guardian, December 2, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/dec/03/world.russia. 58

Sinclair, Nicole. “Fund Manager Explains Why He Estimates Putin’s Net Worth to

Be $200 Billion.” Yahoo News, July 17, 2017. https://www.yahoo.com/news/fundmanager-explains-estimates-putins-net-worth-200-billion-105932448.html? guccounter=1. 59

Fossato, Floriana. “Russia: Conflict Increases Among Berezovsky, Nemtsov And Chubais.” RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty, April 9, 2008. https://www.rferl.org/a/1086103.html. 60

Binstein. “LOOTED RUSSIAN TREASURE.” Washington Post, August 30, 1992. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/opinions/1992/08/30/looted-russiantreasure/c511268a-53c1-4deb-8ff7-8ee7a847b329/. 61

Anderson,

Jack,

and

Michael

POLITICO. “A Putin Critic Fell from a Building in Washington. Was It Really a Suicide?,” August 26, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/08/26/dan-rapoport-putin-criticwas-it-suicide-00053836.

Edmond Safra & His Assassination

A

dmittedly, I initially believed that Putin was ruthless and assassinated anyone who criticized him. After all, that was the storyline put out by the press all the time. So when Edmond Safra was killed on December 3rd, 1999, even my lawyers were shaken and thought I should get a bodyguard—I said no to that one. Someone had even put a bullet in my mailbox, which I handed over to my lawyers and was on the court record. But something told me in my gut that it was a message from the New York bankers, not Putin.

There were simply things in the wind that did not make any sense. I remembered that when I said I would fly to Geneva on August 28th, 1999, to meet with Safra, I was told I could not, that he fled to Monaco “for security reasons.” That told me that even the bankers were shaken back in August of 1999. I knew that their blackmail of Yeltsin was to secure the presidency to merge Russia into the West. I assumed that Putin would have been justified in taking out Safra for such a plot. However, I knew Safra was just the facilitator in filing the suspicious report under the banking system to start the Bank of New York case. Yet, I also knew Berezovsky was the mastermind, and reliable sources warned me to stay clear of him. He killed those who disagreed with him was the rumor in those days. Indeed, with Yeltsin turning to Putin on August 9th, 1999, and Safra’s taking of $1 billion from my accounts on August 27th, 1999, it appeared that Safra was desperate. For I knew he lost perhaps 50% of his net worth in Russia. At first glance, with the failure of the plot to blackmail Yeltsin in July, the appointment of Putin, and Safra fleeing Geneva for “security reasons,” it all was pointing to Russia. With time, the number one thing that stood out as a major contradiction was that the two real culprits, who should have been killed if Putin was really in that state of mind, were Berezovsky and Gusinsky. I laid that all out even to Marcus Vetter for his film the Forecaster back in 2014. The release of the declassified document now confirms my sources back then were absolutely correct. The fact that Berezovsky and Gusinsky were both untouched contradicted this image of Putin. Then, there was Bill Browder appearing all over the place, claiming to be Putin’s #1 enemy. Surely, if that were true, why was he still breathing?

The more one began to look closely, the more it began to surface that it was not Putin at all. Instead, someone was killing off their enemies while telling the press it was Putin as the cover story. Was there another plot behind the string of assassinations? Berezovsky’s bodyguard did say it was not a suicide; MI6 killed him.

Edmond Safra When Edmond Safra (1932–1999) was assassinated on December 3rd, 1999, I must admit I had assumed, like everyone else, that it was on the orders of Vladimir Putin. I also knew Edmond was by no means the mastermind. He was just the facilitator to launch the investigation of the Bank of New York money laundering case that was then used to blackmail Yeltsin. Yeltsin said during a phone call to Bill Clinton on September 8th, 1999, that the Bank of New York affair was “political” and he was sending his team over to investigate that included the Minister of Interior, which is their equivalent of the head of the FBI. That meant it was very serious, and this was now a highstakes game.

Edmond was obsessed with security and lived a life in constant fear of someone assassinating him or staging a terrorist attack against him. I had only one other client like that in Milan. He was one of the largest gold jewelry producers in Italy. When I flew into Milan for a meeting, I was greeted by two bodyguards with machine guns who followed me everywhere, even when shopping. When I asked what was with the security, he replied that they had kidnapped his wife and demanded a ransom. That I at least understood. Northern Italy in the 1980s was a hotbed for kidnappings. Edmond’s assassination on December 3rd, 1999, had other connections. In the summer of 1999, Edmond spent several days in Moscow. Edmond traveled to Moscow with his bodyguards during the summer of 1999 when the plot to blackmail Yeltsin was hatched. Edmond Safra had bought an armored limousine for the occasion, and he was, of course, surrounded by bodyguards from the former Israeli Mossad. Edmond stayed for several days and met with Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich. He also met with several high-ranking officials of the Ministry of Finance. According to one of the bodyguards, on the last day of his Moscow trip, Edmond insisted on increasing the security detail after his meetings. He clearly knew he was playing in a real highstakes game on this one.

Edmond was killed in Monaco, and that is very important. As I have said, when he took the $1 billion from my accounts on August 27th, 1999, I called, and the head of the Republic National Bank, George Wendler, asked what was going on. He said he was “just the messenger.” That told me that it was an order from Edmond himself. I replied that I would fly to Geneva the next day. I was then told I could not. Edmond fled Geneva and went to Monaco “for security reasons.” I knew something was seriously wrong. I also knew Edmond’s

Monaco residence was a fortress. When they told me it was for “security reasons,” it suggested to me that even the bankers were upset.

To put Edmond in context, the Safra banking family from Aleppo was one of the main creditors of the Ottoman Empire. They were the competitors to the Rothschilds of Europe. In 1998, Safra’s Republic National Bank of New York was the “preferred” foreign bank through which most Russian banks had their correspondent accounts. That included many banks from Inkom, Menatep, and SBS-Agro, to even the United Bank, as well as the Russian Ministry of Finance. They transferred IMF loan money to many foreign locations through Safra’s Republic National Bank of New York. Edmond was a gold bug. He even issued his own silver bullion bars for his customers. He was always a believer in hard money. According to the testimonies of people who knew him, Safra had recently been particularly frightened because of the events in Russia. Some assumed that the main culprit in the affair was the Russian mafia. However, I knew differently. Edmond Safra’s name became public in the Bank of New York case, and the Swiss prosecutors came to believe that his death was related to that case. I knew the entire scheme to interfere in the 2000 key Russian presidential election because they tried to get me to invest

$10 billion in a “guaranteed trade.” Of course, they always went to bribe the politicians. Nevertheless, it sounded to me like a plot best suited for a James Bond movie. However, I also knew Edmond was a gold bug, and the thought of controlling the gold sales was enticing.

Following those meetings in Moscow, when Edmond had fled Geneva for “security reasons,” he first went to his Villa Leopolda in Southern France. It was then during the early autumn of 1999 that Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky, accompanied by another person, went to the residence of Edmond Safra. Edmond purchased the Villa La Leopolda in 1987, which is located in Villefranche-sur-Mer France, a small resort town in the Alpes-Maritimes in Southern France. They spoke with Safra for three hours behind closed doors. The conversation got loud, and Berezovsky was said to have left very upset and

rushed off to his own villa in Antibes. The plot to seize Russia was failing.

La Stampa Italian newspaper also reported that Safra was

seen at the restaurant of the Hotel Martinez in Cannes in the company of two other Russians, with whom he had quarreled before leaving angrily. They may have been Berezovsky and Abramovich. After this period of what appears to have been frantic meetings, Edmond Safra was overtaken by what may have been a state of unbridled panic. This seems to be the events behind why he left Geneva for “security reasons” that were obviously not subsiding.

The entire plot to blackmail Yeltsin and seize Russia was falling apart with the appointment of Vladimir Putin on August 9th, 1999. Yeltsin turned to Putin as a defensive measure with the oligarchs plotting against him on one side and the communists trying to impeach and imprison him on the other side. Despite the fact that Safra’s Villa Leopolda was equipped with the latest security system, obviously, that was not secure enough. Safra urgently moved to Monte Carlo, where he settled in his specially prepared 1000 square bunker on Ostend Boulevard. That was known to all residents of Monaco, not by number 505 and certainly not by its name Belle Epoque. In Monte Carlo, it was called “Fort Knox”—the symbol of ultimate security. Edmond Safra lived in constant fear of becoming a victim of some attack. After all, Edmond did deal with all the various mafia groups around the world—Italian, Russian, and Armenian, plus those in the Middle East and Asia.

In Monaco, everyone knew that the security systems installed in Safra’s two-story penthouse would be the envy of the prince’s palace. Edmond’s elaborate 20-room penthouse was outfitted with bulletproof doors and state-of-the-art locks. Yet this was different as he was playing a new game in the realm of geopolitics. Edmond’s apartment was normally guarded 24 hours a day by at least ten bodyguards. All of them were veterans of the Israeli counter-terrorist services. The rest of the staff (chauffeurs, butlers, cooks, and medical staff) were typically recruited, taking into account the military merit of the candidates as well. All the doors in the penthouse, from the entrance to the door to the toilet, utilized electronic combination locks and were reinforced with metal plates. The walls and roof were designed to withstand a direct impact from an artillery shell. Therefore, it is not surprising that this is where Edmond fled even from Villa Leopolda. As Dominic Dunne (1925–2009) wrote in Vanity Fair, Death in Monaco, one of the great mysteries of the assassination of Edmond was that not one of the guards was on duty the night Safra died. They had been dispatched to Villa Leopolda, 20 minutes from Monte Carlo, by his wife, Lily. The unanswered question that bothered Dominic: “Why weren’t any guards in the penthouse at the time of Safra’s death, doing what they were trained to do, protecting the life of one of the world’s wealthiest men?”

Even Edmond’s investment in Canary Wharf in London fell apart, as reported on September 29th, 1999, by the Daily Telegraph in London. The previous day Safra had to admit that the rumors that exonerated his bank in taking the money from my accounts were not true, and the investigation was ongoing. Given everything that was unfolding, I believe that Edmond was not thinking clearly when he took the money from my accounts. Perhaps he was misled by the letter from the Japanese asking to confirm that I had placed the $10 billion at his bank and saw an opportunity to recoup his Russian losses. He was under a lot of stress. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported on September 4th, 1999, that Edmond was closing down all divisions that produced less than a 15% profit margin. I knew the bank was preparing to be sold. So, yes, I thought it was Putin who had ordered Safra’s assassination back then. However, since then, something did not add up. There was more incentive for Berezovsky to take out Safra. Perhaps Berezovsky feared Edmond might confess to Putin. That could not be ruled out. Edmond may indeed have been contemplating throwing Boris Berezovsky under the bus, realizing this whole scheme was falling apart. However, he met with Berezovsky after he fled, so that did not make sense.

Nonetheless, there was the possibility that Safra was assassinated by British and/or American intelligence forces. Given these declassified documents, they may have also been concerned that Edmond would speak out to distance himself from Berezovsky and tell the whole truth about who was behind all that had taken place. The mystery has never been solved. While they blamed his male nurse Ted Maher, Dominic Dunne (1925–2009) saw through the veil and told me that there were two bullets in Safra’s body. He wrote in his December 1, 2000, Vanity Fair article, Death in Monaco: “The rumor of the two bullets in Safra’s body was a constant in conversations among the fashionable element of the town, although it was spoken of in hushed tones and with caution.”

Safra was in league with the government supplying skids of $100 bills to Russia. Billions were flown in weekly on what became known as the “money plane.” I knew that because they offered me a tour of the vault to show me the skids of

$100 bills. They were bragging about their connections in Russia in the bank. Something was missing. Granted, the declassified documents confirmed that Putin was an unknown at that time. It was clear to those of us who knew the plot why Yeltsin turned to Putin. Even in 2000, the reports stated: “[Putin] is walking a very fine line between laying down new, more modern ‘rules of the game’ and reverting to old methods of arbitrariness and intimidation…”

I also knew all about Edmond’s involvement with Berezovsky, and I was concerned about the bank’s losses following the 1998 Russian Financial Crisis. I also knew Edmond was selling the bank since HSBC came to me to ask my opinion in April 1999 before buying it the next month. Edmond was selling his bank in early 1999. To me, that meant he was breaking his ties to Russia after the devastating losses thanks to Bill Browder and the whole idea of cashing in on Russia’s wealth. Edmond’s loss in Russia was probably the biggest in his life. It obviously shook his confidence in the banking legacy of his family’s history. He came to that decision BEFORE the blackmail plot against Yeltsin in July 1999. Was the plot to seize Russia to be Edmond’s new venture?

On December 6th, 1999, the Wall Street Journal pointed out the mysterious circumstances. The police claimed that the video camera did not show any intruders. Yet, they questioned two Arab guys staying in a hotel across the street. Why? Was that to pretend they investigated something? Moreover, the article confirmed: “Republic’s steep losses sustained in the Russia’s financial crisis last year prompted rumors that the Russian Mafia may have been involved in a hit.”

I believe that after that devasting loss during the Russian Financial Crisis of 1998, Browder’s buy-and-hold strategy was not that of a trader, just a speculator. His admission to losing up to 90% of the fund could have been a motive for retribution against Edmond. Safra was losing everything. Perhaps this was the real reason he joined Boris Berezovsky’s scheme to blackmail Yeltsin in July 1999. Maybe that was his desperate attempt to win it all back big-time.

Edmond was shutting down all the departments that made less than 15%. I knew he was hurting, and I could tell he was dressing up the bank to be sold at the start of 1999. Forbes had put his personal wealth at $3.3 billion at the start of 1998, and Edmond was #106 on their list. At the start of 1999, Edmond fell to #165 with $2.5 billion. Obviously, he lost over $1 billion, according to Forbes, so losing $1 billion in 1998 was serious. I thought he took money from my accounts out of desperation. As the National Post confirmed, Safra was the informant in the Bank of New York money laundering case used to blackmail Yeltsin. That was most likely why Edmond fled Geneva in August 1999. If the assassination had been from the Russian mafia because of their loss with Hermitage Capital Management, that would have probably happened back in October 1998. I doubt his sudden fear had anything to do with losses in Russia back in 1998.

Yet, we know that Putin granted Yeltsin immunity to protect him from the communists. Yeltsin asked the nation for “forgiveness because many of our hopes have not come true.” Undeniably, we also know that Yeltsin’s last words to

Putin were: “Take care of Russia.” Putin had to know Berezovsky’s role and probably Edmond’s as well. I believe Berezovsky personally delivered the blackmail to Yeltsin faceto-face, leading Yeltsin to turn to Putin on August 9th, 1999.

The Americans knew Berezovsky led the plot to seize Russia, and even Edward Shevardnadze told them that Boris Berezovsky “merited U.S. Support.” Putin had to have that same information. So, why kill Safra but not Berezovsky and Gusinsky? In July 2000, Putin called all the oligarchs to a meeting and told them he would not seize their money, but they were to stop interfering in politics. That was about seven months after

the murder of Safra. If Putin took out Safra, it made no sense to leave Berezovsky still conspiring to seize control using his media empire. Did Putin make the same mistake as Julius Caesar (100-44 BC), who forgave his enemies and they still plotted to kill him? Since Yeltsin turned to Putin moving him to the position of his heir apparent on August 9th, 1999, and I was told that Edmond had fled Geneva for “security reasons” on August 27th, 1999, the entire scheme of the Bank of New York was collapsing. As I stated, even the Swiss prosecutors investigating the case commented that they believed that Safra’s murder had something to do with his informing the authorities about the money laundering at the Bank of New York. But who? Putin, Berezovsky, the mafia, or the Western intelligence agencies?

Edmond’s death scared the hell out of all the bankers dealing with Russia. According to one of the FBI employees, Edmond’s

death completely frightened the management of the banks who were suddenly now terrified to testify against anyone in Russia. I knew Dominic Dunne (1925–2009), who wrote the article on Safra, Death in Monaco. Dominic and I would speak often. The #1 question: why were none of his many bodyguards on duty that night? Dominic told me that there were two bullets in Edmond’s body when the authorities claimed there were none. Dominic had once described Monte Carlo to me as “a sunny place for shady people.” Dominic also told me that when he was at a restaurant in Paris, a guy walked up to him and said, ”Be careful what you write about.” I had spoken to Dominic on this matter numerous times. He seemed to believe that Edmond’s wife was connected somehow. I thought that if there was any connection to Lily, she was told to dismiss all the guards and perhaps even provide unimpaired access. I did not see why she would do that when Edmond was in financial trouble and sick anyway.

Dominick Dunne wrote in Vanity Fair, Death in Monaco, opening his piece: “On December 3, 1999, in Monte Carlo, Monaco, the multibillionaire banker Edmond J. Safra, along with one of his nurses, died of asphyxiation in a locked, bunker-like bathroom in a conflagration that engulfed his magnificent duplex penthouse, atop a building housing the Republic National Bank of New York, which he had made final arrangements to sell a few days previously. Early accounts said that two hooded intruders had penetrated the apartment, which was as solid as a fortress, and stabbed a male nurse. The bizarre death made headlines everywhere and sent shock waves through the banking community, as well as through the principality of Monaco, probably the safest, most tightly controlled tax haven in the world for the very rich.“

Again, the police claimed there were no videos showing intruders. If they were covering up for anyone, it would have to have been the CIA or MI6 to get that kind of cooperation —not Russians. I think that statement ruled out Berezovsky, whose favorite method was poison. There were definitely connections between Edmond and the government with respect to Russia, as confirmed by the

money plane reported by New York Magazine on January 22nd, 1996. While I helped Dominick Dunne, in all fairness, we did not know a lot of facts behind the scenes then. Because Edmond was a gold bug, he called the gold dealing desk daily, which was recorded. The guys were angry at what Edmond had done to me and gave me the six phone numbers that Edmond called from. Then he would be transferred to whomever, but he did not realize those conversations were still recorded. Edmond had Parkinson’s disease, but that did not stop the phone calls. I filed a subpoena for those tapes in the civil case. The Department of Justice rushed in and demanded a protective order to prevent me from getting those tapes. It was just a matter of a couple of weeks after I subpoenaed those phone lines that Safra was killed. Even my lawyers freaked out and wanted to know if his death was linked to the tapes I subpoenaed. I said, “Perhaps.” They would have everything you ever wanted to know about what was happening. Within a matter of days of Edmond’s assassination, the government had the receiver, Alan Cohen, move to put me in civil contempt indefinitely. There was never a specific order that said, “If you do this, you will be released.” My lawyer at the time, Richard Altman, said this was all a sham. It did not matter what I could produce; their intent was to shut down this entire case.

Indeed, they threw me in prison on civil contempt on January 14th, 2000, without any order defining what was to be produced. I stood up on February 7th, 2000, and told the court I had no order. The judge said, “I thought you did that,” and legally, he should have released me then and there.

Judge Richard Owen continued the civil contempt for 7 years without any order whatsoever. Even though Congress stated that the maximum imprisonment would be 18 months, Judge Owen thought he was clever and kept rolling it, creating a new contempt every 18 months pretending to comply with the law.

My lawyer was right. This was all about stopping the trial. Why? Did they get a call from Washington telling them to stop my trial? Was the CIA behind Safra’s assassination? What was on those tapes they sealed? I was in the middle of a political case, and there were no constitutional rights at that point.

The law clearly states that there must be a specific order. Never in seven years would the receiver ever provide such an order, and even the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit refused to direct the district court to issue such an order. If I could have complied, they would have been forced to release me. It was, indeed, a cover-up to prevent any trial in fear that I would expose what really took place regarding Edmond. I did an interview with the press in Japan and told my clients that they better come to New York City and file a lawsuit against Republic National Bank/HSBC. They did, and the lead lawyer came to see me and said, after reviewing the case: “Sorry, you are collateral damage!”

I said I know. The DOJ then cut a deal with HSBC to return the money to my clients, and no banker would ever go to prison. The SEC claimed this was remarkable as 100% of the losses were returned to the alleged victims—the first in history. All because the bank stole the money.

Then came the ultimate violation of Due Process of law. They put a gag order on me to stop me from helping my clients sue HSBC. The bank cut a deal that nobody would go to prison if they returned all the money. How could they hold me in prison to turnover assets if there were no victims? Alan Cohen just claimed there was another fraud before I dealt with Safra, and it was huge, but “there is no as description of criminal liability,” so they kept me in prison in case they could come up with something to accuse me of committing—which never took place.

Even after they handed my notes to HSBC rather than the receiver, collecting the funds the bank stole from my accounts, the receiver handed HSBC the $400 million profit I had in those notes. A former employee asked an HSBC official what took place, and he said it was a deal too good for HSBC to pass up. Even after that, they found $30 million in an account they overlooked and then tried to get me to agree to the CFTC taking that as a fine. However, the law prohibited that when there was a parallel case. So, the receiver just kept collecting fees without end for more than 20 years.

The Supreme Court had ruled in 2006 in United States v. Gonzalez-Lopez, 548 U.S. 140 (2006) that to do that nullifies all actions. So, they stole the money and ignored the Supreme Court. Consequently, the bank paid the restitution—not me. It became obvious to everyone except most in the press, who just report whatever the government tells them. This was all a

sham to prevent a public trial that would expose the whole plot to seize Russia. As I said, Dominick told me and reported that “there were two bullets in Edmonds’s body.” That suggests that there had to be intruders, so why did the Monaco prosecutor claim there was no video showing any intruder? But they questioned two Arabs staying across the street. Why question those men if there was no evidence of an intruder? It seemed that Edmond Safra was killed by U.S. intelligence to prevent any connection to the U.S. government from surfacing in the plot to seize Russia. Dominick wrote that Safra knew “all the secrets of the financial planet.” Some also wrote that I was also the guy who knew too much. Within days of Safra’s murder, the government stopped my trial and blocked any discovery to prove my case. Nobody has ever been held in civil contempt for 7 years using a statute that Congress declared would never exceed 18 months. So to me, a lot was going on behind the curtain. Dominic wrote again for Vanity Fair in September 2005. “DID SOMEONE SAY SAFRA? Some cases just don’t get cold, and the mysterious death of billionaire Edmond Safra is one… Samuel Cohen, known as Schmulik, a former Mossad agent Safra paid $1,000 a day, led an elite team of 25 guards, who were billeted at La Leopolda, the Safras’ magnificent estate, located 20 minutes outside Monte Carlo. One of the most puzzling aspects of the case is that not a single guard was on duty at the penthouse on the night of Safra’s death. “Madame didn’t want me to tend to the security of this apartment in Monaco,” Cohen is quoted as saying. When Cohen finally arrived from La Leopolda that night with the keys to the Safra apartment, the Monaco police commissioner barred him from entering the apartment and handcuffed him—when he still could have perhaps saved

Safra. The commissioner, Bianchini reports, was subsequently transferred out of the Monaco force because of his alleged links to the Russian Mafia.”

Safra was never without his security guards. The entire night was a perfect storm that appeared to ensure that Safra would be exterminated. I seriously doubted that Berezovsky could have that sort of influence over Lily, the Monaco prosecutor, and the police. It was Lily who had to be a key part of the night, dismissing all the security staff. With the declassified documents, the fingers point to the intelligence agencies who simply had to cover up the plot to seize Russia, for they were terrified about letting me go to trial. Safra was sick, and perhaps he had simply worn out his usefulness to the intelligence agencies MI6 and CIA. Edmond had been alleged to have allowed the use of his private jet in the Iran-Contra scandal. If Edmond had been exposed, along with the money plane, he would have been the link to Western governments involved in the plot to seize Russia.

After all, Berezovsky’s own bodyguard also said he believed that Berezovsky was assassinated by MI6 following his “begging letters” to Putin, asking to come home in 2013. So then, they had to claim Berezovsky committed suicide, for if it was Putin, he would have said, “Sure, come home,” and assassinated him then. If Putin was the organizer of all these assassinations, why would Berezovsky write to him asking to come home? If Putin had been assassinating anyone who criticized him, as the Western press has repeatedly reported, then Berezovsky would not ask to come home.

Moreover, Bill Browder was Safra’s partner. Browder claims to be Putin’s #1 enemy, but he is still alive and running around the world, always advocating the oppression of Russians. He has poisoned people’s minds that sanctions against oligarchs are because they support Putin.

The consequence of this hatred being poured out against Russia has now turned out to be outright prejudice against all Russians. That included the Russians who have always lived in the Donbas. Now, people are insisting that even eBay ban any Russian from selling anything personally. In 2021, Russia supplied 40% of the European Union’s gas. Inflation has soared because of these sanctions. Even more bizarre, Dominic Dunne further reported on the Commissioner in September 2005: “Bianchini also says that the sophisticated alarm system, designed to detect any intruders in the Safra apartment, had not been working for two weeks. The security cameras in the building were working on the night of the fire, but when the police sat down to study them, they found that the videotapes had been erased. In addition, the fire that Ted Maher started in a wastebasket— which he did, he later claimed, to create a situation in which he could emerge as his employer’s savior—turns out not to have been the only fire. Bianchini writes that experts found a second fire, and traces of the very flammable liquid ethanol, in the nurses’ station. A few days earlier, a guard had reported signs of another

fire and traces of ethanol in the garage of the building—which could very well have been a rehearsal for the real fire. Bianchini concludes, “At this point in my investigation, the elements undermining the official theory according to which Ted Maher acted alone are already impressive. And sufficient to raise the possibility that he was an accomplice in a veritable organization.”

As if things were not insane enough, the judge later admitted that the trial was rigged. Ted Maher, the male nurse convicted of setting the fire that led to Safra’s death, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He spent 8 years in prison before the judge admitted that the trial was all rigged. Maher was convicted of setting the fire. They claimed he was pretending to be a hero to save Safra. Nothing rings true in this mess because it appears to be one giant cover-up for national security purposes.

Curiously, Dominic Dunne believed that the death of Edouard Stern (1954–2005) was connected to that of Edmond Safra. Stern was also obsessed with his personal security like Safra but was supposed to have been killed by his alleged mistress, Cécile Brossard, during a bizarre sadomasochistic sex session. She claimed to be trying to blackmail him. Stern was on the list of France’s top 50 wealthy citizens. Stern was also the son-in-law of Michel David-Weill, the billionaire former chairman of investment banking firm Lazard Freres. He was found shot to death on the floor of his Geneva, Switzerland, apartment in 2005, wearing nothing but a fleshcolored latex body suit. Vanity Fair published in July 2005: “Edouard Stern lay dead on his bedroom floor, one bullet in his chest, one in his stomach, and two more in his brain.”

His mistress, Cécile Brossard, was claimed to have confessed to her husband Xavier Gillet, who did not report the crime, that she shot Stern when questioned. Next to his body was a chair wrapped with a rope. His office called him because he was late for a meeting that morning with none other than Edmond’s ex-partner—Bill Browder. The article continued:

“Stern missed an appointment with his friend William Browder. Who ran the Hermitage Fund.”

Crime Magazine contradicted Vanity Fair in reporting four years later: “The police had only established that he had been shot after they had removed the suit.” If he was shot in the head, that should have been obvious.

Unfortunately, Dominic died before he explained why Stern’s death was linked to Safra other than Bill Browder and his alleged investment into Hermitage Capital Management.

Crime Magazine, in April 2009, updated November 15th, 2010 report, commenting on the murder of Edouard Stern:

“The 9 a.m. appointment had not been all that pleased that Stern had not shown, but the 11 a.m. one was really put out. The appointment was with William F. Browder, head of the investment fund and asset management company, Hermitage Capital Management, specializing in Russian markets. Stern was not only a friend of Browder but he was also an investor in his company of which the late Lebanese-born Brazilian-naturalized banker Edmond Safra was a founder-member. In December 1999 Safra died in a fire in his luxury Monaco penthouse.”

Among initial lines of investigation, the police looked into the possible involvement of the Russian mafia, particularly after

Stern’s recent deals in Eastern Europe and his reputation as a tough businessman. It was alleged that Stern got into a major dispute at Lazard Freres with his father-in-law Michel DavidWeill in 1996 over getting involved in Russia, which may have been the connection Dominick saw. In 1996 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Berezovsky and the Seven oligarchs formed the Davos Pact. However, that was also where Bill Browder was and later formed Hermitage Capital Management with Edmond. Stern was alleged to have been an investor in that venture. The press claimed Stern simply wanted a board position in a company Lazard Freres had invested in. Yet, the dispute resulted in his departure from the firm, and he began his own firm Investment Real Returns (IRR). Nevertheless, he maintained cordial relations with his father-in-law, who invested $300 million in his IRR. In addition, Stern did fear for his life. Curiously, that was because of a dispute with Rhodia, France’s largest specialty chemicals maker. Stern accused them of accounting irregularities that placed them at the center of a criminal investigation, also alleging insider trading. However, much later in 2011, Rhodia and Russia’s Sibur signed a letter of intent to form a joint venture in specialty surfactants that would have a production base in Dzerzhinsk, Russia.

As I said, I did not realize at the time of Safra’s death just how deep the rabbit hole went. I knew it indeed involved Berezovsky since he called me after I rejected investing $10 billion in Hermitage Capital Management. I had refused to talk to him, knowing who he was and warnings from friends to stay away from him. It only confirmed the link between Edmond and Berezovsky, and they were trying to pull me into this plot to seize Russia, promising they had it all covered. The fact that Lily had dismissed all of Edmond’s bodyguards made Dominick suspect Lily. I must agree that such an order suggests that she was instructed to do so, most likely by the intelligence agencies. For I doubt that Lily would not have done so if it was a request from Russia.

The Vilification of Putin

V

ilification of political opponents has become standard practice, yet it degrades the public discourse and undermines any hope of democracy. Some refuse to open their minds to the fact that both sides are engaged in propaganda. The most important factor here is to seek the truth. The demonization of Putin, a single man, is used to justify the hatred of all Russians, which is the necessary step to support a war against a foe. Leaders must paint the opposition as evil to get people to die on a battlefield, believing it is for some just cause. In Islam, they call it jihad or

holy war in the name of God. We must be mindful of how leaders create war through vilification. At the Nuremberg trials, Field Marshall Hermann Wilhelm Göring (1893–1946), who committed suicide rather than being sentenced to death, indeed explained it best: “Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war … after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along … the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

In law, we are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty. However, the press immediately vilifies everyone as guilty, and they are tried in the press long before any legal trial. This is how the conviction rate in U.S. federal courts has reached from 97% to 99%. If a jury finds someone not guilty, the press denies that they are innocent and claims there was insufficient evidence.

This vilification has emerged in politics in the USA. The Democrats continually demonized Trump as a strategy to defeat him in 2020. They did the same to the Republicans during the midterm of 2022. What they say does not matter. It never has to be proven in a court of law and politics; it’s fair game to lie about your opponent without fear of a lawsuit.

Although we now know that Hillary Clinton paid to have the Steele Dossier made up, and John McCain handed it to James Comey at the FBI, the vast major of Democrats still believes Russia was the enemy long before Ukraine. Because of Hillary, 70% of Democrats thought Russia was the enemy after 2016. Although it was all a fraud that cost the nation tens of millions of dollars, the Democrats were fined for creating that fraud. They vilified Trump as a puppet of Putin, and that image cannot be erased.

The truth never matters because people believe what they want to believe, as Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) commented. Even if we look at a coin of Julius Caesar, we see Vercingetorix presented as a barbarian captive with wild hair and a beard. This was justifying Caesar’s conquest of Gaul. This tactic of selling war to the people has been around for a very long time. You must paint opponents as evil to make the people willing to lay down their lives for what they believe is a noble cause.

Vilification of an opponent is a known political strategy, and it has been used historically to push the false narrative that war is the solution to all future problems. Any dialog now between Democrats and Republicans has deteriorated into character assassination that not merely destroys democracy but divides the country, ensuring its ultimate fall. We were once all Americans, but wokeness has divided us into many groups offended by everything.

Indeed, dividing the people in this manner was the very tactic of Adolf Hitler. He divided the people, turning one group against the other and turning the people against the Jews, calling them “Jewish Swine.” It was Julius Caesar who also expressed the maxim to “divide” the people and “rule” (conquer). Winston Churchill (1874-1965), the great lover of history, said on June 16th, 1941: “United we stand. Divided we fall.”

Such deterioration of civility in U.S. politics is one of the most concerning trends, for it has torn apart the very foundation of civilization itself. This poisoning of the mindset of the people has numbered the days for the ultimate demise of the United States. Indeed, COVID was used to demonize those who refused to vaccinate, claiming they put even the vaccinated at risk. It turned one group against another, and that harm cannot be repaired.

Vilification of an opponent goes beyond saying he is mistaken or misguided. It ends all debate. Discourse has collapsed into a one-way public argument void of listening to the opposition. We saw that with President Biden demonizing the unvaccinated. That type of vilification and character assassination of an opponent immediately shuts down any debate or discourse. Ignoring rather than listening to objections transforms a democratic process into tyrannical oppression. Those with whom Biden and his handlers disagreed were projected as morally bankrupt individuals who threaten society as a whole. In 2021, Biden warned that unvaccinated Americans faced “a winter of severe illness and death.” This demonization of those with whom you disagree has been reducing civilization to a deplorable state of tyranny.

We see the same strategy of demonization between prolife and pro-choice advocates as we did before with AIDS activists and animal-rights proponents who both demonized their opponents. The battle between environmentalists and loggers was another demonization example, and our politicians have constantly exploited the differences between blacks and whites. Lately, it is emerging between immigrantrights advocates and their anti-immigration opponents.

This practice of demonization inspires hatred that has been around since time immemorial. However, this time the demonization of someone like Putin takes on a whole different agenda. On the surface, the press may appear to be always talking about Putin, but they are demonizing Russians as a whole. In a Pew Research Center survey from April 2022, 70% of Americans saw Russia as the enemy—not just Putin as an individual. The same prejudice existed against the German people after World War II (WWII).

Following WWII, the general belief was that the Germans were somehow different and had no remorse for slaughtering so many in their drive for the perfect race under eugenics. The experiments of Stanley Milgram (1933-1984) set out to test that hypothesis, and he staged events with actors pretending to be tortured by average people off the street with electric shocks. Stanley discovered this willingness to torture was not confined to Germans, but existed in all human societies. He called his discovery, Obedience to Authority. We run the same danger of presuming that all Russians are evil, just as America imprisoned all Japanese during WWII. That presumption of guilt is the net result of this demonization process of an opponent.

Indeed, concerning Putin, this demonization that began with Hillary had moved to the next level of character assassination with Ukraine. It has now migrated to the sheer hatred of the Russian people. That is a very serious evolution because that is the missing element needed to wage war.

The adverse effect of demonizing our opponents goes beyond the normal discourse between left and right. You did not see Republicans going around with signs claiming Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, or Obama was not their president. That was the start of the demonization of Trump and part of the strategy to defeat him in the 2020 election. This “cancel culture” of shutting down free speech because something offends someone somewhere is also undermining civilization.

Public discourse came to an end, killing any hope of a democratic process needed to maintain civilization. Democratic societies require the free exchange of ideas among a populace willing and able to make informed judgments about them. However, when the rhetoric outweighs the rational examination of ideas, everything comes to an end historically. This process of demonization undermines everything that creates a civilization which is the unification of people

coming together for the mutual benefit of all. Indeed, we as a society become less able to see the bonds that bring us together when we only view everyone as a possible opponent. This vilification obscures our strengths and fuels our weaknesses, ending any discussion and advancement from alternative viewpoints. What has transpired is that words are now weapons, and any public discourse degenerated with a single focus on acquiring power. Truth no longer matters, just as Hillary’s Steele Dossier proved. Victory at all costs becomes the battle cry on Capitol Hill.

Even the term “vilification” extends back centuries. The word “vilify” means to lower in worth or value, and it comes from the late Latin “vilificare,” meaning to make cheap and to lower the esteem to be of little value. It seems to have meant “to slander, speak evil of” a person, which was first recorded during the 1590s. It was the Vandals who sacked Rome in 455 AD, which leaves us with the word “vandalize” to this very day

In political terms, the object of this vilification has become a tool to defeat the enemy and occupy their hill, but in the process, they become the enemy. Amid this strategy, as Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) exploited, emotionalism usurps all reason. Hitler was a speaker with great charisma that tapped into the emotion of the people. Democracy dies under such circumstances, ending any meaningful free social dialogue.

This trend of demonizing or vilifying an opponent raises serious moral reasons for concern. To demonize someone not merely moves beyond saying he is mistaken or misguided. It terminates discussion and reasonable debate. When this is carried out against a head of state, it transcends and denounces the leader and vilifies the people themselves. It also terminates any possibility of compromise and eliminates any peace negotiations. A national leader’s moral status differs from attacking an individual’s character. This implies a war against the Russian people, not merely against Putin alone. Thus, today there are no peacemakers. Every world leader is willing to support Zelensky until the last Ukrainian dies in battle.

Why? Because of this vilification of Putin transcends to all of the Russian people including those who have lived in the Dundas for centuries. The West has also tied the moral status of Russia itself to the alleged personal intentions of Putin. Therefore, attacking Putin’s character as evil means that his intentions cannot be good. That becomes mutually exclusive. In a court of law, it is impossible to know someone’s true intentions. Here too, the demonization and vilification of Putin have opened the door, and we see nothing but murky waters ahead laced with hatred. That has never ended well throughout history.

Finally, demonizing an opponent invites a like response, which is unfolding in Russia. Once both sides hate each other, that becomes the last necessary element to unleash the dogs of war, as spoken by Mark Antony in Act 3, Scene 1, line 273 of William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: “Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war.”

This only escalates a death spiral of hostility that becomes unresolvable and contributes to a climate of public distrust of not just one person, as in Putin, but two nations as a whole. This vilification cannot be reversed. There is a price to be paid. Unfortunately, that is typically the lives of the common people who are sent into battle. There is nothing left but war as the resolution, for politicians are incapable of ever admitting they were wrong. Nobody dares to stand up and say Putin is not evil or a madman. Thus, the “die is cast,” as Julius Caesar said. War becomes inevitable because human nature never changes, and we must always wage war like two drunks in a bar.

The Magnitsky Scam

S

ergei L. Magnitsky (1972–2009) was a Ukrainian-born Russian accountant whose story was exploited to achieve political objectives that could not be implemented without a human rights violation to avoid international law. Namely, the sanctions imposed under the Magnitsky Act (2012) banning visas and freezing assets of Russian officials allegedly linked to his death. Post-mortem, Magnitsky was seen as a whistleblower who was assassinated to cover crimes committed by the Russian government under Putin. Yet, Magnitsky would have been a witness against Bill Browder and Edmond Safra of Republic National Bank, exposing a lot more behind the truth about Hermitage Capital and Yeltsin’s forced resignation.

Sergei Magnitsky had worked at Firestone Duncan, an accounting/legal firm founded in 1993 by American attorney Jamison Reed Firestone (born 1966). This was the firm hired by Bill Browder, the junior partner of Hermitage Capital Management with Edmond Safra (1932-December 3rd, 1999). Magnitsky was an accountant advising on taxes and not a lawyer. The firm provided services to foreign investors doing business in Russia. The New York Times62 wrote on June 9th, 2016:

“Six years after his mysterious death in a Moscow prison cell, Sergei L. Magnitsky has become a byword for brutality in President Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia. Now, a documentary film that paints Mr. Magnitsky as an accomplice rather than a victim is generating a furor, with critics trying to block screening of it next week in Washington.”

Edmond Safra was a collector. He had a great stamp collection, which included the famous 24c Inverted Curtis Jenny of 1918. Edmond had purchased Position 77 of the original sheet of 100 from Christie’s auction in New York held during 1994, paying $173,000. Even the Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled: “Some details of Safra Death are called into question.” After Edmond Safra was murdered under

mysterious circumstances in 1999, the stamp was held by his family until 2014. It was then sold at Spink USA in an auction and resold in 2022 for $800,000.

My interaction with Edmond was very curious. He seemed desperate to get me to invest $10 billion into Hermitage Capital Management in March 1999. It was not revealed to me at that time that Browder had lost 90% during the 1998 Russian Financial Crisis. When I declined, even Berezovsky reached out to call me, which was even stranger. It was in May 1999 when Edmond sold his bank to HSBC for $10 billion. It appeared my decline perhaps prompted him to sell his bank. It turned out that Edmond had lost at least $1 billion himself, aside from the loss in Hermitage by Browder. Indeed, the losses by all the hedge funds who were playing the “guaranteed trade” in Russia were staggering and resulted not just in a massive loss in Russia, but it set off a

global liquidity crisis. They were forced to sell assets in all markets to raise capital to cover their Russian losses. Interestingly, Browder has spun the story of a tax fraud into alleging a human rights violation. Magnitsky died in prison after being beaten by guards because he would have exposed corruption in the Russian police, which sounds like the plot from a B-movie. Yet three separate investigators have rejected Browder’s story, and Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, said:

“When I was in the Government, we studied closely [Magnitsky’s] tragic case and had a radically different assessment.”

Safra was counting on Berezovsky to take the presidency, and then they would control all the natural wealth of Russia. Edmond was a hard-money guy who would call the gold trading desk every morning to check the market. The connection between Safra and Berezovsky perhaps accounts

for the same demonization and vilification of Putin by Browder, which does not conform to the declassified documents from the Clinton Administration. There is no question that the ’98 Russian Financial Crisis was a bloodbath in Russia in particular. Browder writes in his Red Notice that Beny Steinmetz lost so much that “he had to divest his interests in the Hermitage Fund and the company.” Browder also continued: “Like Beny, Edmond’s bank had also bet heavily on Russian bonds and lost.” I knew that the rumor was that Soros had lost $2 billion in Russia. He was also buddies with Safra, Browder, and Berezovsky.

As I said, the month after the 1998 Russian Financial Crisis, in October 1998, Edmond invited me to the IMF dinner that he put on in Washington, DC, renting the entire National Gallery

and filling it with all the politicians. They were hopeful that the politicians would hand the IMF more money and bail out Russia, which would be another one of those bailouts for the bankers. This was their “hail mary play” to get back all their losses, and I was invited so they could show me they had all politicians in their pockets.

Browder admitted in his book Red Notice that he lost 90% of his fund on that collapse63. To me, they were in search of that “guaranteed trade” that was like searching for the Fountain of Youth by Juan Ponce de León (1474–1521). That was probably a slur to ruin Juan’s reputation since there is no record of any reference to the Fountain of Youth existing that would have inspired him to search for something his opponents just made up. The “Club” has continually lost vast amounts of money on every major “guaranteed trade.” So, they always count on the politicians to bail them out. This has been going on since the Latin American Debt Crisis of the early 1980s. The U.S. dollar rose dramatically into 1985, forcing even the British pound down to $1.03 in 1985. Nobody could pay back dollar

loans that were more than double in local value. There too, banks were told to lend, and the IMF loans were their presumed guarantee. The entire mess collapsed, and Brazilian officials planned a debt negotiation meeting where they decided to “never again sign agreements with the IMF.” In Russia, the same scenario unfolded with the dollar rising, and IMF loans were presumed to be that “guaranteed trade” bankers always sought. Because they were banking on the IMF continuing the loans, they were not employing even the most basic risk management. When bankers are just looking for the “guaranteed trade,” all common sense leaves the room. While the “Club” was looking for that “guaranteed trade” and lost billions, I was named hedge fund manager of the year for being on the right side of that crisis. I was typically trading against these people and even one of my employees, Barclay Leib, said in the movie the Forecaster that he did his due diligence before joining my firm. He asked Goldman Sachs about me, and they said they thought they could “crush” me, but I usually won. I traded against the “Club,” which was often war in the financial pits.

I traded head-to-head against the “Club,” so I was in the middle of these events. I traded directly against Soros as well as Buffett. I am not writing from the outside based on things I did not experience firsthand or witness. To be an international hedge fund manager, you must know what is happening everywhere at every minute.

I had clients worldwide, and my connections were renowned. Even Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) asked me if I had any info regarding a secret Russian installation that they were building underground back in 1995-1996. My network of contacts was extensive because we were all of like minds.

I had heard the sales pitches about how the IMF would never allow Russia to default because of all the nukes. Hence, it was thought to be a “guaranteed trade,” but I had warned them Russia would collapse. As always, they refused to listen and just laughed, for they had their foot in the door to power. The trade was “guaranteed,” and Berezovsky would become the president of Russia, opening the door to all the wealth of Russia at last for the taking. There was no talking to them.

It was April 1999 when I flew to London and met with HSBC for my advice on buying Republic National Bank. The next month, May 1999, Edmond agreed to sell his bank to HSBC, as reported in all the newspapers in Europe and USA. Edmond’s billion-dollar loss on Russia was devastating to him. It was by far his worst investment in his entire life.

With the mysterious death of Edmond Safra on December 3rd, 1999, Republic National Bank had still been bought by HSBC. That meant that HSBC partnered with Bill Browder in Hermitage Capital Management. It is curious that five years later, in 2005, Bill Browder appears to have falsely claimed that he was banned by the Russian government as a “threat to national security” and denied entry to Russia. Yet he attempted to reapply right up to January 2008. The reason may have been illegal activities and tax fraud. This coincided with the very strange and mysterious death of Édouard, the French banker who was also an investor in Safra/Browder’s Hermitage Capital Management. The morning of his death, he was to have a meeting with Bill Browder. In his notes, stranger still, Dominic Dunne suggested

that Edouard Stern’s death had been somehow connected to the death of Safra. I am not sure why Dominick made that connection. He did not explain it in his notes. Browder had claimed that his visa to enter Russia was revoked because he campaigned to improve corporate governance in firms he had invested in, which would have been at least a tenfold profit. Browder presented the image of a white knight to the press, who were ignorant of the motives or transactions. There was no profit in just trying to clean up corruption, which would have been highly dangerous. People were there to make as much as possible during Russia’s wild days. Even Browder’s new partner, HSBC, was criminally charged with money laundering violating numerous sanctions from Libya to Iran.

In fact, HSBC has been criminally prosecuted for such dirty dealings, and in 2019,64 the third time was the charm. HSBC

managed to get a non-prosecution agreement. However, they turned over every client they could rat on with offshore accounts in order to escape prosecution. Russian authorities began the proceedings against Hermitage, Browder’s fund, for tax evasion 18 months after Browder’s visa had been revoked. Hermitage had strongly denied any wrongdoing, but it then had subsequently liquidated all its holdings and left Russia. The Economist wrote that the Russian government blacklisted Browder because he interfered with the flow of money to “corrupt bureaucrats and their businessmen accomplices.” Other experts on the activities of Western “investors” in Russia during the 1990s were far more sympathetic to the position of the Russian government’s assessment regarding the tax schemes, citing Browder’s earlier confidential settlement agreement in February 2000 with VSMPO, AVISMA’s parent company. The company required Browder and other investors to sell their VSMPO shares there. Some viewed their activity as engaging in green-mail alleged extortion.

Browder was also found guilty of evading some $40 million in taxes in Russia. That was the entire reason for the raid of Hermitage Capital Management and the offices of Firestone Duncan simultaneously on June 4th, 2007. These facts, some have alleged, may have been the real reason Browder crafted the Magnitsky Act to prevent his extradition for tax fraud. While Bill Browder presented himself as the white knight of Russia, claiming to champion corporate governance, he had to deal with Gazprom. Browder targeted Gazprom in particular, pushing it to adopt Western standards so it could be listed on a Western exchange at a tenfold profit. This was hardly a white knight. Gazprom was trading at about $3 per barrel of oil reserves, whereas British Petroleum (BP) traded at $20 per barrel. So, if Browder could push the company to list on Western exchanges with Western accounting standards, he was looking at a huge profit. The white knight story does not exactly play out, for the press was just ignorant of finance. Interestingly, Bill Browder had supported Putin at first because he was not a communist and he supported free markets. That meant a Russian company could list on a Western exchange with a tenfold profit. It was not a plan to expose corporate corruption; it was a plan to make untold billions all offshore tax-free.

Interestingly, Business Insider published a dispute to provide a glimpse of intrigue behind the scenes. The dispute was between Browder and Fusion GPS, the research firm that produced the fake Steele Dossier for Hillary Clinton that started RussiaGate. The involvement of Browder was exposed when the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, unilaterally released the transcript of an interview the committee conducted with Glenn Simpson, a Fusion cofounder. The transcript revealed that Simpson worked with the American law firm BakerHostetler, who was representing Prevezon, an international real estate investment company that the U.S. government accused of laundering money into New York City real estate for Russians. The transcript contained the information that they were “trying to get William Browder to testify under oath about his role in this case and his activities in Russia.” Browder was notorious for avoiding any deposition to get him to testify about his activities in Russia and Magnitsky.

Insider reported: “Browder, according to Simpson, had told

the Justice Department that the laundered money was stolen from Russia as part of the $230 million tax-fraud scheme that Sergei Magnitsky, his lawyer, uncovered in 2008.” Simpson testified that Browder would not answer any of BakerHostetler’s questions about Magnitsky’s and Prevezon’s purported involvement in the tax-fraud scheme. Simpson said that Browder also evaded subpoenas with videos of him running away down the street, refusing to be served. Business Insider further reported Simpson saying: “So we subpoenaed his hedge fund.” Browder “then changed the hedge fund registration, took his name off, said it was on there by accident, it was a mistake, and said that he had no presence in the United States.”

Browder had conveniently renounced his U.S. citizenship in 1996 when he formed Hermitage Capital Management following meetings at the WEF in Davos, Switzerland, in

January 1996 with Holtzman. That was after they allegedly met with the oligarchs behind Berezovsky’s Davos Pact.

CBS News listed Browder as one in five people who resigned their citizens to avoid taxes.65 Browder characterized Fusion GPS’ work for BakerHostetler as a “smear campaign,” and Insider reported that he “tweeted on Tuesday that Simpson repeated ‘old and false Russian government attacks on me and Sergei Magnitsky.’”

Business Insider continued reporting that Browder had

accused Simpson of then “whitewashing his accused Russian money launderer clients who received money from the crime Sergei Magnitsky was killed over.” The article continued: “Glenn Simpson admits in his testimony to several facts that show he was part of the Russian anti-Magnitsky lobbying campaign in D.C. that were summarized in our DOJ criminal complaint about his conduct filed in 2016.”

Interestingly, Business Insider reported that in “December 2016, Browder lodged a formal complaint with the Department of Justice alleging that Fusion’s work for BakerHostetler on behalf of Prevezon violated disclosure requirements.” This raised questions about whether Fusion GPS violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act by failing to register.

Fusion GPS had denied that its opposition research against Browder on behalf of BakerHostetler was an effort to undermine the Magnitsky Act. Yet Browder was never able to prove that Prevezon engaged in the tax-fraud scheme that he claimed Magnitsky had uncovered. At his videotaped deposition, he could not recall over 20 times answers to questions. Yet more interesting, when questioned about Magnitsky, whom he claimed was his lawyer, then under oath, he admitted Magnitsky had no law degree and advised him on taxes. He claimed he was his lawyer simply because he was in court. That was really absurd.

Nevertheless, Simpson acknowledged during his testimony that BakerHostetler had instructed Fusion to give its Browder research to the Russian-American lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin, who then lobbied Congress against the Global Magnitsky Act.

Prevezon’s Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya was added to the original Magnitsky Act list. Interestingly, Natalia participated in the famous Trump Tower meeting on June 9th, 2016, with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner. They said they had dirt on Hillary to get the meeting, but it was to try to make Trump aware of the backdrop to the Magnitsky Act. Indeed, one of my lawyers, Scot Balber, was there at that meeting.

Business Insider also reported that Browder characterized

Simpson as “a big player” and said his vendetta was against Russian President Vladimir Putin, who, he said, “murdered

Magnitsky and covered up the crimes of his officials.” Still, Browder has never been able to prove any such claim. Indeed, many have disputed Browder’s story about Magnitsky. Business Insider reported Simpson told lawmakers: “[Browder] was willing to, you know, hand stuff off to the DOJ anonymously in the beginning and cause them to launch a court case against somebody,” but that he wasn’t interested “in speaking under oath about, you know, why he did that, his own activities in Russia.”

According to the Insider, Simpson told the Judiciary Committee that Fusion had uncovered evidence that Browder sought to evade taxes in Russia using “dozens of shell companies in Cyprus and other tax havens.” Simpson testified that he “became personally interested in where Bill Browder came from, how he made so much money under Vladimir Putin without getting involved in anything illicit.” Simpson characterized Browder’s behavior in the Prevezon proceedings as a “determined effort to avoid testifying under oath,” which included “running away from subpoenas” and “making lurid allegations” against Fusion. Simpson told the committee that all of that “raised questions in my mind about why he was so determined to not have to answer questions under oath about things that happened in Russia.” Browder claimed that the subpoena was quashed. Browder also claimed that Mikhail Khodorkovsky of Yukos, who allegedly obtained Yukos for $300 million in a rigged auction, was engaged in asset stripping and transfer pricing. That is pulled off by selling assets to an offshore entity at a reduced price, which would then sell at full market price offshore. Browder said:

“We found him to be our toughest opponent. That is one of the reasons I am so sympathetic with President Putin.”

Indeed, the European Court of Human Rights stated on August 27th, 2019,66 that the arrest of Sergei Magnitsky was justified in the investigation of Browder’s tax evasion. “The Court observes that the inquiry into alleged tax evasion, resulting in the criminal proceedings against Mr Magnitskiy, started in 2004, long before he complained that prosecuting officials had been involved in fraudulent acts.”

The Court concluded that Magnitsky’s “arrest was not arbitrary and that it was based on reasonable suspicion of his having committed a criminal offense.”

Andrei Nekrasov (born 1958) is a Russian who began the film on Bill Browder, The Magnitsky Act, believing that the evil lurking behind the curtain was Putin. However, as Andrei investigated, he came to believe that the story of Bill Browder was false. Magnitsky was only Browder’s accountant—not his lawyer, which was a false statement off the bat.

The Nekrasov film shows that there were numerous people killed who could have provided evidence against Browder. Putin’s police certainly had no incentive to kill Magnitsky, for he would have been a valuable asset as a government witness. Magnitsky may have exposed the truth behind the entire affair of tax fraud and possibly the entire scheme with the Bank of New York. On November 27th, 2020, Andrei Nekrasov said: “Ten years ago, when I first thought of making a film about Sergei Magnitsky, hardly anyone in the West had heard of him. On November 18th, 2020, at an online event organised by prominent MEPs, Magnitsky’s name reverberated with fame and glory; the glory of a martyr, in the tradition of Giordano Bruno or Martin Luther King.”

It was said that Andrei viewed the Magnitsky story as a hoax. Barrie Weis explained in his article:67 “Ursula von der Leyen President of the European Commission, Magnitsky ‘Act’, Bill Browder, Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, (Not to mention Hunter Biden’s Laptop) Secretary Blinken, Trump, Kushner, Clinton She and He, Obama, Bush I II and III,

Blair, Cameron, Johnson, ‘Voldemort’ Zelensky, Uncle Tom Cobbly and all – What’s the Common Denominator? Corruption. Period.”

Browder pulled every trick in the book to shut down the film, for it showed that perhaps the culprit may have been Browder himself—not Putin or the police. The film was banned in the United States, as was the documentary The Forecaster. So much for the land of the free and home of the brave. Browder had Andrei’s film also banned in Europe. The best Andrei could do was to create a Behind the Scenes when his film was banned to hide the truth. Andrei and I met in Germany. It was very interesting to see how we both came from different angles on the very same story but arrived at the same conclusion. Andrei began the film because he was anti-Putin. But the more he listened to Browder and his claim that Putin “murdered Magnitsky and covered up the crimes of his officials” all because he exposed a tax fraud did not make sense.

Andrei’s conclusion was that it was one giant hoax played out in the Western press. Much more serious was the fact that these lies were covering up the attempted takeover of Russia by Berezovsky with the bankers during the Clinton Administration with their blessing. Indeed, the fate of the entire world is now being decided once again on fake news just like the weapons of mass destruction and all the lives lost in Iraq. In 1999, many were dumbfounded as to how the unknown Vladimir Putin came to power. It was Boris Berezovsky who began the slander campaign against Putin as some evil KGB officer who dreams of reestablishing the Soviet Union. He knew that was false, but he played that KGB up in hopes of overthrowing Putin so he could grab the reins of power himself. Berezovsky was relentless in that quest until the very end. The Clintons remained silent, perhaps hoping to reduce Russia to a mere vassal state of Washington. They have certainly not declassified the most incriminating documents. What has been declassified confirms that Putin stood between the communists and Berezovsky’s oligarchs. These documents definitively establish that Putin had no such intentions of resurrecting the USSR. It was John McCain who took Berezovsky’s propaganda to constantly accuse Putin of being a communist, claiming that when he looked into Putin’s eyes, he only saw three letters—K, G, B. There is no question that Putin stood between the oligarchs and the communists, for both were the enemies of Yeltsin. He would not have turned to Putin if he was from either camp. Putin was neutral against the oligarchs whom Browder met with in Davos in 1996 when they formed the Davos Pact. After that Davos event, Browder formed Heritage Capital Management with Edmond Safra in 1996. Safra gave Browder

$25 million to begin Hermitage Capital Management despite the fact that he was not a trader. The corruption Putin targeted was that of the Davos Pact, knowing this was all about stripping assets of Russia and seizing power. The entire attraction was to get control of the hard assets―gold, diamond, and energy. Edmond was a gold bug. He got his start buying the Maria Theresa coins at a discount from the Arabs because they could not handle coins with a picture of a woman on them. But these coins were the standard in those days. Edmond said it was funny that we both had dealt in coins. Andrei wrote: “Bill Browder has made sure every mainstream news outlet, every major political party in the West has put its signature under a false accusation of the most ignominious kind. An accusation from the high moral ground of democracy and human rights, that has turned out to be a lie motivated by greed. Some mistakes do get admitted, but admitting this one is seen as a total capitulation with unpredictable consequences. That gives one private citizen named Browder the confidence to bully entire countries, e.g. Cyprus, as he fast-tracks sanctions ultimatums through the European institutions, lest the police continue to do their job and investigate his dubious shell companies. Now it’s Switzerland’s turn. Browder has just threatened Swiss citizens, should they act on the instructions of their country’s legal authorities, with “civil and criminal penalties in the United States.” And so, I dare predict that the Magnitsky case’s trajectory from an obscure financial crime to the biggest international cover-up in modern history will run its full course in all its absurdity, sliminess and geopolitical precariousness. Causing, in these uncertain times, an unforeseeable damage to the health of democracy, which has enough underlying conditions as it is.”68

Andrei tried in vain to break through the corruption behind this entire affair. He wrote an open letter to Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Union, who had vowed to implement the “European Magnitsky Act” in her State ofthe European Union address in September 2020. Andrei copied the letter to everyone in the European Parliament. Eight weeks later, on November 17th, 2020, he received a short reply (dated November 13th), “on behalf of the President,” from the EU “Managing Directorate Russia, Eastern Partnership.”The Directorate “took note” of his “views,” the letter said.

The evidence shows that Magnitsky was under criminal investigation and was not a whistleblower. He was most likely being held in hopes that he would give evidence against the entire affair of tax frauds allegedly run by clients of the firm he worked for at Firestone Duncan.

That investigation may have even involved Berezovsky and the Bank of New York blackmail scheme of nearly 9 years before. Magnitsky was a target being questioned on criminal activity.

Magnitsky was in a position to incriminate Hermitage and other clients of Firestone Duncan. They may have made connections to Safra and the involvement of even the Clinton Administration. Some believed that Edmond had been assassinated to prevent him from providing any link to the Clinton Administration and the CIA.

By no means was Andrei the only one to see through Browder’s claims that Magnitsky was killed on the orders of Putin were false. The Ron Paul Institute published an article on the subject of the Magnitsky Act and Bill Browder, dated June 28th, 2016.69 The conclusion was straightforward. “Browder has assiduously, and mostly successfully, made his case that he and Magnitsky have been the victims of Russian corruption both during and since that time, though there have been skeptics regarding many details of his personal narrative. He has been able to sell his tale to leading American politicians like Senators John McCain, Ben Cardin and ex-Senator Joe Lieberman, always receptive when criticizing Russia, as well as to a number of European parliamentarians and media outlets. But there is, inevitably, another side to the story, something quite different, which Andrei Nekrasov presents to the viewer.”

If we look at this more realistically, Magnitsky was Browder’s accountant, not his lawyer, and he was an employee of a firm Browder hired at Firestone Duncan. So Magnitsky certainly would have been a witness against Browder and all the carpetbaggers in Russia, no less other clients who were alleged to be involved in the same tax scheme.

A Russian lawyer, Nikolai Gorokhov (born in 1964), has been representing the family of Sergei Magnitsky since 2011. He fell or was pushed from his fourth-floor window. He suffered serious head injuries after falling from the fourth floor of his apartment building near Moscow.70 Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta said Nikolai Gorokhov apparently fell from the

window while trying to lift a bathtub up to his apartment. Yet others suggested Gorokhov might have been thrown from the window. Gorokhov was 53 at the time and was taken by helicopter to the hospital. What was really curious was that he was scheduled to appear in court that week for a case Magnitsky’s mother had filed against some of those allegedly involved in the fraud of her son, whom Browder claimed he uncovered. The case appears to have ended after Gorokhov’s fall, and nothing came of it. Curiously, the only one to benefit would have been Browder. For if this case went all the way in Moscow, there was no proof of Browder’s claims. Perhaps that is why it appears to have been dismissed or withdrawn.

Reuters reported that the Russian prosecutors had concluded

that they suspected that Bill Browder ordered the murder of Magnitsky. Indeed, Browder has benefited from Magnitsky’s death and has championed himself as a human rights activist to rebut any extradition to Russia for tax fraud charges. I suspect if that were true, it had to have involved Berezovsky. Clearly, Berezovsky routinely had people killed. Indeed, Forbes wrote about Berezovsky that “people who have stood in his way sometimes met bloody ends.” It is curious that Berezovsky formed his Davos Pact in 1996, the same time that Holtzman took Browder there, and he then formed Hermitage Capital Management with Edmond. If anyone pulled off the assassination of Magnitsky, who had been in prison for more than 10 months, it surely would have been Berezovsky.

Also of extreme interest, is a report to the European Parliament by Andreas Gross. He states:71 “In the draft report, I have described in some detail why it is absurd that Messrs Magnitsky and Browder themselves committed the fraud they had denounced in their detailed criminal complaints made before the fraud actually happened. The judgments recognizing the claims against the Hermitage companies effectively annulling the profits for which Hermitage had paid the equivalent of US$230 million in taxes were obtained by lawyers acting on behalf of the criminal conspiracy – on both sides of the court cases in question. They were shown to have traveled frequently with some of the officials accused of being involved in the conspiracy. The court ruling of 30 July 2007 in favour of the convicted criminal Mr Markelov, transferring to “Pluton” (a company owned by Mr Markelov) the three Hermitage companies mentioned in the above quote from the Prosecutor General’s Office, was based on false documents. Upon the discovery of the fraud, the lawful owners of the Hermitage companies succeed in having the ruling of 30 July 2007 overturned, but then the criminal conspirators came up with another plot: they claimed, in their appeal, that Mr Markelov (“Pluton”) had acquired the Hermitage companies from a Mr Gasanov with whom he had purportedly signed an agreement on the companies’ sale on 31 July 2007. Mr Gasanov died on 1 October 2007 and could no longer be questioned.”

Indeed, the entire claim that Magnitsky was a whistleblower against two corrupt police officers, Karpov and Kuznetsov, did not fit Browder’s version. He claimed that Magnitsky had

testified against them and was under pressure to withdraw his accusations. Once again, nobody can independently confirm that fact. Nonetheless, when Andrei Nekrasov downloaded the transcript of the Magnitsky testimony against the police, it showed he was not a whistleblower. Magnitsky was arrested and imprisoned at the Butyrka prison in Moscow in November 2008. That was after the offices were raised on June 4th, 2007. Magnitsky was charged for colluding with Hermitage and held for 11 months in pretrial detention.

Magnitsky was summoned to be questioned in a criminal investigation of Hermitage/Browder. It was clear from the police transcripts that what Browder called “testimonies” revealed that Magnitsky had been summoned to answer questions. He was not reporting on anyone, let alone accusing police in a police station. Browder appears to have possibly misrepresented the contents of those police interviews in short descriptions thereof, which most people read without consulting the original.

Indeed, during the Prevezon Holdings case in New York, they tried to introduce the Gross Report as evidence. Judge Pauley denied their effort stating that the report was biased: “And it also, is my judgement, suffers from a lack of trustworthiness, having read it.”

What Browder says in the media is very different from the version he gives when under oath. In the Karpov vs. Browder case at the High Court in London, Browder claimed that the

Russian authorities, wanting Magnitsky dead, imprisoned him because the lethal outcome was a “reasonably foreseeable” consequence of the imprisonment, “not least” because of high mortality rate in the Russian prisons. Judge Simon dismissed such a “causal link,” noting that “nothing is said about torture, beating by guards, and murder.72 Alex Krainer’s book on Bill Browder, Grand Deception, The Browder Hoax, is a well-documented investigation into the entire hoax behind the Magnitsky Act. This is well documented in and of itself.

Alex Krainer was also a hedge fund manager and trader. Perhaps it just takes someone from the field to see through these allegations as if they were a pane of glass. Alex lays out that he wrote this book to “contribute an important element of truth toward a peaceful resolution of the dangerous yet needless new Cold War between the United States and Russia…” What Alex saw were the intentional lies that have undermined the world’s stability geopolitically.

Alex maintained that Bill Browder was the false crusader for justice and human rights and the self-proclaimed No. 1 enemy of Vladimir Putin. Yet Putin is supposed to have killed his critics. So, why is Browder appearing on TV and pushing his narrative? Browder, as far as Alex writes, has perpetrated a brazen and dangerous deception upon the Western world. Browder engaged in propaganda and flat-out lies, the aims of which were destabilization, chaos, mayhem, and “regime change” in Russia. This is all self-serving for Browder. Browder has conducted a campaign using lawyers to silence any dissenting voices. He managed to ban The Magnitsky Act film, and even Alex’s book is banned on both Amazon and Barnes and Noble without any due process, just threatening lawsuits. One wonders why the Western press and Western governments have taken whatever Browder says without any fact-checking. Alex raises the question: What were the U.S. Senate and Congress’s interests in accepting Browder’s word?

Then, there is Lucy Komisar, an investigative journalist familiar with finance who Browder bans from any lecture. Lucy was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Lucy asked Michael McFaul, the former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, to appear before the Council. Lucy asked a question about its purpose she later published on May 15th, 2018. Lucy points out

that the Magnitsky Act was a means to impose trade sanctions on Russia as an exception under the World Trade Organization (WTO) for human rights. Lucy points out that McFaul wrote: “Once Russia joined the WTO, Jackson-Vanik put the United States in a particularly awkward position. If we were still applying trade restrictions when Russia joined, we would be in noncompliance with our WTO obligations. Russia, in turn, could discriminate against our companies.” He said, “No one on the Hill was prepared to do Russia any favors, even if American companies would be the biggest losers of doing nothing. And then our legislative experts discovered a lifeline” the Magnitsky Act.”

Therefore, the Magnitsky Act allowed the U.S. to do what was illegal outside of the WTO, using human rights to impose trade sanctions. Our wonderful leaders in Congress seem to have not cared about the truth or the facts. With 60% of the people on Capitol Hill being lawyers, they know how to craft laws, create loopholes, and always proceed in an adversarial manner which may be suitable in private practice but not in

international relations between countries. Adversarial politics diminishes the likelihood of compromise or settlement. Putin was warned and turned against the Berezovsky crowd and everyone connected thereto. He knew full well that this was a scheme to seize control of all the Russian assets. He knew that Berezovsky and Gusinsky seized the free press and used it for political gain. This was why Yeltsin’s last words to Putin were: “Take care of Russia.” Browder admitted in his interview at Cambridge Business that he lost $900 million dollars during the 1998 Russian Financial Crisis. He also states that he went to Russia because they were giving out the country’s assets for free. The total capitalization of Russia in 1992, he says, was only $10 billion. Curiously, that was the same number Republic National Bank tried to get me to invest in his Hermitage Capital Management fund after he lost 90%. Lucy Komisar points out all Browder’s inconsistent stories, advocating sanctions and seizing Russian private assets to pressure Putin. •    “I don’t know what they were thinking. I don’t know whether they killed him deliberately on the night of the 16th, or if he died of neglect. “73 •    “They put him in an isolation cell with a doctor outside the door until he died.”74 •    “They put him in a straightjacket, put him in an isolation room, & waited outside the door until he died.”75 •    They put him in an isolation cell, tied him to a bed, ^ then allowed 8 riot guards to beat him with rubber batons until he was dead.”76 •    “But when he arrived there, instead of putting him in the emergency room they put him in an isolation cell, chained him to a bed, and eight riot guards came in and beat him with rubber batons.”77

Lucy has documented how Browder is a liar, for he never tells the same story twice. It begins with him having no idea how Magnitsky died, to claiming his death was deliberate as a doctor waited outside his door until he died. Then, the next version was they put him in a straightjacket, and eight guards beat him. Then before the Senate, he testified that they chained him, and then eight guards beat him to death. Browder appears just to be making up the story on an ad hoc basis. Why? Lucy notes the Dealbook article in the New York Times where he boldy pushes the world towards World War III as if he has any qualification in geopolitics. He is not even a real investment manager, for all he was doing was buying and holding. Anyone can do that. Now he advises the world, saying: “‘There Is No Reasonable Way for This to End’: Bill Browder on How to Stop the War.”

Lucy points out the propaganda against Putin and Russia from biased journalists who do not bother verifying what they publish. Browder can say Putin is raping little old ladies, and they will print it. Lucy pointed out all the fake facts already published by the New York Times.78

McCain always supported maintaining Russia as the enemy. Without that, there would be no need for NATO. McCain had been pushing NATO to move East right up to the border of Russia while claiming it was Putin who wanted to expand West to recreate the USSR. Yeltsin would not have turned to Putin if he had been a communist. They were his lethal enemies. Was McCain and his cohort of Neocons just out to destroy Russia because they needed an enemy, and no reform in Russia mattered?

The curious set of facts was that after resigning his American citizenship, Browder could still get access to John McCain to sponsor the Magnitsky Act. That really protected Browder from extradition to Russia for tax fraud when he was no longer an American citizen. That made no sense. Renouncing your American citizenship means you need a visa to visit the United States, and you certainly can never have a gun in the USA. So why did McCain greet Browder with open arms? Even Strobe Talbott, deputy secretary of state from 1994 to 2001 during the Clinton Administration, authored a book, The Russia Hand: A Memoir of Presidential Diplomacy. Talbott responded to the issues pushed by John McCain that Putin’s consolidating measures in early 2005 were some attempts to resurrect the USSR.

Talbott suggested in the interview that in order for Russia to survive as a unitary state, it must resume its development as a federal and democratic state. That is precisely what Putin was doing, just as Washington has been urged to federalize

abortion rights dictating to the states. There was no agenda to restore the USSR. That is precisely why Yeltsin selected Putin. When we dig deeper, something emerges. The U.S. government has used the Magnitsky Act to demonize Russia and Putin. The list of people who cannot come to the USA even though they have never been tried, charged, and had no connection with Magnitsky whatsoever continually expands. There is obviously a dual purpose being served here, and those in Congress just overlooked Browder and his history simply because it was a clever means for the Neocons to punish Russia and ensure there would be no end to the Cold War using the excuse of human rights. Interestingly, the Treasury Department’s list of sanctioned countries states that: “The sanctions can be either comprehensive or selective, using the blocking of assets and trade restrictions to accomplish foreign policy and national security goals.”

There is no mention of human rights. That is how they have gotten around international law by crafting the Magnitsky Act on the pretense of human rights, and they could care less if Browder made it all up.

Moreover, when we look at the list of the 13 people provided by Browder to begin the Magnitsky Act, it included the judge against Browder, the prosecutor, the Moscow tax official, and the judge who ruled Magnitsky’s imprisonment, which the EU report said was justified. Browder used the Magnitsky Act to ensure he would not be extradited. The list included the very people who were investigating Browder. They were not responsible for some human rights violations. Was this a clever way to escape extradition to Russia for fraud and Browder’s past while accomplishing McCain’s goal to punish Russia? This is why many refer to this as the Browder Protection Act. Yet, this was not achieved simply because they liked Browder. McCain hated Russians in general and saw this as a golden opportunity to strike a blow against his enemy.

The German publication Der Spiegel wrote on November 26th, 2019, concerning the whole Magnitsky story: “The legal documents that underpin it fill dozens of binders, not only in Moscow, but also in London and New York. After sifting through thousands of pages, one might begin to wonder: Did the perfidious conspiracy to murder Magnitsky ever really take place? Or is Browder a charlatan whose story the West was too eager to believe?” “But with the Magnitsky sanctions, it could be that the activist Browder used a noble cause to manipulate Western governments.”

Once more, when anyone looks closely at Browder’s story, it never holds up to the light of day. Der Spiegel wrote: “When asked, Browder cites the investigative committee’s report as evidence. He does the same on his website, where he also says the same officials incriminated by Magnitsky “intentionally tortured and ultimately murdered him.” The report, however, makes no such assertion of an intentional killing. The names of the two police officers, Kuznetsov and Karpov, don’t even appear in

the original Russian version of the commission’s report. Kuznetsov is only mentioned in an English translation on Browder’s website.”

Indeed, Der Spiegel asked: “But the question remains: Just how solid are the facts upon which politicians and the media are basing their judgements of this case?” Various inconsistencies and contradictions are apparent in some documents that Browder’s people have published online.

Der Spiegel also noticed that Magnitsky does indeed mention

the names of the two police officers nearly 30 times. However, never did he make any accusation against them personally, but Browder did. They also noted that Magnitsky did not report fraud, but rather his statements were entirely answered as a witness in an ongoing investigation. Der Spiegel states that they have confirmed these facts, which blows a hole in Browder’s story.

Der Spiegel also points out that Browder: “[H]as a well-documented talent for selling a set of facts so that it supports his own version of events. In Moscow, this was part of his business model as an investor. According to its own calculations, Hermitage Capital Management generated a 1,500 percent return on its investments within just a few years. According to Russian investigators, a company in Browder’s fund structure had wrongly paid only 5 percent in taxes, when in fact 15 percent should have been due. A double taxation agreement with Cyprus should not have been applied. Browder denies this.”

Sergei Magnitsky’s arrest and death were by no means what Browder has presented, as confirmed by the European Court of Human Rights (“ECHR”), in the case of Magnitsky and others v. Russia. (Decisions issued by ECHR on November 27th, 2019). In Russia, on July 23rd, 2008, the Investigative Committee of the Ministry of the Interior joined the Kameya case with three other tax evasion cases implying that they were all carried out by the same mastermind. Dalnaya Steppe and Saturn were actually opened in 2004. Sergei Magnitsky was the tax adviser whom the Minister of Interior concluded that he allegedly gave advice to Browder

with respect to the activity of Dalnaya Steppe and Saturn. On November 14th and again on the 17th of 2008, Magnitsky was summoned as a witness in this criminal investigation. As the story goes, the summons was left in the postal box since he was not at the registered address.

Then, on November 18th, 2008, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow authorized a search warrant of Magnitsky’s flat on the basis that he had assisted Dalnyaya Steppe and Saturn with the preparation and filing of tax declarations that were used in the alleged illegal tax fraud. They executed that search warrant on November 24th, 2008, and they then took

him to appear for interrogation. This ended up being the same day that he was arrested for tax fraud. Sergei Magnitsky was then interviewed on the 25th of November as a suspect and was then formally charged with two counts of tax evasion committed in conspiracy with Browder with respect to Dalnaya Steppe and Saturn. The tax was reduced if you employed disabled staff. Here, the very people who claimed to have been disabled had confessed to fraud for the two companies. One of them testified that he had been in contact with Magnitsky directly. He also confessed that he had been paid by him and had assisted Magnitsky in finding other people to pretend to be employees. He further testified that Magnitsky had even told him what to say if the authorities ever questioned him. Finally, he confessed that he understood the deal and became a witness to the conspiracy. Hence, Magnitsky was formerly charged that day. The documentary evidence outlining the tax audit conclusions and statements by the disabled sham employees supported the charges. They also concluded that it was Magnitsky who had obstructed justice by directing witnesses on what to say. They also believed that Magnitsky was preparing to flee abroad, perhaps to join Browder since he had applied for an entry visa to the United Kingdom and had booked a flight to Kiev. He probably had an idea that the fake disabled employees had turned the state’s evidence against him, and that would lead to Browder. The following day, Magnitsky appeared in court with his lawyer, who pleaded that his client had no intention to obstruct the investigation or flee the country. In the face of his visa application and the flight to Kiev, Magnitsky was denied bail, and his detention was ordered until January 24th, 2009.

The preponderance of the evidence that he was not residing at his registered address, his application for the visa, and booking of a flight to Kiev were justified grounds to deny his release. His lawyer appealed, and that was denied on December 15th, 2008. Magnitsky died in prison due to his health on November 16th, 2009. There was no independent evidence that the police ever beat him. He would have been a witness against Browder just as the fake disabled employees were a witness to start the case.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) issued its final judgment on November 27th, 2019, holding that the arrest of Magnitsky back in 2008 was by no means arbitrary and was based on reasonable suspicion that he committed a criminal offense of tax evasion. The very companies involved were

those controlled by Bill Browder. The ECHR stated clearly that Magnitsky was arrested after it was discovered that he had influenced witnesses, had not been residing at his registered address when the investigator had attempted to summon him, and had been preparing to flee Russia. As to his death, they attributed that to inadequate medical care.

The ECHR report of August 27th, 2019, did not find any support for Browder’s claims that Magnitsky was beaten to death by prison guards. However, the report cited the autopsy.79 Moreover, nothing in the transcripts of Magnitsky’s interview suggests he was a whistleblower in either his interrogation of June or October 2008. As Andrei Nekrasov discovered, when Magnitsky was summoned for questioning, he did not accuse anyone. Worse yet, Lucy kept digging and discovered that Magnitsky’s mother told forensic investigators that her son had fallen and hit his head in 1993, 16 years before. He had suffered a concussion at that time and was treated. The forensic investigators found the medical history reports and included them in the document, as Lucy published.

The Russian forensic Report 2052 included photos of Magnitsky’s dead body, but images do not show that he was beaten to death by guards. Magnitsky served the purpose of using human rights to circumvent international law to sanction Russians. The majority of the press didn’t bother to verify anything because they had been so prejudiced against Putin; all Russians were just evil criminals. There are now 31 countries with the Magnitsky Act laws, all based on exactly what? Magnitsky’s death certificate makes no mention of being beaten to death by guards, and the photos prove exactly the opposite of these claims. This may be the Browder Protection Act, but it has been used to exploit the hatred of all the Russian people.

Magnitsky death certificate—no signs of a violent death detected.

What is most interesting is the procedure. On November 27th, 2009, the case against Magnitsky was dropped on account of his death. Then on the 11th of December, a few weeks later, a lawyer acting on behalf of the Magnitsky family asked to overrule that decision and to discontinue the criminal proceedings owing to the absence of criminal conduct and elements of a crime. The court declined to address that request. On July 30th, 2011, the Deputy Prosecutor General decided to reopen the investigation against Magnitsky. On August 22nd, 2011, Magnitsky’s mother filed a complaint asking for the prosecution of her late son to end. Shortly thereafter, Magnitsky’s wife was called as a witness, and during questioning on August 26th, 2011, she protested against reopening of the case on the grounds that it was “illegal, inhuman, and unethical” to carry on the prosecution of her late husband because he was unable to defend himself. Therefore, on the 26th of August and the 28th of September 2011, Magnitsky’s widow and mother, respectively, were granted the status of legal representatives of the late accused in the criminal proceedings. There was something more at stake than Magnitsky.

Then, on September 5th, 2011, Magnitsky’s mother sent two further petitions asking them to stop the prosecution of her late son. It was alleged that Browder was funding these petitions. A month later, the investigators replied that there was no reason to close the case. Then on the 8th of November 2011, the Prosecutor General’s office formally rejected her petition to have the case closed. Various petitions were filed all demanding the case be closed, and the only one to benefit would have been Browder. Interestingly, Forbes Magazine reported that the Swiss Attorney General’s office had dropped a decade-long investigation into Russian money laundering, concluding that there is no evidence to bring charges “against anyone in Switzerland.” It was Bill Browder who brought that case also back in 2011. He told Forbes that ending the probe without any charges was “a very dark stain on Switzerland.”80

Some have argued that the Russian case was dropped illegally. On April 3rd, 2012, the Ostankinskiy District Court concluded that the decision of November 27th, 2009, to discontinue the proceedings had been unlawful under the legal code because it had been taken without the consent of the deceased’s family. Yet, because Magnitsky’s mother had argued for rehabilitation of her son’s name, the reopening had not violated her rights and was appropriate. She was pushing for her son to be declared innocent, which benefited only Browder. An attempted appeal of that decision was dismissed on May 21st, 2012. Hence, on November 28th, 2012, Magnitsky was accused of tax evasion for having fraudulently claimed through Dalnaya Steppe and Saturn the equivalent of USD $3 million in tax benefits for the employment of disabled persons. Additionally, another count of the underpayment by those companies of the equivalent of approximately USD $14 million through wrongful exemptions from local and regional taxes.

The prosecution insisted that the offenses had been committed in conspiracy with Bill Browder and that Sergei Magnitsky had acted as his accomplice and a criminal leader. However, Browder did not help Magnitsky when he was arrested and may have sought to blame him for the tax fraud. Had Browder paid the $14 million due from the earlier civil judgments against Dalnaya Steppe and Saturn, Magnitsky would have been released and never died in prison. Sergei Magnitsky was named general director of Saturn Investments.

Astonishingly, Browder may have wanted Magnitsky to accept responsibility for these tax scams since he testified under oath at his deposition, “I don’t remember” when asked whether “Did you ever have somebody suggest to Mr. Magnitsky that he should take responsibility for the Saturn and Dalnaya Steppe?” (Tr: id/376-377). This is an amazing failure of memory from someone who had made Magnitsky’s death into a full-blown human rights campaign internationally. Browder has been meeting with world leaders and politicians spreading the anti-Russian agenda ever since. I cannot find any public statements of Browder concerning the tax fraud he was charged with through Dalnaya Steppe and Saturn. Has this been one of those inconvenient truths? Browder’s 2013 conviction was for this very fraud of Dalnaya Steppe—not the so-called $230 million fraud. That was a civil judgment until Browder failed to pay the taxes. Browder was sentenced to nine years in prison for his role in the tax fraud. Browder does not mention either Dalnaya Steppe or Saturn in his book Red Notice. Another convenient lapse of memory? The case was then scheduled for trial in December 2012 under the premise that Magnitsky’s mother had sought redress for the “possible rehabilitation” of her son’s reputation. The trial of Magnitsky and Browder began in March 2013. Magnitsky’s family did not participate, nor did their lawyers raise the possibility that Browder funded the whole thing as he had tried in Switzerland.

The court-appointed lawyer argued for dismissal against Magnitsky, which was denied on March 4th, 2013. The trial proceeded, and the District Court heard many witnesses, including tax inspectors and several disabled persons allegedly involved in the tax rebate schemes recruited by Magnitsky. The trial also admitted all the documentary evidence relating to the financial activity of Dalnaya Steppe and Saturn. Finally, on July 11th, 2013, the District Court delivered the final ruling in the case. It found Sergei Magnitsky guilty as charged, with the only exception that he had acted as a criminal leader, and not as Browder’s accomplice. Therefore, there were no grounds for rehabilitation. No sentence was imposed because Magnitsky had died.

Perhaps Browder funded an appeal on July 15th, 2013, on behalf of Magnitsky’s wife, Nataliya Valeryevna Zharikova, and his mother, Natalia Nikolayevna Magnitskiya, who did not participate in the proceedings. His widow was listening to Browder and petitioning the U.K. to ban all those Browder accused. Two weeks later, the District Court dismissed the appeal for lack of a power of attorney, which was strange to say the least. Had that appeal been filed using the names of family who had not agreed? As a result, the decision of July 11th, 2013, became final. Browder was convicted of tax evasion, sentenced to nine years of imprisonment, and

deprived of the right to carry out entrepreneurial activities for three years in Russia. It was December 2007 when Browder began his disinformation campaign. He actually filed criminal complaints with various Russian law enforcement authorities, informing them about the “theft” of the three companies before the tax fraud on Christmas Eve. Magnitsky was never mentioned in any of those complaints. It appeared that this was creating the perfect alibi so he could claim that he warned the government in advance—a very clever move. There were people in Moscow who viewed Browder as having a cynicism about the Russians that they actually found very offensive. I believe he teamed up with Edmond Safra, who was obsessed with making extraordinary money and would lead Edmond to deal with virtually every mafia group around the world. As Browder explained in the Cambridge video81, the entire market cap for all of Russia was only $10 billion in 1992. To him, they were giving away their assets for virtually free. That is why Edmond joined in on the scheme.

When Putin came to power, Bill Browder even wrote an article that appeared in the Moscow Times on January 21st, 2004. He wrote: “There are a number of big problems facing Russia today, but the battle that President Vladimir Putin has been fighting to stop the oligarchs from taking over the country has to be one of the most important. And nowhere is this battle more emblematic than in the current fight between Putin and Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The way it is resolved will influence the country’s development for the next decade… Putin understood that the country would never succeed with seven oligarchs at the helm — particularly since their interests were so counter to those of the nation. He has set clear limits to the oligarchs’ power and their meddling in the affairs of state. While there may be some things about Putin that we disagree with, we should give him the benefit of the doubt in this area and fully support him in his task of taking back control of the country from the oligarchs.”

The very same scheme to avoid taxes used by the oligarchs was employed by all the foreign investors as well. Even as late as April 2007, Browder was bragging that Putin was great and his clients made 25x the return on their money. Putin promised there would be no return to communism. The raid of his company and Firestone Duncan took place in June 2007. The Browder narrative flipped drastically from his article in the Moscow Times in 2004 when he was cheering, going after the oligarchs for tax evasion. Browder began to attack Putin and Russia as a defense to prevent his extradition for tax fraud. He cleverly switched the subject. His claim now turned on the allegation that the investigating authority kept all of the original corporate documents, stamps, and seals since the June 2007 raid on the Hermitage and Firestone Duncan offices. By April 2008, Browder was telling the press that the raids on his companies were all because he was exposing corporate corruption in Russia. Yet he was cheering Putin for going after that corruption in his own writing back in 2004. That appears to be a cover story.

Magnitsky was arrested on November 24th, 2008. The story then shifted again after Magnitsky’s death in November 2009.

That is suddenly when we see for the first time that Browder claimed that Magnitsky was the whistleblower. This was critical for, in the end, that was the element that John McCain needed to turn the entire incident into a human rights issue that would allow sanctions under the loophole in international law. However, there really was a whistleblower, but it was by no means Magnitsky. The real whistleblower was Rimma Starova, a 70-year-old lady living in Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan. In early 2008, Starova was the newly appointed director of Rilend, Makhaon, and Parfenion under the ownership of Boily Systems for a short time before their liquidation. In April 2008, Starova saw an article in the Russian press about an investigation into Hermitage Capital Management and his companies for tax evasion. She was concerned about the irregularities she discovered and wanted to avoid being held criminally liable for them, for she thought she was used as a pawn. Rimma Starova went to the local police and filed a criminal complaint, which outlined some elements of the tax fraud scheme based on the information she discovered. Starova’s complaint was filed with the Russian police months before Magnitsky gave his first testimony about this case or was arrested. Consequently, the real whistleblower regarding the tax fraud was Rimma Starova, not Sergei Magnitsky. Browder presented himself and Magnitsky as the whistleblowers who first reported the tax refund fraud and as victims of Russian corruption while admitting none of his clients were harmed. So why has he fought so hard if he was never the victim? Spending millions to trace the money on behalf of the Russian

government made no sense. The benefit was to avoid any prosecution and extradition.

In December 2008, we find the Russian newspaper, the Kommersant, ran the headline that an audit of the Hermitage was taken seriously. The managing partner of the fund’s consultant at Firestone Duncan was arrested in Moscow— Magnitsky.

The month after the raid of June 4th, 2007, Browder proudly told Reuters on July 17th, 2007, that he had no intention of leaving Russia. Browder even bragged how in 1997, his

campaign at Gazprom pushed it to adopt Western standards in accounting, which “was instrumental in forcing management changes that sent its stock rocketing up 35 times, giving Hermitage a return of 228 percent that year, the best return of any similar fund in the world that year.” There was no mention yet of his shell companies being stolen during the raid the month before.

Browder then posted a video on YouTube on October 8th, 2009, about one month before Magnitsky died on November 16th, 2009. Browder states that he went to the January 2007 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he spoke to Dmitry Medvedev (born 1965) who was then Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister. Browder says he asked for his help to renew his visa. The $230 tax fraud took place on December 23rd, 2007.

According to a Bloomberg News report on April 4th, 200882, Browder alleged that after that Davos meeting on February 17th, 2007, Hermitage received a telephone call from Lieutenant Colonel Artem Kuznetsov of the Russian Interior Ministry. According to a transcript of the call contained in the report, Kuznetsov said he had been notified of Browder’s request to receive a visa and wished to arrange a meeting to discuss the situation. Kuznetsov was reported to have said: “The sooner we meet and you provide what is necessary, the sooner your problems will disappear.”

Browder then claimed that Kuznetsov, on June 4th, 2007, led a raid by 25 police officers in the offices of Hermitage and Firestone Duncan. The police were investigating tax evasion by Hermitage’s subsidiary, a Russian company called Kameya that was being investigated for tax fraud of underpaying

taxes by $44 million after falsely claiming it employed disabled staff. The New York Times reported on July 30th, 2009, still before Magnitsky died, that he hired the former Attorney General’s law firm of John D. Ashcroft to represent him in New York, where he filed for a subpoena seeking bank wire transfer records. John Ashcroft contended that this would prove Browder’s allegations. Nothing came of that, and it might have just been a publicity stunt.

Then, Reuters reported on October 19th, 2009, that Browder asked Russian authorities to investigate what it says was a series of fake tax refunds that defrauded taxpayers of 11.2 billion rubles ($382 million). This was about one month before Sergei Magnitsky died on November 16th, 2009. If anyone had an incentive to kill Magnitsky, it would have been Browder to prevent him from being a witness against him. The Russian prosecutors then began to suspect precisely that. Browder was making a huge confrontation out of this $230 million tax fraud when that was not the case Magnitsky was found guilty of at all. Browder has stated publicly that neither he nor his clients lost any money. Yet he has spent millions claiming to be searching for this $230 million that would

neither overturn his conviction nor would he have any entitlement to the money. Why fight for the Russian government unless it was really a defense against the allegations of tax fraud for the $44 million? Browder later told the University of Chicago Magazine in their article, Reversal of Fortune, in the May/June 2013 edition83, that he was on the phone with his lawyer, Magnitsky, who was not a lawyer. Browder claimed he listened to him explain the huge fraud he had narrowly avoided. Yet this allegation did not surface before Magnitsky was arrested.

The scheme had been elaborate. He explained that when the perpetrators arrived at the banks to claim the money that the companies had, they found nothing there. The accounts

were emptied by Browder, who had quietly withdrawn everything quite conveniently. He asserted: “Weeks after the failed theft, his lawyer pieced together what had happened. ‘And I began to laugh sort of nervously, but happily,’ Browder recalls, ‘because we had successfully avoided them grabbing our assets.’ His lawyer, a 36-yearold Russian named Sergei Magnitsky, didn’t laugh.”

Indeed, in his April 2015 sworn deposition before U.S. federal court, Browder admitted that Magnitsky was not a lawyer. When asked if he had a law degree, Browder answered, “I’m not aware that he did.” Browder then admitted that Magnitsky never went to law school. If the companies were stolen, how did he withdraw the money? Surely, just because they might have changed the company’s ownership on paper, that did not change the access to the bank accounts without going there and providing a whole new level of documentation and signature cards. What is even more curious is that the very people Browder alleges stole the three companies using fake judgments all ended up dead.

It is clear that from October 2009, Browder began publishing YouTube videos to promote his version of events. He began to allege that Russian officials and Russian corruption were behind everything, which was really the start of defense against allegations against him of tax fraud. When Magnitsky died on November 16th, 2009, Browder revised his story and now claimed that Magnitsky was the heroic whistleblower who was beaten to death by prison guards for refusing to withdraw his testimony. This suited John McCain for a human rights violation, giving him the loophole to sanction Russia. Suddenly, the very people named in the Magnitsky Act list that Browder allegedly created were the

very tax people investigating him. That is why it was called the Browder Protection Act. It was brilliant. Browder had transformed himself into a corporate activist, admitting that he was pushing for changing the accounting standards to make a fortune, not to clean up corruption. But now, with Magnitsky’s death, he could convert his defense against tax fraud into being a global human rights activist, which then justified also becoming a global political lobbyist. Then, in 2015 Browder published his book under the title “Red Notice” which helped to promote his image globally. This propagated Browder’s narrative worldwide and has provided immunity against ever being extradited to Russia. Browder has been presenting himself as “Putin’s No.1 enemy,” which is fiction. He presents himself as living a life on the run from Putin. If that were true, he should be hiding quietly in the corner somewhere, not always in the media. In truth, this has been a magnificent campaign to try himself in the Western press and then acquit himself from being held responsible for any crime in Russia. Browder’s campaign to exonerate himself in public opinion against Vladimir Putin all began before Sergei Magnitsky was even first arrested on November 24th, 2008. Yet from the outset, when Andrei Nekrasov simply verified the claims of Browder, they did not check out.

Another curious fact is that after Sergei Magnitsky had already been arrested for a few months, only then did Browder begin to refer to him as the person who discovered the tax refund fraud—not before his arrest. Browder’s presentation of March 2009 mentions Magnitsky as an “auditor and tax partner of Firestone Duncan” and a “key analyst who discovered the $230 million tax fraud committed using the stolen Hermitage companies.” Browder has filed fictitious criminal complaints around the world designed to push his story. Browder used an army of lawyers to file dozens of fictitious criminal complaints with law enforcement authorities in several countries, including Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Latvia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. He has accused major banks and multinational companies of somehow being involved in the money laundering of the proceeds from the so-called $230 million dollars Russian tax refund fraud. Yet, if the money was stolen

from the Russian government and not Browder’s companies, then he has no standing in a court of law. This is akin to filing a suit against your neighbor, claiming they defrauded a third person that did not harm you in any way.

Browder’s complaints were dismissed in most countries as frivolous. In some countries, his complaints led to investigation proceedings that lasted several years, like Hillary’s RussiaGate. They consumed taxpayers’ money and prosecution authorities’ time. In Switzerland, Browder’s complaints led to investigations and the freezing of funds. Then, when nothing panned out, Browder criticized Switzerland for unfreezing money that was not his to begin with. None of Browder’s complaints has ever led to a single conviction.

Even the BBC84 did a story on how liars create the “illusion of truth” by repeating their lies over and over again. Indeed, Paul Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) was a German Nazi politician famous for speaking on this subject.

So Browder repeated this narrative in the press and built on Berezovsky’s propaganda against Putin. In addition to his numerous frivolous official complaints that always warranted a press release, Browder has successfully made the Magnitsky story a perceived truth for many people worldwide.

This has ensured that the Magnitsky story is accepted as fact as long as nobody picks up the rug to check its veracity.

In June 2020, Danish investigative journalist Lars Abild and Birgitte Dyrekilde published a book titled Man of Power – A True

Story about Bill Browder, Money Laundering and Media Manipulation. The Amazon review states that this is a story of a

PR genius. It likewise has reviewed his many press interviews and seen that he was “a keen fan of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, until several tax issues, a ban from Russia and a dead tax advisor changed all that.” For more than a decade, the review states Bill Browder pushed the story of his dead “lawyer” Sergei Magnitsky worldwide; “a story, which is distorted at best, at worst entirely

false. With huge fanfare, he has created a US human rights law in the name of his dead tax advisor.” The Review continues stating that “Bill Browder’s story is a sensational tale of lies, murder, billionaires and the manipulation of Western media by a single man who loudly claims to be ‘Putin’s enemy No. 1’.” His stories, propagated by Bill Browder, “have had major repercussions in the financial industry—including in the Nordic countries—and have made the prevention of Russian money laundering a top priority in the Western world.” The book describes in detail Browder’s strategic use of the media to further his business and political goals. It explains how brilliantly Browder has used the media to avoid his own extradition to Russia and divert any discussion of his tax evasion practices. Browder explained how he used lawsuits and the media for business purposes: “We have been involved in 32 lawsuits. And we win in terms of public attention regardless of the outcome, where we’ve lost 31 times. I think the proportion of number of words written in the press when a lawsuit is initiated to when it is dismissed is 50 to 1… Originally, we would give one reporter the whole story. They would check every bit of it out, get the other side’s point of view… Now we give a small piece of the story to a journalist and let them know that we’ll give it to someone else in three days if they don’t write anything. It seems that journalists are more concerned about losing the story to a competitor than almost anything else.”

Browder has a history of asserting things without any proof or evidence to back up his statements. For example, he claims that Putin is the richest man in Russia with $200 billion taking 50% of the wealth of all the oligarchs without a single mention of that in the declassified documents. Anyone who bothers to examine Browder’s many allegations concludes that they cannot be verified.

Browder eventually closed his Hermitage Capital Management fund, as the London Financial Times reported in March 2013. Browder’s story to protect himself against the tax fraud for which he was sentenced to 9 years in prison involving Dalnaya Steppe and Saturn Investments is not discussed even in his book Red Notice. Instead, we have all sorts of allegations of a $230 million dollar tax fraud of which he was not the victim. Had he paid the taxes, Magnitsky would not have died in prison. He was found guilty of a civil judgment and refused to pay. HSBC shut down his fund because of all the stories, and then he was sued in

London by the very police officer he accused of killing Magnitsky.

62

The

Landler, Mark. “Film About Russian Lawyer’s Death Creates an Uproar.”

New

York

Times,

June 10, 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/world/europe/sergei-magnitsky-russiavladimir-putin.html. 63

Stansberry Research. “Bill Browder: What’s It Like to Have a Target on Your Back From Vladimir Putin?” YouTube, January 28, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=LdmMvbwQHuw. 64

Boland-Rudder, Hamish. “HSBC To Pay $192m Penalty For Helping Americans Evade Taxes.” ICIJ, December 11, 2019. https://www.icij.org/investigations/swissleaks/hsbc-to-pay-192m-penalty-for-helping-americans-evade-taxes/. 65

McCormick, Jason. “5 Citizens Who Left the U.S. to Avoid Paying Tax.”

CBS

News,

July 12, 2012. https://www.cbsnews.com/media/5-citizens-who-left-the-usto-avoid-paying-tax/. 66

Magnitskiy and Others v. Russia https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=001-195527

67

VVeiss, Barrie. “A Spectre Is Haunting Europe — the Spectre of Magnitsky by Director Andrei Nekrasov.” Best China Info, November 21, 2022. https://bestchinainfo.com/guest-posts/a-spectre-is-haunting-europe-the-spectreof-magnitsky-by-director-andrei-nekrasov/. 68

Ibid.

69

“The Magnitsky Hoax?,” n.d. http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featuredarticles/2016/june/28/the-magnitsky-hoax/. 70

Engel, Richard, and Aggelos Petropoulos. “Lawyer Probing Russian Corruption Says His Balcony Fall Was ‘No Accident.’” NBC News, July 8, 2017. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/lawyer-probing-russian-corruption-says-hisbalcony-fall-was-no-n780416. 71

fileid=20084&lang=en

https://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/XRef/Xref-XML2HTML-en.asp?

72

Krainer, Alex.

Grand Deception: The Browder Hoax. Alex Krainer, 2018. 25.

73

Browder, William. “Hermitage Capital, the Russian State and the Case of Sergei Magnitsky.” https://www.Chathamhouse.Org/Sites/Default/Files/Public/Research/Russia%20and %20Eurasia/151209browder.pdf. Chatham House, December 15, 2009. 74 75

The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes, 2016.

SanDiegoLaw. “William F. Browder - Part https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPCZydwIhyg.

IV,”

December

7,

2010.

76

University of Cambridge Judge Business School. “Bill Browder on Russian Corruption and the Experience of Losing $900 Million,” December 13, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32AqentzbOQ 77

“Testimony of William Browder to the Senate Judiciary Committee on FARA Violations Connected to the Anti-Magnitsky Campaign by Russian Government Interests,” July 26, 2017. https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/07-2617%20Browder%20Testimony.pdf. 78

Komisar, Lucy. “NYTimes Dealbook Repeats William Browder’s Magnitsky Hoax. I Ask Major Media ‘Fact Checkers’ to Deal with It.” The Komisar Scoop, April 10, 2022. https://www.thekomisarscoop.com/2022/04/nytimes-dealbookrepeatswilliam-browders-magnitsky-hoax-i-ask-major-media-fact-checkers-to-deal-withit/. 79

CASE OF MAGNITSKIY AND OTHERS v. RUSSIA https://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng# {%22itemid%22:[%22001-195527%22]} 80

Williams, Ollie. “Switzerland Drops Magnitsky Case ‘Amid Accusations Of Bribery And Political Meddling.’” Forbes, July 28, 2021. https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2021/07/28/switzerland-dropsmagnitsky-case-amid-accusations-of-bribery-and-political-meddling/? sh=430f57719fc7. 81

“Bill Browder on Russian Corruption and the Experience of Losing $900 Million.” YouTube, December 13, 2011. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32AqentzbOQ. 82

Bush, Jason. “Hijacking the Hermitage Fund.” Bloomberg, April 4, 2008. https://www.bloomberg.com/tosv2.html?vid=&uuid=9727aea6-976c-11ed-b7af516242507878&url=L25ld3MvYXJ0aWNsZXMvMjAxMy0wMy0yNi9oc2JjLXNodXR0ZXJzL Whlcm1pdGFnZS1mdW5kLWFzLXJ1c3NpYS1jaGFzZXMtYnJvd2Rlci1pbi1jb3VydHM=.

83

“Reversal of Fortune.” In The University of Chicago https://mag.uchicago.edu/law-policy-society/reversal-fortune. 84

Magazine,

n.d.

Stafford, Tom. “How Liars Create the ‘Illusion of Truth.’” BBC Future, n.d. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20161026-how-liars-create-the-illusion-oftruth.

The Largest Tax Fraud in Russian History

O

n June 4th, 2007, a serious $40 million tax fraud was carried out against the Russian government. A force of 25 Russian Minister of Interior officers searched the offices of Hermitage Capital Management and their tax adviser/law firm, Firestone Duncan. The operation was carried out simultaneously, illustrating that there was probable cause that the two firms conspired together. It appeared to be $40

million, but in reality the scheme went much deeper and resulted in the largest tax fraud in Russian history.

Forbes Magazine had reported on June 14th, 2007, that a client of Hermitage Capital Management “is under investigation by Russia’s Interior Ministry.” They reported:

“[I]nvestigators allege that an investment vehicle advised by an affiliate of Hermitage, which is owned by William Browder, a British citizen, failed to make the proper tax withholding payments on a May 2006 dividend.”

This was the focus, a $40 million tax fraud just as the IRS does in America, not the $230 million tax refund fraud that we will explore.

Forbes reported that the investigation “centers on a May 2006

dividend payment from a Russian company, Kameya, to its controlling Cyprus shareholder.” In the process, because of abuse of the tax code in the Republic of Kalmykia pretending to hire disabled financial analysts, Browder owed about $40 million in taxes that he refused to pay and was eventually convicted of tax fraud in Russia. Browder would claim the purpose of the search was to seize original corporate documents and seals to create a $230 million fraud on the government. Browder then changed the subject using this to shift the focus of the search as if there was no $40 million fraud to the $230 million fraud on Putin.

The Ministry of Interior’s search of the offices of Hermitage Capital Management was coordinated with that of Firestone Duncan where Sergei Magnitsky (1972-2009) worked, and his fingerprints were all over the crime as at least the organizer. There was sufficient evidence that they were intricately involved particularly because Magnitsky was also allegedly a director of one of Browder’s companies—Saturn Investments. In May 2007, the investigation department of the Ministry of the Interior in Moscow opened a criminal case into tax evasion allegedly committed by the head of Kameya because it refused to pay a reported civil judgment. This is what the investigation was focused on—the $40 million tax fraud with fake employees. By blaming Putin, the press has grabbed that and ignored all the evidence right down to the questions about Magnitsky being a whistleblower. Browder’s problems all began on February 17th, 2007, following several unsuccessful attempts to have his visa reinstated following its revocation in December 2005. Browder reapplied for a visa again in January 2007. The Russian position was that Browder did not provide the requested documents regarding taxes. It was possible that at this time. Browder gave up on returning to Russia and burned all bridges by liquidating all Russian assets ahead of his alleged $230 million fraud he claimed was carried out by the police. On June 4th, the police confiscated one server, seven computers, and five boxes of documents from Hermitage’s offices in Moscow. The basis for the search was an alleged $40 million underpayment in a dividend withholding tax by one of Hermitage’s companies named Kameya. From the offices of Firestone Duncan, the government seized servers, computers, and two vanloads of documents.

Browder naturally claimed that there was no basis for the search, for there were no irregularities. He also asserted that the Interior Ministry, which is the equivalent to the FBI, had no authority to conduct the search. Such claims are usually laughable even in the United States. Indeed, the EU investigation concluded in the report by Andreas Gross, a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), that the search was justified. After searching both places, the Ministry of Interior investigators took with them computers and documents, as is standard for such an operation. However, Browder insisted that among other items of evidence, they seized original corporate documents, stamps, and seals not related to Kameya. The government claimed that they offered to return those items, but Browder had declined. The problem is that the companies were “stolen” following the search, but as we will explore, that appears to have already been set in motion.

Browder doesn’t seem to like to pay taxes. He resigned his American citizenship when he formed Hermitage Capital Management because the United States and Japan taxed worldwide income. Browder took citizenship in Britain, which does not tax income made outside the country. Andrei Nekrasov points out in his documentary film, The Magnitsky Act, Behind the Scenes, that investigation into Browder’s tax evasion began back in 2004, three years before the search of his offices in Moscow in June 2007. The Browder tax investigation was running the sale of shares through his tax shell company, and he wired the money out of Russia. This formed the eventual criminal charges against him for refusing to pay taxes. Browder never paid a civil

judgment against him on the tax issue of about $40 million, which is what then became a criminal proceeding warranting the search. Indeed, the whole Magnitsky affair unfolded because of this tax evasion. Had Browder simply paid the tax, Magnitsky would not have been questioned in the first place.

Andrei Nekrasov tried verifying Bill Browder’s claims and discovered that they did not pan out after inspecting all the documents. When Magnitsky was questioned on June 5th, 2008, he did not report that he discovered any theft but was asked about the companies involved. Then on October 7th, 2008, he again did not report any theft of $230 million but was questioned about it. Magnitsky then asserted his right to silence when asked about Oktai Gasonov, who had the power of attorney to act for Browder’s companies. The press called Magnitsky a whistleblower and ignored what actually took place because they were conditioned to hate Putin. Nowhere in Magnitsky’s testimony does he ever accuse the police of carrying out fraud. As Andrei pointed out, Magnitsky never blamed the police for the crime. In fact, the entire crime he and Browder were

charged for was the approximate $40 million underpayment from fake disabled employees and not this $230 million tax fraud on the Russian government. Magnitsky was called in for questioning on June 5th, 2008, only because the real whistleblower, Rimma Starova, had filed her first complaint on April 9th, 2008, and then her second one confirming the tax fraud took place in July 2008 after Magnitsky’s first interview. At no time did this June 4th, 2007 search and investigation have anything to do with the $230 million tax refund fraud that took place at the end of 2007. Instead, this has been the clever diversion from Browder’s and Magnitsky’s $40 million tax fraud charge. However, Bill Browder put out what appears to have been a PowerPoint presentation dated March 2009, just about three months after Magnitsky had been arrested in November 2008. Lucy Komisar, in her investigation, reported that in a 2017 deposition ordered in New York in the US v Prevezon case, Browder said this PowerPoint presentation was put together for journalists. Browder’s public relations campaign presented his version of events against the tax fraud charges. This appears to be a brilliant strategy to prevent him from ever being extradited, following suit with Boris Berezovsky’s campaign to demonize Putin so he could attempt to seize the presidency of Russia.

Browder claimed that the “raid” was ruthless, and they beat a lawyer nearly to death in the process. However, Lucy uncovered that Browder used a photo from 1961 in his presentation, claiming the picture was of the lawyer beaten during the search. I searched to verify her claim and discovered the actual newspaper that the alleged lawyer was holding in the photo. It was from the front page of the Montgomery Advertiser dated May 21st, 1961. This calls into question all the facts that Browder was presenting in this PowerPoint press manipulation presentation to sell the story they did not bother verifying. Berezovsky conditioned the press to hate Putin, so they did not bother to check any of the facts claimed by Browder. It appears that most of the press just hated Putin, so it did not matter if this story was real. It painted Putin as the evil Darth Vader in their vision of a Star Wars plot defending against the evil emperor. None of the mainstream press ever took one

step to verify either Berezovsky’s or Bill Browder’s claims. The mainstream press had the fake news they wanted to project and Putin, along with all of Russia, was just evil. It was not much different from using the Nazis to paint all Germans as ruthless following World War II.

Lucy Komisar’s investigation discovered that there was even a Hermitage press release dated September 16th, 2008, which has been curiously removed from the Hermitage website.

Lucy, as a real investigative reporter should do, managed to recover the tossed press release from the Wayback Machine. There, it is claimed that Starova, on April 9th, 2008, had filed a complaint with the Russian Interior Ministry in Kazan “falsely accusing representatives of HSBC’s companies of the theft of state funds.” Starova filed a second complaint in July 2008, accusing Browder of the scam, not HSBC. This was the real whistleblower, and it sparked the interrogation of Magnitsky a second time on October 7th, 2008, where he invoked his right to silence.

What I discovered on the Wayback Machine was the first claim that Browder’s companies were stolen, dated April 7th, 2008. It would appear that Rimma Starova, the real whistleblower, probably called Magnitsky since he apparently hired her as a director for the company after the tax refund fraud took place, which was paid out in December 2007. She was obviously deeply concerned about getting caught up in a crime. In February 2008, Russian law enforcement authorities revealed that approximately 5.4 billion rubles were stolen from the Russian Federation’s treasury by Rilend, Makhaon, and

Parfenion. These were all companies that had been controlled and managed by Hermitage. Firestone Duncan provided legal and accounting services to these three companies. That was a red flag. Rimma Starova most likely wanted to question Magnitsky about what was going on before she filed her criminal complaint on April 9th, 2008, two days later. The 7th was a Monday, so she probably stewed over the weekend and made contact on Monday or just before filing to doublecheck what was happening. Browder put out the story that the companies were suddenly hijacked two days before she filed the complaint on April 7th, 2008. Obviously, Rimma became concerned if she was unknowingly being used in fraud after she read in the local press about some irregularities. Rimma told them about the fake re-registration of the companies and false certificates of debt in the amount of 13.5 million rubles, which equaled the company’s profits for 2006. This was the key to accomplishing the tax refund fraud. She does not at all talk about the “high jacking” of the companies by outsiders whatsoever. She refers to Glendora and Kone, Browder’s Cyprus shells. Lucy has provided a copy of Rimma’s testimony of April 9th, 2008.85

Then in July 2008, Rimma Starova filed a second complaint where she mentioned Magnitsky and the alleged theft of companies, which is why he was summoned again on October 7th, 2008. This is critical, for there is no way Magnitsky was the whistleblower. While Browder was calling Magnitsky his lawyer, he admitted in a deposition in the prevezon case that he was just the

accountant with no law degree. Lucy provided the first page of Magnitsky’s testimony. Here we see that #8 lists him as an auditor at Firestone Duncan but not a lawyer. Obviously, the story changed as events unfolded. Even in Andrei’s film, the Magnitsky Act, Behind the Scenes, Browder states in the film that in order to investigate the tax theft of $230 million: “We immediately went through our list of lawyers in Moscow and called up the smartest lawyer we knew Sergei Magnitsky.”

Yet, Magnitsky was handed the Hermitage case by his boss in October 2006, more than one year before the crime ever took place, and he was a director of Saturn Investments. It does not appear that Magnitsky was hired to investigate the 2007 tax fraud. He was also charged with Browder in the previous $40 million tax fraud with fake employees to reduce the taxes.

From the US v PREVEZON HOLDINGS LTD. case, we learn that Browder met with his real lawyers on September 4th, 2008, at BakerHostetler about five months after Rimma Starova had reported the tax fraud. Browder asked his lawyers to investigate the $230 million fraud after the Ministry of Interior launched an investigation, and Magnitsky’s first questioning was in June 2008. Was Browder trying to see if he had any holes in his alibi that would lead back to him? Or was he looking to blame Firestone Duncan and Magnitsky?

We learn this fact from a filed memorandum of law requesting: “Browder and Hermitage request that this Court disqualify Defendants’ counsel, BakerHostetler and Baker Botts, based on their irresolvable conflict of interest arising from BakerHostetler’s successive representation of Browder and Hermitage, on the one hand, and now of Defendants, on the other hand, in a substantially related matter.”

This was dated September 29th, 2014, and filed by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. In the New York Prevezon case, which is one of the top law firms in New York City that is not cheap. When Magnitsky is questioned again on October 7th, 2008, he was asked about this $230 million fraud. That is when he asserted his right to silence concerning if he had ever met with Gasanov, who had the power of attorney from Hermitage.

Browder set up his shell companies in the Republic of Kalmykia, a Buddhist region in Southern Russia. This provided him with the lowest possible tax rate that could be claimed inside Russia. Kalmykia provided a tax benefit if you employed disabled people, which was a 50% savings. Then it also provided an additional tax reduction if you invested in their state to promote the local economic development. Browder used these shell companies to take advantage of the tax-transfer scheme from Moscow to Kalmykia, which was the service Magnitsky provided as a tax specialist and not a lawyer. Browder took the massive tax deductions on profits in Moscow, claiming to be hiring disabled people and investing in the local region. This was the tax fraud that Browder was being investigated for, and was ultimately found guilty in court with Magnitsky. Jamison Firestone fled Moscow in early 2010 and moved also to London. His shell companies had no actual employees. They paid off local workers, using their work documents and claiming that they were suddenly educated but disabled stock analysts. This was what resulted in a scam that saved $40 million in taxes back in Moscow.

Lucy published the documents and the testimonies of the fake disabled workers that provided the basis for Browder’s conviction of tax fraud regarding the $40 million. However, because Browder did not pay the civil judgment against him for the $40 million, it turned the case into a criminal action. Had he paid that money, Magnitsky would not have been in prison, and he at least made $40 million on his death since he never paid the tax due on the employee fraud. Interestingly, Maginsky did not invent the companies. The mastermind was allegedly his boss/partner Jamison Firestone. Sergei Magnitsky was allegedly only handed the Hermitage account by his boss in October 2006, about one year before the tax refund fraud of December 2007. Yet Magnitsky was a director of Browder’s company, Saturn Investments.

On June 4th, 2007, Russian tax investigators came in to search the Hermitage and Firestone Duncan offices simultaneously. This was the incident that Browder used to claim they took the original seals so the corrupt investigators could hijack his companies and pull off the $230 million tax refund fraud. In the Washington Post, Browder said that Hermitage believes that it has traced up to $43 million of the tax refund.86 Yet he has also stated that neither he nor his fund were victims, which is critical. Yet Browder spent millions to trace money from fraud on the Russian government that did not impact him or his clients since he moved all the assets out of Russia just before the fraud. Was this really to support “justice for Magnitsky” or to firm up an alibi for the massive tax refund fraud scam?

Browder’s entire claim was that the companies were hijacked, and to do that, the police were to blame for taking original seals. However, here on October 7th, 2008, Magnitsky is asked about “duplicate” seals and simply says he does not know where they are. When the questioning moves to Magnitsky about the powers of attorney provided by Browder’s Cyprus shells to Oktai Gasanov to change the ownership, the fall guy, everything becomes even more

suspicious. Magnitsky simply said the powers of attorney were not properly registered.

When Magnitsky was questioned if he had ever met Oktai Gasanov, he refused to answer, citing his right to remain silent, as Andrei showed in his film. However, Magnitsky’s claim that the powers of attorney to Gasanov were not properly registered is important. As Andrei Nekrasov points out in his film, The Magnitsky Act, Behind the Scenes, neither Magnitsky nor Browder ever claimed that the powers of attorney authorizing Gasanov to change the registration of the companies to steal them were ever forged. Andrei states in his film that Browder never mentioned anything about the powers of attorney in the plot to him. Lucy Komisar interviewed a Moscow lawyer named Andrei Pavlov. Pavlov told her when she interviewed him in New York that he was approached by Viktor Markelov, who conveniently was a convicted murderer. Markelov wanted him to obtain a court order based on liability for the

Hermitage companies, which would lead to a tax refund claim. Pavlov told Lucy: “You didn’t comply with a contract, we lost money, you owe us $1 billion.”

That equaled Hermitage’s entire 2006 profits. It was a brilliant scam, and Browder was safely in London. Andrei Pavlov explained that the refund application would require detailed information from the companies’ books for the year. Since this was provided, he explained, it appeared to be an inside job, not a random third party. Indeed, when the lawsuits were filed, Browder’s companies didn’t defend the cases, and a default judgment warranted the payout of $230 million that had been Browder’s taxes on the entire 2006 profits.

Lucy points out that Hermitage did receive legal notices at their old mailboxes concerning the lawsuits leading to the

transfer of ownership in July 2007, which was the time of the legal actions. Lucy states the mailboxes were then accessed by Magnitsky. She found exhibits that proved there was legal notice provided that was filed in U.S. federal court in the Prevezon case. Obviously, the fact that Hermitage provided the notices established that they were served, but Browder never challenged the suits. Why? He does state clearly in Andrei’s film that he withdrew all the assets from Russia before this transfer of ownership, so there was no loss of assets—quite a convenient premonition. It also suggests that Browder was probably shutting down his Russian venture. Browder relied on the June 2007 search to claim that the police took the original documents. He insisted they stole the companies and applied for the tax refunds fraudulently. Yet something did not jive. Magnitsky was asked about “duplicates,” and he did not deny their existence, just that he did not know where they were at that time and asserted his right to silence about ever meeting Gasanov. This is where the powers of attorney are key. The claim that the police officers who searched the offices had taken documents and simply re-registered the firms seems impossible. Under Russian law, anyone with the original documents cannot simply re-register the companies. That can only be accomplished with the owners’ consent, who must appear in person at the company registration office. The only other option was to provide a power of attorney where someone else could act on behalf of the owners. Magnitsky simply said the powers of attorney were not properly registered. He did not say that they were forgeries. Powers of attorney provided by Browder’s Cyprus shells to Oktai Gasanov were actually real. Yianna Alexandrou, who

was employed at the Cyprus company formation agent that set up the shells, swore in a Southern District of New York deposition in the US v Prevezon Holdings, Ltd. case that she recognized her signature. Obviously, this implied once more that this was an inside job. Then the three Browder shell companies were sold to a new pretend owner on July 31st, 2007, according to the sale agreement. Lucy provided the photo of the sales agreement that was based on the powers of attorney signed on July 2nd, 2007. Parfenion was sold to Pluton LLC, represented by Viktor Alexandrovich Markelov, the convicted murderer. Glendora Holdings Limited, represented by Oktai Gasanovich Gasanov, was the seller. Glendora was Browder’s Cyprus shell company and owner of his Russian shell Parfenion. The companies were, according to Magnitsky, not “officially” re-registered until September 2007 during his first questioning in June 2008. Magnitsky says that after “rulings dated 3 and 7 September 2007 by the Arbitration Court of Saint-Petersburg and Leningrad Region [the companies] were re-registered on 11 September 2007 and 20 September 2007 under new legal addresses in Moscow.” Lucy points out that if this was true, then the companies were still registered with the owner as Glendora, using the old addresses. Lucy further points out that Glendora was prominent in the July 2007 bill of sale, but why did it take five to six weeks to re-register? The lawyer Andrei Pavlov told Lucy: “In October the whole Browder team knew about these claims and didn’t appeal the decision [allowing the take-over of his companies] which had been granted.”

Strangely, Magnitsky testified that he did not receive the lawsuit notifications from July until October 16th and that he noticed a hearing would take place on October 22nd, 2007. Surely, that should have sparked a phone call and a motion to postpone, yet no request was filed. Hermitage did not object, which was very strange unless it was an inside job that wanted the so-called “theft” to take place. Since Magnitsky worked at Firestone Duncan, which were also lawyers, then they had a duty to inform Browder and/or ask for a postponement. Pavlov told Lucy: “They did nothing till the money was paid out of the budget [the Russian Treasury].” That took place only at the end of December 2007. Browder’s employee, Ivan Cherkasov, who has also pushed Browder’s version of Magnitsky’s story, was the operating director of Hermitage at the time. Cherkasov had also been named in the criminal investigation regarding Kameya with

Browder and Magnitsky. Cherkasov had also fled Russia and was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison along with Browder and Magnitsky, who were convicted of $40 million in employee tax fraud. Viktor Markelov (born 1967) played a part in the alleged theft of the companies and the $230 million tax refund fraud from Browder’s Hermitage Capital Management. Browder then accused government officers Kuznetsov and Karpov, alleging that they seized without a warrant and held custody of the documents and seals for companies Hermitage had invested in and transferred the ownership. Yet Browder had taken all assets out in advance, which was very convenient and implied he would no longer invest in Russia.

However, Viktor Markelov had no such expertise in the world of finance. This would be like Goldman Sachs blaming a hot dog vendor in New York for dreaming up the 2007 mortgagebacked financial crisis. The mainstream press could not see this? Markelov was picked for his background, a convicted murderer, and painted as a career criminal. This was all perfect. Who would listen to a convicted murderer? Markelov was the perfect fall guy! There was no way for the police officers Kuznetsov and Karpov to take the companies by simply possessing the original documents. The same would be true in the United States. The entire key was the powers of attorney given to Oktai Gasanov, which appears to have been authorized but not properly registered. That smelled of an inside job. Browder claimed that Markelov had then appointed himself director of one of the stolen companies, and then he appointed two more directors, Valery Kurochkin and

Vyacheslav Khlebnikov, of the other two stolen Hermitage companies and managed to open bank accounts in Dmitry Klyuev’s Universal Savings Bank, which then conveniently closed down as bankrupt. Browder then claimed that they issued powers of attorney to a lawyer Andrei Pavlov, who then managed to obtain court judgments for fake debts. The three criminal directors then applied for fraudulent tax refunds totaling $230 million. Corrupt officials in Moscow Tax Offices #25 and #28 who Browder alleged were members of the Klyuev Organized Crime Group, had approved the fraudulent tax refund requests and refunded $230 million to accounts in Klyuev’s Universal Savings Bank.

Browder’s claim that Magnitsky exposed the theft of $230 million from the Treasury is false, for he asserted his right to silence. Browder also claims that the Interior Ministry protected the Klyuev Organized Crime Group. This all seemed to be very fantastic, but it also played on the demonization of Putin set in motion by Boris Berezovsky when their plan to blackmail Yeltsin failed in July 1999.

Boris Berezovsky was in league with Edmond Safra on the whole plot to seize Russia. Berezovsky used assassination as a tool for both politics as well as business. Interestingly, Berezovsky did not die until March 23rd, 2013. He was there in the background, and if anyone knew how to organize assassinations, it was Boris. As I said before, when I declined to invest $10 billion into Hermitage Capital Management in March 1999, I suddenly got a call from Berezovsky. My sources were top-notch. I had laid out the Plot to Seize Russia that appeared in Marcus Vetter’s 2015 film The Forecaster long before I got a hold of these declassified documents. Everything I had told Marcus back then swiftly became confirmed. I had been warned back in 1999 to stay away from Berezovsky, for he was ruthless, and to never do business with him. Even Forbes said people tended to die around Berezovsky. I believe that Berezovsky was involved behind the curtain and may have even eliminated Magnitsky. Indeed, the Russian prosecutors came to the conclusion that Bill Browder may have ordered the murder of his so-called lawyer, Magnitsky, whose memory he has championed, which was announced back in 2018. Yet, the hatred painted of Putin has been so well crafted that nobody will dare consider any other culprits. Oleg Silchenko, who was the Moscow official prosecuting Magnitsky, sought cooperation from Britain to allow a search of Browder’s residence in London. Browder was tipped off, and it even appeared in the press, implying he would have had plenty of time to move anything (if it existed). Perhaps he tipped off the press himself, which was how it often went.

The poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko by Berezovsky appeared to help Browder as well. Russia refused to extradite the people Britain, on speculation, alleged killed Litvinenko in 2006. In turn, Britain refused to cooperate with respect to Browder. As the story goes, the new owner of the “stolen” companies turned out to be Viktor Markelov, the convicted murderer. This new debt was then used to wipe out all the 2006 profits of the companies claiming a retroactive loss, thereby justifying the tax refund of $230 million that the companies had previously paid. The tax refund was issued on Christmas Eve, December 2007. It was the largest tax rebate in Russian history. It has been alleged that the two tax officials were perhaps bribed by Berezovsky using his contacts.

Browder was the person pushing to search for the $230 million. He spent a lot of money on an alleged crime of which he was not a victim. It seemed that this gallant effort was perhaps to craft a story to prevent his extradition for the $40 million tax fraud he was found guilty of in Russia and/or to create his alibi. The reason I believe Berezovsky was involved behind the curtain—all three of the people Browder claimed stole his companies and walked away with the $230 million magically met their deaths, forever silencing any possible witnesses. Amazingly, the very people alleged to have been involved in the tax theft of $230 million were all strangely found dead conveniently to cut off any possible testimony. Mikhail Alexandrov, a spokesman for the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office, publicly stated, as reported by the Tass News Agency on November 19th, 2018:

“Forensic examination of biological samples taken from [Browder’s partners] Gasanov, Korobeinikov, Kurochkin and Magnitsky makes it possible to conclude that the mentioned persons had symptoms of chronic poisoning with toxic, soluble inorganic substances introduced into their bodies.”

The Russian prosecutors pointed out that these poisonings were all linked to Browder’s business activities—Oktay Gasanov, Valery Kurochkin, and Sergey Korobeinikov. The curious deaths were that the three individuals, with the exception of Magnitsky, all died within months of each other while being investigated as part of Browder’s case. They were the three directors of the so-called stolen companies who received the $230 million fraudulent tax refund. Browder said in Andrei’s film that the entire purpose of the June 4th, 2007 search was to obtain the original seals of his company. That discounts the entire $40 million tax fraud. The prosecutor stated, “it is highly likely that they were killed to get rid of accomplices who could give an incriminating testimony against Browder.” The European Council report by Mr. Gross implied that Browder and Magnitsky acted very suspiciously, stating:

“In the draft report, I have described in some detail why it is absurd that Messrs Magnitsky and Browder themselves committed the fraud they had denounced in their detailed criminal complaints made before the fraud actually happened.”

If this was true, given the string of poisonings carried out by Berezovsky and the connection with Safra, who was a partner with Browder, and the call I got from Berezovsky, this rang the alarm bells as far as I was concerned. I could not rule out they were all killed to prevent any witnesses, which would be very Berezovsky-like, I would dare say. Was Berezovsky doing just a favor for Browder, or was he protecting himself from any further liability? Eventually, Berezovsky’s begging letters asked for forgiveness to let him return to Russia. Since Berezovsky was not found dead himself until March 23rd, 2013, if anyone had the connections inside a Russian prison to have Magnitsky killed, it was probably Berezovsky. Of course, that is speculation. Browder has avoided depositions and tends to not recall many things when he has been deposed. The theft of $230 million is far more than anyone could spend in several lifetimes without buying $100+ million homes and works of art. It is far more than two police officers could ever use, and buying a condo is not going to cut it. As I have said, this is serious money, and that is enough for the real masterminds who like to play in politics, for that is on the cusp of power and not simply money. The one person to survive was Markelov who was criminally charged and went to prison for the tax refund fraud, which probably saved his life. At his interrogation, Markelov talked about the role of Pavlov and also recalled getting documents from a man he knew only as Sergei Leonidovich, as a Russian would have addressed him, but his full name was Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky. He was the agent of an unnamed

client. When Markelov was released, he fled and went into hiding no doubt for fear of his life as well.

Andrei Pavlov had told the Russian investigators that he was acting on behalf of Viktor Markelov, who was a sawmill

worker, not a mastermind for a complex financial fraud. There has been an unanswered question as to why Markelov pled guilty to stealing the U.S.$230 million in the Magnitsky case. Markelov got a minimum sentence of five years in a correctional facility that probably protected him from the same assassins. Few believe Markelov was anything more than a proxy, something Pavlov confirmed. But pleading guilty may have been his way out, given that the three other directors were all magically eliminated.

Pavlov in an interview with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), published on March 29th, 201487, said: “Of course, it would be ridiculous to say that Markelov is a fraudster who committed this crime by himself. He was the head and the owner of the company which was our client. But besides him there were other people, that’s true.”

Andrei Pavlov explained that Markelov asked him to represent the interests of “directors of companies who are nominees and can’t show up in court.” Pavlov further elaborated in the interview that Markelov was clearly fronting

for people from the Universal Bank of Savings (UBS), but he declined to mention any names.

Andrei Nekrasov’s investigation discovered that Browder went to court to claim that the companies were stolen and should be returned. That motion was denied, implying that it was a valid transfer all along. This again appeared to be an effort to distance himself from the $230 million tax fraud—brilliant! Andrei also discovered that Browder had filed with the government notices that the companies had been stolen before the fraud, dated December 7th, 2007. Once again, the companies allegedly had no assets, and as Browder said, he suffered no harm. Yet, he took extreme measures to lay a paper trail that he was not in possession of the companies BEFORE the fraud.

Add to this his relentless spending of significant amounts of money to trace the funds when the victim was clearly the Russian government. Why? If he ever traced the money and found it, the money was not his and would be returned to Putin’s government. He has the very strange claim that he is Putin’s #1 enemy.

However, Browder has probably spent millions in legal fees to recover Putin’s government tax revenues without success. None of this seems normal if you are not the victim and have lost nothing. So why spend millions of dollars and nearly 10 years of your life hunting down money for the Russian government? The New Zealand Herald pointed out: “British hedge fund Hermitage Capital Management Limited has filed a number of civil and criminal court proceedings in Russia and abroad over allegations of major tax fraud and subsequent cover-ups.”

Why do all of this if Browder was not the victim? In a court of law, his lawsuits make headlines but go nowhere. To file such lawsuits, you must have what is called standing. Anyone who has studied law knows that this is a publicity stunt. I have no more standing in a court to demand a tracing of assets to prove Browder stole the $230 million than he does to hunt down someone else.

For example, courts only have the constitutional authority to resolve actual disputes. The U.S. Federal Courts do not, under Article III of the Constitution, have the power to resolve legal questions that do not arise out of an actual dispute between real parties. Browder has no “standing” to file suits to trace money from fraud on the Russian government because he has already admitted he was not harmed. This seems to be just a publicity stunt to get the press with such filings, but the press never pays attention when they are dismissed. The year before, in 2006, there was basically the same scheme that took place with Hermitage whereby they stole the equivalent of U.S.$107 million from the Russian government in another similar tax fraud. That involved a company by the name Rengaz, which traded Russian blue-chip stocks. Renaissance Capital also invested in Russia, which was founded in 1995 in Russia. The firm was part of ONEXIM Group, one of Russia’s largest private investment holding companies.

It was originally owned by Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov (born 1965). Renaissance Capital investment bank did not lodge a formal complaint that their companies were stolen since they did not lose any money, as Browder also claimed. It was obvious that any group capable of making a tax refund scheme had to be sophisticated and was better left unchallenged. Renaissance understood that crossing that line could be very dangerous in Moscow when people would simply vanish. They were not behind the scheme. Why did Browder take on such a high-profile attack unless he was not afraid of retaliation? This implies that perhaps Browder either felt safe being in London and/or was privy to the scheme.

Interesting how small the world really is as Mikhail Prokhorov, the owner of Renaissance Capital, during March 2010, was

forced to forfeit a £36 million deposit he had placed on the £360 million from Edmond Safra’s Villa Leopolda in the French Riviera in 2008. On March 2nd, 2010, a court at Nice in France ruled Lily Safra could keep the £36 million deposit, plus £1 million in interest for backing out of the deal. Lily claimed she would donate the money, but the two seemed to dislike each other. On December 11th, 2007, Igor Sagiryan, the then-chief executive of Renaissance Capital Ltd., met with William Browder in London. Browder alleged that Renaissance claimed it could dissolve the companies that Hermitage had reported to the Investigative Committee as “stolen” the day before. This was still before the actual $230 million fraud. Not sure why that was important if there were no assets anyhow. It seemed to be another allegation thrown at the press to make news. The Telegraph of London reported88 on July 30th, 2009, that more than £6 million ($7.5 million) from the $230 million tax refund fraud on Russia allegedly traced to a U.K. bank account held by Renaissance Capital, connected to its London offices. That was never proven.

Mikhail Prokhorov’s Onexim Group took control of Renaissance Capital in 2012. The investment bank did not change its name. The co-owner Stephen Jennings, of New Zealand, had set up the firm in Moscow 17 years before. Jennings was then stepping down from the investment bank. John Hyman, who had been at Morgan Stanley for 17 years, took over as chief executive. Mikhail Prokhorov, from 2012 on, indirectly owned 100% of Renaissance Capital. Therefore, at the time of the alleged fraud, Stephen Jennings was still the owner. Jennings told the New Zealand Herald on October 24th, 2009,89 that his company denied any allegations of wrongdoing by Browder. He also said that his

company had been hit by fraudsters. Curiously, The Rengaz fraud, like Magnitsky, set up fake companies to act as claimants with the very same directors who would show up in the Magnitsky case a year later. The same Moscow tax officers (number #25 and #28) approved the fraudulent tax refunds in both cases, and the same small Moscow Universal Bank of Savings (UBS) processed many of the transactions, which was owned by Dmitry Klyuev who controlled the company since October 2004. In 2006, Dmitry Klyuev was found guilty of an attempt to steal shares of an iron ore processing company called Mikhailovsky GOK. Klyuev was sentenced to three years in jail. However, the sentence was suspended, as is the usual practice in Russia for first-time offenders, which is something that would not happen in America. Klyuev’s friend Orlov was also involved and had a criminal background. According to court testimony, Klyuev Orlov and the sawmill worker Markelov were all involved in the kidnapping and extortion of businessman Fedor Mikheev. Klyuev told OCCRP that he had sold his bank UBS to his old friend Semen Korobeynikov before the Hermitage tax refunds. “UBS didn’t belong to me by that time. I sold it,” says Klyuev. “But people leading [a smear] campaign against me don’t care about that.”

He might be telling the truth. Curiously, Korobeynikov also amazingly died in 2008 when he fell (or was pushed) from a building that was under construction. If UBS was sold to him and was involved in the Hermitage tax refund fraud, then he met the same fate as all other potential witnesses. Renaissance denied Browder’s allegations that it, or any associated company, knew who the fraudsters were. “Any suggestion that Renaissance was involved in a 2006 tax fraud is wholly false,” the company said. They further explained that since those companies were not being used, they only learned of the tax fraud through the media. To accomplish that required insiders in the tax office to get the details of

prior payments. It also shows that the “raid” used by Browder was not necessary based on the Renaissance Capital trial run. It is a possibility that the Renaissance Capital was a test run. Once that worked, the scheme was applied to Hermitage, and all the strange facts seem that it allegedly involved both Magnitsky and Browder. OCCRP claimed that it has proven that the ex-husband of one of the officials in tax office #28 received some of the stolen money. The possibility that the tax officials who granted the refunds were bribed was a key element. Were they also conveniently eliminated? The big difference between the two cases was that nobody screamed fraud in the Renaissance Capital case since it did not involve a crime against the company. Browder turned the Hermitage incident into an international issue and exploited that profile to disrupt the relationship with Russia and the United States. Renaissance Capital never alerted the authorities about the stolen companies since they lost nothing. Browder strangely reported the companies stolen. They had notice of the action in court and did nothing. So, why? There was no crime to report, as was the case with Renaissance Capital. Was it too clever creating an alibi, for they knew the refund would take place? There were duplicates of the seals, and it required detailed knowledge of what taxes had been paid to apply for a refund. That might have been provided by insiders in the tax office. Still, someone was creating a paper trail and then shouting, “Oh my God! The government has been ripped off!” Pavlov admitted to OCCRP in the March 29th, 2014 interview that, in both cases, he knew that the claimants and the respondents were essentially the same people. “It’s not good,

but there is no violation of the law. It was usual in Russia.” Pavlov explained that he “didn’t know the exact purpose. It is not in the lawyer’s role to ask odd questions to his client.” Pavlov said the Renaissance Capital case was the same scheme but law enforcement found no evidence of a crime. That seems to be because it was not carried out by Renaissance Capital, so there was no crime on their part. The people behind this tax refund fraud scheme had to be well-connected. They were not someone like Markelov, who was a blue-collar worker. This clearly required knowledge of finance, law, and the laundering of money. In the Magnitsky case, more than 10,000 transactions took place to ensure the money was well laundered to conceal its final destination. That showed sophistication. Any claims of tracing are small amounts that, at best, were payoffs if true, rather than more smoke and mirrors. Between March and July 2008, one of the Russian companies alleged to have been involved in the Hermitage tax refund fraud, Camelot LLC, made dozens of wire payments to a British Virgin Islands firm named Altem Invest Ltd, which held an account in Cyprus FBME Bank. Camelot allegedly received some small amount from the Hermitage tax refund fraud. The European report by Andreas Gross, a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), stated that Dmitry Klyuev was the beneficiary of the Altem account. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has produced a conclusive document confirming that Klyuev was the beneficiary of the bank account of Altem Invest in 2008.

Klyuev has hinted that Browder is his enemy who foments these “speculations” involving him. He told OCCRP, “I constantly face such speculations and, frankly speaking, I have got used to them already.” He said that not so long ago, there were media reports that his company, Fungamico, was found and that the Hermitage money was hidden there. “That company really belonged to me, but after numerous investigations nothing was found there. And nobody wrote about that,” he declared. This appears to be just more allegations thrown into the air to garnish press releases and ensure the press is never on the real trail. The $230 million tax refund fraud was interesting. That came after the June 2007 search for the $40 million fraud. Browder was prosecuted for that false employee fraud, and the West protects him at all costs—very strange indeed! The Russian tax refund fraud was a very sophisticated scam primarily carried out by Magnitsky, allegedly, with the approval of Browder. The men used low-life common criminals with no sophistication for

a complex fraud who then all mysteriously died by poisoning or falling off buildings, leaving no trace of where the money went. The only thing I learned from being thrown in prison on civil contempt was that the real criminals know how to beat the system, and conspiracy is used when they do not have actual proof. Hence, a professional criminal pulls in others, claiming they knew. They will get on the witness stand and say anything to reduce their own time in prison.

The professional criminal knows how to game the system because they know that the prosecutors only want to rack up the number of convictions, like some ace pilot marking his plane with all his kills. They manipulate the entire system, and no doubt, they do the same in Russia as well. The Columbians have their own radio station in NYC where they pass messages to detainees awaiting trial. They will pay a medically sick man who needs a heart transplant to hop on

a flight to New York carrying a few keys of cocaine. The detainee tells the prosecutor who and when they will arrive to get credit. The prosecutor then arrests the man, and the real professional gets less time. The system is totally gamed because then the sick man cannot stand trial until he is healthy. He goes to the top of the list for a heart transplant because the government needs to supersede everyone else. The cartel takes care of man’s family back home, and they play the prosecutors by feeding them convictions as the prosecutors only care about the number, not the quality. Politicians do the very same thing managing the press. They plaster a version of facts all over the planet. The more you tell the story in the press, the more others repeat it, and suddenly, it all conveniently becomes a fact that rarely will a journalist check the veracity of the claims—hence fake news is born. According to Bill Browder, the documents that the Russian Ministry of Interior had taken in the June 2007 search (raid) were used to forge a change in ownership of Hermitage Capital Management. Yet Magnitsky refused to speak about meeting with Gasanov, who was given the powers of attorney, and simply said he did not know where the “duplicates” were while not denying they existed. It was then alleged that the thieves used the forged contracts to claim Hermitage owed $1 billion to shell companies. Browder then claimed that was all unbeknownst to him or Hermitage while those very claims were granted in court in the U.S. v Prevezon case, proving he had noticed all along.

Here is Browder’s slide supposedly tracing the missing $230 million, which was not the reason Magnitsky was arrested. That was confined to the simple refusal to pay a civil judgment for the false employee tax fraud of $40 million. Hence, the $230 million fraud has been used to drown out the real reason for Magnitsky’s arrest.

The Associated Press reported on November 28th, 2008, about the tax payment owed but did not mention the $230 million fraud. If Magnitsky was the whistleblower, that should have been the issue from day one, but it was not. That crime was performed by misleading the Russian tax authorities using forged contracts and sham lawsuits, which artificially produced losses that offset these companies’ profits from the sale of shares they held two years before. This created the appearance that these companies were entitled to a refund of all taxes they paid in 2006.

Yet nobody seems to have asked the question: Where did the $230 million go if the three thieves are all dead? The number of wires and the constant moving of that money through some 10,000 transactions has hidden the real beneficial owner. Moreover, all of the directors alleged to have stolen the companies all conveniently died. Nobody has ever investigated Bill Browder. Putin said he wanted to question Browder, and in return, the U.S. could investigate and question people in Russia. The U.S. rejected that offer. In July 2018, the U.S. Senate unanimously rejected to allow Russia to question any U.S. diplomat. Of course, that strangely benefited Browder despite the fact that he was no longer an American and he was by no means any sort of a U.S. diplomat, even though Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, publicly stated that his investigation of Magnitsky disagreed with that of Browder. The truth is, John McCain did not care if the story of Magnitsky was true or not. A human rights claim provided the loophole he needed to impose sanctions on Russians.

Browder seems to dance between the raindrops in politics and in the press. No mainstream press has ever questioned Browder, most likely because they have been quietly told behind the scenes not to dig because they know the Magnitsky Act is based on lies. That is the way the press operates. The government calls and says it has a favor. If the journalist bucks the trend, they are suddenly investigated for taxes or whatever else they can find.

Michael Hastings (1980–2013), the journalist investigating the government spying on its citizens illegally, drove straight into a tree in Los Angeles on June 18th, 2013, and was killed at high speed. His car was a Mercedes-Benz C250 coupé. A witness to the crash said the car seemed to be traveling at the maximum possible speed and created sparks and flames before it fishtailed and crashed into a palm tree. Back in March 2017, WikiLeaks leaked nearly 9,000 internal CIA documents, confirming that the CIA’s cyber intelligence had explored methods to hack into vehicle systems and take them over. WikiLeaks noted in its release accompanying the documents: “The purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage in nearly undetectable assassinations.”

It was too convenient. About 12 hours before his car crash and death, Hastings sent out a short email headed, “FBI Investigation, re: NSA.” In it, he said that the FBI had been interviewing his “close friends and associates.” He advised the recipients, including colleagues at the website Buzzfeed, “[It] may be wise to immediately request legal counsel before any conversations or interviews about our news-gathering practices or related journalism issues.” He also added, “I’m onto a big story, and need to go off the radat [sic] for a bit.” Whistleblower Edward Snowden shocked the world with his revelations about how the government was spying on all Americans at the National Security Agency (NSA). Shortly after, and two weeks before his firey death, Hastings wrote an article on June 7, entitled: Why Democrats Love to Spy on Americans. Lucy Komisar has published how Browder has changed his story concerning Magnitsky’s death many times. He didn’t

claim Magnitsky was beaten to death for two years until he allegedly made that claim to get the U.S. Congress to support his Magnitsky Act. That gave John McCain the exception he needed, and I would not put it past McCain to personally embellish the story. Browder’s campaign has been to target Russia and paint it as corrupt as possible. Browder has clearly capitalized on the propaganda campaign of Berezovsky, who was trying to overthrow Putin so he could seize the presidency of Russia. The assault by Browder upon Russia and Putin has ensured he will never be extradited for his conviction of tax fraud, and no way will the U.S. even allow him to be questioned by Russia despite the fact that he is no longer even an American citizen. To what extent the $230 million tax fraud has been used as a distraction for what he and Magnitsky had been justly convicted of is debatable. Browder has advocated the need for sanctions to be coordinated with the U.S. against all the oligarchs, and the political forces have welcomed the Magnitsky Act as a loophole based entirely on a human rights violation. The Magnitsky Act has also served as the Browder Protection Act. Whatever money he got his hands on in Russia was tax-free in Britain. This has been a brilliant plot. Just as professional criminals manipulate the prosecutors, this case has manipulated the press and the politicians to make sure everyone is happy with fake news and punitive sanctions against individuals in Russia that have long distanced themselves from any human rights violation tied to Magnitsky.

As I have said, I was taken for one of those “walks in the park” across from the Court House in Foley Square, NYC, where they promised everything would go away if I agreed to be an informant. My lawyer Richard Altman warned me what would happen, and for the rest of my life, I would need permission even to go to Greece for a holiday. I declined. Prosecutors do not drop charges for no reason. Alexander Acosta, who became the U.S. Labor Secretary under Trump, was the U.S. Attorney for South Florida who cut that nonprosecution deal with Epstein. Acosta was appointed to the cabinet by President Donald Trump. He had to be vetted. It was then written:

“He’d cut the non-prosecution deal with one of Epstein’s attorneys because he had “been told” to back off, that Epstein was above his pay grade. “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone,” he told his interviewers in the Trump transition, who evidently thought that was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta. (The Labor Department had no comment when asked about this.)”

Goldman Sachs was in a lawsuit for allegedly using prostitutes, fancy meals, and hotels to swindle the Libyan government in a $1.2 billion lawsuit. Using seductive young women is standard operational procedure in many fields. Israel’s fearsome Secret Service’s best agents are hot women rather than the James Bond type. This is the standard new breed of super-spy.

Anna Chapman was a Russian Spy caught in New York City. She was swapped for American spies in 2010 and made headlines in New York. She was stunningly beautiful as well as stunningly successful. I’m sure they get more information in bed than using the rubber hose treatment. Later, Anna showed up in Ukraine to train with the soldiers, leading the rebellion. She has become known as Vladimir Putin’s weapon of mass distraction. Epstein was probably the master at creating honey traps. All the people he brought in were high profile, which was the real giveaway. All the elements were present. He had a luxurious lifestyle and endless free time. He also has heaps of money nobody quite figured out where it came from. Here we have Bill Browder running around the world, jumping before every camera he can, lobbying government to create the worldwide Magnitsky Act, and pushing to illegally sanction private individuals claiming 50% of what they have is Putin’s. Allegedly, just maybe, he is also a dog on a very long leash. He is pursuing lawsuits and chasing $230 million that, even if he found, belongs to Putin since he admitted he lost nothing. Who knows? Did he take one of those “walks in the park” where they say, Do this, and you will never be extradited to

Russia?

85

“Starova Testimony,” April 9, 2008. https://www.thekomisarscoop.com/wpcontent/uploads/2020/03/Starova-Testimony-April-9-2008.pdf. 86

Enguld, Will. “Private Probe: Officials in Russian Tax Fraud Case Stashed Millions Offshore.” The Washington Post, April 18, 2011. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/private-probe-officials-in-russian-taxfraud-case-stashed-millions-offshore/2011/04/18/AFzlrXzD_story.html.

87

OCCRP. “The Silent Looting of Russia,” https://www.occrp.org/en/investigations/2382-the-silent-looting-of-russia.

n.d.

88

Malnick, Edward. “Exclusive: £6.6m Linked to Death of Lawyer ‘Traced to Russian Firm’s UK Account.’” Yahoo News, April 13, 2017. https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-6-6m-linked-death-211500502.html. 89

Milne, Rebecca. “Kiwi Link in Russian Tax Fraud Allegations.” NZ Herald, September 18, 2020. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/kiwi-link-in-russian-taxfraud-allegations/ZBS6ANVTZTZWAW6XQXIPD757WI/.

Browder’s Fiction Threatens the World

B

rowder’s false allegation that the oligarchs hold assets for Putin appears simply weird at first glance. Perhaps it might be an ego thing to keep himself in the limelight, for he certainly appears to love the attention of the press who hold him up as some expert on Putin’s mindset. They did the same with Greta at 16 years old to be a climate change

expert. Browder is venturing into areas that now threaten the world economy and the future of even our children, no less their posterity. Browder has pushed his advice to seize all the assets of oligarchs under the claim that they are secretly holding assets for Putin. He offers no proof of that claim, and the declassified documents contradict Browder’s claims.

Indeed, the La Crosse Tribune of Wisconsin published an interview with Browder on May 4th, 2022, claiming that nobody knows Putin’s mindset better than Browder. That statement is absolutely absurd. Browder has been only a buyand-hold investor, not even a seasoned trader or he would never have lost a fortune in 1998. Yet in July 2000, the press reported the “truce” between Putin and the oligarchs. The foremost geopolitical analyst in the world is former U.S. secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger (born 1923) who separated Russia and China, putting one against the other during the Nixon Administration. Besides sanctions never working against governments, there is no historical precedent

for seizing private assets to pressure a head of state. That violates international law.

Kissinger spoke at the 2022 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and he urged the United States and the West not

to seek an embarrassing defeat for Russia in Ukraine. Henry put it mildly, saying that would undermine Europe’s long-term stability. To be blunter, you cannot push Putin into a corner where the only option is a nuclear attack. Worse still, what makes world peace is interaction and trade. That was how Rome lasted 1,000 years. Browder’s advice to seize private assets undermines international law and breaks the very economic bonds that ensure world peace.

Henry warned that the West cannot forget the critical importance of Russia in world trade. He warned we cannot get swept up “in the mood of the moment.” Kissinger also pushed for the West to force Ukraine into accepting

negotiations with a “status quo ante,” which means the previous state of affairs.

To me, Browder playing in this sandbox of geopolitics threatens everyone’s future. It makes no sense whatsoever even to try to analyze what is going through his mind. However, there is one possibility that makes sense, and unless you have been taken on one of these little “walks in the park,” you would never know what truly goes on behind the curtain. When my case began and just before the bail hearing in New York City, I was taken for one of those “walks in the park” across from the Court House in Foley Square, NYC. I was told that with all my connections, everything could go away if I agreed to work for them undercover. My lawyer Richard Altman warned me they would do that, and he recommended I decline. He said I would be like a dog on a leash for the rest of my life. If I took such a deal, then I too would have been given a non-prosecution agreement. In MCC, I met a detainee named Lou who had been in charge of Asian marketing for Resorts Casino in Atlantic City. The FBI pulled off an elaborate scam. A friend of his girlfriend

got mixed up in drugs, and to get less time, she set up his girlfriend by telling her she had to fly to Columbia and bring back a key of heroin or they would kill her. The girl agreed and even got through customs, for the FBI had that all arranged. She went with her to drop off this heroin to the FBI, who were pretending to be the drug dealers. The undercover officers threatened to kill them both, saying it was cocaine and not heroin. She broke down, told Lou, and he met with them and offered to pay whatever to save his girlfriend. The undercover agents arrested Lou, claiming he was the mastermind in a drug conspiracy. They then took him for one of those “walks in the park” and said if he reported everyone at Resorts coming in or leaving with more than $100,000 in cash, it would all go away. Even Jeffrey Epstein’s first case was dropped because the prosecutor was told he “belonged to intelligence.” I believe that Browder was threatened with being extradited to Russia on one of these “walks in the park,” unless he cooperated and became their dog on a leash. He may be a mouthpiece now for the CIA. What he is saying has no support, and it is only hurling us closer and closer to World War III.

The force of arms does not create world peace; it is only created by economic opportunity. That is how the Roman Empire flourished. Rome conquered much of North Africa during the Punic Wars. They conquered Greece and the East during the days of the Republic. Yes, they conquered all of Europe under Julius Caesar (100-44 BC). They had captured Egypt under Octavian who defeated Cleopatra VII. Octavian even issued his coinage announcing that Egypt was captured. Rome conquered Britain under emperor Claudius (41-54 AD), and he named his son Britannicus in honor of that conquest. The Balkans were conquered under Trajan (98-117 AD), and Constantine (306-337 AD) moved the capital from Rome to what today is Istanbul (old Constantinople). What held it all together? It was free trade!

The enduring phrase from the Roman Empire—All roads lead to Rome—reflected the free trade and commerce that made Rome endure. Free trade created the greatest empire ever known in human history and benefited everyone. The conquered lands prospered and sold their goods to the whole empire. Roman entrepreneurs were the ancient investors in what were then emerging markets. They funded projects and brought each region’s unique products from all the provinces to Rome.

The ancient version of Wall Street was known as the Via Sacra (Sacred Road). Cicero (106-43 BC) wrote that anytime there was news of a disaster in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), a financial panic would be unleashed in the Roman Forum on this very street. The Via Sacra was the main street of ancient Rome, leading from the top of the Capitoline Hill, through some of the most important religious sites of the Forum, and the widest street to the Colosseum.

Even the phrase, “Taking the purple,” meant becoming emperor. You see, purple dye was imported from India and the emperor loved that color so much that nobody else was allowed to wear purple other than the emperor. This is why today you will see priests with purple vestments symbolizing that Christ is king.

There was a major earthquake in Turkey in 17 AD, which was devastating. That set off a financial panic down the ancient

Wall or the Via Sacra. Ancient commentators recorded the earthquake in Turkey and how it set off a financial panic among the Roman bankers. Roman Emperor Tiberius (14-37 AD) had to create a bail-out fund and even issued coins declaring this was a relief for Asia. Our world leaders are ignorant of history, for they do not understand what truly makes world peace. Browder has been advising to break those bonds of trade by advocating the seizure of private assets. His advice is contrary to every lesson from history. He offers no precedent or proof of his claims. All he has is his opinion, which may be buried in personal motives.

Removing Russia from the SWIFT system has divided the world economy and pushed China to launch its alternative system —CIPS. No longer will the world economy function under SWIFT. We have entered a multipolar financial world. Browder’s story has undermined world peace and forever divided the world economy, ending globalization.

Vladimir Putin’s speech at the 10th Moscow Conference on International Security on August 16th, 2022, reflected this very danger Browder has created with his narrative that has contributed to the polarization of the world economy. “I reiterate that the era of the unipolar world is becoming a thing of the past. No matter how strongly the beneficiaries of the current globalist model cling to the familiar state of affairs, it is doomed. The historic geopolitical changes are going in a totally different direction… I want to emphasise [sic] that the multipolar world, based on international law and more just relations, opens up new opportunities for counteracting common threats, such as regional conflicts and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism and cybercrime. All these challenges are global, and therefore it would be impossible to overcome them without combining the efforts and potentials of all states.”

There is no evidence that Putin ever demanded 50% of all the oligarchs’ assets. Just the opposite. He told them they could

keep their assets and only asked that they stop interfering in politics. That is all confirmed by the declassified documents. Not even Berezovsky ever reported to the Americans that Putin had made such a demand. Lucy Komisar also pointed out that, according to Browder, the U.S. should sanction Russian oligarchs because they are holding Putin’s money.

“So, when you see an oligarch worth $20 billion, $10 billion of that is Putin’s. He can’t hold any money in his own name.”

This is a total lie based on the absence of any such account by any of the oligarchs in the declassified documents.

Indeed, Browder has been anti-Putin. So why has Browder supported seizing all the oligarchs’ assets? Does he think he could pull off what Edmond and Berezovsky had in mind in terms of grabbing Russia’s resources? It makes no sense. This also raises the question of whether politicians were too stupid to see the inconsistencies in Browder’s story. Perhaps they just didn’t care. Even in Browder’s book Red Notice, he wrote that following the incident with the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky who was arrested, “most of Russia’s oligarchs went one by one to Putin” and asked what they could do to avoid MBK’s fate. There is no mention of this in any of the declassified documents.90 Browder claimed Putin demands 50%.91 But the declassified documents make no mention of such a demand! Berezovsky surely would have been screaming if Putin had made such a demand, given his anti-Putin posture. All Putin demanded was for them to stay out of politics. He obviously knew that Berezovsky and Gusinsky manipulated the press in 1996 to get Yeltsin elected. Tatyana, Yeltsin’s daughter, stayed on to advise Putin on what had taken place. Putin’s meeting to tell them to stay out of politics made sense, given what they did in 1996 and the fact that Tatyana stayed on to help Putin during the transition because of Berezovsky and Gusinsky. So, why did Browder make such a claim? It is hard to say. He provided no documentary evidence. Was it to feel important? Perhaps it could be revenge? Or was he trying to realize the dream of Boris Berezovsky and Edmond Safra? Then again, Browder may be simply serving the interests of the American Neocons and their fearless former leader, John McCain. Good old John never met a Russian whom he did not see the letters “K.G.B” in their eyes.

Browder seems to say things at times with no supporting evidence. For example, it has been entirely Bill Browder who has allegedly created the fake story92 that Putin is worth $200 billion. Foreign Policy93 points out that $200 billion would be almost twice Jeff Bezos’ worth. This story has torn the world economy apart. Even if Putin had taken 50% of all the oligarchs’ wealth, it would never have reached $200 billion. Browder has spun a story with no possible ground in reality and no verification.

Nevertheless, Browder has promoted seizing private assets, destroying international law completely. You cannot seize all the assets of individuals who are denied any right to be heard in a court of law, claiming this is putting pressure on Putin. So, let’s arrest your wife because you did not take out the trash. Sorting out the truth from the lies here is now critical because this is threatening our very way of life and the entire future of the world. Not only does this end globalization, but it impacts the future of our children and grandchildren, assuming that anything actually survives. Justice has been redefined as “JUST US.”

Bill Browder has advocated seizing all the assets of oligarchs under the pretense that this would somehow put pressure on Putin.94 Sanctions historically never work. The theory is that punishing the people will cause them to rise and overthrow the government, thereby achieving regime change. Just look

at the sanctions on Iran. It has not resulted in overturning the Islamic Revolution. All you need do is look at the declassified documents to see for yourself that Putin stood against the oligarchs and the communists. He would never ask them to hold money for him that he could never spend. All the documents are entirely silent on any such scheme. Putin held a meeting and told them they could keep their wealth, but they had to stop interfering in politics. That was the entire issue because Berezovsky and Gusinsky were always plotting to interfere in politics. Certainly, Yeltsin turned to Putin because Berezovsky had blackmailed him with the Bank of New York money laundering case.

Browder’s push to seize the personal wealth of oligarchs has only violated international law and set the destruction of the world economy in motion. Why should the Chinese invest in America or Europe if the new precedent is that a dispute between nations justifies the confiscation of private assets? This was similar to imprisoning the Japanese in America because of the war with Japan. Yet, America did not imprison those of German descent. If the U.S. is in conflict with Canada, shall it confiscate all Canadian private assets in the United States? The entire world economy is dependent upon the free movement of capital

and the rule of law. Ending that freedom terminates everything that creates world peace. Without secured property, there can be no basis for global investment. Why would anyone even buy a home if it is not secured under a law that you are the rightful owner? Civilization rests upon the rule of law. Everything rests upon that foundation. Contract law began perhaps with the king of Babylon Hammurabi’s Legal Code, discovered in 1901, which was a text composed c. 1755–1750 BC based upon earlier legal codes that predated it. Before, one could go to court and say, “I paid him cash for his house.” It was then up to the king to say who was telling the truth. It became impossible to secure your property; thus, all transactions had to be recorded in writing.

During the first Gulf War in Iraq, the bombings uncovered a city previously unknown. The archives of all the texts appeared on the black market. Academics boycott such things rather than try to save them, thinking they can write a law and people will turn over what they find for nothing. Academics always object to private people using private

funds for research. They always demand that they should get such finds at no cost to play with and analyze. In this particular case, thousands of tablets were on the black market. I was offered the entire collection, and my competitor would have been a Norwegian collector of manuscripts, Martin Schoyen. Indeed, Schoyen had over 13,000 documents in his collection. The very best in the world that included an original copy of the Magna Carta. I met Martin Schoyen in Zurich for dinner. We came to an arrangement as my interest was purely economic. Martin agreed that I could use the economic text in return for bowing out of the bidding. Martin Schoyen’s contribution to history has been tremendous. He covered the costs of translating what became known as the Legal Code of Ur-Nammu (ca. 1900-1700 BC), predating Hammurabi by 300 years. Contract law requires that everything must be in writing. Verbal contracts were not to be recognized. Browder has advocated the total destruction of the bonds that secured the foundation of civilization itself, extending back over 4,000 years.

When the rule of law collapses, investment ceases to exist. Historians have drawn the line in history for the decline and fall of Rome with the death of Marcus Aurelius (b: 121; Rules 161-180 AD) who was succeed by his son Commodus (b: 161; 180-192 AD). In his classic book, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon wrote that the rule of law collapsed under Commodus.

Law, under Commodus, merely became the will of the government. This is what Browder has advocated by seizing private assets under his unsupported claim that they are secretly holding assets for Putin. Pushing to sanction private individuals with no due process of law violates everything society was based upon for more than 4,000 years. If someone assassinates Browder—it won’t be Putin—it will be an oligarch. Shockingly, we have world leaders stupidly listening to this nonsense. Why should any Chinese have assets in the West with this total collapse in the rule of international law? This is why globalization is coming to an end. A Democrat of New Jersey, Tom Malinowski, regurgitates whatever Browder has said. He claims they will not return any oligarch assets. Instead, they will liquidate everything and give it to Ukraine. He justifies it by repeating Browder’s claim that they are only holding the assets for Putin with no proof whatsoever.

I dealt in trillions, perhaps the first advisor ever to do so. I was asked to testify before the House Ways & Means Committee on July 18th, 1996, for at that time I confirmed: “We currently provide corporate and institutional advice under contract on global assets exceeding US$2.5 trillion, an amount equal to about half of the U.S. national debt.”

In today’s money, that would be $15 trillion dollars. Unless you have been at this level in this game of international finance, you will never understand the extent of one billion dollars, nor the actual value of trillions or 1,000 billion. There is no possible stock valuation that Putin could even have that would rise to $200 billion in Russia. It is a typical allegation of someone who does not understand the real game. If you go out to an extravagant dinner, perhaps you would spend $3,000 eating some exotic food and add a $15,000 bottle of wine. Berezovsky’s Villa in France was worth $120 million, not billions. Playing with billions is not real. It is beyond what you could rationally spend. A German journalist in Munich asked how I could advise on such vast sums of money. I responded straightforwardly that it

was just phone numbers. I do not think about the purchasing power of such sums, for it cannot even be conceptualized rationally. I explained that I just watched the trends that need to be addressed. She found that was very interesting. The journalist explained that she had interviewed a leading brain surgeon who said the same thing. Once he thought about what he was actually doing, how the slightest mistake might paralyze the patient, he could no longer do the job. So if you think about the value, you cannot advise on trillions.

Someone who is only focused on money has no real concept when dealing in billions. It is an amount that is far beyond personal use. You are entering the world of a poker game. Putin is not interested in money. He is interested in a legacy, and all of his actions have been in the spirit of Yeltsin’s last words, “Take care of Russia.” That defines Putin. Berezovsky had billions, yet he wanted Putin’s power that money could not buy. What Putin has done has been to further that legacy, not to resurrect the USSR or sneak away $200 billion that nobody

could ever spend in a hundred lifetimes. You really cannot take it with you, and even your children cannot spend that much. That sort of money is only for political power, which he has now as president of Russia, and Berezovsky, with all his billions, sought to grab.

That is why people like Bill Gates, George Soros, and Warren Buffett try to use their money in a high-stakes game to change the world. As head of Russia, Putin can have whatever he needs and will live comfortably. Money will not change that. Even if we look at Trump, despite the fact that so many Democrats hate him, he too was in the game for power, not money. The career politicians hated Trump because you cannot be bribed when you have billions. There is no place in Washington for such a counter-culture. As Mark Twain implied, Washington has no room for honest politicians. Berezovsky tried to bribe Putin, and he admitted that Putin had turned down the money. None of the assassinations point to Putin. Berezovsky was the benefactor of those deaths. He

then carried out a desperate effort to blame Putin in hopes of overthrowing him to seize Russia. Berezovsky seized the media also by an alleged assassination of the major shareholder—all for power, not money. When money was on the table, information was gold. Even when it turned out to be Warren Buffett who bought $1 billion worth of silver, the Wall Street Journal asked me, “How did you know?” I replied that it was my job to know, just as they would monitor what I did. When you play at the billion-dollar table, you better know your opponent.

Unless you have played with billion-dollar chips at the table of international finance, you do not understand the game. Money crosses the line and transforms from wealth into power. This is what people do not in the least understand. They judge others by themselves and think I could do this or that if I just had more money. So, they think billionaires are

greedy and want more money to live better somehow. You can tell that Browder is making that allegation when even $200 billion does not buy the power Putin has right now.

Money ceases to be wealth and crosses over into the realm of power. Money has its limits, the same as everything. Having one drink of scotch and water is OK, but drink the whole bottle, and you may die. As my mother used to say, “Everything in moderation.” It is impossible for a man to write a book that explains how it feels to give birth to a child. This is the very same limitation. Unless you have sat at the billion-dollar table and played at this level, you will never understand the true meaning of a billion dollars—it is power, not wealth. That kind of money is beyond reality. For Browder to even claim that Putin has $200 billion is not just naïve. It is so absurd

that it suggests he probably never sat at a real table in the game of world finance. He was just a buy-and-hold investor without trading skills. If he had trading skills, he would have never lost the vast amounts he did in the 1998 Russian Financial Crisis. That sort of money ceases to be wealth. It is simply just a poker chip at a table of power and influence.

90

Red Notice, 168.

91

Red Notice, 169.

92

Clifford, Cat. “Is Vladimir Putin the Richest Person in the World? This Financier Says

He’s Worth More than Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos Combined.” CNBC, July 31, 2017. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/31/financier-bill-browder-says-vladimir-putin-isworth-200-billion.html. 93

Minesotor, Ricardo. “Vladimir Putin’s Net Worth 2021: Is He the Richest Man on

Earth?” Foreign net-worth/. 94

Policy,

March 21, 2021. https://foreignpolicyi.org/vladimir-putins-

“Is the U.S. Banking System Fraud-Proof? - Sep. 1, 1999,” September 1, 1999. https://money.cnn.com/1999/09/01/worldbiz/russia_banking/.

RussiaGate & Neocons

T

he term “RussiaGate” emerged with Hillary vs. Trump, and its roots actually extend back into the 1990s following the collapse of the USSR. The modern-day carpetbaggers descended upon Russia as they did follow the American Civil War invading the South. Here, the huge question was how to transform a system of communism where the state owned everything, even your home, to a free market system of capitalism. I was asked to come over to China by the central bank following the Asian Currency Crisis of 1997. After that meeting, I was taken in a motorcade like the president of some country. I arrived at a facility surrounded by tanks where about 300 people were downloading everything from the internet they could discover on capitalism. I found myself explaining capitalism at the most basic level. It taught me, in turn, a lot about the consequence of Marxism.

They could not understand how one tea selling, for say, $1 in one region was selling for $5 somewhere else. I explained first that there were transportation costs, and then human nature kicks in, where people will pay more for something if they like it better. Under communism, if it was $1 in one place, it had to be $1 everywhere, even if it cost $10 to transport to the remote regions. That’s why communism failed—inefficiency. It was really interesting to see the thinking process that was required to make the transition.

Time Magazine published Hillary’s comments on December 16th, 2016, a few weeks after losing the election. Time

reported: “On Russia, Clinton said the nation wanted to “undermine our democracy” and that Putin has a “personal beef” with her because she said the 2011 Russian parliamentary elections were rigged. ‘Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people, and that is the direct line between what he said back then and what he did in this election,’ she said.”

The real reason Hillary blamed Putin was not for her 2011 comment; it was clearly because of their support of Berezovsky and the whole scheme to rig the 2000 Russian Presidential election. All the declassified documents from the Clinton Administration point to behind the curtain shenanigans of Berezovsky and why Yeltsin’s last words to Putin were profound: “Take care of Russia!”

Russia became an easy scapegoat for Hillary to defeat Trump and drive him from office as Berezovsky had tried to do to Putin. Russia was corrupt thanks to the West pouring in money and Harvard academics who misjudged everything, possessing only book knowledge, and lacking actual experience in the financial markets. John McCain (1936-2018) supported RussiaGate, where the motive was to prevent Trump from even trying to normalize relations with Putin. McCain was always just a Neocon who simply appeared to hate Russians and always championed proxy wars against Russia from Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine. McCain’s involvement did not end with sponsoring the Magnitsky Act for Bill Browder. The fake Steele Dossier, which Hillary funded, he willingly used to create the entire RussiaGate fraud because Trump was against a proxy war against Russia using Ukrainians as cannon fodder.

McCain and Hillary were Neocons. McCain furthered the scheme to accuse Trump of being Putin’s puppet and conniving against his own party. It was McCain who handed Hillary’s Steele Dossier to James Comey of the FBI. Of course, McCain asserted it was not Hillary who gave it to him, but in Halifax, Nova Scotia, it was handed to him by a British diplomat Sir Andrew Wood.95 However, Sir Andrew Wood told the Guardian, which published it on February 13th, 2017, that he was consulted about the claims by Senator John McCain at a security conference in Canada shortly after the US election. Yet, Wood said he did not have the dossier but that

“McCain obtained it from his own sources.” That contradicted McCain’s story.96

It is curious why Hillary claimed that Putin interfered in the 2016 election yet funded the fake Steele Dossier. If she really believed Putin interfered, perhaps she assumed it was payback for supporting blackmailing Yeltsin to install Berezovsky as president back in 2000. Thanks to Special Prosecutor John Durham, what surfaced was that Hillary Clinton and her top foreign policy advisor, Jake Sullivan, spread a bogus Trump-Russia “collusion” narrative. Hillary’s false claims resulted in 70% of Democrats believing that Russia was the enemy, according to Pew Research.97 This fake news set the stage for the hatred of Russia and, in the long haul, the justification for World War III.

To enable this Soviet-style disinformation campaign, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign hired a tech firm to “infiltrate” servers at Trump Tower in Manhattan and the White House in order to link Donald Trump to Russia. This was up there with Nixon and Watergate. The Neocons orchestrated a hate campaign against Trump so he would lose in 2020.

We know that Durham has proven that Hillary funded the entire RussiaGate hoax. Even the Federal Election Commission fined Hillary and the DNC for forging the entire RussiaGate scam. Hillary probably arranged for John McCain to get the dossier “indirectly” or perhaps handed to him personally since Ambassador Wood denied giving it to McCain. We know without question that McCain handed it to Comey at the FBI. Comey has shown clearly that he was part of the scheme, for whenever he spoke to Trump, he was taking notes. He never took notes with Hillary so she could never be charged with

lying to the FBI like Martha Stewart. Comey recommended no charges against Hillary, but he exonerated her for a higher crime than raiding Trump’s home claiming he had classified documents.

What Comey omitted was that there were 110 classified emails transmitted and received via Clinton’s personal email server. Comey claimed her actions rose to “gross negligence.” He did not explain the rationale behind this finding.

Reuters reported that Hillary was copying information in a

classified format marked “Top Secret” to hide what she was doing, which was the intent. Comey did not address that. Reuters reported on July 7th, 201698: “The Inspector General for the Intelligence Community stated some of the documents were marked at the highest levels, including one about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. At least 47 of the Clinton emails released contain the Freedom of Information Act release exemption B3 CIA PERS/ORG, which indicates the material referred to CIA personnel matters. Some emails show semi-oblique references to CIA staffers, known as “talk arounds,” to avoid mentioning a name or position per se.”

Even more curious is that Comey, the US Attorney at the time, approved of keeping me in civil contempt well beyond the 18-month statute under 28 USC §1826 for nearly 7 years. He did this to prevent any public hearing against Safra’s bank and this entire issue of interfering in the Russian 2000 election. Comey was well aware of the Bank of New York connection to my case and protected Hillary and the bankers. As I said, I informed that the Bank of New York case led right to Yeltsin at a reverse proffer in April 2000. I even told them that it was the Russian Minister of Interior who was blocking the leads to Yeltsin. The declassified phone call shows Yeltsin stating he was sending over the Minister of Interior to investigate the Bank of New York because it was “political” on September 8th, 1998.

Clearly, Comey knew the inside story on both my case, the Bank of New York, and, I believe, even this entire scheme of RussiaGate. So for him to take notes on Trump but not Hillary said it all.

Was Trump the real target of RussiaGate? Perhaps he was collateral damage in the Deep State’s ongoing effort led by John McCain to demonize Putin and Russia. McCain hated Trump because he was anti-war. This was like waving a red cape in front of a bull to McCain. The Neocons never want world peace. They would lose all purpose in life if there were nobody to stay awake at night thinking about how to destroy them. John McCain had joined the conspiracy with Hillary against Trump, handing the Steele Dossier to FBI agent James Comey because Hillary was at least a Neocon. McCain, a Republican, removed any perception that it was partisanship by Hillary. So the new conspiracy known as RussiaGate was launched.

There was a lot more at stake than what had made the news. The declassified documents from the Clinton Administration clearly show discussions on how the oligarchs would turn Russia over to the West and assume control by joining NATO. However, they also reveal that NATO had invited Russia to join back in 1991. Today, all we hear is that NATO denies it ever promised not to move eastward when not only is that not true, but they invited Russia to join their little club. That changes history completely.

While Berezovsky appears to have been the origin of the antiPutin commentary, there is no doubt that John McCain jumped on that bandwagon as soon as it appeared. McCain’s reputation in Washington was anything but cordial, as he was renowned for his temper. In 2008, he had an affair with a lobbyist, which he lied about to the New York Times, selling his vote for sex. His former campaign adviser Steve Schmidt admitted he lied to the press and said the affair was so blatant “that it alarmed his own staff, who did everything to keep the two apart.”99 That always left a question in my mind why McCain would sponsor the bogus Magnitsky Act (i.e., the Browder Protection Act), which protected Bill Browder from extradition for tax fraud.

It has also been long speculated that Bill Browder bought his way into McCain’s circle by donating a lot of money to his Institute. That was the favorite scam in Washington, and McCain probably got tips on how to do it from Hillary Clinton. Then, the Daily Caller investigation found that the McCain Institute for International Leadership executives refused to disclose how much money big donors had contributed to the nonprofit that’s named after former Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain. That is the typical way they protect selling favors on Capitol Hill.

In the famous 60 Minute interview, The Maverick from Arizona, on October 12, 1997, Mike Wallace noted: “People who know McCain well say he can hold a grudge. He also has a legendary temper. But if McCain can be hard on his friends and even harder on his enemies, he can also be very hard on himself.” John McCain admitted that they broke him while he was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. That may have been the cause of his hatred of Russia or any communists.

WALLACE: What did you do wrong in prison? Sen. McCAIN: I wrote a confession. I was guilty of war crimes against the Vietnamese people. I intentionally bombed women and children. WALLACE: And you did it because you were being tortured and you’d reached the end of the line? Sen. McCAIN: Yes. But I should have gone further. I should have—I never believed that I would—that I would break, and I did.100

The McCain confession tape made in 1969 was referred to as a “Tokyo Rose” propaganda recording. McCain made the anti-U.S. confession tape, which resurfaced in late 2016. An independent news journalist, Charles Johnson, said he uncovered the recording because it had been mislabeled by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. They have pulled that tape from wherever they could to protect McCain from being viewed as a traitor and war criminal.

In the tape, McCain takes full responsibility for flying bombing missions, acknowledges he was guilty of crimes against the Vietnamese, and claimed he was treated inhumanely since captured. McCain said he was tortured for days and made the confession after extreme physical abuse. McCain claimed that he regretted that decision for the rest of his life. The National Archives verified that the tape was authentic. His legendary ability to hold a grudge perhaps explains much about why he appears to have lashed out at Putin during his presidential run in 2008, saying that Russia had a “KGB apparatchik-run” government (communist). He also accused

his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, of being naive over Russia’s conflict with Georgia in South Ossetia. He further bashed Putin on July 18, 2007, saying: “Russia has now become a nation fueled by Petro-dollars that has basically become a KGB apparatchik-run government. I looked in Mr. Putin’s eyes and I saw three letters -- a K, a G and B.”

John McCain has always spoken against Russia. Nothing ever changed his position despite Russia being no longer communist since there was private ownership, and the oligarchs proved that. It was 2005 when McCain wanted to exclude Russia from the G8 on the sole argument that the Russian government was not sharing the USA’s basic values. There were no specifics to define that view. They were simply Russians, and that was enough. McCain knew Trump was against war, using Ukraine as the spearhead to begin a proxy war against Russia. McCain was the most notorious American Neocon who even met with Neo-Nazis promising support against Putin in Ukraine. Then there was the whole Sergei Magnitsky problem, which McCain sponsored. At the press conference in July 2018, the U.S. claimed it wanted to question Russians about Hillary’s RussiaGate claims. Putin stood alongside Trump and said no problem, but he too wanted to question a few Americans, which included Bill Browder and the former Ambassador who had investigated and rejected the Magnitsky story.

The Russians presented 1,000 pages of documentation on Browder to the U.S., but John McCain led the Senate to ban any American from being questioned by Putin in July 2019. That protected Browder, despite the fact that he had even surrendered his American citizenship. It was McCain who also pushed the Magnitsky Act for Browder. This raised some serious questions since he was personally involved with Browder, who called him his hero.

McCain came out swinging, claiming that Trump’s meeting with Putin was the most “disgraceful” performance of any American president. What infuriated McCain was that Putin wanted to question Browder. Then McCain pushed the U.S. Senate into a unanimously approved non-binding resolution making current and former diplomats available to the Russian government for questioning in exchange for cooperation with the Mueller probe. He clearly knew that the Steele Dossier was a fraud anyway since he handed it to the FBI personally. Given his direct involvement in RussiaGate, at the very least, this was an unethical conflict of interest and an obstruction of justice to

prevent Muller from questioning any Russian. The United States had refused to respond to Putin’s request to question Browder.

This was not the first time that John McCain was involved in influence peddling like Hillary. This has always left a huge question mark with McCain’s involvement that was not so dissimilar with regard to the Charles Keating affair previously. McCain was one of the five members of Congress who had accepted money to try to intervene in a criminal fraud case of Charles Keating (1923–2014) and his Lincoln Financial organization. Beginning in January 1987, Keating looked for help from what would become known as “the Keating Five” from Washington. They were Democratic U.S. Senators Alan Cranston of California, Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, John Glenn of Ohio, and Donald W. Riegle of Michigan. The one Republican was U.S. Senator John McCain of Arizona.

Ironically, In October 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the government’s appeal for overturning the state conviction of Charles Keating. However, because Keating had entered a plea bargain with the Feds, that was not overturned.

Geopolitically, McCain was the driving force to constantly push to expand NATO right to the border of Russia in violation of all prior agreements. In 2017, when Senator Rand Paul objected to allowing Montenegro to join NATO, McCain accused Paul of treason and working on the floor for Putin. His hatred of Russia constantly drove McCain, and it never mattered who was the head of Russia at any time. McCain’s reputation on the Hill was one of a hothead who would hold a grudge until he died. My personal encounters with him never left me with a warm and fuzzy feeling. Even back on October 20th, 2008, The Nation101 quoted McCain saying that Russian oligarchs “rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power…[are] reassembling the old Russian Empire.” The very advice on how to privatize industry from Harvard helped to create the oligarchs. They never considered human ingenuity to game the system anywhere.

The Clinton declassified documents show that the Berezovsky oligarchs tried to join NATO. So it seemed McCain objected out of sheer hatred of Russia. One must wonder if McCain’s hatred led him to a delusional conspiracy theory.

Yahoo News reported that Bill Browder said, “I have two heroes

in the world: Sergei Magnitsky and John McCain.” They reported Browder’s comments: “I was distraught by the brick wall that I’d encountered. But in the spring of 2010, I was lucky enough to get a 15-minute meeting with Senator McCain. He met me at the door of his office in the Russell Senate Office Building with a warm handshake and a hearty smile. I sat on the couch, and started telling him the story of Sergei’s whistleblowing and the horrific consequences he faced. He was so interested that he kept asking questions. Very quickly our 15 minutes were up and I was nowhere near finished with the story. His secretary came into the room to say his next appointment was ready, and I worried that my opportunity was already gone. “I need some more time with Mr. Browder,” the senator said softly. His secretary left and McCain turned his attention back to me. “Please continue.”’

As long as Browder trashed Putin, McCain loved him. McCain did not care if the story was true or not. It satisfied his objective to push Russia into a corner and pray for a chance to annihilate them once and for all. The fact that they were no longer communist and Putin was not interested in resurrecting the old USSR did not matter.

The Wall Street Journal published an unimaginable level of espionage on Feb. 14, 2022. Hillary was tapping into the White House communications to dig up dirt on Trump. “Special Counsel John Durham continues to unravel the Trump-Russia “collusion” story, and his latest court disclosure contains startling information. According to a Friday court filing, the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign effort to compile dirt on Donald Trump reached into protected White House communications.”

To this very day, RussiaGate accomplished a critical goal. On July 18th, 2018, USA Today published a poll: “President Donald Trump may view Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin as a “competitor” who is “not my enemy,” but a new poll being released Wednesday shows a large majority of Americans do not share the same opinion.”102

The Clinton/McCain RussiaGate created a serious conspiracy theory with two elements. First, Trump and his campaign conspired or coordinated with Russia to interfere in the 2016 election. Secondly, they claimed that Trump was beholden to Putin.

Once they convinced the majority of Americans that Russia was evil, they accomplished their goal—there will never be a return to peace. The Cold War will reign supreme forever. As Niccolo Machiavelli (1469 – 1527) said: “There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.”

Sadly, this is the first fundamental requirement to justify war. The population must be convinced that they should lay down their lives to stomp out such evil. To die for one’s country/politicians is to be an honorable death.

Despite the Muller report findings, a significant number of Americans formed a hatred of Trump to ensure he lost in 2020. However, they also established a seething hatred of Russia even before the entire Ukrainian incident. In 1997, then Senator Joe Biden advocated admitting the Baltic states to NATO, which was the very pitch of Berezovsky. Biden proposed that this would provoke a “vigorous and hostile” response within Russia. So, even before Putin came to power in 1999, the anti-Russia propaganda was alive and well. It just appeared that Browder provided the excuse for

them to introduce the Magnitsky Act to impose sanctions on Russia, claiming human rights violations. There was no way the West would ever accept Russia as a member of the world community despite the fact that it was no longer the communist state spreading Marxism to the world. If Russia was absorbed by the West, like Japan and Germany, as NATO offered in 1991 and Berezovsky was pushing post-1997, then NATO would become irrelevant, and Russia would be reduced to a vassal state. It appeared that Russia had to remain the enemy regardless of who was president or their economic philosophy. If Russia was not absorbed, it had to remain the enemy of the West to justify maintaining NATO.

As Glen Greenwald, who exposed Edward Snowden, wrote, Robert Mueller did not merely reject the Trump-Russia Conspiracy theories, but he obliterated them! Greenwald points out that nobody was ever prosecuted for any conspiracy related to rigging the election. Indeed, Mueller’s investigation did not find any evidence that Trump’s campaign had ever coordinated with Russia to influence the United States 2016 election.

Nevertheless, they have created an image around Putin that he is pure evil and needs to be removed, even if it takes World War III. There is nothing I can write, or anyone can possibly say that will change that view of those in power. The press will beat the war drums, and eventually, there will be war just like the weapons of mass destruction or the false attack by Vietnam. In an interview with ABC News, McCain said that Vladimir Putin was still ruling his autocratic Russia. “We need to improve their behavior,” McCain said and promised to kick Russia out of the G8 if he won the presidency. “His government - former president Putin, and now Prime Minister Putin - has taken his country down a path that I think is very harmful. They’ve become an autocracy. In the last week or so, look at Russia’s actions. They cut back on their oil supplies to the Czechs, because the Czechs made an agreement with us. They have now thrown out - or forced out - BP out of Russia. They continue to put enormous pressures on Georgia in many ways. They’re putting pressure on Ukraine. They are blocking action in the United Nations Security Council on Iran.” “We want better Russian behavior internationally, and we have every right to expect it. And I will do what I can to see that they reverse many of the behavior patterns which have really been very unhelpful to peace in the world.”

John McCain never understood what makes world peace and never advocated for peace with Russia or China. Threats and punishments do not create world peace— world trade does. Just look at the greatness of Rome. Conquered lands suddenly became the emerging markets attracting investment, and they were able to sell their goods to a whole new network. Following World War II, Germany and Japan were destroyed, but they rose from the ashes to be the largest economy in Europe and the second largest economy in the world,

respectively. That was accomplished with trade, not threats, war, or punishment. Isolating Russia and China with sanctions promotes war, not peace. They would not bite the hand that feeds them when their economies are interlinked, as their populations count on that trade for a livelihood. Creating trade is what keeps governments free, for that is the selfinterest of their people. Sanctions break those ties, and suddenly there is no risk in biting that hand. Ancient Rome lasted for 1,000 years because conquered lands found it beneficial with a common market. Hence, all roads led to Rome. The Pax Romana celebrated on coins was created by trade and investment— not threats and war. McCain spoke of Russia as a country headed by a group of former intelligence officers. He never changed his view from claiming he only saw three capital letters—K G B—in Putin’s eyes, yet Putin was of low rank and quit in 1991. George Bush was previously the head of the CIA, but that did not matter. Putin was not a communist seeking to resurrect the old USSR any more than Bush looked upon society to be spied on. Putin was not affiliated with the communists, or Yeltsin would have never selected him. It was the communists led by Gennady Zyuganov who tried to impeach Yeltsin and wanted to throw him in prison, seize power and restore the USSR. The declassified documents made it very clear that Yeltsin was besieged on two fronts: the communists on one side and the oligarchs on the other. When the communists were trying to impeach and imprison Yeltsin and take the country back to the good old days of the USSR, Berezovsky’s group wanted to sell Russia to the West and seize control of the country with his “Davos Pact” of elite friends. Yeltsin introduced Putin to

Clinton, stating he would continue his free market policies. McCain refused to listen.

Yeltsin turned to Putin because he would (1) defend Russia, and (2) continue the reforms that the people wanted to provide free markets. There was no way the Russian people would allow the country to turn back to communism. That is what brought about the revolution in 1991. McCain never saw “a K and a G and a B” in Putin’s eyes. His personal bias dominated his rhetoric. Nowhere in the declassified documents is there any mention that Putin was even remotely leaning toward resurrecting the old USSR or restoring communism. There was no possible way the people would have supported such a move. The declassified documents made that perfectly clear.

“Unlike Yeltsin, who tried to play a balancing role among Russia’s fractious elites, Putin is fighting several other battles simultaneously. The recent crackdown on prominent oligarchs … Other notorious power-brokers (Abramovich, Mamut) are escaping scrutiny from the tax police and procuracy; Putin’s inner circle of security service veterans and the so-called Yeltsin “family” are reportedly pulling the strings. The Putin administration is walking a very fine line between laying down new, more modem “rules of the game” … While criticism of Putin’s tough guy methods and highly elastic political value system is mounting in the liberal Russian press, his approval rating is still over 75%. Sound Thinking on Economics. Putin continues to say all the right things on the economy, but he has trimmed his sails somewhat regarding international” which was obviously rejecting IMF loans after the illegal laundering.”

Declassified 2012-1021-M

It simply appeared that Russia had to be the enemy regardless of the facts. Was this to support NATO or just a personal grudge for which McCain was famous? In the Daily Beast on March 1st, 2014, McCain repeated his hatred of Putin: “Of course, she got it wrong,” said McCain. “She believed that somehow there would be a reset with a guy who was a KGB colonel who always had ambitions to restore the Russian empire. That’s what this is all about.”103

McCain repeated the Berezovsky/Browder propaganda against Putin. Was he supporting Berezovsky’s scheme or did

he just want to annihilate Russia because communists broke him? In a September 10th, 2014 interview, McCain made it very clear that Putin’s ambitions were to restore the Soviet Union, which was entirely false. There was no support for that statement. It was propaganda spouting from the mouth of John McCain. Putin never sought to restore the USSR or expand back into Eastern Europe. The Russian people supported Putin because he stood against the communists who did want to take their freedom. Even Berezovsky told the Americans that he had to form his Davos Pact in 1996, for if the Communists won, he and the rest of the oligarchs would have been sent to work camps in Siberia. Everything hinged on maintaining that Russia was the evil enemy that wanted to eat your children if they ventured into the dark forest. McCain presented the view that Russia wanted to conquer the world and bury the United States as if Putin was Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), who even the communists removed from power in 1964 because of his insanity and the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It is a well-established fact that people tend to judge others by themselves. A dishonest person will not trust anyone else, and an honest person often becomes the fool separated from their money. According to famous German novelist Hermann Hesse (1877-1962): “If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”

Indeed, whenever you’re judgmental of traits in others, it is often said that you’re judging yourself. That does not apply to a rapist, bank robber, or someone senile. This refers to their character/traits and/or their mannerisms.

This may have been the driving force behind John McCain. Whenever he accused Putin, pointing his index finger at him, claiming he wanted to expand Russia, he was actually pointing his other fingers at himself for constantly pushing to expand NATO. John McCain was constantly pushing for the faster integration of Georgia and Moldova into the structures of NATO and wanted the Baltics to join NATO. After the 2016 election, thenPresident-elect Trump stated that he would not automatically come to the aid of new NATO members in the Baltic region following a hypothetical Russian attack. That sent McCain into political spasms stating NATO will defend the Baltics regardless of Trump104.

McCain was there in Kiev promoting the Euromaidan Revolution in 2014 because Yanukovych was ethnically Russian. Carl Gersham (born 1943), who was the long-time director of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) (1984-2021), came out in 2013 before the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution and wrote in the Washington Post on September 26th, 2013, that “Ukraine is the biggest prize.”

He advocated targeting Ukraine to break its ties to Russia. “Putin may find himself on the losing end, not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.” This hatred of Russia has never faltered. Gersham and McCain appeared together on stage often.

In an interview with Voice of America on March 12th, 2014, McCain called for the U.S. Congress to “accelerate the path of Georgia and Moldova into NATO.” McCain also mentioned the need for placing parts of a U.S. missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland. From Riga in Latvia to Moscow, it is about an 11-hour drive. It is 574 miles (924 km). This would be like Russia putting nukes in Portland, Maine. And we were upset over nukes in Cuba when that was 1,211 miles (1949 km) from Washington, DC. McCain vowed to defend Latvia in the Baltic Times on December 28th, 2016, while Trump was still just president-elect. McCain was also there in Kiev in December 2016 promising support to the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis and the civil war against Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Business Insider reported that McCain was repeatedly photographed with Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the right-wing nationalist party Svoboda—the notorious Neo-Nazis. It did not matter that the Neo-Nazis supported only the Ukrainian language to be spoken and wanted to wipe out all Russian-speaking Ukrainians. That would be like outlawing speaking Spanish in the United States.

Indeed, everything McCain accused Putin of was precisely what he was doing himself. He was expanding NATO with every breath he took to within a distance of Moscow, less than half that of Cuba to Washington, DC. In 2009, the U.S. abandoned plans to send missile systems aimed at Russia to be located in the Czech Republic and Poland because the people rejected having nukes in their backyard. Instead, the U.S. installed the Aegis-class missile defense system based initially in the Black Sea and eventually in Romania. There may have been an issue with McCain and a possible shadow psychology syndrome that caused his rage against Putin.

Hermann Hesse referred to the shadow personality phenomenon based on findings from Sigmund Freud (18561939) and Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961). Hesse explained that when you dislike someone, it has a very specific context. You tend to hate the very same kind of people wherever you go, for what you may dislike in them is often a trait you dislike about yourself. Indeed, it was McCain who was pushing the total expansion of NATO to confront Russia on every possible front while insisting it was Putin who wanted to do the very same by restoring the USSR.

I remember when I bought my first car. If I came home late and parked my car behind my father’s car, he would take my sports car. I would have to take his Cadillac on a hunt to find my car. He would say he didn’t have the time to move it. He was also always cautioning me about my sports car. At a family funeral, I arrived in my sports car, and my father’s brother said, “You are just like your dad!” I said I was nothing like my dad. He said, “Let me tell you about your father.” He told me my father had a biplane and always loved daring things. He even drove a car across an iced pond on a bet. Suddenly, I understood that what he was constantly cautioning me about was because he saw in me himself. Similarly, an overweight mother will typically accuse their daughter of overeating. Freud was the first to attempt to construct a map of the human psyche. Freud saw three levels of consciousness: the conscious, the unconscious, and the preconscious. He explained these three levels as the conscious segment of our mind is that part within your awareness in the immediate

present as you are reading this passage. The preconscious mind is where all memories exist that are easy to recall, such as a doctor’s appointment, that is outside our present awareness. Then we enter the unconscious part of the mind. This is where our inner psyche is hidden from awareness. This is the part that is difficult or may even be impossible to recall.

Freud saw this segment of the unconscious mind where we store urges, desires, and memories that the conscious mind kept buried to protect itself. This is what Freud strove to uncover—the hidden content within the unconscious mind. Freud believed tapping into this unconscious reservoir of urges and motivations could be dealt with directly and overcome. However, not everyone agreed with that proposition. Freud’s conception of the unconscious most likely formed a part of what has been called the shadow consciousness

discussed by Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961). Jung believed in analyzing dreams, doing word association exercises, and working with the active imagination. However, when a conflict emerges from our unconscious mind or in our shadow personality, they theorize that you can’t deal with it directly because it profoundly impacts your thoughts and behaviors. That implies that we are not directly aware of at the moment —we just react. In our conscious mind, we can use logic and reason. However, Jung believed that perhaps we could never overcome or set aside the unconscious segment without harming mental health, but we might come to understand those aspects. Obviously, the shadow personality or the unconscious mind may contain positive and negative traits, including long-ago memories even from childhood. In this respect, Jung believed that there were layers to this shadow personality. Yet he also proposed the projection of the shadow self, which may explain McCain’s constant blaming of Russia. The interesting part that may explain the Neocon obsession with war is what Jung called the part of your mind that you couldn’t accept within yourself. Hence, you can’t possibly directly acknowledge or experience that part of your mind. Instead, you project that fault or unacceptable trait onto someone else’s morality. In this sense, McCain‘s obsession with expanding NATO was projected upon Putin, claiming that he wanted to resurrect the USSR. McCain had to push for the expansion of NATO first as if this were a chess game.

Jung suggested that the projection of the shadow personality happens when you see your shadow in someone else. You are then confronted with some undesirable or embarrassing part of yourself, which prompts you to see that same trait in someone else immediately, which manifests in confrontation or hate. Jung argued that It’s only through disciplined selfeducation that you can understand what’s in your own shadow personality and deal with it.

McCain even repeated from the declassified documents that Putin gave Yeltsin “immunity” for his embezzlement. Obviously, he chose to ignore the facts that Putin was selected because he was not one of those apparatchiks (communists) who were trying to impeach Yeltsin and reestablish the USSR. This suggests that McCain was selectively using the declassified information because he was projecting his shadow personality onto Putin. There is the possibility that McCain was deliberately doing this in support of Berezovsky’s scheme to take control of Russia. That too is a possibility, given he was also supporting Bill Browder and the Magnitsky Act. An opinion piece in the New York Times talked about how the overwhelming majority of the Czech people did not want McCain’s missile bases. The opinion piece stated bluntly that the USA was fostering paranoia about Russia rather than building trust. Such bases become the first-strike target in war before they can be launched.

Time Magazine, on February 28th, 2014, noted McCain’s

constant hatred of Putin. In supporting the Ukrainian revolution, McCain declared, “We are all Ukrainians.” He called for swift U.S. economic aid to Ukraine, new moves to condemn Russia at the United Nations, and sanctions against Russian officials individually. He again argued that installing U.S. missiles in the nearby Czech Republic would show American regional strength. That would be a distance of 1,035 miles (1,665 km), a little more than Miami to Washington, DC. On September 11th, 2013, Vladimir Putin picked up the pen and wrote an opinion on Syria that appeared in the New York Times. He made a case that the world was not black and white. It was far more complex than the typical cause and

effect. Russia had warned that removing dictators in the Middle East would destabilize that entire region. Of course, that was rejected. Indeed, Bill Kristol’s book supported that the war against Iraq was at the heart of the issue. The theory was that overthrowing these dictators would lead to democracy and secure Israel’s future. That was once more judging the world by one’s own beliefs. The Middle East is deeply entrenched in religion, and the war between Shite (Iran) vs. Sunni (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Libya, etc.) was more comparable to the Protestant Reformation—separation between Church and State. Against this backdrop, Vladimir Putin tried to explain the Russian position by writing his op-ed that appeared in the New York Times. He wrote: RECENT events surrounding Syria have prompted me to speak directly to the American people and their political leaders. It is important to do so at a time of insufficient communication between our societies. Relations between us have passed through different stages. We stood against each other during the cold war. But we were also allies once, and defeated the Nazis together. The universal international organization — the United Nations — was then established to prevent such devastation from ever happening again. …Syria is not witnessing a battle for democracy, but an armed conflict between government and opposition in a multireligious country. There are few champions of democracy in Syria. But there are more than enough Qaeda fighters and extremists of all stripes battling the government. The United States State Department has designated Al Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, fighting with the opposition, as terrorist organizations. This internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world. … It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

But force has proved ineffective and pointless. Afghanistan is reeling, and no one can say what will happen after international forces withdraw. Libya is divided into tribes and clans. In Iraq the civil war continues, with dozens killed each day. In the United States, many draw an analogy between Iraq and Syria, and ask why their government would want to repeat recent mistakes. … The world reacts by asking: if you cannot count on international law, then you must find other ways to ensure your security. Thus a growing number of countries seek to acquire weapons of mass destruction. This is logical: if you have the bomb, no one will touch you. We are left with talk of the need to strengthen nonproliferation, when in reality this is being eroded. We must stop using the language of force and return to the path of civilized diplomatic and political settlement.

A new opportunity to avoid military action has emerged in the past few days. The United States, Russia and all members of the international community must take advantage of the Syrian government’s willingness to place its chemical arsenal under international control for subsequent destruction. Judging by the statements of President Obama, the United States sees this as an alternative to military action.

I welcome the president’s interest in continuing the dialogue with Russia on Syria. We must work together to keep this hope alive, as we agreed to at the Group of 8 meeting in Lough Erne in Northern Ireland in June, and steer the discussion back toward negotiations. If we can avoid force against Syria, this will improve the atmosphere in international affairs and strengthen mutual trust. It will be our shared success and open the door to cooperation on other critical issues. My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.

John McCain was constantly putting out his hatred in op-eds. In 2008, the New York Times rejected an op-ed he wrote criticizing Obama during the election for not waging endless wars. He actually wrote105: “I am also dismayed that he never talks about winning the war, only of ending it. But if we don’t win the war, our enemies will.”

On August 31st, 2017, John McCain lashed out at Trump in another op-ed in the Washington Post, for he too would not support McCain’s endless wars106: “We are the country that led the free world to victory over fascism and dispatched communism to the ash heap of history. We are the superpower that

organized not an empire, but an international order of free, independent nations that has liberated more people from poverty and tyranny than anyone thought possible in the age of colonies and autocracies. Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct. We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities. We must, where we can, cooperate with him. But we are not his subordinates. We don’t answer to him. We answer to the American people. We must be diligent in discharging our responsibility to serve as a check on his power. And we should value our identity as members of Congress more than our partisan affiliation.”

John McCain’s hatred of Russia dated back long before Putin. Politico noted on August 12th, 2008,107 that his antiRussia position extended back to 1996. Indeed, if McCain had ever become president, he would have started a war with Russia. “McCain has suggested he sees Russia’s danger to its neighbors through a long historical lens. As far back as 1996, when Russia was near economic ruin and governed by an erratic Boris Yeltsin, he warned of the danger of “Russian nostalgia for empire.”

That is total fictional propaganda. Nothing in the declassified Clinton documents supports that view. Yeltsin stood against the communists. McCain never changed his view of Russia, even after the collapse of communism or the reforms of Mikhail S. Gorbachev. Never did McCain ever comprehend that communism failed not because of military strength exerted against it but because it was simply unsustainable economically and contrary to human nature.

McCain had to retaliate against Putin’s op-ed published by the New York Times. McCain disputed the truth that he was just anti-Russian. He mentioned the Magnitsky Act in his article, which he pushed, I believe, knowing that it was also a fictional lie. At best, he never verified Browder’s story by simply looking at the actual transcripts that revealed Magnitsky was being questioned in a tax fraud and not as a whistleblower. If Magnitsky would have been a witness, it would most likely have been against Browder, Safra, the Ziff brothers, and possibly the American Neocons.

In a 2008 op-ed in the London Financial Times, McCain then pretended to use climate change as the excuse for Europe to end buying energy from Russia. That is interesting in light of the attack on the pipeline. There McCain wrote108: “That dependence, I am afraid, has become a vulnerability for both the US and Europe and a source of leverage for the oil and gas exporting autocracies. The US needs to wean itself off oil faster. Europe needs a comprehensive energy policy so that Russia’s oil and gas monopolies cannot behave as agents of political influence.”

John McCain‘s op-ed in its entirety appeared in Pravda:109

Senator John McCain: Russians deserve better than Putin Opinion When Pravda.ru editor, Dmitry Sudakov, offered to publish my commentary, he referred to me as “an active anti-Russian politician for many years.” I’m sure that isn’t the first time Russians have heard me characterized as their antagonist. Since my purpose here is to dispel falsehoods used by Russia’s rulers to perpetuate their power and excuse their corruption, let me begin with that untruth. I am not anti-Russian. I am pro-Russian, more pro-Russian than the regime that misrules you today. I make that claim because I respect your dignity and your right to selfdetermination. I believe you should live according to the dictates of your conscience, not your government. I believe you deserve the opportunity to improve your lives in an economy that is built to last and benefits the many, not just the powerful few. You should be governed by a rule of law that is clear, consistently and impartially enforced and just. I make that claim because I believe the Russian people, no less than Americans, are endowed by our Creator with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A Russian citizen could not publish a testament like the one I just offered. President Putin and his associates do not believe in these values. They don’t respect your dignity or accept your authority over them. They punish dissent and imprison opponents. They rig your elections. They control your media. They harass, threaten, and banish organizations that defend your right to selfgovernance. To perpetuate their power they foster rampant corruption in your courts and your economy and terrorize and even assassinate journalists who try to expose their corruption. They write laws to codify bigotry against people whose sexual orientation they condemn. They throw the members of a punk rock band in jail for the crime of being provocative and vulgar and for having the audacity to protest President Putin’s rule. Sergei Magnistky wasn’t a human rights activist. He was an accountant at a Moscow law firm. He was an ordinary Russian who did an extraordinary thing. He exposed one of the largest state thefts of private assets in Russian history. He cared about the rule of law and believed no one should be above it. For his beliefs and his courage, he was held in Butyrka prison without trial, where he was beaten, became ill and died. After his death, he was given a show trial reminiscent of the Stalin-era and was, of course, found guilty. That wasn’t only a crime against Sergei Magnitsky. It was a crime against the Russian people and

your right to an honest government - a government worthy of Sergei Magnistky and of you. President Putin claims his purpose is to restore Russia to greatness at home and among the nations of the world. But by what measure has he restored your greatness? He has given you an economy that is based almost entirely on a few natural resources that will rise and fall with those commodities. Its riches will not last. And, while they do, they will be mostly in the possession of the corrupt and powerful few. Capital is fleeing Russia, which - lacking rule of law and a broad-based economy - is considered too risky for investment and entrepreneurism. He has given you a political system that is sustained by corruption and repression and isn’t strong enough to tolerate dissent. How has he strengthened Russia’s international stature? By allying Russia with some of the world’s most offensive and threatening tyrannies. By supporting a Syrian regime that is murdering tens of thousands of its own people to remain in power and by blocking the United Nations from even condemning its atrocities. By refusing to consider the massacre of innocents, the plight of millions of refugees, the growing prospect of a conflagration that engulfs other countries in its flames an appropriate subject for the world’s attention. He is not enhancing Russia’s global reputation. He is destroying it. He has made her a friend to tyrants and an enemy to the oppressed, and untrusted by nations that seek to build a safer, more peaceful and prosperous world. President Putin doesn’t believe in these values because he doesn’t believe in you. He doesn’t believe that human nature at liberty can rise above its weaknesses and build just, peaceful, prosperous societies. Or, at least, he doesn’t believe Russians can. So, he rules by using those weaknesses, by corruption, repression and violence. He rules for himself, not you. I do believe in you. I believe in your capacity for self-government and your desire for justice and opportunity. I believe in the greatness of the Russian people, who suffered enormously and fought bravely against terrible adversity to save your nation. I believe in your right to make a civilization worthy of your dreams and sacrifices. When I criticize your government, it is not because I am anti-Russian. It is because I believe you deserve a government that believes in you and answers to you. And, I long for the day when you have it.

The real story behind Syria had nothing to do with concern for human rights. It was another proxy war against Russia promoted by McCain. Back in 2009, Qatar proposed a pipeline plan to Assad to send its natural gas to Europe via Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Jordan. Syrian President Bashar alAssad refused the proposal. His refusal is precisely why the Obama Administration wanted to invade Syria, which the people rejected. Assad refused to protect the interests of his long-time ally, Russia, which is Europe’s biggest natural gas supplier, based on all the data. Just one year after Qatar’s proposal, Assad began negotiations for another pipeline plan with Iran that would carry Iranian gas to Europe across Iraq and Syria. Russia endorsed this project since it would clearly have more control over gas flow rather than the U.S.-linked Qatar. Moreover, this agreement would strategically place control of the gas flow to Europe in Russia’s hands.

Consequently, the Iranian pipeline became a priority for Russia. Then Damascus and Moscow began working together to block the Qatar pipeline and create the alternative Iranian pipeline, whereby construction began in 2010. But by 2017, Iran was still looking to Russia for a partnership. The pipeline was to open in March 2021 finally. Yet U.S. sanctions against Iran even made it difficult for Iraq to pay for their gas. Ukraine became the prize to cut off the flow of natural gas from Russia to Europe. All Russia’s fuel moved through Ukraine, which was why they began constructing the Nord Stream under the sea to Germany. Obama had targeted Russia from the outset, pushed by Neocons, including Hillary. There was a meeting between Obama and Putin at the United Nations where Putin tried to get Obama to side with Syria against ISIS. Obama rejected the proposal. So, when Russian forces entered Syria on the Economic Confidence Model (ECM) turning point 2015.75 (October 1st, 2015) to the day, it was an ominous event. Russia was not only backing the Assad regime but defending itself against the strategy to cut Russian energy exports to Europe.

Russia’s economy has been largely based on its energy exports, which account for between 60% and 70% of its international trade. With regard to the entire economy, energy accounts for about 50% of GDP. This was why McCain was pushing nuclear energy in Europe, using climate change as the excuse to isolate Russia. This is also why McCain pushed for war in Ukraine. It had nothing to do with democracy or freedom for the Ukrainian people. This was all about cutting off the gas flows from Russia. He was trying to wage an economic war against Russia while advocating more boots on the ground and the

loss of American lives to satisfy his hatred of Russia that extended back to at least 1996. While Russia has the largest gas reserves in the world, the second is actually Iran. Even Turkey is also importing some of its energy from Russia and some from Iran. Turkey was even buying oil at a discount from ISIS. This was also why Obama was lifting sanctions on Iran in an effort to break that alliance with Russia. Obama was carrying out the Neocon agenda because he had Hillary as Secretary of State. Hillary was always in the same camp as John McCain to isolate Russia and terminate its existence as a superpower.

Obama was proposing to invade Syria, which was a proxy war against Russia. McCain always advocated boots on the ground to die on foreign battlefields for objectives that were never made truly public. His advocating war in Syria benefited the terrorist group ISIS. The French journalist Nicolas Hénin, who was a hostage of ISIS, had come out and stated that bombing Syria was benefiting ISIS.

Obama rejected joining Putin against ISIS. It did not matter that there was a common enemy. Hillary and McCain pushed the Obama Administration without any coherent objectives other than removing Assad solely to defeat Russia and its energy hold on Europe. McCain’s anti-Russia stance was relentless, and it did not matter who was in power, whether Gorbachev, Yeltsin, or Putin. McCain previously stated, “I looked into Mr. Putin’s eyes and I saw three things—a K and a G and a B.” I have been unable to find a single account where he met with Putin. McCain knew all these declassified documents since he was also the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. It does not appear that anything would have ever changed McCain’s hatred of Russia. On September 10th, 2014, John McCain said in an interview that “Vladimir Putin plans to rebuild the former Russian empire,” which he told presenter Zeinab Badawi on BBC’s Hardtalk110 despite the complete lack of any such evidence. He also criticized then-President Barack Obama for refusing to supply Ukrainian forces with arms and intelligence, which he claimed had encouraged Putin to take a more aggressive approach within the region. McCain omitted that half of Ukraine was historically occupied by Russians since the Russian Empire of the Tsars. Khrushchev merely drew the border of Ukraine for administrative purposes, for he was in charge of rebuilding Kiev after World War II before he became the head of Russia.

McCain stated there and then that Putin aimed to separate eastern Ukraine from the rest of the country, creating a land bridge. He did not claim that Putin sought to conquer Ukraine. He did claim that Putin wanted to reclaim Moldova and the Baltics. He also stated that Putin was arming the separatists in Eastern Ukraine, which is precisely the policy urged by McCain supporting the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis. McCain was like Louis XIV (1623-1715) who said on his deathbed: “I have been too fond of war.”

Just after Trump was elected on Tuesday, November 8th, 2016, John McCain and Lindsey Graham flew to Ukraine promising money, weapons, and support for their civil war against Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the East. McCain and Graham assumed they would now have a clear road to turn up the heat on their proxy war against Russia since Obama was gone. That assumption proved incorrect. Trump was anti-war like John F. Kennedy (1917-1963), and that is when McCain threw down the gauntlet. From that moment on, McCain hated Donald Trump because he would not support his endless passion for war against Russia. McCain had tweeted from Ukraine that he was there to support Ukraine’s war on the Donbas, which began in a

matter of days under the new U.S.-installed “temporary” unelected government of Ukraine in 2014. The people did not vote for civil war. This was all created by an unelected “temporary” U.S.-supported government.

When Zelensky was elected, he promised to seek peace. The Ukrainian people never voted for this civil war and had consistently voted for peace. Politicians always seek war as the extension of politics to the next level of violence. The Daily Caller reported that McCain had traveled to Ukraine and openly was meeting with the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis

because they hated any Russian-speaking Ukrainians. McCain was shaking hands with Neo-Nazis who promoted ethnic cleansing. As noted, McCain was repeatedly photographed meeting with Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the right-wing nationalist Svoboda Party. The Daily Caller also reported that Tyahnybok has a history of making anti-Semitic comments. He was expelled from parliament in 2014 after he demanded the Ukrainian people wage war against the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia,” and both words are insults aimed at the nation’s Russian and Jewish citizens. In 2015, Tyahnybok wrote letters where he demanded Ukraine fight against acts “of Jewry.”111 That said, McCain characterized the crisis in Ukraine as “Putin’s aggression” despite the fact that the civil war was set in motion in 2014 by the “temporary” unelected government installed by the United States. The unelected “temporary” government rejected the Minsk Agreement that called for free democratic elections in the Donbas concerning their right to peacefully separate. Kiev immediately launched an attack on the Donbas. McCain characterized this as Putin’s aggression when from the start it was intended to create a proxy war with Russia instigated by the McCain.

This entire region East of the Dnieper River had always been historically Russian territory during the age of the Tsars. McCain did not care about the people of the Donbas; this was a war against Russia and they were just the excuse and Russians anyway. McCain never acknowledged that this was the precise region where two Russian heads of the state grew up – the Donbas – Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971) and Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982).

Nonetheless, John McCain’s personal hatred of Russia contrary to all the declassified documents still appears to be perhaps alleged rage for his own statements he made for the Vietnamese. Was this McCain’s shadow self or was he in league with Berezovsky’s scheme? McCain’s cohort was Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (born 1955; Senator since 2003) outrageously called for someone to step forward and assassinate Vladimir Putin. Had Putin said that of President Biden, it would have been clearly warmongering. Yet Graham boldly declared: “The only way this ends, my friend, is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out.”

Removing Putin could open the path for the real communists to seize power once again and they have just as much hatred of Americans as McCain and Graham. Indeed, Graham even repeated his call for assassination and added

that his old friend and mentor, the late senator John McCain, would have agreed with him. Graham was even asked by the press: “Do you stand by your call to have Putin be assassinated?” He answered, “Yeah.”

Then Graham added, “I hope he’ll be taken out, one way or the other. I don’t care how they take him out. If John McCain were here, he’d be saying the same thing, I think.” The history of McCain has always been debated. Donald Trump knew McCain was a relentless war-monger. During the election, Trump said, “He was a war hero because he was captured.” Trump added, “I like people who weren’t captured.”

I am often invited to various political events by presidents over the course of my career. I even attended the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner with Bill Clinton in 1996. I thought he gave a very personal and fantastic speech that, politics aside, warranted a loud applause. I was sitting at the table with the conservative boys, including George Will. They looked depressed because the speech was excellent.

After meeting many world leaders and politicians over my life, when I went to Mar-a-Lago for dinner with Trump in March 2020, that was the first time I ever heard any president express remorse for those who died on a battlefield. Perhaps that is not so shocking considering that he was not a career politician where war is merely an extension of political

disagreement to the next stage being violence as Carl von Clausewitz explained. Nevertheless, it all came to a head even after meeting McCain on Capitol Hill and witnessing his brash demeanor. I could see the hatred McCain had for Trump because he would not commit boys to die in endless proxy wars where the objective was always to overthrow Russia.

My father, born in 1909, was a Democrat growing up as a young man during the Great Depression. I remember when I was just 10 years old, my father took me to Willingboro, New Jersey, to see John F. Kennedy in person. I actually met John F. Kennedy (born 1917; President 1961-1963) on October 16th, 1960, and shook his hand as a kid. However, unlike Bill Clinton, it did not inspire me to become president. Kennedy was assassinated most likely by an internal plot because he too was against war. The CIA has blocked

releasing documents on the Kennedy assassination to the public. They cleverly had Trump postpone the release until after the election as if they knew he would lose and then Biden cited endless COVID to delay the release indefinitely. Politico reported on November 21st, 2021, that Biden stated:

“Temporary continued postponement is necessary to protect against identifiable harm to the military defense, intelligence operations, law enforcement, or the conduct of foreign relations that is of such gravity that it outweighs the public interest in immediate disclosure.”

If Russia had been behind it, they would bring that out now. Withholding this info demonstrates that the assassin was not

just some crazy person, but this was most likely an internal coup because he was against going to war.

As a kid, I recall walking around and hearing people bash Kennedy because he was Catholic, saying the Pope would run America. There is no doubt that the vast majority of immigrants to America were Protestant, and as such, the old hatred from Europe rose its head in the New World as well. I saw from an early age that regardless of the political system, we are all still human beings. Thus, we struggle between our memories of the past and our hopes for a future that seem to never truly sever their ties to the past. Perhaps that comes only with the passing of more than three generations. When I was about 13, my father took us to Europe for the summer around 1964. I remember being in Berlin and looking at the bullet holes in the wall that are still present. An angry old man came up to me and yelled in English, “See, that’s what you did!” I believe that such memories fade only with the passing of several generations. This may also be why history repeats, for with the passing of generations, we do not learn from the past on a societal level, only individually. Each step toward the future is presumed to be on fertile ground that no one

before has ever set foot upon. That is just wishful thinking. We are indeed still trapped in the past, for societies never learn from their historical mistakes, as that is reserved for individuals in this journey we call life.

95

Haltiwanger, John. “John McCain described how he received the Steele dossier

that contains the most salacious allegations about Trump and Russia.”

Business

Insider Nederland,

March 22, 2019. https://www.businessinsider.nl/howjohnmccain-received-steele-dossier-trump-russia-2018-5?international=true. 96

Harding, Luke, and Alice Ross. “Sir Andrew Wood, Former UK-Moscow

Ambassador, Consulted on Trump Dossier.” The Guardian, March 6, 2018. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/13/trump-dossier-ukambassadormoscow-john-mccain-andrew-wood. 97

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/04/06/seven-in-ten-americans-nowsee-russia-as-an-enemy/ Wike, Richard, Janell Fetterolf, Moira Fagan, and J Moncus. “Seven-in-Ten Americans Now See Russia as an Enemy.”

Center’s

Global

Attitudes

Pew Research

Project,

April 6, 2022. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/04/06/sevenin-ten-americans-nowsee-russia-as-an-enemy/. 98

Buren, Peter van. “Commentary: What the FBI Didn’t Say about Hillary Clinton’s Email.” U.S., July 7, 2016. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-clinton-fbicommentary/commentary-what-the-fbi-didnt-say-about-hillary-clintons-emailidINKCN0ZM1TG. 99

Lincoln, Ross A. “Steve Schmidt Says John McCain Lied When He Denied Affair With Lobbyist in 2008.” Yahoo News, May 10, 2022. https://www.yahoo.com/video/steve-schmidt-says-john-mccain-040712964.html 100

“The Maverick from Arizona/First Lady/Was Rolando Cruz Framed?” CBS, October 12, 1997. 101

The Nation. “McCain’s Kremlin Ties,” May https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/mccains-kremlinties/. 102

11,

2022.

Bustos, Sergio Usa Today. “Most Americans View Russia as U.S. Enemy, Unfriendly,

Shows

New

NBC

News

Poll.”

USA

TODAY,

July

18,

2018.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2018/07/18/poll-russia-usenemy/794640002/. 103

Rogin, Josh. “Exclusive: McCain Tells Obama How to Punish Putin.”

The Daily

Beast,

April 14, 2017. https://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-mccain-tellsobama-how-to-punish-putin. 104

The

Weaver, Al. “McCain to Baltic States: US Committed to NATO.”

Washington

Examiner,

December 27, 2016. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/mccain-to-baltic-states-us-committed-tonato. 105

McCain, John. “McCain’s Rejected New York Times Op-Ed Piece.” https://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/21/mccain.op.ed/. 106

CNN,

n.d.

“Opinion | John McCain: It’s Time Congress Returns to Regular Order.”

Washington

Post, September 1, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/john-mccain-its-time-congress-returnsto-regular-order/2017/08/31/f62a3e0c-8cfb-11e7-8df5-c2e5cf46c1e2_story.html. 107

POLITICO. “John McCain’s Long War on Russia,” August 12, 2008. https://www.politico.com/story/2008/08/john-mccains-long-war-on-russia-012500. 108

“Russians Deserve Better than Putin.” Pravda, September https://english.pravda.ru/opinion/125705-McCain_for_pravda_ru/. 109

9,

2013.

Ibid.

110

BBC HARDtalk. “Putin Is ‘rebuilding Russian Empire’ Says Senator McCain - BBC HARDtalk,” September 10, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLAzeHnNgR8. 111

Donachie, Robert. “Flashback: That Time McCain Met And Praised Actual Neo-

Nazis In Ukraine.” The Daily Caller, August 17, 2017. https://dailycaller.com/2017/08/17/flashback-that-time-mccain-met-and-praisedactual-neo-nazis-in-ukraine/.

The Sabotage of Nord Stream

O

n February 7th, 2022, President Joe Biden stood up at a press conference and declared that he would end Nord Stream 2 over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Most do not realize that even Donald Trump, the puppet of Putin according to Hillary Clinton, made it known that he wanted to block the Nord Stream 2 pipeline back in 2020 to end Germany’s reliance on Russian energy, as reported by Fortune Magazine on September 8th, 2020.112 He was counting on the poisoning of Alexei Navalny for that political leverage, but all of the poisonings were most likely staged by Boris Berezovsky in his attempt to overthrow Putin. When the history books of this period are written after the dust settles post-2032, I believe you will find that the stated goal has been to break the energy link between Germany and Russia to destroy Russia. On September 26, 2022, global

headlines reported that the Nord Stream pipeline had been destroyed. Moreover, this attack also appears to have been coordinated. Most now believe that the United States took out this pipeline. It was the stated objective all along. Energy is 50% of Russia’s GDP. The sanctions imposed primarily by the United States to date have not worked, but in fact, they have backfired on the United States and Europe, causing runaway inflation with economic decline—STAGFLATION.

This attack was also timed with Poland and Norway113 announcing a new Baltic pipeline coincidently the very next

day on the 27th—an amazing coincidence. In addition, the EU cut a deal with Israel114 the week before on the 12th, so they would no longer rely on Russia for gas and oil. This has been seen as the death blow to Russia. They have intended to cut off all its exports and starve them out like a good old fashion siege of the medieval days.

Furthermore, On September 2nd, 2022, plans were put in place to build terminals in Germany for the importation of liquefied natural gas (LNG)115. This was all laid out because blowing up the pipelines without an alternative would have led to massive civil unrest. This was a strategic act of war to cut off Russia economically, for the sanctions have not worked. Plain and simple, this is an all-out war against Russia itself.

On September 7th, 2022, Putin proposed that the sanctions should be lifted or he would turn off the gas by simply turning a valve. Putin perhaps did not have the full picture of how there was a strategic effort to eliminate Russia entirely by undermining its economy. Putin has failed to grasp just how crazy the West has become. Climate change rules everything, and they want to destroy the Russian economy to end its production of fossil fuels. On the other hand, perhaps Putin did know that their alternative would not be sufficient in the short term. If the EU had been forced to cave in and lift the sanctions as winter deepened, the war against Russia would have collapsed even in Ukraine. This most likely forced Biden’s hand to eliminate the pipeline to prevent any possible reconsideration.

At the United Nations Security Council on September 29th, 2022, the Russian representative laid out the facts and directly asked the United States representative: “Did the United States take out the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline?” The U.S. representative neither confirmed nor denied anything, which in itself was confirming that the U.S. sabotaged the pipeline. On September 30th, 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the attacks on the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines that connect Russia to Germany, offer a “tremendous opportunity” to end Europe’s dependency on Russian energy. If Russia attacked U.S. infrastructure, it would be an outright war. The U.S. knows that Putin has never had designs to reestablish the USSR. All of these documents confirm that it has been a public propaganda objective like the Steel Dossier against Trump.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also made a statement about negotiations with Russia on Friday, September 30th, 2022, that Ukraine is ready “to agree on coexistence on equal, honest, dignified, and fair terms.” However, he also made it clear that no talks about peace are possible with Putin: “We are ready for a dialogue with Russia, but with another president of Russia.” He demanded regime change. On March 26th, 2022, Biden said, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Almost immediately after Biden made that statement, which was not in the script, the White House downplayed that remark by releasing a statement: “The president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.” Of course, that was a lie. The U.S. policy has always been about regime change throughout the Middle East. Of course, you have those appearing at the World Economic Forum also calling for regime change, such as George Soros. He called to overthrow Putin and Xi Jinping to save

“civilization” that fits his version of a political state of a oneworld government. His dream of an “open society” is actually a one-world government headed by the United Nations, creating his planet with no borders. As soon as they realize there would also be dissent, then the freedom of movement would end.

This very idea of regime change lies at the heart of the policy pushed by the Democratic Party that was employed against even Donald Trump domestically. Now, they pretend that they are not insisting on that after Biden went off script and said what they were all about. Therefore, they told their puppet Zelensky to call for regime change in Russia as a term for peace talks. Then Zelensky called for an expedited entry to NATO that would be the same as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse. NATO is prohibited from accepting a country that is at war. Let’s see if they change that rule.

Regime change theory perhaps emanated from the age-old question: What if someone killed Hitler? Would that have prevented World War II? Thus, we have this hypothetical theory within international geopolitical relations that has emerged from this speculative liberal tradition. This argues that international institutions or regimes affect the behavior of states. Consequently, if you remove that leader, then somehow everything will be normal. Without Lenin, they think there would not have been a Communist Revolution, and without Hitler, there would not have been World War II. In both cases, people listened to them only because of the underlying economic conditions. NATO’s intervention in Libya on March 19th, 2011, was a multistate NATO-led coalition that began a military intervention in Libya that was not even in Europe. It was intended to be regime change, but they used NATO under the pretense of humanitarian aid to remove Muammar Gaddafi. It was an operation that caused a tremendous debate because of its hypocrisy.

NATO’s actions contradicted the very purpose of the humanitarian intervention to justify its role according to the definition of its Responsibility to Protect (R2P) civilians against its own government. It was really about regime change outside of its jurisdiction, which was Europe. Indeed, the parties to the North Atlantic Treaty signed in Washington on April 4th, 1949, stated considering that the forces of one party may be sent by arrangement to serve in the territory of another party. Nothing in the treaty gave it jurisdiction outside of Europe. Moreover, the very sub-Saharan African torture reports involved the rebel groups that had NATO’s backing for regime change. The very NATO-backed rebel groups were torturing minority ethnic groups, many of whom were civilians, which undermined NATO’s stated mission. These acts contradicted the definition of Responsibility to Protect and delegitimized the very purposed necessity for regime change. In other words, the king is dead, long live the king explains that when the power changes hands, it typically results in more violence that becomes retribution. Further proof that the operation was about regime change when the fighting ended on October 31st, 2011, following the killing of Muammar Gaddafi. NATO only then stated it would end operations over Libya for it accomplished its true goal— regime change. The only difference between conquest and regime change, in theory, is that the invading army has no intention of occupying the country they are invading. In that respect, there is often a very fine line for conquest that has also included a regime change with the installation of a puppet ruler, reducing that country to a mere vassal state.

Even during the final years of the Roman Empire, a puppet monarch was just a figurehead who was installed by barbarian rulers for image purposes. Libius Severus (461-465 AD) was appointed by the Germanic General Flavius Ricimer (c 418-472 AD). This allowed imperial power to provide the appearance of the local authority. However, in truth, the political and economic control remained with the barbarian rulers. All the sources were pointing the finger in the same direction as the Biden Administration. Their intent was to wage an economic war against Russia to eliminate energy exports to Europe, accounting for 50% of Russia’s GDP. This was a declaration of war against Russia and Putin knew it. This Great Reset requires the overthrow and subjugation of China and Russia, as well as North Korea, to push for this oneworld government at the United Nations under the theory of climate change. The argument is that no single nation can fight climate change, so there must be a central authority

that is a one-world government with the United Nations in charge. Russia has been invaded 18 times from the Mongols, Poland, Sweden, Napoleon, Ottoman Empire, and Adolf Hitler, just to mention a few. The mindset of Russia is that they feel disrespected in modern times because even overthrowing communism never seemed enough. The Western press is inflicting a blow to the very heart of Russia’s pride. They celebrate the draft dodgers running from Russia while condemning the American draft dodgers who fled to Canada and Mexico during the Vietnam War. They are hurling insults, and that only fuels the likelihood of a greater confrontation. That is only human nature.

The Western press constantly put out propaganda that Putin’s invasion was unprovoked. That is simply not true. The press will never discuss the Massacre of Odessa, where the Neo-Nazis burned alive Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Nor will they address Zelensky’s refusal to comply with the Minsk Agreement allowing the Donbas to vote sponsored by Germany and France. The press refuses to report that the Ukrainian Neo-Nazis are engaging in ethnic cleansing. Even if Russia withdrew, they would not stop until they killed every Russian-speaking Ukrainian on what they claim is Ukrainian territory. They will not

report that Zelensky has outlawed any pro-Russian116 political party. Zelensky has even outlawed any pro-Russian media in Ukraine in a true authoritarian manner.117 The press refused to report that Zelensky outlawed speaking Russian, and he outlawed their religion, demanding that all churches no longer report to the Patriarch in Moscow but to the Patriarch in Kiev.118 None of these decrees are ever considered by the Western Press as a provocation. Religion has often been a motive for war. This is the hallmark of propaganda—one-sided reporting. What would they do if Protestants were outlawed and all Christians must only follow the Pope? Would that be worthy of reporting? The media will also not address how Ukraine was to remain neutral. Zelensky pushed for NATO membership to provoke Russia, violating the 1991 accord that neither NATO nor Russia would enter Ukraine. Joining NATO was the Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse.

On February 23rd, the very day before Putin’s invasion, Zelensky publicly stated that Ukraine would seek nuclear weapons, as reported by the Daily Wire. The USA invaded Iraq on the claim that it had weapons of mass destruction that never existed. But asserting that Ukraine would become a nuclear power somehow was perfectly acceptable, and Putin was the aggressor. The same was somehow not true for the United States concerning Iraq. This is the Western media’s propaganda intended to support the war against Russia. You must always demonize the head of state to justify invading a country. This entire Ukrainian invasion has been not just a provoked event to overthrow Russia for the Great Reset; Zelensky has been willing to sacrifice his own people as a puppet ruler of the West. He certainly does not care about his own people since, being a

Jew, he can also head to Israel if the curtain falls. He is subjecting his country to the horrors of war on the orders for his masters—the Biden Administration and NATO. Nobody will even suggest peace. Old hatreds have resurfaced, and this is all about evening scores. We may see European conflict erupt going into 2023/2024, but it still appears that we will be looking at World War III with China and North Korea joining Russia post-2024.

The sabotage of the Nord Stream Pipelines on Monday, September 26th, 2022, was carried out by U.S. intelligence. The entire world is pointing the finger at the Biden Administration. On September 6th, 2022, CNBC reported: “Russia has cut off gas supplies to Europe indefinitely. Here’s what you need to know.” Russia stopped pumping gas via Nord Stream 1 and said it was completely dependent on the sanctions to

discontinue pumping. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov replied that if the sanctions were lifted, the gas would flow again. He said that the sanctions prevented the maintenance of units necessary to pump the gas.

It was September 7th when Putin himself threatened to turn off the gas unless sanctions were lifted. The American media was reporting the U.S. propaganda that Russia blew up its own pipeline, which was absurd when they could simply turn off the valve. Taking out the pipelines left Russia with no leverage. Not a single U.S. mainstream media questioned the Biden Administration, but they claimed Russia was the terrorist. Once more, it merely revealed how the media is no longer independent. All I can say is that based on information, a think tank had advised the White House that they also needed to attack the pipelines through Turkey to isolate the Russian economy further. So this has been a deliberate attack on Russia all for this climate change agenda to end fossil fuels.

Meanwhile, China has told the White House, as if they even listen, that if Ukraine joins NATO, there will be a nuclear war. If Biden allows the destruction of the South Stream pipeline, it will confirm that the Biden Administration has effectively declared war on Russia and is strategically trying to destroy its economy while supporting the Neo-Nazis of Ukraine and their ethnic cleansing. Anyone who questions the existence of the Ukrainian NeoNazis should look at the Polish Association of Memory of

Victims of Crimes of Ukrainian Nazis. They documented 135 methods of torture and murder practiced by Ukrainian Nazis that even horrified the German Nazis. Poland officially called the Ukrainian actions genocide. The Ukrainians have been protected by the CIA for decades only because they hated Russians. They continue to protect the Ukrainian Nazis only because they are waging war against Russia. The Ukrainians were unprecedented in their war crimes during WWII and the sheer outright cruelty one would expect only exists in some B-rated horror movies. This included: •    Running children through with stakes •    Cutting a person’s throat and pulling their tongue out through the hole •    Sawing a person’s torso in half with a carpenter’s saw •    Cutting open the belly of a woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy, removing the fetus, and replacing it with a live cat before sewing up her abdomen. •    Cutting open a pregnant women’s abdomen and pouring in broken glass •    Nailing a small child to a door

Russia has cut off Italy from gas as well. This is just amazing that we have such foolish world leaders who are pushing the entire world to the brink of nuclear war all because of Ukraine, which refuses to seek peace. Even the Italian and Russian mafias are afraid of the Albanian and Ukrainian mafias. For if you are in a dispute with them, they will kill your entire family and the dog, unlike any other crime organization, to prevent any reprisal in the future.

The Iranian Neo-Nazis are a vengeful lot, and they still believe in the ethnic cleansing of their country. They will not even tolerate Russian-speaking Ukrainians who have lived in the Donbas for centuries. There is not a single leader in the West who will stand up and speak the truth. Biden coming out to warn Putin he will defend every inch of NATO territory is just theatre. Putin has no intention of invading a NATO country and made no effort even to conquer all of Ukraine. The U.S. is waging a direct economic siege on Russia, and this is really an all-out war to bring about the destruction of Russia as they have done in Iraq, all for climate change to ending fossil fuels. The logical response to the U.S. destruction of Nord Stream is to carry out its threat to sanction Ukrainian energy company Naftogaz, which is one of the last functioning Russian gas supply routes to Europe. Granted, Europe has been stockpiling natural gas in anticipation that this will be an all-out war against Russia.

Naftogaz had initiated an arbitration proceeding against Gazprom (GAZP.MM) in early September, claiming that the Russian company has not paid transit fees for sending its gas to Europe via pipelines that cross Ukraine. Gazprom rejected all the claims and warned that Russia might introduce sanctions against Naftogaz if it further pursues the matter, and Gazprom would be prohibited from paying Ukraine transit fees. That would officially end all Russian gas flows to Europe via Ukraine. This would accelerate the energy crisis just as the crucial winter heating season begins.

All Russia can do is turn off all the gas through Ukraine and Turkey, which now transports about 30% of Russia’s gas supply to Europe. The destruction of the Nord Steam pipelines will impact Germany, where the government is telling people they have reserves and will import liquified gas from America.

Europe as a whole counts on 40% of its energy needs from Russia.

Just as adversaries would counterfeit each other’s currencies in a desperate measure to undermine their economy to strip them of the ability to fund the war, blowing up these pipelines was a deliberate act to inflict a death blow to the Russian economy for the same strategy. They believe they have Putin on the ropes and can conquer Russia without nukes or boots on the ground. Ending Russia’s #1 income, energy, has been a key strategy to undermine Putin and lead to domestic discord or perhaps a revolution. The problem for the Russian people is that the West will never accept Russia as an equal member. They want to kill the bear completely. Putin’s warning on September 7th, 2022 was to cut off the gas and grain supply. That was met with the U.S. attacking the Nord Stream pipeline. Even food prices appear to be soaring higher into 2025. Wheat could even reach the 14.32 level by that time. It is clear that those seeking to conquer Russia for climate change are totally unaware of the full ramifications.

Seymour Hersh, an 85-year-old Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, has spent his career exposing the truth behind Washington’s brutality in war. He exposed the treatment of Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam war some 50 years ago, broke the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse story from 2003, and even played an important role in uncovering Watergate. In February 2023, Hersh revealed the unsettling plot to destroy the Nord Stream Pipeline.

The plan to create an energy disaster began in 2021 before a single Russian troop crossed the border into Ukraine. Secretary of State Tony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and Victoria Nuland, the Undersecretary of State for Policy were the masterminds. The Nord Stream I pipelines were essential for delivering Russian energy to the West. Nord Stream II, finished in September 2021, had the potential to double Russian energy exports, thereby significantly improving the Russian economy. Washington was concerned that Germany, and thereby the entire EU, would be reluctant to supply aid to Ukraine due to its reliance on Russian natural gas. Jake Sullivan called for a secret meeting in December 2021 between Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Treasury Departments to discuss options for making the pipelines obsolete. Hersh reported: “Over the next several meetings, the participants debated options for an attack. The Navy proposed using a newly commissioned submarine to assault the pipeline directly. The Air Force discussed dropping bombs with delayed fuses that could be set off remotely. The CIA argued that whatever was done, it would have to be covert. Everyone involved understood the stakes. “This is not kiddie stuff,” the source said. If the attack were traceable to the United States, “It’s an act of war.”’119

Three weeks before the Russian invasion, Biden indicated his plans to the public. “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it,” he ominously stated. A month prior, Nuland also told reporters that Washington was willing to destroy Nord Stream. “I want to be very clear to you today,” Nuland told reporters. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” Rumors stated that the CIA was displeased over these overtly aggressive messages and noted that the mission to destroy the pipelines needed to be

extremely covert. Article one of the Constitution states that only Congress can vote to approve such a measure, which would be considered an act of war. As history has shown, politicians will bypass the very laws they have be hired to uphold. Hersh reported:

“The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was suddenly downgraded from a covert operation requiring that Congress be informed to one that was deemed as a highly classified intelligence operation with U.S. military support. Under the

law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal requirement to report the operation to Congress. All they had to do now is just do it—but it still had to be secret. The Russians have superlative surveillance of the Baltic Sea.”’

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg happens to be from Norway, one of the founding countries of the NATO pact and a bordering country of Russia. Stoltenberg is also a vocal Neocon who vehemently opposes the mere existence of Russia. “He is the glove that fits the American hand,” one of Hersh’s sources reported. The US was amplifying its military bases in Norway, but a measure passed in November 2021 propelled America’s military efforts. The Supplementary Defense Cooperation Agreement (SDCA) provided the US with unconditional use of four “agreed areas” in Norway. Norwegian Judge Advocate General Sigrid Redse Johansen ruled, “Authority can be exerted towards anyone getting in contact with the agreed area.”

America, with its superior military power, could become the aggressor under this law. Russia dominated European energy exports, and Norway could only compete with its own natural reserves if its adversary was eliminated. In addition, the Norwegian Navy has extremely skilled deep-sea divers with detailed knowledge of the waters hosting the pipelines. They

observed that for the past 21 years, the American Sixth Fleet sponsored NATO exercises in the Baltic Sea every June. The US and Norway needed a method to plant C4 explosives on the pipelines, undetected, and this was their window of opportunity. Baltic Operations 22, or BALTOPS 22, was born.

The US Navy discusses the plan openly on its website. They claimed the exercise was simply to “test the flexibility, adaptability, and capabilities of maritime and amphibious forces.” Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Turkey, and the United Kingdom also participated in the exercise, albeit potentially unaware of the real plot. Intelligence agencies knew it would be too obvious to destroy the pipelines during this exercise. Washington requested the power to detonate the explosives at the time of its choosing, and the solution was to drop a sonar buoy by

air that would trigger the planted explosives. As Hersh uncovered: “On September 26, 2022, a Norwegian Navy P8 surveillance plane made a seemingly routine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The signal spread underwater, initially to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours later, the high-powered C4 explosives were triggered and three of the four pipelines were put out of commission. Within a few minutes, pools of methane gas that remained in the shuttered pipelines could be seen spreading on the water’s surface and the world learned that something irreversible had taken place.”

The first explosion was recorded near the Danish island of Bornholm. The second blast happened later that evening and was so powerful that scientists equated it to a 2.3 magnitude earthquake. The US feigned shock, and White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said she would not “speculate on the cause.” Media sources immediately began to blame Russia. Why on Earth would Russia terminate its most significant piece of leverage in dealing with the West? Leave it to braggadocios politicians to expose a carefully concealed plot. Radek Sikorski, Poland’s former minister of national defense and EU Parliament member, immediately posted an image of the explosion on Twitter with the caption, “Thank you, USA.” US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken could not help but to express his pleasure, calling the act “a tremendous opportunity.”

“It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs. That’s very significant and that offers tremendous strategic opportunity for the years to come, but meanwhile we’re determined to do everything we possibly can to make sure the consequences of all of this are not borne by citizens in our countries or, for that matter, around the world.”120

Nuland also expressed her delight to the press. “I am, and I think the Administration is, very gratified to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of metal at the bottom of the sea,” she said, referring to the catastrophic event that will plague energy costs for years to come.

The Washington Times reported in December 2021: “Russia remains a key suspect, however, partly because of its recent history of bombing civilian infrastructure in Ukraine and propensity for unconventional warfare. It’s not such a leap to think that the Kremlin would attack Nord Stream, perhaps to undermine NATO resolve and peel off allies that depend on Russian energy sources, officials said.”121 Yet, Russia had absolutely nothing to gain and everything to lose from this unconstitutional act of war.

Make no mistake about it—sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines was a unconstitutional act of war that is a treasonous and impeachable offense. Not only is the Biden Administration intent on ending fossil fuels, but this was a strategic maneuver on how to wage war. Just as adversaries would counterfeit each other’s currencies in a desperate measure to undermine their economy to strip them of the ability to fund the war, blowing up these pipelines was a deliberate blow to inflict a death blow to the Russian economy. Ending Russia’s #1 income (energy) was intended to undermine Putin and lead to a domestic revolution. The problem for the Russian people is that the West will never accept Russia as an equal member. They indeed want to kill the bear completely.

Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken should all be called before Congress and interrogated as to their acts. Biden committed an illegal act of war against

Russia, and this is an impeachable offense. As Biden confessed in a speech on April 8, 2021, “No amendment to the Constitution is absolute.” Once more, the reckless spending on war promoted by the Neocons is undermining the entire global economy. The Neocons have lost every war they have promoted—Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, proposed Syria, Libya regime change, and now Ukraine. These people are never held accountable for all the devastation and the lives lost. War is the primary driver of inflation, and the central banks will not even address it, for they do not want to “criticize” the Neocons. They might wake up with their dog’s head in the bed, as in the Godfather. The central banks will be unable to contain inflation or ever reach their 2% target regardless of the economy’s downturn.

112

Meyer, David. “Trump Has Long Wanted to Kill a Russia-Germany Natural Gas

Pipeline. Navalny’s Poisoning Could Do It for Him.” Fortune, September 8, 2020. https://fortune.com/2020/09/08/trump-pipeline-russia-germany-natural-gasmerkel-navalny-poisoned-nord-stream-2/. 113

Moody, Kate. “Business Daily - Norway, Poland Open New Gas Pipeline amid

Nord Stream Leaks.” France 24, September 27, 2022. https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/business-daily/20220927-norway-polandopen-new-gas-pipeline-as-nord-stream-leaks. 114

“Israel Part of Solution to Europe’s Gas Woes, Lapid Says.” Reuters, September 12, 2022. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/israel-part-solution-europesgas-woes-lapid-2022-09-12/. 115

Clean Energy Wire. “Ukraine War Pushes Germany to Build LNG Terminals,” January 16, 2023. https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/liquefied-gas-doeslng-have-place-germanys-energy-future.

116

Institute for War and Peace Reporting. “Ukraine to Outlaw Pro-Russian Political Parties,” n.d. https://iwpr.net/global-voices/ukraine-outlaw-pro-russian-politicalparties. 117

Mirovalev, Mansur. “In Risky Move, Ukraine’s President Bans pro-Russian

Media.”Media News | Al Jazeera, February 5, 2021. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/5/ukraines-president-bans-pro-russiannetworks-riskingsupport. 118

Helleniscope. “Zelensky’s ‘Democracy’ In Ukraine: The Russian Language Was Banned and Now They Ban the Church of 70% of Orthodox Faithful!!,” April 3, 2022. https://www.helleniscope.com/2022/03/31/zelenskysdemocracy-in-ukraine-russianlanguage-was-banned-and-now-they-ban-the-church-of-70-of-orthodoxfaithful/. 119

Hersh, Seymour. “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.” Seymourhersh.Substack.Com, February 8, 2023. https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream. 120

United States Department of State. “Secretary Antony J. Blinken And Canadian Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly At a Joint Press Availability - United States Department of State,” September 30, 2022. https://www.state.gov/secretaryantony-j-blinken-and-canadian-foreign-minister-melanie-joly-at-a-joint-pressavailability/. 121

Harris, Shane, John Hudson, Missy Ryan, and Michael Birnbaum. “No Conclusive

Evidence Russia Is behind Nord Stream Attack.” Washington Post, December 21, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/12/21/russia-nordstream-explosions/.

The Minsk Agreement Hoax Exposed

T

he second Minsk Agreement brokered by Germany and France was to allow the Donbas to vote on their separation from Ukraine. The West has intentionally reneged on all promises. The Neocons’objective has always been to destroy Russia, and they have also used the Great Reset agenda to justify ending fossil fuels on the premise of saving the planet. They need to conquer Russia to further this climate change agenda for appearance’s sake, but the Neocons have conspired endless wars for decades with their end gold to destroy Russia and even China.

Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971), Former Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, famously said, “We will bury you!” (Russian: My vas pokhoronim!). This comment made at the Polish embassy in Moscow on November 18th, 1956, has been the mantra of the Neocon ever since. The Neocons will never change their agenda to dominate the world regardless of who is the Russian head of state. They tell themselves they will inject democracy around the world to counter that boast of Khrushchev, who was ousted in a coup by Russians for his controversial agenda. Yet it does not matter, for the Neocons have never altered their agenda and have used Ukraine as their spearhead to attack Russia.

The former adviser to Zelensky, Alexey Arestovich, who quit in protest over Zelensky’s destruction of Ukraine, came out publicly and said, “The West deceived Russia. They promised not to push NATO to the east, and they did. They turned Ukraine into a huge anti-Russian country. If I was in Russia’s shoes, I would have done the exact same thing.” He added that the Neocons have stirred up “extreme right-wing Ukrainian nationalism” to get them to fight this proxy war over territory than was never occupied by Ukrainians.

Ukraine claims that the Donbas is its territory, but the area was a border drawn for administrative purposes by Khrushchev during the USSR when everything East of the Dnieper River was historically the Russian empire of the Tzars. In fact, two heads of state of Russia came from this region. Khrushchev grew up in the Donbas and was in charge of Kiev, rebuilding

it after World War II before he rose to the leadership of Russia. His successor was Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982), who was also born in the Donbas. The Russian people have occupied this area since the days of the Tsars. In fact, Kiev was the home of the Russians until their city was destroyed by the Mongol invasion of 1240 AD. Some have compared the Ukrainian attempt to usurp the Donbas to the Palestinians trying to claim Jerusalem was always theirs. In truth, during the final signing of the agreement in Minsk, Belarus, the Ukrainian authorities had promised to reform their Constitution, granting autonomy to Lugansk and Donetsk, allowing them to hold local elections in both regions to establish their own independent governments. Yet the Western press calls the Russian action an invasion of Ukrainian territory when Ukraine has refused to honor their word and negotiated in bad faith from the outset. The Minsk Agreement was signed on September 5, 2014, but it was merely a ploy to buy time, as we will explore. There is clear information that the West was sending Ukraine money long before the agreement was signed. None of this information is secret, but no one has put the pieces of the puzzle together—until now. The 2014 Ukrainian Revolution, also called the Maidan Revolution, that resulted in the overthrow of President Viktor Yanukovych was more than a civil war. The events that unfolded were sparked by an internal coup, but the results were orchestrated by Western powers with the intention of installing a puppet government. Yanukovych was a proRussian leader who aligned with Moscow over the West as both were pulling for Russian resources. The prospect of Ukraine coming to peaceful terms with Russia was unacceptable to the West, which never relinquished the Cold

War. Things took a turn when Yanukovych allowed the Russian Black Sea Fleet to use Crimea as a base until 2042.

Russian energy was also a key variable in this situation. There was the infamous January 2009 gas dispute between Russia and Ukraine when the two failed to commit to a price for Russian gas from Gazprom. Ukraine failed to pay $2.4 billion for gas it received in 2008 from Gazprom, making the company and the Russian government hesitant to enter into a new contract. “We need to finally decide on the Ukrainian debt and recover it either in a voluntary or compulsory manner in accordance with established legislation and within the framework of our bilateral agreements,” Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said at a meeting with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller in November 2008.122 The debt was significant, especially considering Ukraine’s GDP was only $188.1 billion in 2008.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, nicknamed “the gas princess,” blamed the company RosUkrEnergo for the outstanding debt rather than the government. Tensions boiled until January 1, 2009, when Russia cut off gas imports to Ukraine entirely. This prevented natural gas from flowing to Eastern Europe from Ukraine, resulting in a short-lived energy crisis. Gas exports to 16 member states within the EU were reduced significantly during this time. Putin and Tymoshenko eventually met and spent five days negotiating a deal. On January 18, 2009, Ukraine agreed to a 10-year contract to purchase gas for $232.98 per 1000 cubic meters with a flat transit fee. Other Eastern European countries were paying over $500 per 1000 cubic meters during that time, and Ukraine’s economy was propped up by the subsidies it enjoyed from exporting Russian gas.

This deal would later come back to haunt Yulia Tymoshenko. Ukrainian courts accused her of embezzlement and abuse of power in negotiating the deal. On October 11, 2011, she was sentenced to seven years imprisonment for what became known as “the gas deal.” Yulia maintained her innocence and claimed her arrest was an attempt to silence her from her political opponents. Authorities tried to pin additional charges on the politician while imprisoned for an array of suspected crimes including murder. The European Union sided with Yulia and agreed her arrest was politically motivated. After numerous hunger strikes and an international outcry, Tymoshenko was freed. Rodion Kireye, the judge who sentenced her to prison in 2011, fled the country and was later placed on a wanted list. Tymoshenko remains an influential politician in Ukraine today. The Ukrainian economy was in a dire position. Ukraine was desperate for funding but already had $35 billion in outstanding debt owed to the IMF. The European Union offered Ukraine a trade deal under the condition that it met unfavorable austerity measures. Putin agreed to match the $15 billion offer without strings in an effort to prevent a

Ukraine-EU alliance. Ukraine could not afford to lose its main energy supplier, and Putin’s deal seemed too good to pass up. His decision to accept Putin’s offer resulted in some accusing Yanukovych of treason, as vilifying one’s opponent is always necessary for revolution. Yet, Yanukovych played the part of a villain exceptionally well, and propaganda was not necessary due to his own actions.

By February 2014, the fear of war with Russia had people scrambling to buy dollars, resulting in the Ukrainian government placing restrictions on buying dollars. Ukraine’s currency reserves had fallen so dramatically that the national currency, the hryvnia, was hanging in mid-air. The National Bank of Ukraine was forced to back off the fixed exchange rate, for they over-valued the currency and would have wiped out all reserves, trying to pretend nothing was wrong. On February 7, the central bank introduced a new exchange rate for the hryvnia at 8.708 to the dollar in what appeared to be an attempt to meet the lending requirements of the International Monetary Fund. The currency then floated,

resulting in a further decline against the dollar. This geopolitical crisis was reflected in the currency as it is always a matter of confidence. The market shift was solely due to confidence. This is the only true mover and shaker in the global economy.

Yanukovych was a corrupt politician who amassed many enemies. Yanukovych comes from the East where they speak Russian, not Ukrainian. When he tried to speak Ukrainian in public, he could not get the accent down correctly. One of his two sons, a dentist by trade, became one of the wealthiest men in Ukraine. Yanukovych was an oligarch, and his police were shaking down businesses and forcing them to pay his two sons. He was running Ukraine the same way oligarchs ran Russia. You obey their commands, or you die. If someone had a business that was doing exceptionally well, Yanukovych and his sons would confiscate it.

The media immediately labeled the deal as a snub to the EU and called Yanukovych Putin’s puppet. “Money, trade, bullying and the fortunes of Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs are certain to have played a central role in Yanukovych’s calculation, with Russia, Ukraine’s largest trading partner, warning of dire consequences if Kiev sided with the EU,” the Guardian reported in November 2013.123 There were no discussions in the media about whether the EU deal was favorable for the Ukrainian people. The article continued: “The EU’s losing battle for Ukraine is likely to encourage the Kremlin in its view that Europe is weak and divided and lacks foreign policy muscle. In September Armenia succumbed to Russian pressure and turned its back on years of negotiations with the EU in a move that stunned Brussels.”

The West did not want Russia to form a trade bloc with Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. The attempt to strengthen Eastern European trade was seen an attempt to resurrect the Soviet Union. Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko, a former Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs, became a vocal opponent of the Kiev-Moscow alliance and fell on the West’s radar. Ukraine was facing the potential of default without a loan from Moscow. Greece was making headlines at the time after defaulting on their loans, with the EU showing no mercy to the Greek people after the unfavorable conversion to the euro paired with the failure to consolidate member-state debt. Greece converted its past debt to euros, which then doubled in value as the euro rallied from 80 cents to $1.60. That meant the past debt was now double in real terms, and there was no possible way Greece could pay it back. In real terms, the debt rose relative to its GDP because you converted the currency base. With no fiscal union, the currency union was merely a currency peg; all currency pegs break under their own weight.

The mainstream media pushed the narrative that Yanukovych was under Putin’s thumb. European leaders met in Lithuanian’s capital Vilnius in November 2013 to discuss trade. Yanukovych proposed trilateral discussions between the EU, Russia, and Ukraine but the EU refused. The rejection of the EU deal provided a reason for his opponents to protest. “We will conduct massive protest actions in all of Ukraine. They must witness our strength,” said Arseniy Yatsenyuk, an ally of Yulia Tymoshenko. World leaders also expressed their dismay. “I see this as a defeat for Ukraine,” stated Lithuania’s President, Dalia Grybauskaite. “The current choice of the Ukrainian leadership means putting limits on the Ukrainian people’s chances of achieving a better life.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel claimed that the door would always be open for Ukraine in the future. However, Yanukovych insisted that Ukraine would need at least 20 billion euros annually to meet “European standards.”124

EU enlargement commissioner Stefan Fuele rebuffed claims that Ukraine needed additional funding, despite its failing economy. “The only costs that I can see are the costs of inaction allowing more stagnation of the economy and risking the economic future and health of the country,” he claimed. Former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski hinted that the EU may offer Ukraine a larger loan than originally stated, but Yanukovych insisted that the Ukrainian economy would crumble without Russian natural energy. Basically, Yanukovych attended this meeting to express his nation’s financial woes and discuss solutions that did not entail entering into a unilateral trade pact with the EU. “Ukraine’s president talked not about the agreement ... but about the economic problems facing Ukraine and which need to be solved. He wanted these problems to be solved by the European Union and Russia together,” Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite told reporters.125 Trilateral discussions would have benefitted Ukraine, but not the EU.

The Right Sector, a collection of far-right activists with Nazi ties, condemned the president’s actions and urged their supporters to protest. Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist party, Svoboda, also encouraged protests. Svoboda (formerly the “Social-National Party”) members held a deep hatred for Russians within the Ukraine. “Yuriy Mykhalchyshyn, a parliamentary deputy considered one of the party’s ideologues, liberally quotes from former Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, along with other National-Socialist leaders,” the BBC reported in December 2012.126 The party believed that their was a “Muscovite-Jewish mafia” connected to Moscow, and openly condemned the Ukrainian Parliament because 70% of its members were Jewish. At this point Yanukovych had accumulated enemies from every angle. He angered political parties within Ukraine who felt he was selling out Kiev to Moscow, and American Neocons shared this sentiment. He angered Europe by discarding the deal and not clearly aligning with the newly formed EU. Most importantly, and what set off the events that led to his demise, he angered the average Ukrainian citizen who was fed up with his corrupt government. Russia wanted to portray this as a coup organized by the US, Europe wanted to portray this as Ukraine wanting to align with them, and the US media spun this as the US against Russia.

Our model indicated that Ukraine was on target for a revolution. The history of Ukraine has demonstrated a close correlation with a 52-year cycle aligning with the Economic Confidence Model of 51.6 years when it comes to political changes. Ukrainian Revolutions: •    Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648–57) •    Ukraine after the Russian Revolution •    Ukrainian War of Independence (1917–21) •    Declaration of Ukrainian State Act (1941) •    Declaration of Independence of Ukraine (1991)

•    Orange Revolution (2004–05) •    Euromaidan (2013–Present)/2014 Ukrainian revolution

I reported in January 2018: “This appears to be on schedule for a rise in tensions again here in 2018, but the peak is most likely coming into play in 2022.”127 His opponents gathered in Kiev’s Maidan (Independence Square) and clashed with police. The then president even attempt to implement laws to forbid protesting in general, which only helped his foe’s to portray him as a treasonous dictator. The president ordered the police to fire at the crowd killing both men and women. His brutality only escalated the protests and turned Kiev into a warzone. This is why being a student of history, I am not supporting Putin or a Republican against the Democrats or whatever other explanation some may try to apply. I am warning that we are being manipulated into war for ulterior purposes. The truth about any war they fail to publicize is that the civilian death toll far exceeds the death of soldiers on a battlefield.

Hermann Goring was asked at the Nuremberg trials, “Why did the people follow Hitler?” His response was perfectly correct, despite the fact that many just preferred that the German people were inherently evil and different from the rest of the

world as the explanation back then. That was why Stanley Milgram (1933-1984) conducted his experiments to test the theory if Germans were just different from everyone else. His book, Obedience to Authority, shocked the world. As Goring said, the very best outcome of war is to return home unharmed, with your family and home still there. He stated the truth: “It is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along.”

This is simply the way it is. The leaders create all wars, never the people. War is merely a continuation of politics that moves to violence. Like two guys arguing in a bar and words no longer matter, that is when the punches start to fly. What do we have to gain from war? Absolutely nothing other than hoping to return in one piece with a home and family to return to. War is the playing of politicians. We are only the pawns on their chessboard for their war games.

The Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736) was one of the greatest generals who fought for many kings. Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu, baron de La Brede et de (1689-1755), was truly perhaps the most influential of the political French philosophers who did more to alter the course of the world than anyone of this time. Montesquieu met the Prince of Savoy in Vienna, whose political discussions helped spark his understanding of government.

This very encounter between Montesquieu and the Prince of Savoy helped him realize that war was the result of provoked standing armies by those in power, who felt their army was a waste of money unless deployed. They waged war because

they were simply there doing nothing. He was the inspiration behind our Second Amendment—the right to bear arms as a militia rather than have standing armies. That wisdom has long been forgotten, and today we have nuclear weapons pointed at each other and politicians still clamoring for endless wars. He was correct. Even King Louis XIV (1643-1715) lamented on his deathbed: “I have been too fond of war.” We are once again plagued by this same crisis. How many times has the U.S. invaded another country under some slogan that was only an honorable pretense? From the weapons of mass destruction that never existed in Iraq to defeat Communism in Vietnam, where as many as 2 million civilians on both sides died, and some 1.1 million North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters also died for an economic system that was collapsing all by itself. President Johnson admitted that the Vietnamese never attacked.

We are plagued by world leaders who played too much with their toy soldiers. These are the real-life consequences of their games. They welcome war and have no desire for peace.

There is not a single leader willing to even say, “Hey, wait a minute!” We are the expendable population. They view it as there are too damn many of us anyhow. We are their toy soldiers. They never consider an individual’s fate.

Our computer had been pointing to 2023 as the start of an absolute major crisis point in global geopolitics going into 2027. The risk of international war is very real. These climate zealots are destroying our way of life the same way that Karl Marx did, leading to the death of over 200 million people between Russia and China. This time, it will be in the billions. The destruction of these pipelines may be cheered in private gatherings behind closed doors. As Blinken said, it was an “extraordinary opportunity.” They are counting on the mainstream media to denounce any objection to war as unpatriotic.

This photo was from the 2011 World Economic Conference held in Philadelphia that was filmed as part of the movie, The Forecaster. Our models are definitive. I am merely the messenger—not the author. I do not offer my opinion, for that means nothing. Everyone has an opinion the same as everyone has an asshole is the standard comment. This gives me no pleasure whatsoever. All I can do is hope that people will listen, and just maybe we can reduce the magnitude. But I cannot prevent this cascade toward war. Perhaps it is just divine will.

I stood up at that conference in 2011 and warned that it would all begin in 2014, which marked the Ukrainian Revolution and the U.S. installation of the “temporary” unelected government that began the civil war by attacking the Donbas. So, the Ukrainian people did not even vote to start that civil war. The West set that all in motion. Zelensky won the election, promising peace with Russia and ending corruption. The Ukrainian people thought he would be different because he was a comedian. Even Russia was hopeful. Our computer had even targeted that Ukraine would be where WWIII begins. That was published back in 2013. Our

computer is renowned for accurate long-term forecasts. Our computer forecasts over 1,000 markets and instruments around the world every day. It fully writes the report itself without any human involvement. It is impossible for any individual to forecast such events consistently for decades. We are all human, and just because someone was correct on one forecast based on an “opinion” does not mean they can consistently forecast the future. The government, bankers, and some competitors have done everything they can to shut these forecasts down. The mainstream press will never cover this because that discredits the talking heads and their personal opinions. They have been told, “Do not report on this model—thank you!” They never will because they do as the governments tell them. The governments must win. They exist to manipulate us stupid slobs to accomplish their goals.

The assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand (18631914) and his wife on June 28th, 1914, launched World War I. That entire region is stained with hatred that goes back centuries. This hatred of the Russian people in Ukraine is merely an extension not so different from the hatred of Catholics in England that resulted in the civil war and the beheading of King Charles I (1600-1649). We are once again looking at drawing the whole world into a conflict that will stain the entire globe with the blood of soldiers and civilians for centuries to come. China will end up siding with Russia, as will North Korea and parts of the Middle East. Just as World War I began over an assassination, the hatred of all Russians in Ukraine will draw in the world over a patch of land occupied by Russians for centuries. The cheers and drums beating for war will alter everyone’s lifestyle irrevocably. As Shakespeare wrote in his play Julius Caesar: “Cry ‘Havoc!’. And let slip the dogs of war.” With this backdrop, the concern for Russians living in Crimea was valid. The majority of those in Crimea identified as Russian, leading Russia to enter the territory on February 20, 2014. News outlets reported that Russia was attempting to expand its empire in an effort to rebuild the glory of the USSR. As explained earlier, this was simply not the case as the oligarchs who wished to restore the fallen empire had failed at every attempt and Yeltsin deliberately appointed Putin to prevent the oligarchs from claiming power. The true motive behind the invasion was Russia believing it needed to free its own people from Ukraine’s corrupt government. I had personal friends on the barricades at Maidan when the protests began on the 21st of November 2013. I was advising the people I knew that they had to get the police to switch

sides. A personal friend had the guts to go up to a Russian soldier when they entered Eastern Ukraine before the news. She went up to him and asked if she could take a photo since they were there to protect them. He allowed her to take the photo. I posted it but cut her image out for obvious reasons. I had firsthand knowledge of how this event unfolded and it was not organized by the CIA, as rumors state. We even had two staff members in Ukraine. When they would visit the USA and saw any policeman, they would panic and try to avoid them because the police pre-revolution would abuse the people and even rape women. I explained that for the revolution to win, they had to get the police to switch sides. America’s CIA gained influence and picked who would take charge, but they did not get the people to rise up—they did that on their own. They threatened the people and warned that if they overthrew the new hand-picked leaders that they would be on their own. You must draw a line between what the people did and what the West did afterward.

Serious widespread protests in Kiev began on February 18, 2014. Activists led 20,000 heavily armed protestors toward Ukraine’s Parliament and were met with brutal force. The protests lasted for five days until February 23. Yanukovych was forced to sign a deal with opposition leaders on February 21, one day after Russia had entered Crimea, and agreed to host an interim government with Parliament voting the president out of office. The people of Ukraine had no say in the matter. Pro-Russian Ukrainians claimed Donetsk and Luhansk during this time, leading to another internal conflict. Yanukovych was forced to flee to Russia on February 22; police abandoned their posts in Kiev, and protestors stormed the exiled president’s residence. Although Yanukovych deemed the events a “coup,” the media touted the actions as a revolution and victory for Ukraine.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who helped organize the protests, was installed as prime minister of the interim government and immediately signed the EU association agreement, abandoning promises Yanukovich had made to Moscow.

Yatsenyuk confirmed that Ukraine would never give up Crimea and all Ukraine-Russia relations went sour from this point forward. Ukraine began doubling its gas purchases from Gazprom as it threatened to raise prices. The G7 condemned Russia’s actions. The USA, Germany, Japan, Canada, France, Italy and Great Britain urged Ukraine to accept the IMF’s reform and began providing funding. China declined to become involved in the conflict, but Russian insiders claimed China understood Russia’s desire to reclaim Crimea.128

The Crimean Parliament even voted to join Russia and secede from Ukraine on March 6, 2014. Yatsenyuk maintained that Crimea was a Ukrainian territory, but respected the democratic process and allowed the people to vote—97% voted in favor of joining the Russian Federation. This was unacceptable to the interim government in Kiev and the results were rejected. This also prompted the US and EU to impose travel bans and freeze assets on several Crimean

Parliament members and Russian officials. Still, Putin signed a law on March 21 to solidify the annexation of Crimea into Russian law. Strategically, Crimea, the southern part of Ukraine on the Black Sea, was part of Russia until 1954. At that time, Crimea was given to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, supposedly to strengthen brotherly ties. However, the majority of the population were Russian. Therein lies part of the problem. This “gift” of Crimea to Ukraine would be like the USA giving Texas to Mexico and Texans would suddenly be Mexican. Would they “feel” Mexican or American?

Petro Poroshenko, a vocal proponent of aligning Ukraine with the West, was elected in a landslide victory on May 25, 2014. Suddenly, the US was ready to provide Ukraine with unlimited funds. Poroshenko claimed to have won just over 54% percent

of the vote. Yulia Tymoshenko was the runner-up with around 13%. Poroshenko was sworn in as president on June 7, 2014. Poroshenko was a Ukrainian billionaire businessman known as the “Chocolate King.” However, our direct sources at the time in the East made it clear that they were unable to vote as the polling stations were destroyed by the pro-Russian terrorists/tourists. Those who would have voted in the East may have voted for Poroshenko because the general feeling was they needed a president who would have a majority vote with no run-offs to prevent civil war. The White House’s own website notes that the US and International Monetary Fund began openly funneling money to the Ukraine in May 2014. While acting as vice president, Joe Biden took it upon himself to push for Ukrainian aid that included installing a new government and boosting military aid. “Ukraine issued a $1 billion sovereign bond fully guaranteed by the United States in May 2014. The U.S. loan guarantee was part of a coordinated international effort to ensure Ukraine has the resources it needs, providing $27 billion to Ukraine as it implements its IMF program. With the support of the proceeds raised by the loan guarantee, Ukraine is implementing a new social protection program to compensate approximately 2 million vulnerable households for increases in gas and heating tariffs.”129

By November 2014, the US had spent over $320 million on funding Ukraine in addition to the $1 billion sovereign bond— or at least that is the amount that the White House was willing to admit. However, loose-lipped politicans always reveal glimpses of the truth. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland to the US-Ukraine Foundation claimed in a speech given in December of 2013 that the US had already spent $5 billion to fund Ukraine since it departed from the USSR in 1991.

“Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991, the United States has supported Ukrainians as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations,” she said. “We have invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.”130

Washington attempted to retract Nuland’s statement, claiming that their only intention was to protect Crimea and therefore Ukraine from Russian forces. Nuland made global headlines for a leaked phone call with Geoffrey Pyattfrom, former US Ambassador to Ukraine, in February 2014 in which she said, “Fuck the EU!”131 At the time, the US was pushing full speed ahead to fund Ukraine while the EU was divided.

The leaked phone call between Nuland and Pyatt confirmed that the West was pushing for Poroshenko to lead Ukraine. Yatsenyuk, Oleh Tyahnybok, and Vitali Klitschko were his main opponents at the time, and the West was not confident that they could control them. “I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary.” Nuland added that what Yatseniuk needed “is Klitsch and Tyanhybok on the outside.” Pyatt blatantly expressed the need to install puppets in both the US and Ukraine. “[W]e want to try to get

somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing,” Pyatt confessed. Nuland had the perfect US politician in mind as they needed “an atta‐boy and to get the details to stick. So Biden’s willing.” The NulandPyatt call, along with funding, confirms that the US was indeed meddling in Ukrainian elections.

Her husband Robert Kagan (born 1958) may not be a household name, but he is an American Neocon. His criticism of US foreign policy is persistent but he is also a leading advocate of liberal interventionism, which is a foreign policy doctrine arguing that liberal international organizations can intervene in other states in order to pursue liberal objectives that include regime change and military intervention. This truly defines a Neocon. These Neocons are a government within a government. They operate under their own rules and are not subject to oversight.

Victoria Nuland has been one of the leading Neocons, always advocating war with Russia. She is behind the propaganda that Russia is on the verge of defeat and that the Russian army is dysfunctional. This is to build up the justification to rush in and easily defeat Russia. There is one

huge undisclosed conflict of interest, and the Biden Administration should immediately fire her to save the world and our nation. To begin, Victoria Nuland is of Ukrainian Jewish descent. Her family changed their name to try to hide their Jewish ethnic background. She really would be Nudelman, not Nuland. She is actually the daughter of Yale bioethics and medicine professor Sherwin B. Nuland, who changed his surname from Nudelman to Nuland. She retained her family name Nuland to perhaps further hide her Jewish connection by marrying Robert Kagan. Victoria speaks Russian, French, and some Chinese. Hiding her Jewish background is critical, for you see, her father was born Shepsel Ber Nudelman in the Bronx, New York, on December 8, 1930. His parents were Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Ukraine who were Jewish—Meyer Nudelman (1889-1958) and Vitsche Lutsky (1893-1941). This explains why Nuland has been a public proponent for Ukraine to wage war against Russia. Her husband, Robert Kagan, authored the “Real Iraq Study Group” report for the American Enterprise Institute. This was the Neocon view of regime change. Kagan was said to have convinced President George W. Bush to order the “surge” plan, which changed the course of the Iraq War. It was Kagan who co-founded the neoconservative think tank in 1997, which was known as the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) with fellow Neocon William Kristol. Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan also wrote a book in 1996 entitled, “Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy.” PNAC was founded one year later based on the policies brought forth in that book. They attempted to convince Bill Clinton to eliminate Saddam Hussein and pushed him to sign the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998. They used 9/11 to push warmongering

ideas and convinced George W. Bush to take out Saddam. Some stipulate the influential think tank even persuaded the president to invade Iraq.

Through this PNAC, from 1998 onward, Kagan was an early and strong advocate of military action in Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan as well as to “remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from power.” Kristol and Kagan teamed up and wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times where they put forth what is now known as fake news: “It is clear that Mr. Hussein wants his weapons of mass destruction more than he wants oil revenue or relief for hungry Iraqi children.”

They proposed that the United States had the right to engage in regime change in other countries. They also wrote in the New York Times: “And Iraq’s Arab neighbors are more likely to support a military effort to remove him than an ineffectual bombing raid that leaves a dangerous man in power.”

It was their anti-Trump position because he rejected their regime change agenda and endless wars. That killed Kristol’s Weekly Standard in 2018 after two years of anti-Trump articles

simply to wage war. The PNAC think tank collapsed even sooner in 2006. Nuland’s brother-in-law, Frederick W. Kagan, and her fatherin-in-law, Donald Kagan, are part of this family of Neocons. Father and son wrote While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today in 2000. The book argued in favor of a large increase in military spending and warned of future threats, including those from a potential revival of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program, which never existed.

Kimberly Kagan, founder of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), and her husband Frederick spent a year in Afghanistan working as “unpaid volunteers.” They supported a regime change and later moved to Afghanistan. They were provided top-level security clearance in Kabul. DynCorp International and CACI International funded Kim’s Institute for the Study of War. The Washington Post declared in 2012 that General David Petraeus had turned the couple into “de facto senior advisers.”

Following the money closer—Lockheed Martin executive Bruce P. Jackson was a director of PNAC. Jackson lobbied for NATO expansion and even attempted to have Ukraine join in 2008. Lockheed Martin directly benefitted from NATO expansion and increased military budgets. The Institute for the Study of War is a giant propaganda machine that constantly claims Ukraine is winning the war against Russia. They never report on Russia’s advancements in the war. This think tank, and everything backed by the Kagan family, is directly funded by large military contractors. In turn, they use their think tanks as propaganda machines to ensure that the mainstream media reports their side is winning, be it Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine.

The defense contractors cheer every time a corrupt politician singlehandedly agrees to ship off countless funds to a war torn area. NATO expansion is extremely profitable. As Forbes reported, “More importantly, aligning with NATO is a commitment to interoperability with the American defense ecosystem. This directly benefits the big U.S. contractors. The market for their goods is expanding and they will face no competition for the foreseeable future.”132

This family of Neocons has one major goal—regime change. They seem to be under the delusion that the United States has the right to interfere in other countries and overthrow leaders they simply do not like. Can you imagine if Russia decided it too would adopt the policy of regime change and move to overthrow the United State Constitution and end public elections? Would the American people support that agenda? Yet these Neocons always argue that if we overthrow these unacceptable leaders, their population will cheer and give us a ticker-tape parade. That did not take place in Iraq or any other country these people have targeted. Senator Rubio on March 8th, 2022 asked the notorious Neocon Victoria Nuland if Ukraine had biological or chemical weapons. She hesitated, choosing her words carefully, responding that Ukraine had “biological research labs.” Senator Rubio, quickly changed the subject, and the Senate thereafter went into crisis mode, desperately trying to undo

that testimony. The spin was immediately pretending that there is a distinction between a biolab for research and a biolab for weapons research. It was Nuland who was at the Maidan in Kiev supporting the overthrow of the government even handing out food to the protestors. McCain, as mentioned, was also on the ground in Ukraine to support the opposition.

Ron Paul plainly wrote: “Victoria Nuland exemplifies the neocons who have led US foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years while evading accountability.” It is indeed time that we examine their Neocons who constantly usurp American foreign policy as they are driving us straight into World War III. Given her Jewish-Ukrainian background, this may indeed be a family feud with Russia

Nonetheless, Poroshenko was also a seasoned politician. He served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2009 to 2010, and as the Minister of Trade and Economic Development in 2012. From 2007 until 2012, he headed the Council of Ukraine’s National Bank. He is pro-West for economic freedom. The fact that he was a billionaire who created businesses rather than inherited them or filled his pockets like Viktor Yanukovych was good, for he was seen as someone who would not rob the Treasury or accept potential bribes. Yanukovych was not poor, but he was not a businessman in reality. Still, Ukraine’s East remained caught in a torrent of violence that was maturing into a civil war. This significant challenge tested Poroshenko, who had promised to navigate between Russia and the West. But the fighting sustained as the separatist rebellion in the Donets Basin continued.

Poroshenko said at the time: “The first steps of our entire team at the beginning of the presidency will concentrate on ending the war, ending the chaos, ending the disorder and bringing peace to Ukrainian soil, to a united, single Ukraine,” at a victory rally Sunday. “Our decisive actions will bring this result fairly quickly.”

Poroshenko also said he waned to lead Ukraine to closer ties with the European Union. During his speeches, on numerous occasions, Poroshenko called the war in East Ukraine a “Patriotic War,” yet did not initiate the implementation of martial law. Nevertheless, the violence that prevented many citizens in Eastern Ukraine from voting demonstrates the old anti-democratic attitude there. It is their way or no way other than sheer dictatorship. Separatists in the region had vowed to disrupt the vote, and they largely succeeded in shutting that down, knowing they would lose. If the vote had been for leaving Ukraine at the time, they would have ensured the people voted, but that was not the case. Putin said a day before Ukraine voted that Russia would “cooperate with the authorities that will come to power as a result of the election.” Still, he added that he continued to consider Yanukovych to be the country’s legitimate president. Eventually, on June 18, 2015, Yanukovych was officially deprived of the title of President of Ukraine retroactively.

The entire problem is that the people of Ukraine rose up against the corruption of the government under Yanukovych. Unfortunately, they did not get the revolution they were hoping for. The old politicians are still in control. Russia claimed they were fascists and instigated by the West, which was not true. The West, meanwhile, usurped their revolution and warned the people if they overthrew this government, they were on their own. Then the new government argued that since there was a war, they could not reform until it concluded. Thus, the Ukrainian people effectively lost their revolution. Poroshenko set up an offshore company in the British Virgin Islands to shelter his taxes from the sale of his company. Leaked documents from the Panama Papers from 2016 revealed that Poroshenko registered the company, Prime Asset Partners Ltd, on August 21, 2014. He denied any

wrongdoing and his legal firm, Avellum, overseeing the sale of Roshen, Poroshenko’s confectionery company, said that “any allegations of tax evasion are groundless.” The anti-corruption group Transparency International believes that the “creation of businesses while serving as president is a direct violation of the constitution.” This allegation of tax evasion arose during the 2019 election which took place on March 31st, with a run-off on April 21. As a result of this election, Volodymyr Zelensky, a former actor and comedian with no prior political experience became the sixth President of Ukraine with 73% of the popular vote in the run-off against the incumbent Petro Poroshenko. Within months of the election, on December 20th, 2019, Ukrainian law enforcement raided both Poroshenko’s party headquarters and gym on the orders of President Zelensky who has turned out to be ruthless and a questionable head of state. The raid was intended to eliminate any possible influence of Poroshenko in the future. It was used to launch criminal investigations focused on the alleged theft of servers with classified information and tax evasion, which is now always called money laundering. Zelensky outright accused Poroshenko of state treason, aiding terrorist organizations, and financing terrorism due to allegedly organizing the purchase of coal from separatist-controlled areas of Ukraine together with pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk. Poroshenko denied the allegations, calling them “fabricated, politically motivated, and black PR directed against [Zelensky’s] political opponents.”

On January 6, 2022, the very day of the ECM turning point, Zelensky ordered a Ukrainian court to seize Poroshenko’s property, and a few days later on the 15th, Poroshenko announced via a video message on Facebook: “I am returning to Ukraine on a flight from Warsaw at 09:10 a.m. on January 17… to defend Ukraine from Russian aggression,” despite the case against him. Following his return to Ukraine, the prosecutor’s office asked a court to imprison him pre-trial. Ultimately, the court ordered him to wear an electronic bracelet, remain in Kiev, and hand over his passport.

Before Zelensky was installed, widespread protests erupted in January 2015 against the interim government. Confidence in the Ukrainian government was collapsing rapidly. The price of food soared as people believed their currency would buy less with each passing day. During the first quarter of 2015, the hryvnya fell below 4 cents US. To quiet protests over food, President Petro Poroshenko ordered the minister of the food reserve to fill the shelves of stores with flour, sugar, canned meat, and buckwheat from the reserve. The problem was that there was no reserve left. Russian investments in Ukraine were suffering. Thousands had died from the ongoing war, and neither Ukraine nor Russia looked like a safe investment for international capital. Both countries agreed that a ceasefire was necessary.

The first Minsk Protocol was signed by Ukraine, Russia, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the pro-Russia separatist leaders back in September 2014. Ukraine and the separatists agreed to an immediate 12-point ceasefire deal including withdrawal of heavy weapons and prisoner exchanges. But the agreement failed to stop the fighting, with frequent violations by both sides—not just the pro-Russian separatists. Five months later, Ukraine lost territory to pro-Russia separatists. Minsk II was then signed between Russia and Ukraine, which France and Germany mediated. French Pres. François Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel helped to broker a deal between Moscow and Kiev. Putin, Poroshenko, Merkel, and Hollande met in Minsk, Belarus, in February 2015,

and formed a 13-point agreement. That quickly broke down because there is simply an ethnic dislike of Russians that makes no sense for Ukraine to refuse to relinquish its claims. Europe’s mediation was merely a ploy to buy time, as we will come to learn.

Moreover, Minsk II included the withdrawal of weapons and monitoring of the ceasefire. There were to be local elections in the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics on their future status in Ukraine. The obstinate position of the Zelensky government is now threatening the entire world. He refuses to recognize that Moscow calls itself a mediator to help Ukraine and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics reach an agreement. Zelensky argues that point 10 of the Minsk agreement, which mentions the withdrawal of “all foreign armed forces” refers to Russia, while Russia denies having any military presence on the territories. The Minsk Agreements would be repeatedly cited over the years by Moscow. Putin was unaware at the time why the deal was not honored. In December 2019, Vladimir Putin, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, and Vladimir Zelensky

gave a joint news conference. Putin spoke of a working toward peace between the two countries under the condition that the Minsk Agreements were honored. “[T]here is no alternative to the Minsk Agreements, and we must make every effort to ensure that they are fully implemented,” he stated. Putin further explained Moscow’s position:

“Mr. Zelensky and I have different positions on this issue. Our position is very simple: we stand for the implementation of the Minsk Agreements. The Minsk Agreements say – you can read it for yourself – that Ukraine will be able to start restoring control over that territory, over that section of the border on day one after the local elections. This is what it says. And this process should end after the completion of a comprehensive political settlement. This is what the text of the agreement says. Why should the Minsk Agreements be reopened and revised? All the measures set out in that package are interconnected. If we revise one of them, this will lead to the revision of others and we will lose the agreements and create a situation where nothing can be done. This is our logic, and I believe that it is justified.”133

Although the West claims Putin is a warmonger hell-bent on expanding the old Russian empire, he made his original intentions clear at that joint meeting and in public appearances. He wanted peace under the pretense of

restoring the Donbas to the people, who are predominately Russian. Putin even began the meeting with talks of reducing tensions: “As we see it, this is indeed a major step towards a continued de-escalation in the southeast of Ukraine and a comprehensive ceasefire. We hope that the disengagement process will continue and that mine-clearing and defortification processes will be launched in the disengagement areas.”134

In reality, that conference was three against one plot against Russia. The West was the instigator rather than the mediator. From the beginning, the United States provided $5 billion to fund the results of the Ukrainian Revolution in 2014. The USinstalled interim government launched the civil war against the Donbas on US instructions. Then in 2014, Obama signed a bill authorizing lethal aid to be provided to Kiev. Then in 2015, NATO Commander General Philip Breedlove favored military aid to Ukraine. The US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, John Kerry, and General Martin Dempsey of the Joint Chiefs agreed.

In December 2022, Angela Merkel, perhaps accidentally, exposed the hoax behind the Minsk Agreement in a candid

interview with the German newspaper Die Zeit. Merkel admitted that the Minsk Agreement was a hoax to buy time for Ukraine to build up its army. There was never any intention of allowing the Russians in the Donbas to vote on their own future, as the West intended on war from the start. Below is an English translation of Merkel’s shocking confession: “I thought the initiation of NATO accession for Ukraine and Georgia discussed in 2008 to be wrong. The countries neither had the necessary prerequisites for this, nor had the consequences of such a decision been fully considered, both with regard to Russia’s actions against Georgia and Ukraine and to NATO and its rules of assistance. And the 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time.”

Merkel admitted that they negotiated in bad faith with Putin to “give Ukraine time” to fortify itself, thereby buying time to build its army and alliances. She also said that at the time, NATO was weak and could not provide support to Kiev to the extent they currently do. The Minsk agreements were signed to pretend to resolve the Donbas conflict, but the motive was to plant the seeds for a global conflict. Putin responded to the admission by saying he understandably lost all trust in the West. “We thought we would still be able to agree within the framework of the Minsk peace agreements. What can you say? There is a question of trust,” Putin said. “And trust, of course, is almost at zero.” Merkel also used the Nord Stream pipeline as leverage, constantly threatening to scrap the deal if Russia invaded Ukraine. Putin knew the threat would only harm Germany and the entire EU, but he did not realize that a larger agenda was at play. One should wonder why Merkel would even consider destroying the EU’s ability to operate for the sake of a nonmember nation. Yet, the West no longer needed that bargaining chip after Russian troops crossed into Ukraine with no plans to retreat.

The entire Minsk hoax was merely to placate Putin, and now that it has been exposed, there is no way for the West and Russia to move forward on good faith alone. “It turns out that no one was going to fulfil [sic] all these Minsk agreements,” Putin continued, “and the point was only to pump up Ukraine with weapons and prepare it for hostilities.” Neither trust nor respect can be re-established in this situation.

Only the Russian media reported on Merkel’s confession. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called for an investigation in a tribunal. “The things that Merkel said in her interview - this is a testimony of a person, who stated it directly that everything that was done in 2014 and 2015 had only one goal: to divert the global community’s attention from the real problems, to buy some time, to pump the Kiev regime with weapons and to lead the situation to a large-scale conflict,” she stated. Merkel said that the Minsk Agreement “was clear for everyone,” besides Moscow, as NATO was unable to provide the same level of aid to Ukraine as it does today.135

War has become the solution, as the promises made to Russia were baseless. This was the intended consequence. “After a statement like that, the question arises of how to negotiate, about what, and is it possible to negotiate with someone, and where are the guarantees,” Putin stated upon hearing the former chancellor’s confession, “An agreement will have to be reached in the end, all the same. I have said many times that we are ready for these agreements, we are open, but this makes us think who we are dealing with.” How could Putin ever agree to peace by paper when the West has repeatedly abandoned their promises? His concerns of NATO encroaching on Eastern European territory were valid all along. If the Minsk Agreement had been honored, there would be no war; Russia would have never invaded in the first place. Putin has repeatedly called for negotiations but his opponents have never considered peace an option. The West has done everything to ensure that Russia is isolated from the global economy while also working toward its goal of eliminating fossil fuels by repeatedly threatening the very existence of the world’s top supplier. The West is successfully escalating the situation by sending unlimited funds to Ukraine to ensure everyone enjoys the spoils of war. Ukraine is merely cannon fodder as the bigger players want their portion of the plunders to prevent Russian energy exports. Yet our computer model indicates this plan will eventually backfire on those pulling the strings while the people are already suffering the consequences of historically high energy prices. I cannot imagine any world leader before Biden who would have deliberately set the stage for war with Russia as it is completely unnecessary. Eastern Ukraine was historically Russia during the Tzar period, which is why Russians live there.

It was never Ukrainian territory. The problem is that Joe Biden is not mentally competent, so the climate zealots are running the White House. They only care about destroying the world’s capacity to produce and utilize fossil fuels. I have met and advised some world leaders. Yet, never in my 40-year career have I ever witnessed such an absurd group of world leaders hurling the world into a major global war all over fossil fuels. There are no peacemakers anymore—only warmongers. Like Biden, all they are doing is reading the words written by someone else from the teleprompters. Biden is incompetent and will lead the world into disaster, and the saddest part is that he is clueless about the risks he is subjecting the entire world population to over fossil fuels. This is why being a student of history, I am not supporting Putin or a Republican against the Democrats or whatever other explanation some may try to apply. I am warning that we are being manipulated into war for ulterior purposes. The truth about any war they fail to publicize is that the civilian death toll far exceeds the death of soldiers on a battlefield.

Another prominent Neocon worth mentioning is Fiona Hill, a former U.S. National Security Council official under Donald Trump. She was stuffed in there by the Neocons in the first quarter of 2017 as deputy assistant to the president and senior director for European and Russian affairs on his National Security Council staff. After Trump got rid of her for her constant warmongering, Hill returned to Brookings in April 2019, where she was a colleague of Victoria Nuland’s husband, David Kagan. Hill also has a very close working relationship with National Security Advisor John Bolton. At Bolton’s request, Hill agreed to stay on until mid-July, after which Tim Morrison would replace

her. As planned, Hill left the White House on July 15, ten days before the Trump– Zelensky telephone call, which was also encouraged by the Neocons to use against Trump. Hill has openly remarked that it was very difficult to maintain a consistent US-Russia policy under President Trump because she always advocated war with Russia.136 Hill even testified to impeach Trump because he would not agree to the Neocon war agenda. In November 2019, Hill testified in a closed-door deposition for ten hours during the impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump. Some Republicans, and many others, questioned the credibility of her testimony. Even Connie Mack IV questioned the veracity of her testimony in light of her agenda to create war with Russia, which Trump opposed. Mack even described Hill in the New Yorker as a “George Soros mole infiltrating the national security apparatus.” On May 31, 2020, Roger Stone also publicly stated: “This is very hard to believe, but I confirmed the facts again this morning. Soros has planted a mole infiltrating the national-security apparatus—a woman named Fiona Hill.”137

It gets better. While at the Brookings Institution, Hill worked closely with Igor Danchenko. In 2010, Danchenko, Hill, and Erica Downs co-authored a paper called, One Step Forward,

Two Steps Back? The Realities of a Rising China and Implications for Russia’s Energy Ambitions.

Hill was deeply involved in RussiaGate. She is the one who introduced Danchenko to Christopher Steele as well as the U.S.-based public-relations executive Charles Dolan Jr., who would later become one of Danchenko’s sources for the Steele dossier.138 You just can’t make up this stuff.

Politico asked Hill on February 28, 2022, just four days after the

war began, if she thought Vladimir Putin would use Russia’s nuclear weapons. Hill responded by saying, “Putin is increasingly operating emotionally and likely to use all the weapons at his disposal, including nuclear ones.” She stated without question, “Every time you think, ’No, [Putin] wouldn’t, would he?’ Well, yes, he would.”139 Hill went further, stating that she believes that World War III is in progress and that the invasion of Ukraine exemplifies that. In a later interview with Politico, Hill said the war is Europe’s third great power conflict in a little over a century, saying, “It’s the end of the existing world order. Our world is not going to be the same as it was before.” These planted Neocons insist that Putin is forcing them World War III. In truth, the West has already committed acts of war against Russia in the hope that Putin will retaliate.

122

Sputnik International. “Medvedev Tells Gazprom to Recover $2.4 Bln Gas Debt from Ukraine 2,” November 20, 2008. https://sputniknews.com/20081120/118434473.html. 123

Traynor, Ian, and Oksana Grytsenko. “Ukraine Suspends Talks on EU Trade Pact as Putin Wins Tug of War.” The Guardian, November 30, 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/21/ukraine-suspends-preparationseu-trade-pact. 124

BBC News. “Ukraine Protests after Yanukovych EU Deal Rejection.” BBC News, November 30, 2013. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-25162563.

125

CNBC. “Ukraine and EU Fail to Salvage Trade Pact.” CNBC, November 29, 2013. https://www.cnbc.com/2013/11/29/ukraine-and-eu-fail-to-salvage-tradepact.html. 126

Stern, By David. “Svoboda: The Rise of Ukraine’s Ultra-Nationalists.” BBC News, December 26, 2012. https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20824693. 127

Armstrong, Martin. “Ukraine & the Next Revolution.” Armstrong Economics | Research the Past to Predict the Future, January 9, 2018. https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/internationalnews/eastern_europe/ukraine-the-next-revolution/. 128

Wirtschaftsnachrichten, Deutsche. “Ukraine droht: Wir werden die Krim niemals aufgeben.” Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten, March 3, 2014. https://deutschewirtschafts-nachrichten.de/2014/03/03/ukraine-droht-wir-werden-die-krimniemals-aufgeben/. 129

whitehouse.gov. “FACT SHEET: U.S. Assistance to Ukraine,” July 2, 2015. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2014/11/21/fact-sheet-usassistance-ukraine. 130

ALL Gaming Exploits. “Victoria Nuland’s Admits Washington Has Spent $5 Billion to ‘Subvert Ukraine,’” February 9, 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=U2fYcHLouXY. 131

BBC News. “Ukraine Crisis: Transcript of Leaked Nuland-Pyatt Call.” BBC News, February 7, 2014. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957. 132

Markman, Jon. “Expanded NATO Will Shoot Billions To US Defense Contractors.” Forbes, May 23, 2022. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2022/05/23/expanded-nato-will-shootbillions-to-us-defense-contractors/?sh=189fc9073189. 133

President of Russia. “Joint News Conference Following a Normandy Format Summit,” December 10, 2019. http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62277. 134

Ibid.

135

Tass. “Merkel’s Confession about Minsk Agreements a Solid Bid for a Tribunal — Diplomat.” TASS, December 8, 2022. https://tass.com/politics/1547779. 136

Berry, Lynn. “Fiona Hill, a Nobody to Trump and Putin, Saw into Them Both.” AP NEWS, October 11, 2021. https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-fiona-hillvladimir-putin-russia-europe-f582f211aa82b69092954b7db94bbf4f.

137

Entous, Adam. “What Fiona Hill Learned in the White House.” The New Yorker, June 22, 2020. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/06/29/what-fiona-hilllearned-in-the-white-house. 138

Stanley-Becker, Isaac. “A Spin Doctor with Ties to Russia Allegedly Fed the Steele Dossier before Fighting to Discredit It.” Washington Post, November 6, 2021. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/11/06/charles-dolan-steeledossier-igor-danchenko-indictment/. 139

POLITICO. “‘Yes, He Would’: Fiona Hill on Putin and Nukes,” February 28, 2022. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/02/28/world-war-iii-already-there00012340.

The World Economy How does it really work?

M

y father was a lawyer and a lieutenant colonel under General Patton during World War II. When I was born, he began saving for my education and hoped that I would fulfill his dream of being an attorney with “and son” on the door. Yet I was headstrong, I suppose. I grew up with law discussions, yet I was just not interested in becoming a lawyer, but that’s a story for a biography. I loved history and was attracted to trading. I obtained a part-time job as a teenager working in a coin store in the 1960s. My father was taking us to Europe for the summer and

he bought a Volkswagen van to drive us around from Sweden to Italy. I wanted to have my own money so that meant getting a job.

Back then, coin stores were really trading in precious metals. Gold was illegal in bullion (bar) form until 1975. It was legal to trade in gold coins that were dated 1947 or before. The US$20 gold coins were traded by the roll back then. There was a big market when the end of silver coins arrived in 1964. That also produced the market in silver certificates.

The store I worked in was buying silver coins and silver certificates from the public. The certificates were bundled together in $5,000 lots and redeemed for silver from the Treasury. Silver coins were trading in $1,000 bags even on the futures exchange. I saw the rise and fall of markets and for whatever reason, I was smitten with the trading aspect of the free markets. My father had been to Europe with General Patton and was also a student of history. He wanted to take us to see the wonders of Europe when I was about 15 years old. That European trip taught me about currencies as we moved from country to country. That was an experience not available in the United States. We would have to exchange currency every time we crossed a border so I was learning foreign exchange at a young age.

For every purchase, you had to mentally calculate the dollar value of money. Value was a concept like a language in our minds. You not only thought in words but in terms of your home currency. This, I believe, introduced me to international finance. I remember one currency exchange broker tried to cheat me, assuming I was a stupid American kid. I was in ninth-grade history class when the teacher brought in a black and white 1937 film entitled The Toast of New York. It was about the notorious robber baron financier Jim Fisk (1835-1872), who tried to corner the gold market resulting in the Panic of 1869.

In the movie, Fisk turns to his girlfriend with the ticker tape saying gold just reached $162.50. At first, I thought it was just a movie. However, it bothered me. I could not see how gold could be $35 in the ‘60s yet $162.50 in 1869. Everything was supposed to be rising in a linear fashion thanks to inflation like technological progress. This challenged what I was being told in school, thereby beginning my skepticism I suppose.

That quote of $162.50 bothered me. I went to the library and there it was. The front page of the New York Times on September 25th, 1869 talked about the gold excitement and it quoted gold had reached $162.50. Suddenly, the linear world I was being taught came crashing down. I watched every market boom and bust during the ‘60s. The price of silver was rising, so President Kennedy terminated silver coins by executive order in 1963. The last year of silver coins was 1964.

What got me interested in coins was going to the bank and sorting through the quarters and keeping the silver and going back for the next roll. Yet at the coin store, I became mesmerized by being able to actually buy an ancient Roman coin. I bought my first one for $10 and was hooked from there onward. My curiosity about history led me to explore how ancient coins had survived. I then quickly noticed that just as the world was debasing their silver coins, replacing them with a white metal that was nickel and sometimes with a copper center, the same trend took place in ancient Rome.

During the third century AD, silver also vanished, and just as the United States issued quarters that were nickel on the surface and copper inside, the Romans did the exact same thing, except they created copper coins silver plated. History had repeated.

The Bretton Woods fixed exchange rate system was starting to crack with the silver being removed from the coinage in 1965. That was followed by the 1966 crash in the stock market, which was followed by the crash in collectibles. I watched rare coins drop in price even up to 50%. That was followed by another crash in the stock market in 1968, coinciding with the gold standard’s crack.

Suddenly, gold began to trade in London in 1968, and a twotier market emerged with the official price and the open market price. Then real estate crashed in 1970, and gold in the free market fell below the official price of $35. Nothing was exempt. Everything rose to the point that there was not enough one day, and then it would crash where nobody wanted it anymore. All markets displayed the same pattern. This sparked my curiosity. How did the world economy really work?

In school, I was now confronted with a paradox. When I went to physics class, I was told that nothing was random. Indeed, even Albert Einstein (1879-1955) said he did not believe that God was playing dice with the universe, hence his rejection of this idea of randomness. However, when I went to economics class, I was told the exact opposite: there was no regular business cycle, for it was all random. I came to see that economists had to claim there was no regularity to the business cycle in order to assert that they could simply manipulate the economy. That resulted in exalting an economist who could then create the perfect world void of recessions and depressions (i.e., Marx and Keynes). Still today, even Wikipedia declares:

“Thus business cycles are essentially random shocks that average out over time. Mainstream economists have built models of business cycles based the idea that they are caused by random shocks.”

Yet, Arthur Burns (1904-1987), who was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1970 to 1978 when Bretton Woods collapsed, concluded that the business cycle always wins. Then in 1978, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker (1927-2019), expressed what he called the The Rediscovery of the Business Cycle. He pointed out:

“[Not] much more than a decade ago, in what now seems a more innocent age, the ‘New Economics’ had become orthodoxy. Its basic tenet, repeated in similar words in speech after speech, in article after article, was described by one of its leaders as ‘the conviction that business cycles were not inevitable, that government policy could and should keep the economy close to a path of steady real growth at a constant target rate of unemployment.’

… By the early 1970s, the persistence of inflationary pressures, even in the face of mild recession, began to flash some danger signals; the responses of the economy to the twisting of the dials of monetary and fiscal policy no longer seemed quite so predictable. But it was not until the events of 1974 and 1975, when a recession sprung on an unsuspecting world with an intensity unmatched in the post-World War II period, that the lessons of the ‘New Economics’ were seriously challenged.”140

Randomness allows theories of manipulation that cannot be applied if there is an inherent order. Perhaps a light just went on. I was fighting against this idea that not only were the New York bankers incapable of manipulating the world markets, so were governments. There was obviously a self-interest at play in economics that began with Karl Marx who did not like the way the economy functioned. Marx had concluded that the government could control the economy if it would remove private ownership from individuals he saw as the source of greed. To control the

business cycle meant it was humanity that needed to be controlled, ending free will and ultimately our freedom of speech, movement, and even thought had to end. Hence, the bias in economics has been driven by the fact that to even have a job, an economist must claim he can steer the economy through thick and thin. The economist seemed to replace the ancient oracles who would advise the king on the fate of his actions. Indeed, King Croesus (c. 585– 546 BC) of Lydia, who created the first coins, proclaimed that the Oracle at Delphi was the most accurate. He consulted Oracle before attacking Persia. The historian Herodotus tells us she advised: “If you cross the river, a great empire will be destroyed.”

Croesus heard what he wanted to hear, as we do today. He believed the response was to his favor. Croesus crossed the river and attacked Cyrus the Great (600–530 BC), but it was his own empire that ultimately was destroyed by the Persians. Economists today seem to fulfill that same role of advising heads of state. However, suppose the economy is not random, and there is a hidden order to everything. In that case, it is impossible as both Marxism and Keynesianism have failed because we are connected the same as everything in a rainforest. Kill one species that is the food source for another, and you set off a ripple effect far beyond a simple one-dimension understanding. The complexity of the interconnections is far too great for any individual to contemplate.

Domestic management of the economy is not possible because external events will always overwhelm a domestic economy. For example, the United States was bankrupt in 1896, and J.P. Morgan (1837–1913) needed to arrange a $100 million gold loan to save the nation. After two World Wars, all the capital fled to the United States, and Britain lost its crown as the world’s financial capital, passing it to New York. If it were not for World War I and II, the United States would still be an emerging market. That was not something created by domestic political policy.

What I was confronted with was that absolutely everything in the universe had a cycle, just as we have night and day, the four seasons, and the ancient Maya discovered the precession of the equinoxes that took more than one generation to observe about 25,800 years (3x8.6). Nothing was exempt, and that included climate. Of course, the current climate zealots attributed everything to the Industrial Revolution and refuse to address cycles in a climate that has existed for countless millennia. They will never even address the climate prior to 1850. The rise of Rome took place during the Roman warming period from 250 BC to 400 AD. Creating a model that would actually worked, required data from all influences, for even war and climate altered the path of history. It became obvious that society expanded only during warm periods and declined during cold periods. The explanation was simple. During cold periods, crops failed, and malnutrition unfolded, which preceded then the cycle of plagues and disease. The discovery of the frozen woolly rhinoceros in 1772 near Vilui, Siberia, and then frozen mammoths in 1787 with grass still

in their stomachs set in motion two schools of thought I have called the catastrophist vs. uniformity. Since the evidence implied you could be eating lunch and suddenly find yourself frozen, only to be discovered by posterity. Suddenly, the climate was not linear. Science was turned on its head, and it was these major discoveries that truly contributed to the “Age of Enlightenment,” where there was a burst of knowledge erupting in every field of inquisition during the 18th century sparked by curiosity.

Civilization has expanded only during warming periods. It always contracts during global cooling periods. It is just that crops fail during cold periods and need the warmth of the sun to grow. Thus, the food supply has declined during global cooling.

Even during the American Revolution, John Adams (17351826) said that beneath the snow, after weeks of severe cold, the ground was frozen solid to a depth of two feet. They could not grow food. George Washington (1732-1799) camped at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, during the American Revolution, and due to cold and disease, nearly 2,000 troops died during the encampment. We were coming out of the Little Ice Age that had bottomed only about 100 years before. This is the standard the climate zealots measure against that this was normal. Sadly, climate change has been usurped for a political agenda to cover up the collapse of socialism that can no longer be sustained by borrowing endlessly with no intention of ever repaying any debt. Everything has a cycle, no matter what. Besides trying to deny the existence of cycles in Western culture, it is part of the

political process. Today, our politicians do not know how to run for office without bribing people and claiming they will reverse a recession in the middle of a global depression, claiming they will rob the rich and hand it to them. Many in politics no longer know how to run for office without resorting to Marxism and the denial of equal protection of the law for race, creed, gender, or class.

This is part of the problem. We are all connected in this world like a rainforest. If depression has engulfed the entire globe, no single nation can change that trend domestically, regardless of the promises made by a politician. Creating a one-world government with central planning to rule over everyone and everything will always fail, as did communism, for it rejects human nature that also provides that curiosity advance society. Today, climate change is used to argue

that the United Nations should be sovereign over all nations, which also speaks only to self-interest. They want to dominate the entire world because they do not comprehend how the world economy functions interlinked with nature. It is also being used to wage war on Russia to end its energy sales to Europe. Instead of trying to reduce the future to a single cause and effect, we need to open our eyes and realize that a complex adaptive dynamic network determines the future. The outcome is determined by a combination of trends, not by a single cause and effect. The same is true of climate change and disease. Perhaps the lesson is the Biblical forecast of Joseph warning the Pharoah that there will be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. He is describing the very nature of the business cycle, and the moral is to live with cycles and prepare for them, as preventing cycles is beyond our ability.

While the actual observation of how the economy functioned produced the realization that took shape as laissez faire economics, which is attributed to Jean-Baptiste Colbert (1619-1683). He was comptroller general of finance under King Louis XIV of France (1638–1715). When he asked

industrialists what the government could do to help their businesses, he responded, “Leave us alone.”

Even in the ocean, there were legends of a giant rogue wave that would take a ship down, typically envisioned as some mythical sea monster. Now we know that there are multiple frequencies in the ocean, and a giant rogue wave can appear because several waves merge together. That combination of waves produces a huge wave in amplitude that appears out of nowhere—the legendary rogue wave.

In 1995, there was the first measurement of such an event known as the Draupner Wave. It struck the Draupner oil platform in the North Sea off the coast of Norway on January 1st, 1995. This provided the very first opportunity to have actually measured such a wave carried out by engineer Paul Taylor. The platform survived this event, but the wave, measured with lasers, was 84 feet high (25.6 meters) in a sea where the average wave was 39 feet high (12 meters).

The world economy functions in the very same precise manner. Sometimes several trends line up all at the same time, and that produces a catastrophic wave of boom and bust. Economists look only domestically, and central banks follow John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) and try to manipulate society by raising and lowering interest rates. These theories have never been able to prevent a recession, nor have they been able to prevent economic booms. What made the Roaring ‘20s such a boom into 1929 was the capital flight from Europe because of World War I, as well as the innovation of the combustion engine with the expansion of the automobile. Neither a domestic central bank nor a politician has any external power outside the domestic economy to create or prevent an international trend.

My father saw I was going down a different path. He pushed me into computers, saying I had to do something. I did not want to finish law school. I entered computer engineering to please my father. Back then, you had to do the whole course from electrical engineering to programming.

The computer field was influenced by the TV show Star Trek. That show inspired many to investigate everything from NASA to artificial intelligence. Indeed, NASA had even named the first shuttle Enterprise and invited William Shatner (born 1931) to tour the lunar module before it took off to the Moon.

Star Trek inspired many, and even at Apple, Steve Jobs (19552011) repeatedly referenced Star Trek during product releases. A number of Apple products strongly resembled the aesthetics and functionality of Star Trek. The first cellular phones were flip phones, as in Star Trek.

While I went through the entire computer engineering course, once again, I was lured back to markets and trading. This time, however, I realized I could write a program to track the markets. That trip as a teenager to Europe opened my eyes to international trends, yet listening to the law also gave me a perspective of international law and the different legal systems and cultures. They stirred in my love of history, and the combination gave me an unorthodox perspective of combining fields of study. I had set out to employ Artificial Intelligence and created a program that would correlate with the entire world. I could see in my mind’s eye how everyone acted in their own selfinterest that made the whole function. Suddenly, I reached the same conclusion as Adam Smith (1723-1790) whose invisible hand concept was absolutely brilliant.

I understood that Smith’s book was a challenge to the French Physiocrats who took the position that wealth was agriculture. Even a man who shoed the horses for a farmer did not contribute to the wealth; he was a parasite living off the wealth created only by agriculture. Their theory sparked the age of empire building since the land was wealth creating the colonization of the world. Smith realized that the wealth of a nation is the combined productive capacity of its people and not merely its land mass.

Adam Smith realized that we all pursue our own talents and collectively create the economy, not by a ruler’s decree. Communism failed because it did not respect human nature and was obsessed with wealth that one person had more than another and took the position that was not fair. If someone can throw a football better than I can, they should not make me a quarterback and pay me the same as the guy who can do it. Likewise, I was good at trading financial markets, but I would be a danger if ordered to be a brain surgeon. I found that trading requires a natural instinct to observe everything around you and absorb that into a trading strategy. As in driving a car, you must watch everyone around you, and the most subtle move will indicate if that car will take some action. It turned out that my father’s shove into computers paid off. I had purchased numerous IBM XTs and linked them all together running in parallel—a sort of homemade supercomputer. By 1985, I opened my first office in Europe, London. From there, I opened in Geneva. Then I opened an office in Australia and Japan in 1988. I had emerged as the leading foreign exchange adviser because I was also American and not bound by politics.

A client who was the head of a major Swiss bank explained over lunch in Geneva that everyone used me because I did not care if the dollar went up or down. European analysts could not speak freely because the rise and fall of European currencies had become political since they all started from scratch after World War II. If a German said the Deutschemark would drop, that was a political statement, not a mere market forecast. No analyst could retain a job in Europe if he was truly independent.

What I discovered was that virtually, every computer program that had been created to forecast the financial markets and the world economy had failed. Why was my model succeeding where others failed? Suddenly, it became obvious. All of these failed models did so because they had hard-coded economic theories that did not work. Ideas like interest rates up, so sell stocks, were simply theories never supported by reality. I tested all the various theories and discovered none of them were correct. They appeared to be forged by a single event where they tried to attribute the event to an isolated cause and effect. This blinded society to the far more complex answer that it was always a true combination of events, never a single instance. Before 1929, as long as rates were rising, that demonstrated there was still a demand for money and hence bullish for the economy. People were not borrowing whenever interest rates declined because they saw no opportunity. Even just looking at the Trump Administration, the

Federal Reserve kept raising interest rates, and they called the rising stock market the Trump rally.

Here is a chart of the Call Money Rate taken from the New York Stock Exchange covering the period of 1876 to 1932. Note that the high saw one trade at 200% on December 18th, 1899, not 1929, which was the high in stocks. The WSJ viewed the 1899 panic as irrational, but it was not entirely without reason. The panic began the week of December 4th, 1899, as the bulls turned into a stampede following the Supreme Court decision that very day concerning a merger involving Addyston Pipe. The Court upheld the Rule of Reason doctrine regarding U.S. antitrust laws in Addyston Pipe and Steel Co. v. United States, 175 U.S. 211 (1899). That decision was seen as highly discretionary and dangerous to the economic boom that had been underway since 1896. The market saw this as discrimination against Industrial shares as we are witnessing against fossil fuel-related companies today. Suddenly the takeover boom of the 19th century was seen as high risk when mergers were in the hands of bureaucrats who were becoming highly socialistic and antifree markets. This was the Marxist theory that began to be applied by the Supreme Court and Congress. The stock market had never peaked with the same level of interest rates twice. The hard fast rules were not so hard and fast. Suddenly, the market theories turned to myth and served as mere confusion instead of guidelines.

The word had gotten out that I was incorporating physics into my model. I was called in by Western Mining in Australia and the board of directors ordered their CFO to meet with me because he lost a lot of money hedging. When we met, he naturally had his backup. He conceded our forecasts had consistently been correct. He argued that could have been luck. In frustration, I finally asked him what was his background since most CFOs that I had met typically came from engineering backgrounds.

He replied more subserviently because he lacked a degree in economics. He replied his background was nuclear physics. I said, “Great! Let’s look at this from the perspective of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.” His mouth dropped, and he instantly said, “Oh my God! There has to be a cycle!” I said, “You got it.” All things trend toward disorder. You can hold your arm up in the air creating a form of “order” but your arm will become so heavy you are forced to drop it to your side. More

specifically, the Second Law of Thermodynamics states that we can create order, but the system will inevitably move back to disorder. Left unchecked disorder increases over time. Energy disperses, and systems dissolve into chaos. Hence, every civilization has risen, but it then will collapse. It is simply inevitable.

In reality, entropy is actually defined as a measure of the disorder of the universe, on both a macro and a microscopic level. Hence, nothing can be sustained forever. We are born, which is the creation of order, but our body and all its elements seek to go back to a disorder that we call death on a personal level. The same is true of all economic systems. Others seem to have tried to follow in my footsteps using physics such as Black–Scholes attempting to create things based on random walk theories. They had taken a small slice

of historical data that led to false assumptions. They have failed because they have not fully understood that not only are we all connected in this world and an event in one nation will ripple through the entire system as in a rainforest, but they have failed to comprehend that in 6,000 years of history, it has repeated not because of technology, but because human nature has never changed. You simply need to see both sides of a market and that cannot be accomplished without centuries of data. I recreated the world monetary system from ancient times to be able to see authoritatively how the rise and fall of civilizations took place. Recreating the monetary system answered the question how did Rome fall? Like a 747 coming in gradually for a landing? Or was it just a sudden collapse like a waterfall?

Most people have no idea that much of history has been confirmed from the coinage that has survived the trials of centuries. For example, here is a coin of Brutus (85-42 BC) that brags he killed Caesar on the Ides of March (EID MAR) in 44 BC. Lacking newspapers in those days, the Romans used the reverse side of their coinage to announce great victories,

some events, or a new economic policy. As a result, history is not really subjective, it is also documented by the very coinage of the Roman Empire.

Here is a gold aureus confirming the marriage between Mark Antony (83-30 BC) and Octavian’s sister Octavia to form the political alliance. Then, here is a silver tetradrachm, which is a Greek denomination, that was retained in Egypt. This coin

shows that indeed Cleopatra (69-30 BC) has seduced Mark Antony in hopes of conquering Rome for the glory of Egypt.

Here we see two sestertii of the Roman Emperor Hadrian (117138 AD) announcing relief for orphans and the cancelation of all debts owed to the government for back taxes. Here is a sestertius of Titus (79-81 AD) announcing the opening of the Colosseum in 80 AD. Coins were clearly newspapers. Here is the reverse of a sestertius of Nero (54-68 AD) announcing the opening of the Port of Ostia. In fact, the Port of Ostia served as the model for Michael Angelo (1475-1564

AD) when he designed the Vatican. His idea was that, like Ostia, the Vatican would be the port for all Christians to come to Rome.

When the Roman Republic in 509 BC was overthrown, there were to be no kings. But the assassination of Caesar ushered in the Imperial period, terminating the age of the corrupt Republic. Emperors still pretended that they were elected every year, keeping the pretense of the Republic was still alive. They really created a monarchy that was indeed inherited through generations. The titles on their coinage pretended that they were elected each year. This allows an accurate means to date when a coin was struck since each year, they were consul. Thus, here is a coin of Domitian (81-96 AD) with the title COS XI, meaning he was elected consul for the 11th year in a row. Since the coinage of Rome could be dated to a specific year, I could run analysis tests to ascertain the metal content

annually. This enabled me to establish that the monetary system of Rome collapsed in the brief time span of just 8.6 years.

We all knew that Rome fell. That was a fact, which was certainly not in dispute. The questions that needed to be addressed were (1) how did it fall, and (2) how fast did the collapse take place? What became obvious was that the confidence of the people in their empire was shaken to its core.

Emperor Trajan Decius (249-251 AD) was killed in battle in 251 AD during the invasion of the Goths in the Battle of Abrittus in modern Razgrad, Bulgaria, which was the Roman province of Moesia Inferior during the summer of that year. The second was Emperor Valerian I (253-260 AD), who was captured by the Persians and turned into a royal slave. A relief still exists with him kneeling before the Persian king. When Valerian died, it was suggested they had him stuffed as a trophy. Once he was captured, confidence in the Roman Empire collapsed. It split into three parts, fearing that the centralized government was incapable of defending the people. In Europe, it became the Gallic Empire with France and Britain joining, and, in the East, it was Queen Zenobia (240-274 AD) who took Syria to Egypt. Imagine if the president of the United States was captured by China and turned into a slave, and the USA was incapable of rescuing him. That was the reality that the Roman people woke up to in the aftermath of 260 AD. Hoarding of coins led to the shortage of money supply and the debasement became excessive just to be able to pay the bills, which included the army.

The silver coinage confirmed Rome collapsed in just 8.6 years once Valerian was captured by the Persians in 260 AD. His successor, Gallienus (260-268 AD), his son, saw massive debasement of the silver coinage. However, even the gold aureus was reduced in weight falling from over 10 grams to under 1 gram, but not debased.

It took one Pi Cycle (31.4 years) from the bottom of the 3rd century AD collapse for a monetary reform to take place in 295 AD during the reign of Diocletian (284-305 AD). He reestablished the gold coinage with a weight of about 5.4 grams, a new bronze standard (Follis), and reintroduced silver coinage that was the equivalent of the coinage during the reign of Nero (54-68 AD).

The 3rd century AD was not unique. Curiously, when I compared the decline in the weight of the bronze coinage of the early Roman Republic, the Roman As was the primary

denomination. In 289 BC, the weight was ideally about 400 grams. By 269 BC, the Roman As fell to about 300 grams as Rome faced the First Punic War. Then by 240 BC, it declined modestly to roughly 275 grams, dropping to about 239 grams.

With the Second Punic War, we see a sharp decline to about 125 grams in 225 BC. Just 8 years later, the bronze coinage collapsed to 65 grams, and by 206 BC, it dropped to 34 grams. The decline continued dropping to 30 grams by 157 BC. By 100 BC, the Roman As fell to about 8 to 13 grams in the aftermath of the Third Punic War. This is about where it stood until the Civil War between Pompey and Caesar, who crossed the Rubicon in 49 BC, where bronze was rarely issued and the coinage is mostly gold or silver with an Æ As at best 13 grams. Fast forward to the reform of Diocletian in 295 AD, the bronze Follis began its decline in weight, which took about 52 years until there was another reform. Indeed, there is no monetary system that has ever been sustained. That is the lesson we must come to face in the years ahead.

This effort to reconstruct the entire monetary system of human civilization has raised the question: Was this waterfall-type collapse of the Roman monetary system unique? Or was this simply the nature of how empires, nations, and city-states collapse and die? Utilizing the coinage from ancient times into the Middle Ages, and modern times, we could see that indeed there was always a trend of debasement. It did not matter the century or the culture. The end result was always the same. Looking into the Roman Republic era and back to ancient Greece and even to Lydia where coinage was first invented (located in modern Turkey), we see the same pattern. The very first coins of Lydia began with a gold stater at a weight of 10.9 grams. As the war unfolded against Persia, the gold stater began to decline in weight to cover the expenses of the war, which are always inflationary. That reduction in weight represented an inflation rate of 25%.

Just before the Peloponnesian War, in the spring of 431 BC, Pericles (c 495-429BC) told the people that there were still 6,000 talents of coined silver remaining after the lavish construction of the Acropolis. An Attic talent was 26 kg or 26,000 grams or about 1512 tetradrachms making it over 9 million tetradrachms. Thucydides explained that treasury before the construction stood at 9700 talents. By the end of the war in 404 BC when Athens lost, their final emergency coinage was bronze silver plated. Once again, the cost of war ruined Athens.

Moving forward to the Byzantine Empire that followed the fall of the Roman Empire, once again, we see the debasement of the gold coinage here rather than silver. This was very dramatic. Gold was debased adding silver that by the time we come to 1092 AD, this marks the Great Monetary Crisis where what was once gold became effectively just silver coins. The coinage debasement was significant. Yet, what is often misunderstood and the root cause of sharp inflation during such periods is that the old coinage is then hoarded. Hence, the debased coinage drives out of circulation the higher quality coinage, which in turn forces the increased production of debased coinage to make up for the shrinkage in the money supply.

Using the coinage, I was able to reconstruct the world monetary system from ancient times, through the medieval period, and into modern times. We can even see the collapse in the silver coinage of Henry VIII (born 1491; king 1509-1547) and why he truly broke with the Pope and confiscated all the church’s property because he was financially broke and used religion as an excuse.

The French Revolution issued assignats (paper money) which moved through hyperinflation. They too confiscated both the property of the rich as well as that of the Catholic Church. I studied the rise and fall of all the various empires and came away with the same cause and effect, gross mismanagement by those in power. In truth, they always followed their own self-interest to retain power at all costs. Governments have often resorted to forced loans as an alternative in a financial crisis. Most people are clueless about

the German hyperinflation. They assume it was due to the government printing money. It was December 1922 when the government confiscated 10% of everyone’s property and handed them bonds as a forced loan to meet their reparation payments. Confidence among the people then completely collapsed at that moment. Anyone with cash converted it to foreign currency and the net result was the hyperinflation that unfolded in 1923.

Even in Japan, the emperors thought they had a clever way of creating money. The coinage of both China and Japan was simply declared to have value like paper money insofar as the coinage was bronze and at times debased to even just iron. The coinage had no intrinsic value, only the declared value of the state. In Japan, each emperor devalued the coinage of the previous emperor and only his coinage would

be valid. After pulling this trick on the people, they resorted to using the coins of China and bags of rice. Japan lost the right to issue its own currency for 600 years after 987 AD until 1587. It was the Meiji era (1868–1912) that restored international commerce in Japan.

Throughout all my work it became clear that the one consistent element as to why nations rise and fall is that human nature has never changed throughout the millennia. What jumped out from all the research was that fiscal mismanagement always took place because of the desire to retain power. It did not even matter what type of government there was, the end was always prescribed by self-interest.

When the reins of power are under stress, the rulers will do whatever they can to tighten their grip and that always reduces our freedom. Perhaps it is just human nature, but even an animal that is cornered will show its teeth and fight to defend itself. This is why any society with a permanent ruling class will always abuse that power for its own selfinterest bringing down the empire, nation, or city-state. As they say, when Rome fell, they were still laughing paying attention to the sports and games than to the fate of the nation. I have encountered the Waterfall Events that appeared in Rome in every society. This includes the fall of Byzantium and even the collapse of the great Venetian Empire that lasted for about 1,000 years from 697 AD until 1797 AD. Venice ended due to the collapse of a massive debt crisis. The fall of the Roman Republic and the people cheering Julius Caesar in 49 BC when he crossed the Rubicon was about a corrupt Senate and a debt crisis.

Even the modern Great Depression was caused mainly by the massive 1931 Sovereign Debt Crisis where foreign government bonds listed on the New York Stock Exchange simply

defaulted and went to zero. When you destroy the bond market, typically, capital in bonds vs. equities is 10:1. A stock market crash is good for a recession. A bond collapse is what creates a depression. It was a Waterfall Event that brought about the sudden and shocking collapse of communism in 1989. Thus, the Waterfall is a sharp collapse that will unfold in a market with a decline of generally greater than 50%. Yet, in a monetary system as a whole, it reflects the demise of the political state. We face this in the years ahead that will end our current monetary system in just 8.6 years. If we listen to the whispers that history tries to warn us from the past, perhaps we can actually learn collectively from society’s previous mistakes as we do individually. As long as we have a permanent ruling class, the fate of the nation will always be doomed to fail be it a dictatorship, monarchy, republic, or democracy. The leadership needs simply to be changed like a diaper on an infant for the same reason.

The U.S. Founding Fathers of America understood that problem, but they failed to include term limits. Even if the politicians are changed, it remains in danger from the bureaucrats that never leave. In truth, it does not appear that we can ever break this cycle of human nature that drives the business cycle. Marx and Keynes have tried to defeat the cycle and both have failed. Society simply repeats the same mistakes over and over again because it is incapable of learning from history and society’s past mistakes. An individual may stick their finger in the flame of a candle when they are a child learning the lesson not to do that again. But our collective societies are incapable of passing on knowledge from one generation to the next. Therein is our curse that history must repeat. Most computer models and economic theories have failed because of this total lack of historical data. This has prevented the ability to not just survive a great economic crash, but to understand how it unfolds.

Forecasting has been plagued by basic assumptions from theories of the political-economic financial world that expect the current trend to always stay in motion. They cannot understand the business cycle or that what goes up must also come crashing down. The only question: When?

Recreating the monetary system of the world through coinage has eliminated opinion and bias. Only then can we see that bullish trends take longer to build while bearish trends are always shorter in duration and much more violent. It does not matter the century, culture, or country. The result is always the same because we are all human despite race or

language. It takes people longer to trust in something or someone, but we tend to lose that confidence instantly. Hence, bear markets are short and much more violent.

When you research to discover what makes things tick instead of trying to force the world to function as you think it should, only then will you discover the reality. That was the objective of my computer that the New York bankers were not very fond of, for they wanted to bribe their way to their “guaranteed trades.” The problem with that strategy is rather straightforward—you abandon risk management because you assume you have it all rigged. Thanks to my father who pushed me into computer engineering, I was able to combine that skill with my passion for history and my curiosity to try to figure out how it all really worked. Unless you have been a trader, you will never see how panic can quickly grip a market in the blink of an eye.

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Volcker, Paul. The Rediscovery of the Business Cycle. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, 1978.

Understanding Time

T

ime is often considered the 4th dimension in physics. Some believe that time isn’t a dimension at all because it moves only forward and is a quality needed for motion. However, some theorize that it is possible that you could also move back in time. One thing for certain is that time prevents chaos if everything were to be happening simultaneously. However, Einstein wrote a letter to the family of Michele Angelo Besso (1873–1955), the Swiss/Italian engineer, after Besso’s death. Although Besso had preceded him in death, Einstein expressed that it was of no consequence, “for us physicists believe the separation

between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.” The theoretical underpinnings of time travel actually date back to 1905, when Albert Einstein explained his special theory of relativity where space and time are intimately linked. Time is a distinct and important element in forecasting for it is one thing to say that the United States will fall like Rome, which is inevitable, yet it is entirely different to address the question of when. It is very clear that everything in the universe complies with the Second Law of Thermodynamics whereby every system born from disorder and rises to an orderly state, will then collapse and once again seek to return to disorder. Everything functions in a cyclical manner from our planet moving around the sun, our solar system moving within our galaxy, and our galaxy revolving around yet a mysterious center point in the universe. Then it appears that perhaps the universe may be expanding currently, yet it might be more like a rubber band reaching a limit and then it snaps back to its origin (disorder) before it begins all over again. What is clear, we too are subservient to time. On Earth, we are born, we live, and then we die— completing the cycle of life. What we are exploring is the measurement of time in our dimension. Is it possible that time is also finite, insofar as it takes a simple standard amount of time for some news to filter through society in order to produce a change? Communism collapsed in 1989 beginning with Tiananmen Square on June 4th and 5th, 1989 (1989.427) in China followed by the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th, 1989 (1989.857), which was 22 weeks and 3 days later. The birth of the Roman

Republic took place in 509 BC, and there too, Democracy was born in Athens about the same amount of time in 50 8BC or about 23 weeks later. When communism fell in 1989, the pundits were all attributing the event to our modern communications so somehow the Germans in East Berlin were moved to follow the same trend. That was just nonsense and the typical opinion of the talking heads on TV. The real question was simply: How long does it take for news within a society to spread and impact a majority? That seems to be from 8 to 23 weeks in general regardless of the century. A ship from Rome brought the news to Athens in less than one week. Information can influence trends, but if it takes one day or one week to travel, is not the question. Indeed, when Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon on January 10th, 49 BC, invading Italy. It only took Pompey about 8.6 weeks to flee Italy to Macedonia. There too, the news of the crossing of the Rubicon filtered through Italy rapidly and the people supported Caesar against the corrupt Senate led by Cato the Younger (95-46 BC).

When I was conducting research in the Firestone Library at Princeton University, I discovered an article in the Wall Street Journal from April 1907 listing the Financial Panics in history starting with 1683. I took the entire period of 224 years and divided it by the number of panics, 26, and that produced 8.6153. I had just assumed it was an average business cycle that I did not expect to work to any degree of certain accuracy. There was no one more surprised than me. This is what I mean about discoveries. They are not always something you set out expecting to fund or to prove a theory. Even Columbus’ discovery of America was by mistake. When the Greeks believed that Earth was round, not flat, by about 240 BC Eratosthenes (c. 276 BC–195/194 BC) had calculated

the circumference of the Earth to be about 250,000 stadia, which was between 24,000 miles and about 29,000 miles. However, we do not know the correct measurement of a stadia (stadium). Columbus relied upon the calculations of the earth from Ptolemy who influenced Strabo stating that it was only 70,000 stadia, making India reachable by sailing West. Posidonius came up with a value for Earth’s circumference of about 18,000 miles, nearly 7,000 miles too small. Hence, Christopher Columbus called the natives in America “Indians” because that is where he was trying to get to. Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512) figured out Columbus’ error, and then the new continent was named after him—America, not Columbus. America became also known as the New World.

In truth, most discoveries are just unexpected events. Someone who starts with a theory and then tries to prove it often ignores the very facts that disprove the actual theory. Consequently, exploring time established that there was in fact a rhythm to everything in the universe right down to the

sequence of waves in the ocean with the time between them.

I then sought to measure time itself, and what emerged was ascertaining that final question of when. The forecasts that have come from this understanding of time proved to be accurate beyond belief. On October 12th, 2009, the New Yorker published a review of this work entitled The Secret Cycle by Nick Paumgarten. He noted that the major forecasts I had put out from this understanding of time were correct from the 1987 Crash even forecasting it to the very day. It had also forecast the major high in Japan in 1989, and the peak in the markets to the day on July 20th, 1998, which was followed by the 1998 Russian Financial Market Crash and the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management forcing the first bailout of a hedge fund by the Federal Reserve.

Even Bloomberg News, which has never been a supporter of me in this battle against the “Club” that buys their services, begrudgingly had to acknowledge all the correct forecasts. Some have suggested that they prefer to ignore our forecasts for they will interfere with their clients who are the “Club” trading against everyone else.

On December 3rd, 2013, I published the analysis from our computer model warning that it was targeting Ukraine as the “hot spot” where this risk of World War III could emerge. However, 2023 appears to be the critical target for global civil unrest and political instability. It also became an important target for both Ukraine and Russia.

While I have traced this business cycle throughout history, noting each wave, it was Wave #932 that saw so many form the precise events to the day. The low in the US share market was April 1st, 1994, the high was on July 20th, 1998 intermixed with the move in the dollar when it made its low in June 1997 and the Asian currency crisis of July that year. However, the Pi target (3.14 years from peak) marked precisely the day of the 9/11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center—2001.69 (365 * .69). That event changed our world dramatically. Then 2002 marked the resumption of the uptrend in the stock market after the Dot.com Bubble that peaked the week of March 6th, 2000.

Of course, we were looking at a shift in capital flows from emerging markets in Asia and Russia that set off a contagion resulting in a massive liquidity crisis following 1998. The SE Asian markets collapsed into September 2000. Global markets were all collapsing from 1998 because the “Club” lost a fortune on Russia. When that manipulation failed, they had to start selling everything everywhere to raise cash to cover their losses in Russia. Even Bill Browder admitted to losing 90% of his fund or $900 million. Even the collapse in the Japanese yen unfolded because of the liquidity crisis resulting from Russian losses as the “Club” members began selling everything everywhere to raise money.

The July 20th, 1998 high not only marked the beginning of the Long-Term Capital Management Crisis forcing the Federal Reserve to step in for the first time to bail out a hedge fund, but it also marked the start of the euro that was officially set to launch January 1st, 1999. The ECM bottom in 2002 was the introduction of the euro paper currency. But it also marked the start of the U.S. share market rally, whereas the German DAX Index declined into March 2003. Numerous events took place with this model, which proves people who refuse to accept that time can be quantified hold predetermined views, like those who refuse to accept that the Earth is not flat. All they do is try to disparage the messenger because they cannot explain why the message is wrong. They will no doubt do that to me. These are the same

types of people who burned alive Giordano Bruno (15481600) for saying the earth revolved around the sun instead of the sun revolving around the Earth. Predetermined prejudice is the hallmark of ignorance.

The wave that peaked in 1929.75 did more than just pick the 1929 Crash or the first coordinated central bank intervention of 1927, the massive Sovereign Debt Default of 1931, the July low of 1932 in the U.S. stock market, and the 1934 Roosevelt devaluation of the dollar. It also produced the Pi target of 1932.89, marking the day President Paul von Hindenburg offered Adolf Hitler the chancellorship. Hitler turned it down when he refused to accept Hindenburg’s stipulations to run a coalition cabinet and respect the decrees enacted by the previous chancellor. The bottom of that wave was January 18th, 1934 (1934.05), which was the turning point for the Roosevelt era, the confiscation of gold, and the devaluation of the dollar. U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Gold Reserve Act, which was the culmination of Roosevelt’s controversial gold program that month. Among other things, the act transferred ownership of all monetary gold in the United States to the U.S. Treasury and prohibited the Treasury and financial institutions from redeeming dollars for gold. This officially devalued the

U.S. dollar in relation to gold by 59% compared to the value set by the Gold Act of 1900. While Hitler came to power in 1933, as did Roosevelt, Mao Zedong (1893-1976) instituted his land reform in 1933, and the Long March took place in 1934. The Great Depression produced a worldwide political change, and in Russia, Stalin introduced his Five-Year Plan as he took food from Ukraine, causing millions to starve to deal with the Russian Famine of 1932-1933.

The wave that peaked in 1989.95 not only picked the high in the Japanese market in December 1989, but it also marked the fall of Marx’s communism in both China and Russia. The riots in China in Tiananmen Square on June 3-4, 1989, to the fall of the Berlin Wall by November 9th, 1989, was a major geopolitical event. It was also on November 20th, 1990, when they staged a coup to force Margaret Thatcher out of office all because they wanted to join the euro.

In 1991, NATO invited Russia to join as a member. The hardliners saw that as the surrender of Russia to the United States. Gorbachev went on holiday to Crimea on August 4th, 1991, and on the 18th, they staged their coup surrounding Gorbachev’s dacha. Yeltsin became President of Russia. In Europe, 1992.096 marked the Maastricht Treaty, and the Pi target (1993.091) marked the European Rate Mechanism Crisis. The crisis continued the collapse of the British pound, forcing it to withdraw, ending Britain joining the euro and making George Soros famous as the man who broke the Bank of England. That became known as Black Wednesday on September 16th, 1992. They staged their coup to force Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013) from power ending her term on November 28th, 1990.

Wave #933 peaked on 2007.15, which marked the very day of the high in the Schiller Real Estate Index. That was followed by the collapse of the Mortgage Back real estate crisis. Some called it “Armstrong’s revenge,” but putting me in prison did not prevent the model from working. What has emerged over my studies is that the business cycle is defined. Events change, suggesting that all trends last only for a specific amount of time before we get tired and look for the next opportunity. The Pi target 2010.29 (April 16th, 2010) marked the very day Greece applied for IMF aid. This began the Euro Crisis, starting the EU debt crisis. Nick Paumgarten wrote in the New Yorker back in 2009 about my writings before quoting me after the October 1987 crash: “Never did I expect this to work on such a precise time level.” He later wrote an essay called Understanding the Real Economy. “It made no sense. I personally assumed it was just a fluke. This took place on the minor halfway point up the first leg of the 8.6-year cycle, at 2.15 years.” Nick did his research on my past writings and discovered:

“[Mr. Armstrong] was messing around with numbers and realized that 8.6 years was exactly three thousand one hundred and forty-one days: 3,141, the number pi times a thousand. The cycle mystery had deepened. If pi was essential to the physical world, perhaps it somehow governed the markets, or the fluctuations in human behavior and mood that manifested themselves in the markets. It was, after all, the magic number associated with the swing of a pendulum, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, and the Great Pyramid at Giza.”

The New Yorker Magazine called this discovery the Secret Cycle. The forecasts covered the great deflation, where the dollar rose to an all-time high, bringing the British pound crashing down to $1.03 in 1985, followed by the 1987 Crash my model had forecast even to the day.

Barron’s wrote in its June 25th, 2011 edition that my model was calling for the stock market to make new highs and they

found that forecast laughable, if not outrageous, at the time. It turned out to be correct. The importance of understanding how the world truly functions is far beyond anyone’s personal opinion. We are all connected in this world, and what impacts one nation ripples through and influences the entire globe. What became abundantly clear was that the cycle I discovered was not just simply some one-dimensional perspective. The more I explored, the greater the accuracy surfaced. It was far more complex than reducing it to some simple cause and effect.

In addition, many people refuse to believe in a business cycle because they think it deprives them of free will. One will hear this typical ignorance, for they fail to comprehend the complexity. We individually have our own cycle; as we move through life, we learn from our past mistakes, unlike societies. We may have bought the high in one cycle, and then the

next comes around, and you are wiser this time. The cycle never engulfs everyone. There are always people on both sides—the bull vs. the bear. As we progress through life, we respond based on our personal experiences. Collectively, society does not learn from past mistakes; only individuals do.

I have learned that there is order hidden behind the facade of randomness, which is chaos theory. Unfortunately, most people cannot see the complexity and will always try to reduce an event to that single explanation. However, in studying the financial markets, I saw the same pattern of formations constantly reappearing, regardless of the fundamental causes. As I said, they teach you nothing is random in physics class. Yet, in economics, everything is random, so the state can justify regulating our behavior to create a utopia. As a computer programmer, I quickly observed that creating a random number generator was impossible. Oh, some devices generate numbers that claim to be truly random yet are not. They rely on what they think are unpredictable

processes like thermal or atmospheric noise, which is also not random and will devolve into a cycle like everything else. They believe this is better than a human-defined pattern that is never random. It is impossible to program a random number generator by any such deterministic algorithm. Therein lies the hidden key. No matter what, a cycle will always emerge. Indeed, the 20th century will be remembered for four scientific revolutions: Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Chaos, and Fractal Geometry. The father of chaos theory is Edward Norton Lorenz (1917–2008), an American mathematician and meteorologist. Ed became “the” pioneer in what is known as chaos theory. He was a professor at MIT who was the first to recognize chaotic behavior in the mathematical modeling of weather systems.

During the 1950s, Lorenz observed a cyclical non-linear nature to weather, yet the field relied upon linear statistical models in meteorology to forecast the weather. It was like trying to measure the circumference of a circle with a straight-edge ruler. His work on the topic culminated in the publication of his 1963 paper Deterministic Non-periodic Flow in the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences, and with it, the foundation of chaos theory. During the early 1960s, Lorenz had access to large mainframe computers that were the size of a room. He was running what he thought would be random numbers and began to observe there was a duality of a hidden repetitive nature. He graphed the numbers derived from his study of convection rolls in the atmosphere. What emerged has been perhaps one of the most important discoveries in modern times. That confirms the regularity of the business cycle, but most economists were also blind and did not see the complexity hidden in the statistics. This illustration of his discovery is known as the Lorenz strange attractor what people assumed was just random weather statistics is truly an incredibly important realization that was first reported in 1963. Lorenz discovered a strange attractor during an attempt to create a model of weather patterns. The actual experiment was an attempt to model the planet’s atmospheric dynamics. It involved a truncated model of the Navier-Stokes equations. It is a visual example of a non-linear dynamic system corresponding to long-term behavior in a cyclical manner. It revealed a hidden order we cannot otherwise observe. That was in the midst of what appeared to be random numbers to the naked eye. It also proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that the entire climate change agenda is once more the assumption that it is just random and that

we have altered the course of a nation without any hard proof of that theory.

Then Lorenz plotted a three-dimensional dynamical system that exhibits chaotic flow, noted for its interesting shape revolving around two invisible strange points in space-time we call strange attractors. The map shows how the state of a dynamical system with three variables of a three-dimensional system evolves over the fourth dimension—time—in a complex pattern. I conducted similar tests with market data, and a striking hidden order appeared.

Benoit Mandelbrot (1924-2010) discovered fractal geometry, the term he coined in 1975 to describe these structures of a repetitive pattern. He became famous for this illustration of his Mandelbrot Set. However, he failed to understand the economy and concluded that in his Misbehavior of Markets, he stated that stock prices probably aren’t predictable in any useful sense of the term. While I do not disagree that his methodology is not helpful in forecasting financial markets or the economy, the global economy’s complexity remains shrouded from the site of the human eye. Nevertheless, what he did not comprehend was time. In that sense, markets are indeed fractal with the same patterns replicating themselves through all time levels from intraday, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly, or even at the century level.

In other words, here is a visualization of duality and what appears to be randomness (chaos). Yet, simultaneously there is a broader clear pattern of order. The same hidden order masked by randomness prevails within the world economy, allowing the illusion that economists can control it. Hence, we each retain our individual free will, yet collectively society produced patterns, which is why people have come to see that history repeats. Therefore, Time presents a whole new field of study whereby mathematics merges with several disciplines, including meteorology, physics, engineering, economics, biology, and philosophy. My discovery of what I have called the Economic Confidence Model actually incorporates everything from weather to war. One cannot extract a single element any more than the elimination of a single species in a rainforest will have a ripple effect that is so complex it masks itself from the naked eye. What we must open our eyes to is that nothing is purely random. Hurricanes are types of tropical storms that form in

the southern Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, and the eastern Pacific Ocean. They do not form randomly in the artic. As my mother always used to say, there is a time and place for everything. Until we shed this notion of randomness that allows the government to claim its power to manipulate society and our behavior, we will never advance to the next stage of knowledge. We must grasp that absolutely everything is combined in that cycle of 8.6 years. You cannot extract war, climate, or even events of disease and war. The North turned cold and drove the people to invade the south, destroying most civilizations except the Egyptians during the Bronze Age, as Eric Cline pointed out in his classic work 1177 BC The Year Civilization Collapsed. The droughts in Asia also sent the Huns off to invade Europe. Each of these separate disciplines has impacted and combined to produce the whole.

Everything has a cycle, including the rise and fall of empires, nations, and city-states. Even population growth is not linear. The standard analysis that leads to wrong forecasts is the basic linear assumption that whatever trend is in motion will

remain in motion. Hence, the ‘70s were predicting a new Ice Age.

What I have learned from 50 years or so of research trying to figure out what makes the world tick is that we are all in this together. What happens in Europe cannot be isolated from the rest of the world or any region. Even the sanctions imposed by the Biden Administration on Russia came back and unleashed a tremendous wave of inflation from energy to fertilizer, creating even food price hikes. Then Joe Biden blamed Putin for the inflation he created.

There is a clash between the research of Adam Smith’s (17231790) invisible hand and Karl Marx’s (1818-1883) beliefs. Marx argued that the world had to be changed to function as he believed, which led to the death of over 200 million who died defending their freedom. In the end, even John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) spent his life trying to claim Smith was wrong and that the state possessed the power to manipulate the economy like Marx, for the government had the power to

eliminate depressions and recessions. Keynes finally came to see that the state cannot control society.

Governments and their central banks have no power to control and manipulate the economy or society and historically have tended to be the cause of major economic upheavals often. Communism collapsed because it was simply the suppression of humanity, and without the free thinking of people, they would never stumble into a new discovery. Without that individual who is free to explore, society will never advance.

If I was not free to explore driven by my own curiosity, I would never have understood that time could be studied. The historian William Manchester (1922–2004) wrote in The Last Lion about Winston Churchill: “Studies at the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota have found that teachers smile on children with high IQs and frown upon those with creative minds. Intelligent but uncreative students accept conformity, never rebel, and complete their assignments with dispatch and to perfection. The creative child, on the other hand, is manipulative, imaginative, and intuitive. He is likely to harass the teacher. He is regarded as wild, naughty, silly, undependable, lacking in seriousness or even promise. His behavior is distracting; he doesn’t seem to be trying; he gives unique answers to banal questions, touching off laughter among the other children. E. Paul Torrance of Minnesota found that 70 percent of pupils rated high in creativity were rejected by teachers picking a special class for the intellectually gifted. The Goertzels concluded that a Stanford study of genius, under which teachers selected bright children, would have excluded Churchill, Edison, Picasso, and Mark Twain.”141

Marxism failed because it sought to create uniformity when, in fact, all creativity comes from non-conformists. In 1895, Albert Einstein’s teacher said to his father: “It doesn’t matter what he does; he will never amount to anything.” We must understand not only the flow of time and its impact on the whole world, but we must also realize that humanity is a part of the cycle. Only four U.S. presidents have won just over 60% since 1900—FDR, Johnson, Harding, and Nixon. Obama won 51.1% of the popular vote compared to

Romney’s 47.2% in 2012, yet he pretended to have a mandate; a 1.1% majority is not a mandate. Joe Biden won with only 51.3%. He tried to impose the philosophy of 50% upon the rest by force. Even Churchill warned in 1947: “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.” Anyone who has read Plato’s Republic knows that Greek philosophers were highly suspicious of democracy. President Joe Biden has driven a spike through the very heart of democracy. With a majority of just 1.3%, he has drastically altered America’s foundational beliefs and culture. Claiming 1.3% is a mandate to force the philosophy of one group upon another is precisely why Plato and others were against democracy.

In politics, the vast majority in the United States will vote for their respective party no matter what happens. As a result, less than 10% of the population decides who will be president.

That sadly reflects the extent of the non-conformists who will actually vote based on the issues rather than party allegiance. Indeed, because only four presidents since 1900 were elected with greater than 60% of the popular vote, therein lies the problem of democracy—a thin majority oppressed the minority. Suppressing that minority and demanding conformity, as was the case under Marxism, produced the worst economic tragedy in human history and the death of more than 200 million people, which at the time was 12.5% of the entire world population. Still, there are those demanding the very same result claiming the economy lacks “fairness” with the same issue of exploiting classes based on wealth. This only fuels the demise of the United States, and it is precisely why Plato warned about the dangers of democracy. We actually live in republics with representatives who vote, not the people. Republics are inherently far more corrupt, for representatives have been bribed throughout history. The bribery was so extensive during the Roman Republic election of 53 BC that interest rates virtually doubled. Our political systems can only survive with a minimum vote requirement of two-thirds and term limits with one-time in and out, thereby ending career politicians. Otherwise, democracy merely devolves into tyranny that inspires rebellion when one side claims it has the right to oppress the opposition, as we are witnessing once again.

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Manchester, William, 1922-2004. Boston :Little, Brown, 19832012. 159.

The Last Lion,

Winston Spencer Churchill.

Artificial Intelligence

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he big push into Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been the assumption that our brain is a supercomputer with countless neural connections. Thus, they assumed creating a neural net and dumping in all the data, shaking vigorously, and stirring robustly would create the answer to things we cannot imagine. This spawned the idea that a computer would one day come alive, for it was just a question of neural connections.

Many movies have been created on this theme, from the Terminator to the Matrix. It is always the evolution of a machine that suddenly wants to control or wipe out humanity because we deserve it. These theories never bothered even to consider how one brain with the same number of connections is capable of painting a portrait and another cannot draw a circle. There was always something more to human consciousness than simply a bunch of neural connections. I find it astonishing that those who seek to impose their economic theories upon the world claim this is the Fourth Industrial Revolution. They argue that they alone should dictate our future by regulating all development in the field of AI that they neither understand nor know how to program. Comprehending real AI programming presents tremendous misconceptions and false theories that are great plots for movies. These are dreams of control freaks, but they are hopelessly impossible as they are lost in the crevasses of their own minds.

I had talent in two fields and curiosity about what made the world tick. I could see that the world was not moved by a single cause and effect, but by the sum of all the fears and hopes of everyone connected. The world functions not by a grand plan of the elite but by every person acting in their own self-interest, just like an animal cornered in a fight to survive. My approach was entirely different. I sought to teach the computer how I would analyze and create the pathways to accomplish that goal rather than creating a neural net and praying for the best to appear. I also knew that for as much as things change over the centuries, they remain very much the same because human nature never changes. I never hard-coded any rules. I allowed my computer to explore the world and return with its global observations

fulfilling my sense of curiosity. In that way, it ended up teaching me things that, in the end, made logical sense. Suddenly, things that were out of the reach of the individual to observe globally became self-evident. The world economy is truly a dynamic, complex network that can never be reduced to a single cause and effect. This is always why history repeats, and it is impossible to create a utopia as Karl Marx attempted when you cannot see the forest because you are focusing on a single tree. Klaus Schwab (born 1938) and his World Economic Forum’s view of the future and Artificial Intelligence is seriously flawed. That is understandable from the standpoint that they take a view on a subject with no direct knowledge of the subject or how to program. That is like a man writing a book on how it feels to give birth. Schwab argues that fusing the political, physical, digital, and biological worlds will have a transformative impact on every facet of human existence. He insists that this will range from how we live our lives, work, the reconfiguration of economic models, and the products we sell. I believe his self-delusion is motivated by the power to extend his life indefinitely to defeat the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Of course, Schwab’s hero in human technology is Yuval Noah Harari (born 1976), who claims people are hackable animals that have not inspired many reviews. This desire to control humanity and herd us like cattle impresses Schwab, who perhaps thinks he can pull off Marxism without the revolution if we are just obedient. Meanwhile, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla dreams of putting chips in every pill that confirms to a central database that you took his latest creation for endless profits while enjoying absolute immunity from any harm. If you buy a car that blows up when you turn it on and it is a known flaw, even one out of a hundred, why bother to fix it if they can never be held accountable? Schwab’s Fourth Industrial Revolution is seriously flawed because he does not understand real AI programming. He also failed to understand that Marxism failed before because it terminated curiosity. Curiosity derived from free thinking is the mother of all creation. We will never discover anything unless we are curious. Schwab is alleged to be a control

freak, so it would be understandable why Marxism is attractive to him.

Many in programming wrongly thought that if you just created a neural net and threw in all the data, it would suddenly come alive and cure cancer. That was the dream of IBM with Watson. However, its famous Jeopardy win was not original thought or analysis at all. It could just look up facts faster, but it did not know them.

Watson’s search function is not real AI. Still, IBM believed that Watson would discover answers where humans failed. Instead, it turned out that the AI created by this method was simply a search tool lacking any real thought or ability to discover something totally new without that indescribable curiosity that defines everything about us as a species.

There is something more to us than just a neural net. Our consciousness does not simply emerge because of all the connections in our brains. Neural nets try to mimic the brain and look upon us as simply a biological lifeform no different from a rodent with inherent instincts without actually understanding there is something much deeper. Take the night you suddenly fell in love with your partner. You were out to dinner, and your unconscious mind actually recorded everything—the place, the food, the music, what they wore. You consciously are not actually noticing all these variables. However, years later, you hear that song, taste that same food, or revisit the place. Suddenly, without even trying to remember, the event is relived. You can close your eyes and see the event as if it were a recorded movie. Our brain is actually recording everything without us even trying or knowing. Creating a neural net and dumping all this information in there does not recreate that ability.

My approach to creating an AI computer was the opposite. I never believed that just throwing in all the information and shaking it vigorously would suddenly make it come alive, as in the Terminator. I did not believe in the idea that we are only the sum of our neurons. I spent a lot of time self-analyzing how I would trade and what I would look at in the world financial markets since I was one of the first international hedge fund managers. I had to understand how the mind actually functioned both on the conscious and unconscious levels. Only then did I comprehend that curiosity was the element behind the discovery. There was no way to create that level of curiosity in a machine; creativity would not surface by shaking or stirring the data.

The vast majority of systems people call AI are nothing more than expert systems that are simply search engines that dazzle the non-programmer. They do not even make an effort to duplicate the human nonlinear thought process. Instead, they are simply designed to mimic our linear

decision-making process by reducing our judgments to a set of rules. More sophisticated expert systems write their own rules based on a method known as “induction.” For example, one could take every loan ever given at a bank using all the credit checks performed and data that was gathered that led to a decision. All this information could be fed into a computer (induction), and a program could easily sort through all the facts and come out with a set of rules, such as defining a loan ratio to net worth: IF LOAN REQUEST = 20% OF NET WORTH, THEN GRANT THE LOAN. These methods of processing data based on predefined rules are expert systems. In many industries, expert systems can vastly increase productivity and even replace linear decisionmaking to a large extent. Nonetheless, expert systems are rule-based programs that in no way attempt to duplicate the mind itself but merely the end result. If new events emerge, such as war, that did not take place during the time period used to create the rules, then the expert system would fail to adapt to new conditions.

Neural networks attempt to create a synthetic version of the human brain but cannot recreate our minds where we even dream. Neural networks were the great hope for true AI since they attempted to simulate biological intelligence. One does not program a neural network; it is trained like a child. There are no rules as in an expert system, but they have failed to create curiosity, and they certainly do not dream where we suddenly wake up in the middle of the night with the answer to a problem that was bothering us. This is why people like Klaus Schwab want to implant chips into the brains of the population for absolute control. But there is no evidence to date that any neural net will ever evolve and dream.

A cockroach knows when it is in danger and will run for its life. It sees, hears, and feels, and its brain processes data on a variety of senses. Its capacity to remember also exists; some species recognize their kin and even take care of a parent. My own dog remembers everything and even anticipates where I am going. When we go for a walk, she knows where she lives. These are qualities that present serious obstacles to creating military robots.

There is a rising ethical concern about creating autonomous military robotics. What is the need to address risk and ethics in the field? Will it just kill any human? Yes, we could equip a digital badge on a uniform that the robot could then distinguish friend from foe. So far, autonomous robots are not lethal and are being used more for reconnaissance, such as this robot dog.

Indeed, sometimes you discover something by mistake or certainly not based on a predetermined theory. Marie Currie (1867-1934) coined the phrase “radioactivity,” which she discovered giving birth to the atomic age. She did not expect what she discovered in advance. Penicillin was discovered by accident. In 1928, Dr. Alexander Fleming had just returned from a holiday to find mold growing on a petri dish of staphylococcus bacteria. When he looked closer, he noticed the mold appeared to be preventing the bacteria around it from growing. Fleming then identified that the mold produced a selfdefense chemical that could kill bacteria. This was an amazing discovery that no computer could accomplish absent of curiosity and the opportunity. Discoveries such as these examples are not things AI can create by a neural net. To accomplish the ability of AI to discover anything necessitated that I had to teach my

computer how I would actually analyze. I could not impose any predetermined rules such as interest rates up and stocks down to fashion human curiosity. Only then could it discover things on its own, lacking the human attribute of curiosity.

The Thinking Process

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named the computer I created using Artificial Intelligence —Socrates. The legend goes that Socrates was put on trial and sentenced to death for his crime because he knew too much. The Oracle of Delphi pronounced that Socrates was the smartest man in all of Greece when a friend asked. When this friend informed Socrates of that decree the Oracle had named him as the smartest man in all of Greece, he disbelieved that forecast and tried to prove the Oracle wrong. In the process that followed, Socrates discovered that he was in fact the smartest man in all of Greece. Yet Socrates did not understand that he saw the world dynamically connecting the dots all around him. The majority of people see the world only linearly and always attempt to reduce everything to a

single cause and effect. It is always this linear thinking of trying to reduce the world to a single cause, like fossil fuels and climate change, that prevents most people from connecting the dots and exploring the world around them. In truth, they cannot see the forest because they are staring at a single tree.

Ironically, because Socrates failed to understand his own dynamic thinking process, he did not realize his assumption that we all think the same. Indeed, Plato recorded a debate between Thrasymachus (459-400 BC) and Socrates. The subject was the rule of law. Socrates assumed that democracy would at least always be fair, yet he believed leaders should be trained and not just anyone should be voted into office. Yet, Thrasymachus warned that “justice” is only the will of whoever is in power, regardless of the type of political system. Socrates and Thrasymachus agreed that justice was beneficial, but they disagreed about whom it benefited. Socrates believed that justice, like any character virtue, benefits its possessor. Thrasymachus disagreed that justice was a virtue at all, and those in power punish claims that my being benefits someone else—namely, the politically powerful

rule-makers, who benefit from my following the rules they have crafted for their own benefit. Thrasymachus saw that the form of government truly did not matter. Regardless of the political form of the state or the label it claims, the result with respect to justice would always be the same. Justice will always be in the self-interest of those in power no matter what the political system. Irrespective of the political form of government, the political state is always moving through time and circumstance from its past memories toward its vision of the destination in the future. Leaders come and go and the new ruler often seeks to overthrow everything of the previous. This is evident from observing the Biden Administration going out of its way to overrule whatever Trump did before. Even Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, wrote of Commodus (180-192 AD): “Friendship of the father always insured the aversion of the son.” The same can be seen throughout history in all cultures.

Obviously, Socrates was a dynamic thinker who merely saw everything around him and connected the dots. Hence, in this quest to prove the Oracle wrong, he offended the elite, so they put him on trial and sentenced him to death for effectively knowing too much. His Apology, written by Plato, has always inspired me. When sentenced to death, he said that death was either the migration of the soul to meet all his old friends, or it was like a mid-summer night’s sleep, so peaceful never to be disturbed by a dream. Go ahead! Do your best! Thus, I traveled to Athens to pay my respects, visiting the cell where Socrates died. It took me some time to also reach and understand that there is a different thinking process within humanity. I had a medical psychologist friend, and we would all get together for drinks once a week. I was frustrated with some people who would call me a genius, as I thought I was normal, and they were elevating me so they could pretend I was not stupid. That’s when he explained that there were two types of

thinking processes—linear and dynamic. I would say that was the first step in comprehending how the world functions. I later read the Last Lion on Winston Churchill by William Manchester. I found his account of Churchill quite enlightening. He went into the studies of what people called geniuses, and it turned out they were, in fact, those with curiosity who were dynamic thinkers. “Clearly there was something odd here. Winston, Davidson had conceded, was the ablest boy in his form. He was, in fact, remarkable. His grasp of history was outstanding. Yet he was considered a hopeless pupil. It occurred to no one that the fault might lie, not in the boy, but in the school. Samuel Butler defined genius as “a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds,” and it is ironic that geniuses are likeliest to be misunderstood in classrooms. Studies at the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota have found that teachers smile on children with high IQs and frown upon those with creative minds. Intelligent but uncreative students accept conformity, never rebel, and complete their assignments with dispatch and to perfection. The creative child, on the other hand, is manipulative, imaginative, and intuitive. He is likely to harass the teacher. He is regarded as wild, naughty, silly, undependable, lacking in seriousness or even promise. His behavior is distracting; he doesn’t seem to be trying; he gives unique answers to banal questions, touching off laughter among the other children. E. Paul Torrance of Minnesota found that 70 percent of pupils rated high in creativity were rejected by teachers picking a special class for the intellectually gifted. The Goertzels concluded that a Stanford study of genius, under which teachers selected bright children, would have excluded Churchill, Edison, Picasso, and Mark Twain.”

Richard E. Nesbett wrote an interesting book entitled The

Geography of Thought, How Asians and Westerners Think Differently … and Why. He attributed his work to a Chinese

student who said, “You know, the difference between you and me is that I think the world is a circle, and you think it’s a line.” He goes on to quote him: “The Chinese believe in constant change, but with things always moving back to some prior state. They pay attention to wide range of events; they search for relationships between things; and they think you can’t understand the part without understanding the whole. Westerners live in a simpler, more

deterministic world; they focus on salient objects or people instead of the larger picture; and they think they can control events because they know the rules that govern the behavior of objects.”

Indeed, in my 40 years of dealing with governments from Europe, the Middle East, North America, to Asia, I have encountered different thinking processes around the globe. In Asia, I never had to explain the cyclical theory behind the Business Cycle. Only in Western culture, Americans & Europeans, did I ever encounter this linear thinking process that was so engrained in the culture. Indeed, those who advance society are always the non-conformers. Even Einstein’s teacher in 1895 told his father: “It doesn’t matter what

he does, he will never amount to anything.” Perhaps this Western linear thinking stems from religion, where we see the world following a strictly linear path to destruction, Armageddon, and a final conclusion of the last judgment. In contrast, Asians believe in cycles that spawn the idea of reincarnation. The world is a cycle to them as it was to the Mayan culture. Indeed, in telling a story, we begin with some event, proceed to a conclusion, and often that would

typically be happily ever after—the classic linear projection. This ignores the fact that we all have ups and downs in life. We see this linear thinking, especially in politics—a war to end all wars and promises of eternal prosperity if you vote for them.

Forecasting Geopolitical Events

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hen I created my computer and turned it loose on the world, that hidden element of teaching it how I would analyze data created its ability to discover things creating artificial curiosity. I never expected it to forecast geopolitical events from the economic data input. As I said, the computer began to teach me because I did not hardwire any rules. What emerged was a shocking discovery I never expected. Since my firm specialized in forecasting all the major currencies around the world, this resulted in our rise to the very top of the world, bringing in multinational companies, countries, and of course, intelligence services. In Geneva, Switzerland, during the 1980s, we had one client, Granadex

SA, Geneva, Switzerland142, which was ordering forecasts on all sorts of things, even platinum, when they were a grain company. I thought it was strange, so I asked one of the heads of a Swiss bank at lunch about the firm, and he said, “Marty. You don’t know? They are a front for the KGB.”

The ‘80s was a wild time in Geneva. Besides dealing with all the OPEC countries, I ended up managing money for Muammar al-Gaddafi (1942-2011) twice, unknowingly. Yes, we even advised the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) on foreign exchange. They were passing it on to specific clients I did not know at the time. BCCI was huge in the Middle East and was shut down in 1991.

Then what I thought was a hotel chain company out of Geneva turned out to be a secret partnership between Muammar al-Gaddafi, Adnan Khashoggi (1935–2017), and Ferdinand Marcos (1917-1989) of the Philippines. The FBI came in when they were looking for the stolen gold reserves that Marcos allegedly took from the Philippines. I was invited to the grand opening of Herald Square in New York City, which I thought was the Geneva firm’s project, but it turned out to be Marcos’s money. The FBI assumed I personally knew Marcos since I was on the guestlist for the opening. I never met him. This was just the tip of the wild trading days of the ‘80s. I even had the counter-revolutionary army of Iran coming in trading commodities to buy arms to try to launch a counterrevolution against Ayatollah Khomeini (1900-1989).

It all began when I was a market-maker in gold, and my computer projected in 1980 that gold would decline for 19 years after January 1980. I had decided to retire and move on to perhaps just trading for my own account. Clients at the time wanted me to continue the research I was publishing that was provided for free as long as they were a client. I had

never viewed advisory as a career path, no less a viable ongoing business. Thus, my clients insisted I should continue to publish my forecasts. I was offered $2,000 per hour for advice. I really had never thought about it. I accepted, thinking it would be good to stay in touch with everyone. It was 1983 when Joseph Perkins at the Wall Street Journal did an article on me because my hourly consulting rates were $2,000. They had heard about my fee and asked if I was the most expensive. I replied that I had no idea, for I did not even know who my competitors. I was advising on billions even at that early stage, well before the NY bankers got into the game, albeit I did not ask the size at first until the crash of the Deutsche Mark (DM) in 1983. My computer warned that DM would crash into 1985, but the yen low was in 1982, so the spread would flip. I had one client who was trading that spread. I called him and said get out of that trade. “How?” he replied. I said at the market.

I left the office, and by the time I got home, my phone was ringing like crazy. The DM crashed, and everyone assumed it was a central bank intervention. I called the client, worried he lost big time, but he was laughing. I asked if he got out of the trade. He said it was him. I asked how much he had on that trade, and he replied $1 billion, and that was in 1983. He allowed the WSJ to call him. Then Perkins from the WSJ called me back after speaking to my clients and said they would pay $10,000 an hour. He was amazed. I flew to Switzerland and went to lunch with one of the heads of a major Swiss bank. I was going to open an office in Europe and asked him what name I should use like European advisers, etc. I knew there was anti-Americanism in Europe. He asked me to name a European analyst. I was embarrassed, for I did not know of any. He laughed and said

there were none. He told me that everyone used my firm because I did not care if the dollar went up or down. Europeans could not forecast currency because it had become too political in Europe. Politicians used the rise of their currency as proof of their policies. If they ever said it would crash, that would be treason.

Over the years, I began to see that my computer was also forecasting geopolitical events. Having clients around the world shaped me because they taught me to see the world through everyone’s eyes. My clients had taught me how my computer was forecasting even geopolitical events that I had never considered before. Back in 1985 into 1989, Lebanon had descended into a militia economy. I was advising the Universal Bank of Lebanon at the

time. They had discovered a book in the basement where someone had recorded the Lebanese pound back in the 19th century. They asked if we could construct a model of their currency. I agreed, and they sent over the data. After inputting the data, the computer correlated Lebanon to world trends. It came out with a forecast highlighting what I called a Panic Cycle. It was a warning that the country would see an economic collapse in 8 days. I called the client and said there must be something wrong with the data saying they had 8 days before their country would crash. They calmly asked me what would be the best currency to move convert their funds. I was taken aback. I told them, at the time, the Swiss franc. Indeed, 8 days later, the Civil War began.

Another Saudi client who was involved in shipping called and asked what gold would do the next day. He told me Iraq was going to begin attacking shipping in the Gulf. “Are you telling me a change in the Iran-Iraq War will begin tomorrow?” He replied, “Yes! What will gold do?” Indeed, the next day began what became known as the “Tanker War” when Iraq attacked the oil terminals and oil tankers at Kharg Island in February 1984. The Associated Press reported the Iraqi military statement:

“We will continue our attacks until the enemy halts its aggression and agrees to abide by the U.N. Security Council resolutions.”

The model picked up the event reflected in the capital movement. Iraq’s aim in attacking Iranian shipping was to provoke the Iranians to retaliate with extreme measures, such as closing the Strait of Hormuz to all maritime traffic, thereby bringing in American intervention. Indeed, the U.S. had threatened several times to intervene if the Strait of Hormuz was closed. As a result, the Iranians limited their retaliatory attacks to Iraqi shipping, leaving the Strait of Hormuz open for general passage. Iraq declared that all ships going to or from Iranian ports in the northern zone of the Persian Gulf were subject to attack.

It became obvious to me that people had connections and knew some geopolitical events in advance. That same client asked me about gold later on. I said it depended on what OPEC would say in their meeting that day. He put me on hold, dialed into the OPEC meeting, and put me on a speaker box. They all knew who I was—”Hello Mr. Armstrong.” The computer monitors capital flow movement. It was picking up the shifts in capital flows in advance of such events. If people were to start a war, they would sell their investments to their opponents. I came to see that capital flows were a key to geopolitical events. Operation Bernhard was an exercise by Nazi Germany to forge British banknotes using Jewish prisoners. The initial plan was to drop the notes over Britain to bring about a collapse of the British pound during WWII. Obviously, undermining a nation’s currency during war has been a strategy throughout all of the time. If war is inevitable, they will sell the assets of an adversary in hopes of undermining the economy of their opponent so that they can no longer fund the war.

The capital flows are key. For example, if China was really going to war against the United States, they would first begin selling all their U.S. government debt holdings. They are already setting up their own alternative to the SWIFT system— CIPS. This is the natural response to President Biden’s sanctions against Russia. What he can do to Russia, he can do to China. Biden has undermined the entire world economy by ending globalism because they are ignorant of how the world economy even functions.

I was to discover that almost every intelligence agency was monitoring our forecasts. After all, our computer had forecast the collapse of communism, the final collapse of the USSR in 1991, and even the ERM Crisis (known as Black Wednesday) on September 16th, 1992, with the collapse of the British pound. I held an institutional conference for our clients in London in June 1998. A journalist from the London Financial Times

attended named Barry Riley. He reported our forecast that Russia was about to collapse, and it appeared on the front page of the second section on June 27th, 1998. It was this forecast that Russia would collapse in about 30 days that created a whirlwind around my model. The Russian Financial Crisis of 1998 had a profound political impact worldwide. In the United States, it forced the Federal Reserve to bail out the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management because its failure would have taken down even Goldman Sachs. Inside Russia, the economy was devasted. The collapse in the ruble wiped out all the foreign investors who were trying to exploit Russia.

Because the bankers always paid bribes to gain influence to manipulate markets, they assumed that I was a risk to their manipulations and petitioned the CFTC to silence my forecasts one way or another. The model proved once again that geopolitical events are predictable based on underlying economic trends. Yet it seemed more like those in the CFTC just wanted to destroy my firm solely for the benefit of the bankers.

It was after this forecast calling for the collapse of Russia in 1998 that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) contacted our firm. The call was eventually transferred to me when the staff realized this was no joke. The CIA wanted me to build the system for them. I explained that it took me 17 years to create this, and I was not about to go to Washington to build something for them.

I respectfully offered to run whatever study the CIA desired. Their response was blunt—“No!” They had to own it. In turn, I responded, “Sorry, it’s not for sale.” I understand that they did not want anyone else to have access to the same information. But that was my business, and I had 240 employees at the time who would be out of a job. That was followed by the 9/11 attack taking place right to the day the model had forecast. That may have been the last straw, and the CIA tried to duplicate our model because I refused to sell.

Indeed, we tend to think that the CIA is all-knowing and allpowerful. I was surprised when they contacted me and wanted me to build my AI computer for them. The book Constructing Cassandra explained why the CIA came to me. Since its inception in 1947, when President Truman authorized its creation as the cold war heated up, the CIA had failed every time to make any correct forecast of political events to come. The CIA failed to see the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. They failed to correctly forecast the Islamic Revolution in Iran,

saying that the Shah would rule into the ‘90s. The CIA never saw the collapse of the USSR in 1991. They also did not forecast the 9/11 terrorist attacks. While Constructing Cassandra analyzes these four key strategic geopolitical surprises, it traces the ultimate origin of these events, arguing that the failure resulted from an enduring collective identity and culture of the agency itself. In other words, historically, human analysis that is too biased always fails, as we will witness with Klaus Schwab and his Marxist Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The CIA launched Cassandra in 2008 to mimic what our computer was doing in part by tracking the capital flow map that we provide on our site to this day. The CIA project was trying to target terrorist organizations’ funding. After 9/11, the

DEA claimed that Hezbollah had become involved in drug trafficking to raise money for their operations tracking capital flows being laundered from the Americas, through Africa, and then onto Lebanon into Hezbollah’s coffers.

I know that many thought my case was retaliation for rejecting the CIA’s proposal. Perhaps. I cannot confirm or deny that theory. However, I personally believed the real instigator was the bankers using the CFTC. What was very interesting was that Dorothy Heyl, who was the SEC prosecutor in my case at the beginning, stood up on June 3rd, 2004, and said this contempt should end. The CFTC objected, as did the Receiver Alan Cohen. She then resigned in September 2004.

It was the CFTC also pushing to destroy my company and to silence all forecasting which would have only been for the benefit of the bankers. A firm Weiss Research stepped forward and offered to run the company, retain the staff and pay rent to the receiver. Tancred Schiavoni, the receiver’s lawyer, refused to allow the company to continue operating and demanded that I turn over the “uncompiled source code” to the model. That was never part of any court order. Even concerning Ukraine, I reported back in 2013143 that “the history of Ukraine is incredibly important in the entire Cycle of War” and that “Ukraine May be the Most Important Country

to Watch.” My computer has been highlighting Ukraine since 2013 as the epic center for World War III. Indeed, the Maidan Revolution against Yanukovych in 2014 was immediately followed by the “temporary” unelected government installed by the West, which began the civil war against the Russianspeaking Ukrainians in the Donbas and Crimea.

Volodymyr Zelensky (born 1978) was elected, promising peace with Russia ending the civil war Kiev began in 2014. However, he has sought nothing but war once in office. Zelensky has converted Ukraine into a proxy war with Russia all for the American Neocons. On February 23rd, 2022, the Daily Wire144 reported he was declaring that Ukraine would arm itself with nuclear weapons, violating every treaty since 1991, which seemed to be deliberately provoking Putin to invade so they could call this Russian aggression despite the fact that the U.S. invaded Iraq for the same theory under the guise of weapons of mass destruction. Putin took the bait and invaded the very next day on February 24th, 2022. The computer had targeted the area of Ukraine back in 2013 when it was just a place in a distant land most people had never heard of. It forecast that Ukraine would be the hotspot from which World War III could unfold. Ever since, the world as we have known it, including our lifestyle, has been irrevocably altered.

This is what I mean about discovery. I never set out to create a model that would be forecasting geopolitical events. What I discovered was that absolutely everything is included in this model, from climate to war. The list of panics began with the 1683 Ottoman Invasion of Vienna, which was the financial capital of Europe at the time. Therefore, not only did this include war, it was international in scope and not confined to just one nation.

142

Liquidated in 2018

143

“Ukraine May Be The Most Important Country to Watch.” Armstrong Economics, December 3, 2013. https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/uncategorized/ukrainemaybe-the-most-important-country-to-watch/. 144

Saavedra, Ryan. “President Zelensky Suggests Ukraine May Pursue Nuclear

Weapons To Counter Russia, Putin Responds.” The Daily Wire, February 23, 2022. https://www.dailywire.com/news/president-zelensky-suggests-ukraine-may-pursuenuclear-weapons-to-counter-russia-putin-responds.

My Case & Safra

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ealizing that it is standard in politics to attack the messenger whenever you do not want to discuss the message, obviously, I must address my case to prevent distortions from the inevitable fake news. All I hope is that people will listen to the message of this book and avoid the death and carnage that awaits us in the years ahead. This hatred of Putin has extended to all Russians. The sheer hatred of Russians propagated by the press and Western leaders is illustrated in the disputes on eBay against Russian citizens. People think that sanctions are clearly against all Russians, not just oligarchs and the Russian government, as was the case against all Japanese during World War II. There is no turning back the clock. While we advance in life learning from our

personal mistakes, as a society, we never learn, so those in charge know that and will lie to achieve their goals.

On August 18th, 1999, the Japanese Financial Supervisory Agency (FSA) sent a letter to Republic New York Securities (RNYS), the brokerage division of Republic National Bank owned by Edmond Safra. They asked the bank to confirm I had $10 billion on deposit at RNYS. I believe that due to Edmond Safra losing more than $1 billion with Bill Browder in Russia, nearly 50% of his net worth. This plot to seize Russia was Safra’s Hail Mary play, but that collapsed following Berezovsky’s move in July 1999 to blackmail Yeltsin. That move only cornered Yeltsin, with oligarchs on one side and the communists on the other. Yeltsin turned to Putin on August 9th, 1999, since he was not affiliated with the group. Perhaps Edmond thought he could recoup his losses by taking the $1 billion that I did have there.

He then turned to the Department of Justice and said that they “had no idea where the money was.” That was an absurd response, but they protect bankers at all costs in NYC. As one New York lawyer told me, “You don’t shit where you eat.”

I was granted bail because there were no complaints from any client. This was entirely the bank behind everything. Because my clients would not sign a criminal complaint against me, the government claimed I manipulated the yen to make them think they made money. It was just unimaginable that they could make up whatever they needed to on the spot. The Department of Justice needed to protect the takeover of Republic National Bank by HSBC for my lawyer, Richard

Altman, sent a letter on Monday, August 30th, 1999, giving the bank until the end of the week to return the money or we would file suit. The FBI raided our offices that Thursday. Not one person seems to have asked, “How did $1 billion vanish from a bank?” There would have to have been a wire transfer or a check—something! When I told the Receiver Alan Cohen to his face that the bank took the money, he said: “We believe the bank!” That impossible statement would become the means they used to destroy my company, the arch-enemy of the NY bankers—Princeton Economics International, Ltd. To give Edmond the benefit of the doubt, I was asked to invest $10 billion into his Hermitage Capital Management in March 1999. That amount of money back then was a lot. Where today, we are into hundreds of billions and trillions. Edmond sold the bank for $10.3 billion to HSBC in 1999. I assume that Edmond merely saw this as an opportunity to recoup his 50% loss of his net worth with Browder and Berezovsky. He agreed to sell his bank in May 1999, ending his family’s heritage of banking. If the $10 billion never got to Edmond’s bank, then claiming he “had no idea where the money was” would have been the proper response. I can only guess he thought he could take the $1 billion, cover most of his losses, and the government would go after me. All well and good! The perfect plot! Edmond took the money from my accounts on August 27th, 1999, which was a Friday. That is when I called George Wendler, the vice chairman and CCO of Republic National Bank, to ask what was going on. The reply was that he was “just the messenger,” meaning the order to take the funds came from Edmond Safra himself.

Someone in the Federal Reserve saw that much money and could not believe it themselves and wrote back to the FSA in Japan asking to please confirm. The following Tuesday, August 31st, 1999, the FSA responded, claiming they had made a decimal mistake and the amount was only $1 billion, which Edmond had already stolen on the 27th. This was why my clients supported me. They had their own conspiracy theory that because I had forecast that the LDP party would lose the election in Japan, and they did for the first time since WWII, they believed it was political and deliberate. They assumed that the FSA could not make such a stupid decimal mistake. They thought this was a political vendetta ordered by the LDP. I have no way to confirm or deny that one. I do agree that it seemed unlikely for the FSA to make such a huge mistake.

Perhaps it was a perfect storm. Maybe the Japanese did deliberately make such an error, fearing we had too much influence. Nevertheless, I think it was just a coincidence that Edmond had solicited me to bring over $10 billion in April 1999 to invest in Hermitage Capital Management. I think Edmond was desperate and thought I stole the $10 billion and stashed it somewhere else where his claim “had no idea where the money was” could have made any sense. He then perhaps saw the $1 billion as an opportunity to recoup his Russian losses. Once the FSA corrected the number 13 days later, it was too late. He could not then put the money back after running to the prosecutors. Perhaps Edmond was not thinking clearly, for then there was the whole Berezovsky crisis, and Yeltsin turning to Putin on August 9th, 1999. Perhaps this sent him into a panic state, fearing for his life, so he fled Geneva and rushed off to Monaco, as the bank told me, for “security reasons.” I thought perhaps Edmond was expecting retaliation from Putin for blackmailing Yeltsin since he was the rat on the Bank of New

York. I cannot say, but knowing all the facts at that time with hindsight, the seizure of Russia was falling apart. On top of losing up to 50% of his net worth, selling his bank and ending the Safra banking legacy, Edmond’s thinking led to panic. I don’t think Edmond would have taken the $1 billion absent from all these events. As they say, even an honest man becomes a thief when starving.

Since Edmond had claimed they “had no idea where the money was,” Edmond was trapped. What day Safra fled Geneva, I am not sure. Obviously, the whole Berezovsky

scheme was collapsing. On the 27th of August, 18 days after Putin became Yeltsin’s heir, I was told he had already fled Geneva “for security reasons.” The takeover of Republic National Bank by HSBC was obviously critical. The government was too quick to raid my offices 4 days after my lawyer threatened to sue the bank, which would have impacted the takeover. Then prosecutors are enticed to grab a huge case in hopes of becoming famous, opening the door to a political career. Rudy Giuliani took down John Gotti and became mayor. My case was the biggest in history when filed. However, then came WorldCom and Enron, dwarfing my case.

The month after HSBC came to ask me in April 1999 about buying Republic National Bank, they put in an offer in May 1999. HSBC’s offer to buy Edmond’s bank was for $10.3 billion. My case officially began on September 13th, 1999. Yet on September 2nd, 1999, Edmond had to inform HSBC about the inquiry from Japan. CNN reported that HSBC Holdings insisted it remained committed to its planned $10.3 billion merger with

Republic New York Corp. However, it stated that they would have to wait for “further details of a Japanese regulatory probe into a Republic subsidiary.” Then added, “Our biggest concern is that we need to get full possession of the facts,” Richard Beck, an HSBC spokesman in London, told CNN145.

HSBC sent in its own team of auditors. They rejected Edmond’s version of the facts and said they were pulling out in November 1999. They found that they did not have me on the phone giving a host of orders. That would have led to a massive lawsuit against Edmond, so he agreed to reduce his personal shares to keep the merger on track. Dominic Donne wrote in Vanity Fair: “The sale of his Republic New York Corporation and Safra Republic Holdings had been approved by shareholders just days before that. Edmond had been so eager for the approval of the sale to go through that at the last minute he lowered the price by $450 million, a totally uncharacteristic thing for him to do, according to the European press. The New York Post reported in its financial pages: “The merger—originally worth $10.3 billion, now valued at $9.9 billion— had been delayed by allegations that a major client of Republic’s securities division committed a $1 billion fraud.” It broke Safra’s heart to sell his bank. He

had wanted it to last for a millennium, but he was ill, and his brother Joseph, who had his own bank in Brazil, had declined to take it over. Safra’s great disappointment was that he had never had children of his own to whom he could hand over the reins.”

HSBC completed the Republic New York Corporation purchase at the reduced price Edmond had agreed to by reducing his personal shares to compensate for the money he took from my accounts. After Edmond was killed on December 3rd, 1999, the merger of his holding company with consolidated total assets of $46.9 billion concluded on December 31st, 1999.

The sheer level of dishonesty among government prosecutors was astonishing. I stood up on October 3rd, 2000, and argued that the seizure of the company was illegal and should have been appointed independent counsel under the Civil Asset Forfeiture Statute 18 USC §981. Judge Owen denied that and said there was none. It turned out the DOJ filed one before yet a third judge who sat there quietly, never informing either court that they used a third court to seize a foreign company illegally and denied it the right to hire any lawyer. The sheer level of abuse was unbelievable.

The SEC & CFTC filed a joint civil suit and installed a receiver over foreign companies to search for the missing $1 billion based entirely on the statements of Edmond’s bank. That in itself violated international law. It would have been like Germany charging General Motors and appointing a receiver to run the operation from Stuttgart. But U.S. federal courts seem to think they rule the world.

The receiver, Alan Cohen, refused to listen to me. I told him face to face that the bank took the money. His arrogance was clear, plus he now stood to make tens of millions of dollars. As noted, he replied—“We believe the bank.”

In addition, the Supreme Court had just ruled in September 1999 in Grupo Mexicano De Desarrollo, S. A. V. Alliance Bond Fund, Inc. 527 U.S. 308 (1999) that prohibited the SEC and CFTC from even appointing a receiver over unsecured assets. For you, I bought the Japanese portfolios. The assets in question were mine. In addition, I issued an unsecured corporate note. The Supreme Court just ruled that what they were doing was unconstitutional, but the judge ignored even the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court made it very clear that there had to be a secured debt that eliminated the right to a civil trial. Thus, such a thing was only possible when a creditor had a secured interest over the asset like a mortgage.

I bought the Japanese portfolios by issuing an unsecured note because most of the portfolios were in a losing position of about 40%. I agreed to buy the portfolios at their original cost with a 10-year period to repay, thereby making up the loss in 8% interest and currency. The loss was mine upon the purchase and had they been secured, then the Japanese would have reported the loss, defeating the entire transaction. Plus, each transaction had to be individually approved by the Japanese Ministry of Finance (MOF). That meant the Japanese government approved each note issued. That eliminated any false claim of misleading the investor These were major public corporations and not mom & pops. The fact that they were professionals did not matter. The SEC regulations are intended for retaining, not professionals. Judge Richard Owen refused to rule on any issue, as did the Second Circuit court of appeals. Every appeal was grabbed by Chief Judge John Walker, who would always claim the inherent powers of federal judges as if the American Revolution had changed nothing. He would always rule in the government’s favor no matter what or how irrational his reasoning ended up. He was President Bush’s cousin, which made me think this was indeed very political.

A judge would even get a phone call, “Hey, we need a favor,” as they do to the press. When he was in private practice, one former SEC lawyer told me he would often talk to Judge Owen on a private phone call regarding a case before him. You suddenly realize that justice is only the government’s interest and the constitution is honestly just a scrap of paper. The person at the SEC who selected the law firm to act as counsel for the receiver O’Melvany & Myers, was Andrew J. Geist, who then conveniently left the SEC and became a partner at O’Melveny & Myers. He obviously brought tens of millions in fees to the firm they had been collecting for more than 20 years. It became clear. The SEC selected the receiver and the judge to ensure they won every case. The receiver Alan Cohen

even froze my mother’s social security and my children’s accounts. My lawyers threatened to go public because my mother could not even buy food or medicine. Finally, Cohen unfroze her social security only because they would have killed her.

I had a meeting with my lawyers from New York, New Jersey, London, and Japan in the Chrysler Building in New York. My lawyer, Martin Unger of Tenzer Greenblatt in New York, said the receiver Aland Cohen was talking to the judge as well as

the government all ex parte. That was supposed to be illegal. Three law firms were there and it was becoming clear that this was being railroaded. I told Unger to move to recuse the judge. He replied that his firm, Tenzer Greenblatt, would never move to recuse a judge. He said their firm would be prejudiced by all the judges in New York for attacking a fellow judge. When my case began, my lawyer Richard Altman said, “Oh shit, New York.” I was naïve. He said that New York “practiced law differently,” and I was about to find out. Even more corrupt, the SEC and CFTC managed to tell the clerks to assign the case to Richard Owen, who magically got every big SEC case, Steven Schiffer and Frank Quattrone, for example. Judge Owen was their favorite, for they could call him ex parte. In fact, a former SEC lawyer who prosecuted a case before Judge Owen said he would always call Judge Owen ex parte. The tyranny of federal judges is beyond belief. They can throw people in prison without a trial until you die. There is no such thing as real free press in the United States. Judith Miller (born 1948) was an American journalist, formerly of the New York Times Washington bureau, who uncovered the lies about the weapons of mass destruction. They threw her in prison on contempt for refusing to reveal her sources.

Tommy Thompson, a research scientist, isn’t incarcerated for breaking the law. Instead, he’s being held in civil contempt, citing my case as precedent to hold you until you die. Nobody cares about the law since Congress established by statute that the maximum sentence is 18 months (28 USC 1826). Even Judge Walker of the Second Circuit claimed that judges have an inherent power that the Constitution cannot deny. He claimed that a federal judge’s inherent power could keep you in prison without due process of law, a trial, or even a lawyer until you die. Judge Richard Owen (1922–2015) was truly a ruthless individual. He would take my lawyers away, disgorging them of any money they were paid. He then kept making jokes about how he did that to Steven H. Schiffer, and he was never overturned. He kept saying he didn’t take that “upstairs —ha, ha, ha.” When I asked my lawyer who Owen was constantly joking about, he said, “You don’t want to know.” I said, “Tell me.” It was a civil SEC case. He took all his lawyers away and constantly badgered him; he committed suicide because he

could not take it anymore. Once he told me that, I looked into Judge Owen’s eyes, and I saw nothing but a deepseated coldness as if he had no soul and by no means any remorse. He enjoyed hurting people. You cannot imagine the feeling of standing in front of a real kangaroo court. I had said in court that I had never met Tenzer of Tenzer Greenblatt. Judge Owen called the prison and asked for a list of all the lawyers who had visited me. There was Uri Taenzer, who had been a partner with my father. He then insisted I got on the witness stand, thinking he could charge me with perjury. They thought Tenzer had visited me. I said no, that was Uri Taenzer. He thought he could sentence me to 5 years for perjury. He was so disappointed.

This was the man I was standing before. A judge should never go off on his own and try to investigate you. That was the job of a prosecutor. Judge Owen was simply vicious—not impartial as required by law. I saw nothing but hatred and pure evil in his eyes.

This receiver Alan Cohen then threatened to imprison all my lawyers on contempt if they did not turn over all the tapes from my recorded lines. I stood up in court on February 7th, 2000, and objected that these tapes had anything to do with the case, but revealed all the criminal activity of the bankers and their manipulations of markets in addition to soliciting me into joining them. Judge Owen ordered my lawyers to turn over all the tapes, for perhaps they would lead to the missing assets. I even explained that I gave the tapes to my lawyers for safekeeping because I believed that someone sent by the NY bankers placed a bullet in my mailbox as a threat, and I turned that over as well.

Then, believe it or not, Alan Cohen, after seizing all the incriminating tapes against the bankers, suddenly became a board member of Goldman Sachs after all the tapes were seized at his request. I believed it was a reward for getting that evidence. There were phone calls where they solicited me to join in, bragging that they were bringing politicians to the guaranteed trade.

When I asked for copies of my tapes, I was then told everything was destroyed in the World Trade Center attack on 9/11. Since they took all my lawyers away in a secret closed court session and threw the press out, even the Associated Press wrote that they questioned if I would receive a fair trial on April 27th, 2000. After the World Trade Center attack, the court-appointed counsel Martin Siegel came and said that they would have to dismiss the case because all my evidence was destroyed. That may have been the law, but they refused to comply with the law on any level. The court would never consider it a conflict of interest for the receiver to be on the board of directors running my company from Goldman Sachs—a competitor. The only time Mr. Cohen

had to step down from being the receiver was after 13 years when Goldman Sachs allegedly sent him to work inside the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2017 where he focused, among other things, on financial stability and global regulatory coordination.

HSBC had actually been a client. They came to my London office for a meeting in April 1999 to ask my advice on buying Safra’s Republic National Bank. I told them to count their fingers after shaking hands and that I was having problems with their accounting after encountering way too many errors. There had been a $500 million loss in trading bonds that was stuffed into my account on a Friday. I called the president Bill Rogers of the securities division and asked what the hell was that. He immediately said it was an error and it would be backed out on Monday since that was a Friday. I found this suspicious and was now concerned that the bank was using my account to “park” someone’s losing trade using my money for the weekend. I was contacted by a journalist from New York Post who asked me a question. “Do you think Safra is laundering money in my accounts for the Russian Mafia as they were doing for [Bernard] Madoff?”

I said they were playing all sorts of games in my accounts, but I did not know for whom. I had assumed they were parking. Today, I believe they were laundering money from Russia through my accounts. If that $500 bond trade was indeed just backed out to the same account it came from, then it was “parking” using my funds. However, if the money went to a different account, then it was money laundering. The journalist never published that story, so all I can assume is that the story was killed as one of those favors.

Indeed, it did come out later that Joseph Safra lost $300 million publicly on behalf of clients. Sources close to him were saying it was at least $600 million. Such was the high-rolling times of finance in New York City where the truth was never told. To what extent they were using my accounts for laundering money and for whom, I did not know. What I did know was that their accounting was a nightmare and I demanded an audit at the end of 1998, which they stalled on and never provided.

Then, there was an account that just opened and I deposited $50 million. When my assistant went to check, the money was gone. I called to ask what happened to the money and was told that “they probably put the notes back in the wrong account.” Here, the bank was using my money for margin on other trades not related to that account. They told the truth. They were tapping into my accounts and I had no idea what they were doing for the party on the opposite side. It smelled like money laundering on a grand scale. When I first was put in prison on civil contempt, the man in charge of the Law Library was Oliver Brown. At first, he said, “All you guys with big money are all the same in here.”

He came to my cell after the first 18 months had passed and stuck out his hand and said he wanted to apologize. He said the prosecutors said I was probably innocent for Republic’s records were so bad they could never prove any case against me. I knew that, but it was never in the press so I realized he was telling the truth. He then said if I could ever get to trial, call on him, and he would testify on my behalf. When the Forecaster was being shot, he came forward and wanted to be in the film. The receiver refused to turn over documents even to the court-appointed forensic accountant. He wrote to the court saying:

“Also want to express my disgust at the fact that, after six years of working on this case, we have yet to receive the discovery for which we have made repeated requests…”

He, too, informed the court, which all the judges ignored, that: “the number of trades, cancelled trades and other information about Republic Bank of NY’s internal controls – or lack thereof…”

I believe they were laundering money through my accounts for there were so many errors that were backed out over weekends. I have no idea if they put trades into my account

and then removed them to a different account, which would have been classic money laundering. I cannot prove that for I did not see where they came from and to where they were taken out.

Republic had audited my account the year before and admitted my trading was extremely conservative with $547 million in account. At that time, the average amount ever used for margin was at best $19.7 million. That was only about 3.6%. They could not claim I was some rogue trader who lost it all. This reflected my total disgust with the bank and my demands for an audit that they refused. The government knew the case was bogus and simply refused to comply with the basic tenets of Due Process of Law. So much for that phrase we said as kids with “Liberty and Justice for All.” I, like most Americans, had been brainwashed into believing that our government cared. My lawyer Richard Altman had said, “You should have taken off to London.” I was shocked. He said then they would have had to put on a case before an independent judge.

145

“HSBC Awaits Probe Facts - Sep. 2, 1999,” https://money.cnn.com/1999/09/02/worldbiz/hsbc/.

September

2,

1999.

The April 2000 Reverse Proffer Session

A

fter Safra’s assassination on December 3rd, 1999, suddenly, the government had the parallel SEC and CFTC case intervene in my criminal case first to move for civil contempt to imprison me since I was on bail. They never provided any list of what I was supposed to produce that said what I needed to do to be released. My lawyer Richard Altman warned that this was a setup and said it was clear that no matter what I did, I would not be released. He also warned that they practiced law differently in New York. I didn’t understand that at the time. He said, “You will see.” This

civil contempt was intended to shut down my Speedy Trial motion, and then they used the parallel case to invade the criminal case to remove my lawyers from there. They always want CJA lawyers appointed by the court who are professionals at losing cases for the government. They threw me in civil contempt under 28 USC §1826 statute that had a maximum sentence of 18 months, which was intended to prevent precisely what was done to me. The Bureau of Prisons docket showed that they were rolling it every 18 months which was entirely illegal. I was to have been released on July 13th, 2001.

But when a judge and prosecutor break the law, that is perfectly fine in New York City. They even alter transcripts, which is a 20-year felony under 18 USC § 1519 for anyone else other than a judge or prosecutor. The prosecutors used three courts in secret hiding what they were doing from each judge.

Judge Richard Owen of the Southern District of New York was one of the most morally corrupt judges I had ever encountered, and then all the other judges did their best to protect his outrageous conduct. Judge Owen would constantly alter the very words spoken in court. I submitted a motion pro se asking for the judge to recuse himself. Hundreds of people showed up that day. I asked what was going on? They said it was me. You can’t accuse a judge of a federal crime. I pointed out that they all admitted they had altered the record. They said yes, but you can’t accuse him of that.

Judge Owen knew I was well versed in the law. When so many people showed up, he became frightened for he had no idea if I would start calling witnesses. So, he admitted changing the record, but claimed he did not recall changing anything material. Andrew Ross Sorkin (born 1977), NY Times correspondent and author of Too Big To Fail, was covering the case of the investment banker Frank Quattrone. He too saw that Judge Owen was changing the transcripts. He came to see me and told me the same was taking place in that case. Indeed, Sorkin reported what took place in court but Owen altered the transcript. I had tried to appeal Owen’s illegal acts and the Second Circuit lost that appeal three times refusing to ever log it. To

the best of my knowledge, I believe when Gretchen Morgenson put me on the front page, the government was not happy. And in court said she did not know what she was writing about. Indeed, the Second Circuit court of appeals overturned Frank Quattrone’s case, but they in their opinion claimed that Sorkin misrepresented what took place in court because the transcript did not match what he reported. They wrote: In attempting to argue that numerous media commentators noted the allegedly biased conduct of the trial court judge, Quattrone cites only one newspaper article in the text of his Opening Brief though he collects others in a footnote. Appellant Br. 101 & n. 38. However, the very article that Quattrone employs to establish improprieties has at least one material mischaracterization of the court’s trial management. The article claims that Brodsky testified upon cross-examination “No” when asked “Did you think he [Quattrone] had done anything wrong?” See Andrew Ross Sorkin, A Shift in Testimony in Ex-Banker’s Trial, N.Y. Times, Apr. 23, 2004, at C3. This characterization was completely accurate. See J.A. 291 (Tr. 1371). What was inaccurate, however, was the next sentence of the article: “The judge ․ immediately struck the answer from the record ․” Sorkin, supra, at C3. The record clearly reflects that upon objection, the trial judge allowed Brodsky to testify “No” but instructed the witness to move on without providing further commentary. J.A. 291 (Tr. 1370-71). Conclusion The district court’s judgment of conviction dated September 16, 2004, is hereby Vacated, and the case Remanded for retrial. The case shall be assigned to another district court judge sitting in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Appellant’s November 15, 2004 motion to inspect a juror’s post-trial letter to the district court is hereby DISMISSED as moot. U.S. v. Quattrone, 441 F.3d 153 (2006)

The government lies all the time. At my bail hearing, they claimed I was going to flee to my house in London filled with rare paintings and antiques. I raised my hand. A defendant is not supposed to speak directly, but I said I just had a question. I simply asked for the address. They immediately

backed off and claimed they thought they had good information. Everyone laughed and I was granted bail. They just make up things, counting on your silence. What I saw and how they treated people was ruthless. Everything I thought about my country was wrong. My family had fought in every war since the American Revolution. They tell people to die for our way of life and then you discover that indeed justice is only the self-interest of government. Judge Richard Owen would forget sometimes who I was and would call me counselor as if I was the attorney representing a client instead of myself. At first, I thought I was perhaps under stress and my memory had abandoned me. A group of lawyers finally got together to complain about Judge Richard Owen as they believed he had dementia. In the end, they reassigned my case to another judge and Frank Quattrone of First Boston had his case also transferred to another judge in 2006. In both cases, the Court of Appeals knew the truth, but would never remove a judge from the bench. It was no different from the early days of denying priests molesting boys because it would create a bad image for all priests. People are not safe because there are judges on the bench who are there for life and become ruthless in old age, and no other judge will say anything.

They first tried to put me in contempt, claiming I went to my office, removed all the incriminating documents, their guards chased me through the parking lot, and I got away. My lawyer Richard Altman knew me; he called and asked if I was crazy. I told him I never went to the office, and to get in, I would need to swipe a card at two security stations to gain access. Call the security company. He did, then called me back and said not to worry, as they confirmed nobody went in that office. The next day in court, the government jumped up before Judge Owen could sit down. They went on trying to explain that nothing took place and the documents had only been moved from one room to another. It went on for 15 to 20 minutes. Finally, the judge cut in and said he was withdrawing the charges. He turned to my lawyer, saying you are in “good

shape.” He altered the transcript removing all the false charges. Then on April 24th, 2000, Judge Owen removed all my lawyers and closed the courtroom to conduct an illegal closed proceeding in violation of the Sixth Amendment. Noelle Knox of the Associated Press was in the room that day. She was told, “Get out!” She walked up to the bench and argued that the judge could not throw the press out. He ordered the marshal to escort her out. So much for public open court proceedings. She then wrote for the Associated Press on April 27th, 2000, that my case was “a ruling that has some wondering if he can get a fair trial.” For the American press to question why I was being hauled into secret court proceedings in the United States was itself a watershed event. I tried to appeal to the Second Circuit, but they would ignore whatever I filed on the government’s order, revealing that the law means absolutely nothing in New York City. President George Bush’s cousin, John M. Walker, Jr., was the United States Court of Appeals Chief Judge for the Second Circuit from September 30, 2000-September 30, 2006. He would strangely grab every appeal and always uphold whatever the government did to me. Interestingly, he was also involved in structuring judicial forums in Eastern Europe against Russia. In 2011, he was instrumental in organizing the first Conference of the Chief Justices of Central and Eastern Europe. Judge Walker was simply above the law. He left the court after an appeal, allegedly drunk, and killed a cop directing traffic. No charges were ever filed.

Wikipedia at least reported: Fatal traffic accident[edit] On the evening of October 17, 2006, while driving home, Walker’s Ford Escape automobile struck a police officer, Daniel Picagli, who was directing traffic in a rainstorm at a road construction site for AT&T in New Haven, Connecticut.[22] [23] There were no construction signs or traffic cones marking off the site.[24] Picagli died four days later on October 21, 2006. “He had been wearing a black raincoat and a reflective vest”.[25] Police Chief Francisco Ortiz said the “officers did not feel it was necessary to test Walker for drugs or alcohol”.[25] Walker stopped immediately, and New Haven police have said the cause was not related to drugs or alcohol.[26] A police investigation reported that Walker “was traveling at a slow speed through the dark and rainy construction site.”[27] The prosecutor declined to press charges, saying nothing indicated “intentional, negligent or reckless conduct” by Walker.[28]

Judge Walker went out of his way to claim inherent powers of judges to essentially imprison you for life without any trial whatsoever, effectively claiming Congress could not overrule inherent powers that extended back to the king of England. For that was their power before the Revolution rendering even the Constitution irrelevant. He issued that decision after his “accident.” Yet then again, if you are a judge, I suppose you can kill a cop directing traffic and still drive home. Now Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor was on my appeal and disagreed with Walker.

SOTOMAYOR, Circuit Judge, concurring. 110 I agree with Judge Walker’s opinion in affirming the district court’s contempt sanction, but I write separately to articulate my belief that the eighteen-month maximum duration imposed on a civil contempt sanction by the Recalcitrant Witness Statute should be a presumptive benchmark for all civil contempt incarcerations. A sanction lasting more than four times the congressional benchmark for such punishments is so extreme that, as Judge Walker rightly directs, the district court should undertake soon to revisit whether Armstrong’s imprisonment has slipped into the impermissible terrain of a punitive sanction.

My lawyers and I believe that I got into the Supreme Court because Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, who was on the Appellate Court at the time, wrote a separate opinion questioning how could 28 USC §1826 be extended beyond 18 months. They ordered the government to respond, meaning they were taking my case. They abruptly removed Judge Owen, sending my case to a new judge who was forced to release me. Otherwise, under John Walker’s decree, I would be in prison until I died on civil contempt with no explanation of what I was to produce to regain my liberty.

The two Bank of New York bankers pled guilty on February 17th, 2000. The prosecutors realized that Safra’s bank had lied. They suddenly wanted a reverse proffer session in April 2000, about 3 months after being thrown in a literal dungeon for three months. The Metropolitan Correctional Center takes its orders from the prosecutor. They are not independent as they pretend to be.

The night I was put in MCC on civil contempt, I was given a brown jumpsuit after sleeping the first night on the floor. The phone rang, I was suddenly taken back and handed an orange jumpsuit. I was thrown in the hole to not just break me, but to cut off all communication with even my lawyers. MCC is connected to the U.S. Attorney’s office next door. They take their marching orders from the prosecutor, which is also illegal. It was April 2000 when the prosecutors realized that the bank had lied at this reverse proffer. The Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Owens, no relation to the judge, admitted that while I did not take the money, they still would not drop the charges and wanted me to enter a plea of conspiracy with Safra and I would be released. It’s impossible for $1 billion to vanish from a bank, and nobody knows where it went. You have to wire it out or write a check. There was no withdrawal, so the whole thing was just absurd. Yet you quickly learn, prosecutors can do anything they like because the Supreme Court handed them absolute immunity. Their personal career comes first so they refused to admit they were stupid to accept the bank’s claim that $1 billion was missing and that they did not know where it went. This was why my clients were supporting me. Anyone in the financial industry knew there was no possible way $1 billion could vanish from a bank without a trace. As mentioned, when I told the receiver, Alan M. Cohen who became an executive staff member of the SEC after leaving Goldman Sachs, he looked straight at me and said, “We believe the bank.” At that moment I knew this whole affair would be rigged. AUSA Richard Owens wanted me to plead to a conspiracy with Safra, and I would go home. I said, “No, thank you.” I then explained the full connection between the blackmail of Yeltsin and the Bank of New York case. Their faces looked

stark white but also emotionless. Perhaps they were in a state of shock. They neither confirmed nor denied what I had just told them. They just stared at me. I don’t think they understood the connection with Safra at that point before that reverse proffer session. However, they began to put it all together. I may have hurt myself and should have never told them anything and just tried to get to trial. Instead, I told them right then and there that the Bank of New York money laundering case, which had been filed about 30 days before mine, led back to Yeltsin and his family. I also told them that they were being blocked and that they could not get passed the Russian Minister of Interior.

CNN had published on September 1st, 1999 that the money

involved with the Bank of New York was taken from the IMF loans to Russia. Statement of Richard l. Palmer before the House Financial Services Committee in Congress, made it very clear that “[w]orse yet, there is the matter of what happened to the $ 4.8 million in additional IMF funds that were delivered to Russian accounts on July 23, 1998. Claims that there is no evidence of the theft of these funds are grossly misleading.” In such a meeting, I could have been charged with perjury if I was lying like Martha Stewart. It is a crime to lie to a prosecutor or the FBI. The declassified documents, now over 20 years later, show that I knew all about the Bank of New York money laundering right down to a phone call with Yeltsin to Clinton saying he was sending the Minister of Interior to investigate.

I told AUSA Richard Owens that the Bank of New York involved Safra and there was no way I was pleading to be in some conspiracy with Safra given the shenanigans in Russia and what I knew involving Berezovsky. The Bank of New York had fired the two bankers only on September 2nd, 1999, about 3 weeks before my case began. I believe these prosecutors rushed in looking to become famous like the prosecutor Rudolph Giuliani who then became New York City mayor after prosecuting of the head of the mafia, John Gotti (1940–2002). A famous prosecution is their stepping stone to the big tent in this political circus world. I was not about to put my family at risk, wrongly assuming at the time that Putin

had ordered the death of Safra as the mastermind in retaliation to save the career of Owens. I was blunt and to the point. I stared Owens square in the eyes—“NO, THANK YOU!”

I had contacts in Russia that were clearly on par with the declassified documents coming from the Clinton Administration 23 years later. But I was also solicited by Safra’s bank to invest US$10 billion into his and Browder’s Hermitage Capital Management that was targeting Russia in March 1999. I declined, for my computer warned their scheme would not work. I did not know at that moment that Browder lost nearly 90% of his fund. I suspected that Safra lost big time, for he was looking to sell his bank to HSBC. I knew that because HSBC was a client and came to my London office to ask my advice on buying Safra’s Bank. I told them to count their fingers after shaking hands.

They did ask me if I knew someone at this reverse proffer session, but the name did not ring a bell. I told them that if they had a photo, I might be able to answer yes or no. It was then that they acknowledged I met many people in my career and regularly traveled around the world. They did not press me beyond that. So, to this day, I do not recall the

name of whom they were curious about. Perhaps it was someone else behind the scenes in the plot against Yeltsin. I felt it was rather obvious that my case was nonsense. There is no possible way that $1 billion vanishes from a bank, and the bankers claim they have no idea what happened. When the documentary on me appeared in Amsterdam, The Forecaster, and I did a question and answer, the moderator wanted to pretend to be impartial. There were three sessions, and this one was all the European bankers. So, when he asked me what happened to the missing $1 billion, I said let’s ask the audience. “Is it possible for $1 billion to disappear from a bank without anyone knowing where it went?” They all started to laugh. I knew that the Bank of New York bankers had just pled guilty to the $7 billion money laundering scam in February 2000, about two months before the reverse proffer session. So, I suspected they knew it was not as they had anticipated. I thought that Safra and Republic National Bank set up the prosecutors. The problem became their personal careers. They would clearly not drop the charges even knowing the missing $1 billion was a fabrication by the bankers. They would now look like absolute fools. They get to weaponize the law for personal or political gain. Within days, the New York Times wrote that trying to follow the path of the money became an enigma wrapped in a maze. They knew that I knew what took place and had no intention of allowing me to have a public trial calling bankers to the witness stand. After throwing me in prison on civil contempt on January 14th, 2000, under the law, you are supposed to have an order that states do this, and you will be released. When I went back to

court on February 7th, 2000, I stood up and asked the judge if I could have an order of what I was supposed to do, which was the law. Judge Owen was shocked and said, “I thought you did that?” Alan Cohen then said he would take pictures of what he had, and I could tell them what was missing. He never did that either. Was I supposed to write my own contempt order? It was becoming clear that this was political. My former lawyer Richard Altman said this would stop the trial.

The phone call from Yeltsin to Clinton on September 8th, 1999, was about the Bank of New York. Yeltsin told Clinton this was political. Indeed, he was being blackmailed. He was sending his Minister of Interior to the United States precisely as I told them in that reverse proffer session. They obviously understood I knew what was taking place politically. They never produced any order to ensure I was being arbitrarily held

indefinitely in civil contempt. They would tell the press it was all about assets, but they never produced a single order. They would not allow me to comply with an order, for they would have to release me. My case had to be shut down for it was way too political internationally.

People who knew me began to call me the “man who knew too much.” What began to appear on the web were comments like: “Is the reason Martin is in prison because he knows too much?” Many knew I had been battling the New York bankers for years and assumed it was probably tied to their manipulation schemes to rig markets for their “guaranteed trade.” Everyone knew about the revolving door at the CFTC and SEC regulatory agencies. That was why no banker ever went to prison. They all wanted those highpaying jobs.

Many assumed my case was all about opposing the bankers. They had threatened my lawyers to turn over all the tapes I had that exposed the manipulations of the bankers. There were tapes where they even bragged that they paid bribes to Russian ministers back in 1997 to recall platinum for an inventory. They got the price to rally from $351 to $473, and there was talk of even Ford Motor Company filing suit against the bankers for manipulation.

Somehow, the government figured out I had tapes and even gave them to my lawyers. They threatened them with contempt. I stood up on February 7th, 2000, and objected, stating that they covered criminal manipulations by the bankers. The judge seized all my tapes and claimed perhaps they might lead to missing assets that they refused to ever define in any order. They then claimed all that evidence was conveniently destroyed in the World Trade Center, and the receiver Alan M. Cohen then magically became a board member of Goldman Sachs in 2004, but continued as the court Receiver running my company from the boardroom of Goldman Sachs. He was then once again magically installed in the Securities Exchange Commission in 2017, as often board members of Goldman seem to end up in top positions in government. Cohen was allegedly the son-in-law of Robert M. Morgenthau who was the District Attorney for NYC who had asked Merrill Lynch to hire one of his witnesses, which became a scandal in the BCCI case in 1993.

The level of corruption and the sheer outright violation of every possible constitutional right was unimaginable, but they managed to bypass the law. You suddenly see that there is no rule of law whatsoever when it goes against the selfinterest of the government. We ask our boys to die in war to preserve the American way, and they never know the truth. There is no interest in justice, honor, or anything. When it is

political, you have zero rights. America has its political prisoners, and nobody bothers to report the truth or investigate. The days of Woodward & Bernstein are long gone. Others knew I had some of the best contacts ever. I knew it was Warren Buffett behind the silver trades into 1997 when even the Wall Street Journal said no way. But there were still others who had asked if there was a darker reason behind my case. One person suggested publicly on the Yahoo “Kondratyev” forum that someone who claimed a CIA insider of his acquaintance told him that “Martin Armstrong had to be stopped.” Perhaps “stopped” from advising over 20,000 institutional clients, managing the first on-shore hedge fund for Deutsch Bank, or disclosing what I knew had taken place with Berezovsky trying to rig the 2000 Russian Election.

I suppose I was also subtly brainwashed about Putin knowing the banker’s involvement and that Edmond Safra’s buddy

Boris Berezovsky was jockeying to become the next president of Russia. The bankers and the oligarchs wanted to own Russia down to the last drop of oil, diamond, and gram of gold. I knew all about the blackmail of Yeltsin and the push for Berezovsky to become president as justification to invest in Russia. I relayed that in the documentary on me entitled the Forecaster in 2015. Now that the Clinton Administration documents were declassified, everything I said in that film has been confirmed. I now can see that not only were my original sources correct down to the Minister of the Interior, but there had also been a propaganda part. This campaign to grab control of Russia painted Putin as a ruthless dictator who would assassinate anyone that dared to criticize him. That was the propaganda put out by Berezovsky, hoping to seize control of Russia.

I admit I had not looked beyond the Bank of New York blackmail scheme. I was not really concerned about the character of Putin. I assumed that his info was equal to mine, if not better, and he knew I was not part of the scheme with Safra and Berezovsky. There was just no way I would plead guilty at that reverse proffer session to a conspiracy with Safra and put my family at risk.

The Abuse of Power Continued

P

eople wrongly think that those in government are “honorable” and ethical and that many always believe that the government honors the law. Indeed, when my case began, I could have fled. I did not because I thought staying and self-surrendering would prove my innocence. You quickly learn that there is nothing honorable about those who prosecute others. They truly have to have an inner distrust of all humanity to a large extent and see no problem in judging others. To do that job, they have to assume you are evil so they can look at themselves in the mirror and celebrate after winning the death penalty.

The famous case of Ethel Rosenberg (1915-1953) and Julius Rosenberg (1918–1953), who were United States citizens convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage during a time of war, illustrates the extent of what I experienced and witnessed against others was not a rare one-off event. They executed the Rosenbergs for being alleged spies knowing his wife was innocent. The Rosenbergs were charged with passing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. However, in legal circles, it has always been known that Ethel was innocent and that the prosecutors deliberately charged her, hoping to force Julius to cooperate. The problem was that Julius was just a courier who really did not have the deep contacts that the prosecutors assumed. Since they were charged with “conspiracy,” there is no requirement of proof that Ethel participated. The crime is just to “agree” and nothing more. Julius had no information to save his wife, so they executed her and drank champagne to celebrate winning the case. A co-defendant of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Morton Sobell (1917-2018), admitted for the first time that he was a Soviet spy on his deathbed at 91 but also made it clear that Ethel was innocent. Sobell passed military secrets to the communists in World War II when the nations were still allies, he confessed to the New York Times. Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass (1922-2014), was arrested by the FBI for espionage in June 1950. To save himself, he quickly gave up Julius Rosenberg. To show how evil the prosecutors were, David testified at the Grand Jury and expressly denied his sister Ethel’s involvement in August 1950. The prosecutors had David change his testimony in February 1951 before the trial. Just weeks before the trial, he swore under oath that his sister Ethel had typed up his notes. His claim was the only

evidence provided, but it was enough to send his sister to the death chamber to save himself. The court rule is that Grand Jury testimonies remain secret to protect the rats. Ethel would not have been sentenced to death if they had been provided to the defense. The New York Times reported: “Mr. Greenglass later admitted that he had lied about the most incriminating evidence against his sister.”146

This is the way the criminal justice system works. The innocent are prosecuted, and the real criminals get less time for bringing in more people. The prosecutors do not care about the truth because everyone is guilty of something in their mind. That is the problem with conspiracy. Here, you have a brother responsible for his sister’s death, and he was the source all along. She died and he was released from prison in 1960.

Conspiracy only requires someone to testify against you, and there need not be any actual evidence. I often saw prosecutors coach their witnesses and tell them what to say to win their cases. Sobell, who served 18 years for espionage, said Julius did pass secrets, but Ethel, who was executed with her husband in 1953, was guilty of nothing more than being Mrs. Rosenberg. Details passed on by Rosenberg were of little value to the Soviets, according to Sobell. “What he gave them was junk,” he said. Indeed, Sobell’s deathbed revelations on Ethel’s innocence bolster a view widely held by historians who viewed the trial as propaganda. Grand Jury transcripts of the case confirm that Ethel was executed on perjured evidence from the prosecution. If it’s a political case, everything becomes a lie. To be a prosecutor seems to require selling your soul. You have to be willing to kill innocent people with absolute immunity and then go to dinner and celebrate your victory. And then these people want to run for political office, praying for a major case to make them famous. No one should ever, under any circumstances, vote for a former prosecutor, regardless of their party affiliation. They cannot have morals when victory is more important than the truth. Edward Snowden fled the United States because there was absolutely no way he would ever get a fair trial. Like the Rosenbergs, they would have demanded the death penalty. The U.S. criminal justice system (Just-Us) is far too corrupt. The 97-99% conviction rate has far surpassed even Adolf Hitler’s most notorious People’s Court, which had about a 90% conviction rate. The LA Times reported that “one of every two cases brought before the court” was sentenced to death.147

They would have done the same to Edward Snowden for telling us that the government was illegally spying on its own people. Once again, the Constitution is only viewed at best as a guideline. Those in power will always act in their own selfinterest.

The CFTC lawyer who initiated my case, Dennis O’Keefe, had also targeted Sumitomo for alleged manipulation of copper. He extorted a $150 million fine only to find out he had engaged in unethical conduct and agreed to a “voluntary

disbarment” with, of course, no jail time. Thomas Jefferson complained about the same issue in one of the clauses in the Declaration of Independence: “For protecting them [King’s agents], by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:”

There were people on every side in my case who certainly did not have clean hands. Dennis O’Keefe abused everything. He claimed his jurisdiction was after what happened in the United States. He failed to explain to the court that there was no solicitation for managed accounts. These were purchases of their portfolios.

O’Keefe should have been well aware of the facts before my case ever began. There had to be a solicitation to open an account to trade futures. The accounts were those of my company, not those of the client. They never opened any account in the United States with some power of attorney to be traded on their behalf. If someone robs a bank, takes the

money, and then trades futures, it does not convert a bank robbery into a commodity fraud. This whole mess became one giant cesspool of unethical conduct and abuse of process. Nothing mattered to Judge Owen, Judge Castel, or Judge Keenan, no less the Second Circuit court of appeals. Worse still, they removed all the lawyers illegally before they could even answer the CFTC complaint, and then the CFTC moved for default judgment, saying I failed to respond, so they tried to take all the money for themselves. I knew the law and stood up and objected. I said the Supreme Court had already held that corporations could only be represented by an attorney—not pro se. I said Alan Cohen was supposed to defend the company, and he refused to state the facts and move for the CFTC case to be dismissed. So, Judge Owen called me a “legal terrorist,” and just dismissed the CFTC motion for default judgment. Alan Cohen would never defend the companies, which was the purpose behind removing all the lawyers. Everything was just ignored, and any form of humanity, no less constitutional rights, went out the window. It became obvious that this was political, and there was no defense. Even Oliver Brown was ignored after coming forward and putting in an affidavit to the court, even though he was an employee of the Bureau of Prisons.

Nevertheless, Alexander Southwell states HSBC paid all the clients “who basically made good and paid out these losses for whatever reasons they did.” It was amazing that he pretended the bank, for some reason, paid all my clients out of the goodness of its heart, I suppose. Naturally, that must have been the reason no banker even went to prison. New York prosecutors and judges always protect the bankers. That is the golden rule in New York City. The American press joins in to also protect the prosecutors. Even the prosecutor in the parallel criminal case then claimed I was being held in civil contempt in case I would owe restitution to the bank in the criminal case. That was totally unconstitutional. One defendant never pays restitution to his co-defendant.

Nevertheless, Alexander Southwell had the guts to stand before Judge Lawrence McKenna (born 1933) and tried to recuse him because he was the only judge trying to protect me. That was just not acceptable to the prosecution. The lead prosecutor Richard D. Owens, I believe then schemed to have my case reassigned to pro-government Judge John F. Keenan. They removed my case illegally from

Judge Lawrence McKenna, who was protecting me, and sealed the record. I could not see how they did that again, violating my Due Process rights. The court-appointed lawyer, David Cooper, refused to object to the reassignment of the case and would never really defend me. Keen overruled McKenna and denied my motion to compel the government to explain what I was actually charged with, as it was obviously changing all the time. The power claimed by federal judges to imprison someone for life without any trial, deny lawyers and due process of law, claiming that is the “inherent power” of courts, demonstrates that the United States is no different from countries like China, Venezuela, or Nicaragua. They claim everyone else violates human rights, but America is never to blame. Chief Judge Walker simply claimed that the Constitution did not limit the inherent power of the courts from the king of England. You can cite all the Supreme Court decisions you want; they ignore them. The Supreme Court made it very clear in the Legal Tender Cases, 110 U.S. 421 (1884) (also referred to as Julliard v Greenman), that this claim of inherent power was rejected. The Supreme Court said: “… there is no such thing as a power of inherent sovereignty in the government of the United States. It is a government of delegated powers, supreme within its prescribed sphere, but powerless outside of it. In this country, sovereignty resides in the people, and Congress can exercise no power which they have not, by their constitution, entrusted to it; all else is withheld.”

Judges, in my case, ignored all arguments. There was no rule of law other than what the government demanded, and it was all to prevent any hearing on what took place with Safra, Berezovsky, Bank of New York, Yeltsin, the IMF, and Russia. For you see, the two brokers in the Bank of New York case, Lucy Edwards and Peter Berlin, pled guilty in February 2000.

However, once they realized my case was all connected to this international intrigue to overthrow Yeltsin, they did everything in their power to prevent a trial, and they did not sentence them for 6 years just in case I got to trial. Then they were given probation for $7 billion in money laundering—the biggest in history. Civil contempt is not “punishment,” but rather it is used to “coerce” you or effectively mentally torture you to do whatever the government demands. However, you are held in worse conditions than a prison. I spent 7 years inside a high-rise building where you never see grass or feel the rain.

The lead lawyer for my clients came to see me and said he was sorry, “You are collateral damage.” I said, “I know.” I agreed to help them against the bank, so the government

ran into court and put a gag order on me to prevent me from helping my own clients against HSBC. That at least created a firestorm. All my clients were major corporations in Japan. They were not people who could be shut out of court. That forced the government to go after the bank for the return of the money. That presented another problem. While the notes were $1 billion when issued, they were denominated in Japanese yen. The yen in 1995 had been 75:1, and by 1998, it had fallen to 147:1. That meant I had a $400 million profit. They were desperate to hide that fact. A receiver is supposed to gather the assets and repay the victims. Yet, if they did what the law prescribed, then the bank had to return the money. The problem then was that there would be a $400 million profit for my company. So, Alan Cohen conspired with HSBC and the government to hand HSBC my profit. The $1 billion notes were thus redeemed for $606 million, and HSBC kept my profit. Some people in HSBC told a friend in London that it was a deal “too good” to pass up. But, of course, nobody from the bank ever went to jail. After the bank pleaded guilty and had to pay everyone back, they were not even fined. How could I remain in contempt indefinitely if all the victims were made whole?

Alan Cohen had the audacity to stand before the court and alleged there was another fraud I was not charged with at any time. No complaint was ever filed, and they admitted in open court that there was no criminal description of the allegation. Nevertheless, they arbitrarily kept me in prison for 5 years without any justification whatsoever in complete denial of due process of law. Due process of law demands that you are to be provided notice of an allegation, and you are supposed to be able to confront your accuser. I was denied every possible Constitutional and human right of all civilized nations. Mark Pitman was a journalist for Bloomberg. He interviewed me and investigated our operation in Japan before my case began. He clearly understood what we were doing in buying damaged portfolios. When the case began, he knew the

allegations were false. We met at a Hyatt Grand Central hotel in New York City, and he said:

“Don’t worry. We’re not going to let them do this to you.”

Bloomberg management removed Mark from covering my

case and handed it to David Glovin who never once questioned the government’s story. Mark died in 2009 and his wife sent me a note on how Mark had always been in my corner. Bloomberg always supported the government. They threatened her for writing the note on Mark’s old stationary. Bloomberg News just protected the government and the banks. There is not much you can do when you are in the middle of a political nightmare. The press will not defend you or the people. They yield to the will of the state.

I met a man in prison, Steven Bumbaca, from the New York Post who had been the vice president controller. As a joke, when we first met, he said, “We all knew you were innocent when they threw the Associated Press out of the courtroom.” He explained that mainstream media gets those calls from government expressed as a “favor,” and if you do not comply, they come after you with IRS audits or whatever.

The new Judge John F. Keenan denied all my discovery rights. He ruled I had enough. The new prosecutors assigned to my case were Alexander Southwell and David Siegel. I believe the initial prosecutor, Brian Coad, was removed because he wanted to go after the bankers. I could see there appeared to be a conflict between him and AUSA Richard Owens at that reverse proffer session. That was the rumor at the time.

Alexander Southwell admitted after nearly 7 years that they didn’t want to go to trial. He came to see me without counsel present to try to cut a deal. He offered a Form B pleading where I would plead only to a conspiracy, and they would drop everything else. I would be allowed to move for time served and go home. Judge Keenan acknowledged the deal on August 17th, 2006.

Judge Keenan then allowed the government to force a plea they wrote and told me to read it like a hostage held by a foreign enemy. Indeed, that is the way John McCain said he had to make a statement in captivity under threat of torture. For me, it was under threat of imprisonment until I died. Just as you are supposed to have a public trial, you are also supposed to plea in your own words. Kennan said a script “should be prepared for you to read to me.” Again, John McCain claimed it was under threat of torture. Mine was no different. “Now read it slowly and read it nice and loud, please.”

The prosecutors Southwell and Siegel knew I would not say I took any money, and they knew I had not. They thus carefully crafted the words. They also knew I never made any misrepresentations, so for the plea, they wrote: “My agents also told investors that their monies in those accounts would be separate and segregated from Republic’s own accounts and would not be available to Republic for its own benefit.”

The plea made it clear that the bank stole the money and claimed I failed to tell the clients they took the money for their benefit—not mine. I suppose if you stole money from someone but failed to tell the government who stole the money, you go to prison for not saying who and the thief goes free. That is also unconstitutional as a constructive crime. However, nobody cares in New York. The government must win 99% if not 100%. The judges and the prosecutors clearly knew that there was no jurisdiction to charge me with events in Japan when each note was under Japanese law and individually approved by the Japanese government. They knew that there could not have been any jurisdiction for the CFTC claims since the

accounts never belonged to the Japanese, and there was no solicitation to open a futures trading account. In fact, the SEC did not have subject matter jurisdiction over private notes purchased by public corporations previously approved by the Japanese Ministry of Finance. The SEC was only granted extraterritorial jurisdiction under the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act enacted on July 21, 2010. They knew there was no such authority. However, why let the law interfere with politics? The Constitution is just a guideline.

Then at sentencing on April 10th, 2007, it was Judge Keenan who changed that agreement with no notice to me. He got the plea with a promise, and then the court altered the plea deal, violating the very promise. If that were the prosecutor, it would have been illegal, so the judge did it.

Yet even stranger, Judge Keenan was desperate to try to call my model a fraud. He alleged I stole the idea from the 1998

move Pi where a man uses pi to predict the stock market against the bankers. Truth means nothing. These judges think they can say and do anything as if they are some sort of God on Earth. It seemed that they did not want anyone looking at this model. The movie did not even come out until less than one year before my case. Yet, who really looks at the timeline? They make up nonsense, and because they are a judge, the press reports it as fact and kisses their feet as if they are their lord and master. I asked these prosecutors, “When did I conspire with the bank?” I had objected on the phone, in writing, and tried to fly to Geneva. I went to my lawyer Monday and he sent a letter to Republic that if they did not return the money by the end of the week, we would file suit. The FBI raided my office by Thursday. The government was protecting the bank and the merger with HSBC. This was a serious cover-up of everything.

Bloomberg News only reported that they tried to have me

killed right after the plea on August 17th, 2006, in 2011 following my release. My lawyer warned me to be careful.

People will strangely die in MCC, as was the case with Jeffrey Epstein. Bloomberg mentioned in passing: “Armstrong spent seven years in a Manhattan prison that houses drug dealers and terrorists, surviving an attack that left him hospitalized.”

Everyone’s doors were locked but not mine and someone else’s. I never saw that officer in charge before or after. I was told by other inmates that my attacker came out and boasted that he killed me. To their dismay, I was in a coma, but survived. They thought I would surely be dead.

The Business Insider had been one of the few members of the press that bothered to report the attempt on my life right after they got their plea to which I was supposed to be released. They quoted my sister, saying she “fears that he may not make it out.” It was Safra who alerted the DOJ about the Bank of New York money laundering. They claimed just a small amount went into their bank and thus they were never charged because they were the rat. Curiously, this story came out on August 27th, 1999, which was the very day that Edmond Safra took the $1 billion from my accounts. There was also the question of the money plane with skids of $100 bills supplied by the Clinton Administration for Republic National Bank that was shipped out weekly to Russia. If Safra

had been caught up in such a scandal, it would have been a major political crisis.

The absurdity of always protecting the New York bankers and the “Club” has run its course. At this point, it has become obvious that bankers never go the jail even when they blow up the world economy. Instead, they hold out their hands and ask for bailouts, blackmailing the government that if they went to jail, who would sell their debt? They have the perfect get-out-of-jail card in real-time.

After pleading guilty in February 2000, Lucy Edwards and Peter Berlin were not sentenced until six years later. The government knew that if I had ever gotten to trial, they feared I would subpoena all the bankers to court and expose the entire affair. They kept them on a short leash to control what they would testify just in case I got to trial. It really would have been the trial of the century or perhaps the millennium if all the truth really came gushing out in a courtroom. There

was probably much more behind the scenes than even I knew.

146

Kaufman, Michael, and Sam Roberts. “Morton Sobell, Last Defendant in

Rosenberg Spy Case, Is Dead at 101.” The New York Times, January 31, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/obituaries/morton-sobell-dead.html. 147

The Los Angeles Times, August 17, 1980

Conclusion

T

his book is intended to bring to light that no government is ever honorable. For those in power will always act in their personal self-interest. They will always engage in propaganda to achieve their own objectives. We the people never benefit from war. We are merely the pawns on the chessboard of those in power, no matter what form of government. Some people are brainwashed and hate Russians as they did Germans and Japanese during World War II. The demonization of Putin is propaganda needed to create war, for it is then extended to all Russians. This hatred of Russia from the Neocons predated Putin, illustrating that it has just been systemic.

They prevent people from looking into the facts by demonizing those who argue against war as a Putin supporter. They are often either brainwashed stooges or someone trolling social media, pretending to be common people when they are only operatives of the Deep State. All they do is push the hatred of all Russians to justify the end objective of war. The threat of force does not achieve world peace. The glory that was once Rome was created by free trade. When everyone is interlinked with one another, the reliance on free trade ensures that they will not bite the hand that feeds them. Imposing sanctions undermines peace and only leads to confrontation.

Rome lasted for 1,000 years because it was generally based upon free speech, freedom of religion, and a common economic market. Yes, the Christians were persecuted, for their religion was different insofar as they insulted everyone else’s beliefs. As Rome conquered territories, they were allowed to retain their customs and religions, they soon merged into the whole because everyone could sell their products to the entire empire—free trade. This was the great Roman peace as celebrated on this coin of Augustus (27 BC14 AD), struck in Ephesus (Turkey), with pax (peace) standing on the reverse. There were people in Rome who would invest in these newly conquered lands the same as we have emerging markets today. There would be a financial panic when a major earthquake hit Ephesus. Just as we have financial panics, the same existed back then as well.

What created peace was free trade. Everyone benefited. We must draw lessons from this piece of history. Imposing sanctions promotes discord and only leads to confrontation. If economies are integrated so that the citizens of all nations benefit from free trade, as was the case in the Roman Empire, then world peace can be achieved for the most part. When Nero died in 68 AD, he was the last of the Julio-Claudian line. Rome was plunged into civil war and that is when Israel made its move to separate from Rome, which was not a very smart move at all. Even Seymour Martin Lipset (1922-2006) in his classical study Political Man: The Social Bases of Politics from 1959, came to understand this same idea.

“Democracy is related to the state of economic development. The more well to do a nation the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy”.

This statement captures the essence of this political understanding that our modern politicians ignore. (Lipset [1959] 1981: 31).

The Civil War (68 AD-69 AD) occurred following Nero’s suicide on June 9th, 68 AD. First, General Galba claimed the throne, but he was killed on January 15th, 69 AD by Otho, who, in turn, was killed on April 16th, 69 AD, followed by Vitellius, who was killed on December 20th, 69 AD. This left Vespasian (69-79 AD) as emperor, establishing a brief dynasty with his two sons Titus (79-81 AD) and Domitian (81-96 AD). Vespasian was then confronted by Judea trying to separate and if he did not respond, then other provinces might have done the same. Thus, he proudly announced on his coinage that Judea was captive and destroyed their temple. The Jews were a problem since they would not respect the beliefs of others. This resulted in them being looked down upon as trouble makers. What we must understand is that our greatest example of success was the Roman Empire. What brought peace was the

regional, inter-regional, and international trade that allowed everyone to prosper. That is the very purpose of civilization that we all come together and benefit. The common feature of the Roman world was its free-market approach that ensured goods produced in one location could be exported far and wide, expanding their markets just as the internet has today expanded the world economy. Grains, wine, olive oil, marble, spices, pottery, and clothing were all exported in vast quantities whilst in the other direction came significant imports of precious metals, marble, and spices. The Romans actually created shoes, as did the inhabitants of India. The ancients of Mesopotamians, Egyptians, and Greeks were either barefoot or used sandals. The success of the Romans in battle was due to tactics and footwear made from quality leather. That became a welcome invention in many regions. The attack on the Nord Stream Pipeline has been a key strategic act of war intended to undermine the Russian economy just as past civilizations have counterfeited an opponent’s currency to cut off their income to wage war.

The Ukrainian neo-Nazis staged the attack on July 17th, 2014, shooting down the Malaysia Airlines flight M17 that crashed near Torez in Donetsk Oblast. MH17 was in route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur and vanished from the skies, killing a total of 283 passengers. This included 80 children and 15 crew members. They used an old Russian-made Buk Missile that was no longer in production. The 15-month investigation by the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) admitted that the firing on the missile could not be nailed down and projected the firing zone was within 320 kilometers. As mentioned, it was the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie on June 28th, 1914 in Sarajevo, that led World War I. That war killed up to 11 million soldiers and 13 million civilians, amounting to about 7% of the world population at the time. Today, 7% of the world population is

about 560 million people dead. We will be lucky if the death toll is that low in World War III. There are always more civilian deaths than soldiers on the battlefield.

Ukraine is being used to draw in the entire world for another conflict that will stain the whole globe with the blood of soldiers and civilians for centuries to come, all to satisfy the hatred of Neocons. Oh, they may come up with a flashy slogan like this will again be “The War to End All Wars” but it will really be the “War to End Civilization as we Have Known it.” Why do Neocons exist on all sides? Why are they filled with such hatred when world peace is simply possible as Rome discovered through free trade?

This time, war will be more like hitting the Ctrl-Alt-Delete buttons on a computer that will be the reboot after 2032. Don’t worry, nothing I can say or write will prevent this from happening. I am more concerned about what form of new government will emerge since no government will survive this time. We are looking at another 1931 mass extinction of sovereign debt in the years ahead. For this system of endless borrowing with no intention of paying anything back is coming to an end.

China will end up siding with Russia, as will North Korea and parts of the Middle East. Just as World War I was over an assassination, the hatred in Ukraine will draw in the world over a patch of land that Russians have occupied for centuries. Because of the hatred of Russians ever since the Communist Revolution of 1917, everyone’s lifestyle will be irrevocably altered by the cheers and the drums beating for war. The Neocons have guaranteed that the vast majority of people will think that all Russians are evil, just as they imprisoned the Japanese during World War II.

Politico published in 2008, that John McCain was always anti-

Russian long before Putin ever came to power. It does not matter who is the head of Russia—it never has. McCain was the leader of the pack of Neocons and his hatred of Russia has been legendary. The typical proof of propaganda is that the facts never matter. They will either twist the facts or omit them to achieve the same end result.

This time, these people are playing a very dangerous game and think they can bring down Russia without nuclear war. They never consider what if they are wrong, just as Robert McNamara confessed that they got it wrong about the Russians with Vietnam. That mistake cost over 2 million lives. How many will die for a mistake this time? Putin had no intention of invading all of Ukraine. Had he done so, he would have first taken down their power grid, then communications, and the water supply as we did in the Iraq invasion. The hardliners are criticizing him for being too soft on Ukraine. It has been the hardliners who are threatening nuclear war. The annexation of the Donbas on September 30th, 2022 was a direct response to the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines on Monday of that week, on September 26th, 2022. The Russian-speaking people of the Donbas region scheduled their right to vote on separation from Ukraine on the 23rd to 27th. That was originally agreed on in the Minsk Agreement. On September 7th, 2022, Putin threatened to cut off the Nord Stream gas if the sanctions were not lifted. The U.S. committed an act of war, blowing it up, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on Friday, September 30th, a “tremendous opportunity” to eliminate Europe’s dependency on Russia for energy. He later tried to backtrack saying nobody benefits from the destruction of Nord Stream.

CNN reported that the U.S. intelligence community has finally

admitted that the car bombing that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of prominent Russian political figure Alexander Dugin, was authorized by elements within the Ukrainian government. They further reported that the U.S. was not aware of the plan beforehand. They also reported that the U.S. intelligence community believed that Ukrainian President

Volodymyr Zelensky was aware of the plot and probably even authorized the assassination. Ukrainians are legendary for their corruption and their genocides. Zelensky is a comedian and a professional actor. He has no understanding of geopolitics or he would not have refused peace and thought he could defeat Russia all for the Donbas, which has been occupied by Russians for centuries. He is trying to drag the entire world into war for his own hatred of Russians. He is now demanding immediate NATO membership, knowing that that will violate every agreement since 1991 and would be the equivalent of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse. Even China warns that if Ukraine was admitted to NATO, it would lead to nuclear war. I cannot stress enough that this is the man who will be remembered for destroying our civilization.

The sheer hatred of the Neo-Nazis of Ukraine against Russian speaking people is legendary. These were the very people supported by John McCain and the American Neocons, and protected by the CIA since World War II when the world was never told about how their atrocities made the German Nazis look like boy scouts. The Ukrainian Neo-Nazis were never punished as the German Nazis were, despite their ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of people from the Polish, Jews, and Russians. Images of their Neo-Nazi hero, Stephan Bandera (1882-1941), was plastered all over the 2014 Maidan Revolution.

The Ukrainian Nazis executed up to 200,000 Jews and over 100,000 Polish, but were always exempted from prosecution because they also killed Russians. Documents have surfaced that were previously classified, revealing the CIA had protected the Ukrainian Nazis. The British MI6 was the main agency using the Ukrainian Nazis all because they hated Russians. The Independent reported on December 12th, 2010:

“Declassified CIA files have revealed that US intelligence officials went to great lengths to protect a Ukrainian fascist leader and suspected Nazi collaborator from prosecution…”

This is what Putin meant stating that he would “de-Nazify” Ukraine and it is why John McCain was openly meeting with them and promising the Neo-Nazis money to wage the civil war against the Donbas. The Western press laughed, pretending there was never Ukrainian Nazis, covering everything up as usual. With Zelensky actively trying to assassinate Putin, this man is recklessly allowing his personal hatred to put the entire world at risk. He has openly said he will not enter any peace negotiation until Putin is removed from power. His personal hatred blinds him to reality. Putin called for a balanced approach after Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov called for

Putin to use “low-yield nuclear weapons” (tactical nukes). Zelensky is out of his mind. Remove Putin, and things will get far worse. The old saying “it is better to deal with the devil you know” should be good advice right now.

This refusal to be unbiased is only pushing the world into war for the hardliners on both sides who cannot sleep at night without an enemy to dream about. Yeltsin was afraid of the hardliners who wanted to restore the USSR, and they are still there behind Putin, demanding action. The Neo-Nazis of Ukraine will never accept peace and the hardliners know that. This is a blood feud that can no more be resolved than the differences between the Catholic and Protestants or the Sunni and Shiites in the Middle East. That is the real risk of nuclear war just as the hatred of the Serbs led to the assassination of the Archduke in 1914.

There is absolutely not a single world leader who is even cautioning restraint. This is the outright attempt to defang and declaw the Russian Bear, assuming they would even allow it to still breathe. The hardliners know well the hatred that brews in Ukraine against all Russians, even those living in the Donbas. That warns that they will launch nuclear weapons in Ukraine if they get their way and then say, “Who is next?” Will the West engulf the entire world in a nuclear war over the Donbas?

For the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Moscow has made explicit nuclear threats while Washington is now desperately trying to game war scenarios should Russia decide to use a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. This is what the Neocons have been pushing for—the destruction of all their imagined enemies. On September 30th, 2022, Putin stated bluntly that the United States and NATO are enemies trying to destroy Russia. He has stated that he would use “all available means” to defend Russian territory, which he has now declared includes four provinces of the historic Donbas from which two Russian leaders emerged. Putin also reminded the world of President Harry S. Truman’s decision to drop atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He stated clearly: “By the way, they created a precedent.” The declassified documents have revealed a different history. NATO offered to absorb Russia in 1991. That is what sparked the coup against Gorbachev on August 18th, 1991. The hardliners saw that as the surrender of Russia to the USA— total defeat. That is when Yeltsin stood up on the tank and

pleaded with the troops not to support the coup. The military then backed down, and support for the coup collapsed. The Russian hardliners who equally hate Americans are still there. This time, they are telling Putin, “See, I told you so.” The conflict between good and evil in every society proceeds unceasingly in the character of humanity. This dual nature has been fostered by politics as well as religion. The most precious possession of humanity is its wisdom. Yet unfortunately, that seems to be shoved aside in time of war, as the hatreds bubble to the surface and take control. Russia must die in the minds of the American Neocons just as the Russian Neocons wish upon Americans. Neither will be satisfied by anything else. Wars are always created by leaders —not the common people. The American Neocons have engaged in endless proxy wars against Russia. They funded the Taliban in Afghanistan, who then used those weapons against Americans. The American Neocons even funded the Chechen terrorists, as I have shown that Yeltsin was telling Obama this had to stop. We must understand that the USA, EU, Russia, and China all have their Neocons who also cannot sleep at night, worrying about their enemies. It’s a shame we cannot put them all in a room to fight it out without involving the entire world population. Yet, they prefer that we lose our lives like pawns on a chessboard.

Indeed, as Carl von Clausewitz said, war is just an extension of politics. Mark Twain said “God created war so that Americans would learn geography.” Indeed, the older Neocons declare war. However, it is the youth that must fight and die. As Plato said, only the end ever sees the end of war.

There were 27 skeletons, including those of children, that were discovered at Nataruk near Lake Turkana, Kenya. There were blades embedded in bones, fractured skulls, and other injuries. What emerged was evidence of a massacre. The bodies were left unburied around 10,000 years ago. Some have argued that this was the earliest evidence for prehistoric violence in hunter-gatherers in tribal warfare. Jane Goodall’s (born 1934) discovery that chimpanzees also make war shocked the world back in 1987. She witnessed in Tanzania chimps beating members of a rival community to death, one by one, before taking over the defeated group’s territory. As long as members of one species organize into a collective, they seem to evolve methods of collective offense and defense. Ants have been known to invade other colonies and cause destruction. After defeating the alpha male, male lions kill the young cubs in that pride so that his own genes may grow, just as the Albanian and Ukrainian mafias target children to prevent retaliation. Even antibodies in our own body will attack foreign cells, and the foreign cells are equally vicious in their response. All of this has led to some theorizing that war is somehow just part of nature hardcoded into our genes—no doubt this debate will go on for centuries. The people have nothing to gain from war. The myth that wars are also defended as being in some way beneficial, comes from the fact that the United States economically benefitted from World War I and II since the fighting did not come to this continent. The reality is that wars only benefited those producing the arms or in the case of World War I, food. The Panic of 1919 that followed the war, saw a Commodity Panic that lasted for 13 years. Despite the “inflation” into 1929

with the Roaring ’20s, even silver declined in price for 13 years bottoming in 1932 with the rising dollar. It was the Panic of 1919 that marked the demise of one of the wealthiest men in the world at that time, Jonathan Ogden Armour (1863–1927) of the Armour meat packing company. He supplied food to Europe throughout the war. Ogden‘s personal fortune had amounted to $150 million at the peak in 1919. At the end of the war, he found himself overstocked and over-expanded along with everyone else in commodities. During the Panic of 1919, adjusted for inflation, he lost about $125 billion, which at the time was $1 million dollars each day for 130 days straight. He died penniless in 1927, living off the generosity of friends in England. When interviewed before his death, he said that he would be remembered for losing more money than anyone in history.

Sometimes the war is won by various governments, but it turns out to be a Pyrrhic victory where success comes with such a great loss. The term “Pyrrhic victory” is named after King Pyrrhus (319/318–272 BC) of Epirus, located in Northern Greece south of Albania. Pyrrhus attempted to invade Rome, which was costly. His army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans in 280 BC. The second Battle of Asculum in 279 BC was devastating. Plutarch relates in a report by Dionysius how another victory like that will be devastating:

“The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one other such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from

a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war.” — Plutarch, Life of Pyrrhus

As Henry Kissinger (born 1923) warned, the Donbas should have been let go. Why fight for land occupied by Russians anyhow? Putin has been in power since 2000 for over 20 years. He did not ever seek to resurrect the old USSR, as McCain constantly accused him of doing. On the contrary, he had actually made Russia quite stable in that region of the world. Ukraine’s attack on the Donbas made no practical sense, for it was a land grab or conquest more akin to the 18th century days of empires. This is not about the Donbas or even Ukraine, which is the cannon fodder to quench the thirst for war of the leaders

contrary to the common people on both sides. Zelensky simply refused to honor the Minsk Agreement, whereby a ceasefire and constitutional reform in Ukraine granted selfgovernment to certain areas of Donbas. The Ukrainian NeoNazis were still promoting ethnic cleansing when Ukrainians never occupied the Donbas. The border was simply administrative under the USSR drawn by Khrushchev. Millions of people are supposed to die on this piece of land? Nobody in the West will stand against Ukraine, just as the CIA has always protected the Ukrainian Nazis only because they hated Russians.

There is no other outcome but war. This is a blood feud like the Hatfield–McCoy conflict, involving two rural American families of West Virginia and Kentucky. Ukrainians vs. Russians will never end. The hatred runs very deep. The West is moved by the Neocons, who have been hell-bent on demoralizing Russia no matter who is in power or their economic system. Napoleon invaded Russia in hopes of

ending the trading partnership between the royal houses of Britain and Russia, supposedly in an effort to compel Britain to sue for peace. Officially, the stated claim was to liberate Poland from the threat of Russia. To a large extent, there was a deep-seated hatred of Russians and Jews as well as Slavic people that was created by the propaganda against Russians in France and Germany. Even the Protestant Reformation was about allowing Christians into the banking system, whereas only the Jews were bankers for the sin of usury prohibited Christians from lending money for interest. During the Nazi era, Germany deemed Russians and other Slavs to be an inferior race that they even called “subhuman” and called for their extermination. This was the mantra of the Ukrainian Nazis who were prepared to implement Generalplan Ost (General Plan for the East). This was a directive whereby the organized murder of tens of millions of Russians alongside other ethnic groups that inhabited the Soviet Union was part of creating Lebensraum, which was the ideological principle of Nazism to expand territorially throughout Central and Eastern Europe. The very term “slav” had meant slave from Middle English, Old French sclave (“slave”), Medieval Latin sclāvus (“slave”), and even late Latin Sclāvus (“Slav”) because Slavs were often forced into slavery in the Middle Ages. The Latin word is from the Byzantine Greek Σκλάβος (Sklábos). So, to some extent, the disrespect of Russians has been historic. The Ukrainian people should understand that they are cannon fodder, and nobody gives a damn about them or their country. This is a war to seize Russia—USA vs. Russia. All the propaganda to paint Putin as a madman or the devil

incarnate is designed to indoctrinate the people to accept war, for that then applies to all Russians. Hence, just as Hermann Goring said: “[T]he people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism.”

There are no peacemakers today, only hatred and warmongers. Our most precious possession of humanity has been cool-headed wisdom, yet that has been abandoned. All world leaders prior to this current crop always sought world peace. It is unthinkable that now there is only darkness, which has engulfed the world, and people do not even fully understand why.

The global financial system is unsustainable. Governments have been borrowing since World War II with no intention of ever paying anything back. The socialist state of Karl Marx is

collapsing by its own weight, as was the case with communism. Those in power have been listening to the World Economic Forum and the need for this Great Reset. They see no way out and took the option promoted by Klaus Schwab. They needed war to justify their debt defaults and then introduce another Bretton Woods to establish a new monetary system as they did after World War II. This time, they want a digital currency to ensure everyone pays taxes. The system of continually borrowing year after year has led to a debt crisis and its inevitable end. The promises of Marxism are crumbling into dust and falling to the ground. War is now necessary to mask the economic collapse and the coming of sovereign debt default. They whisper behind the curtain of a new Bretton Woods, creating a new global currency and centralized government that never works.

The roots of evil have blocked the sunlight of wisdom offered by history, for the leaders of the West are only concerned about retaining power. They remain hell-bent on war as the exit strategy to this economic mess. This is not about supporting the USA or Russia, which is the distraction from the real economic crisis. This is about supporting the people who

are always the victims of the war games of those in power. As the statistics inevitably confirm, there are simply more civilians who die in these wars than soldiers on the battlefield.

History whispers to us, begging us to learn just once from our past mistakes and to look closely at our former successes and failures. Society must learn, as individuals do, and stop ignoring history. Otherwise, we as a society are condemned to record the same failures over and over again. An individual progresses through life learning from prior mistakes, but not collective societies. When we are very young, we have all put our fingers into the candle flame to discover that it burns, and we won’t do that again. Sadly, societies seem incapable of acquiring such experience. Albert Einstein said that knowledge comes only from true experience. As a society, we never look back at the past and repeat the same mistakes century after century. World peace is attainable only when the people are interconnected by free trade, so their leaders are constrained in their desire to

create war or impose sanctions. Now we face the prospect of a major world war, and as Hermann Goring noted, we will all be dragged along with propaganda.

Society ignores history; the lessons are always assumed to be irrelevant, for the present is continuously somehow different. We look at ancient times and assume they were all a bunch of people running around in sheets chucking spears at each other. What could they possibly offer in our new world of technology? They were just primitives in diapers. Indeed, only technology advanced from the past. We have graduated from sticks and stones to nuclear bombs. Our idea of a collective society has never ever advanced with respect to how to govern our way of life. We cannot get through our heads that, given similar circumstances, humans will always respond in the same manner. Emotionally, we have not advanced at all from ancient times. If you ever bother to read the various Greek philosophers, close your eyes. You will discover that human nature has never changed, only the gadgets we now have. As Aristophanes (446-386 BC) wrote: “Under every rock lurks a politician.” For you see, nothing has ever changed politically.

The philosopher George Santayana (1863– 1952), was the one who said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

History repeats because the passions of humankind never change. There have been tyrants in the past, as there are today. Governments will lie to their people because they can never accept responsibility for their mistakes. While we as a species are capable of learning from our mistakes individually, that knowledge is not passed on even to our children. They too must travel through this journey of life and learn from their own mistakes.

As a society, we repeat the same mistakes repeatedly because we are just incapable of learning from the past. Indeed, it was Niccolo Machiavelli (1468-1527) who warned that: “[P]rinces and governments are far more dangerous than other elements within society.”

Therein lies the answer. Those who aspire to rise and grab the reins of power only look at their own self-interest, precisely as in Adam Smith’s invisible hand theory states. There were 30 Roman emperors between 260 AD and 284 AD in just 24 years. You would think someone would be cautious about trying to claim the throne since they all died clinging to it. Each must have thought this time is different. People want to believe what they want to believe. Perhaps that is the real

curse of humanity. Nobody seems to consult history to ask the most obvious question: “Has anyone tried this before? Did it Work?”

Regardless of the political form that governments assume, those in power will always make decisions based entirely on their own self-interest. No one consults history for guidance. Perhaps they are arrogant and assume they either know or fear the answer. Even Boris Yeltsin was confronted by the oligarchs on one side and the communists on the other. Both were seeking their own self-interest in deposing Yeltsin and seizing the reins of power. The communists could care less if communism worked for the people. It was all about their personal power or selfinterest. The oligarchs, led by Berezovsky, were obsessed with power to seize everything in Russia.

Since our world leaders in every form of government make decisions for society based entirely upon their own self-

interest, society can never advance to a higher level. Even the Ten Commandments prohibited coveting other people’s goods. Yet, our leaders preach this Marxist doctrine relentlessly, despite the fact that it has never worked because it tries to alter human nature. They demand that we surrender our freedom for their doomed schemes. Today they even fantasize about implanting chips in our brains so we can be controlled like robots, and then their authoritarian control will succeed. Plato and Socrates saw democracy as a problem. Indeed, just look at the presidential elections in the U.S., and you will see only four presidents ever had between 60% and 63% of the popular vote—Franklin D. Roosevelt on his re-election in 1936, Lyndon B. Johnson as a sympathy vote following the Kennedy Assassination, Richard Nixon to end Vietnam, and Warren Harding in 1920 with 60.32%. Obama won 51.1% of the popular vote, and Joe Biden had only 51.3%. Yet they call this a mandate to force their ideas upon the whole. This is the very curse of a “democracy,” as Plato and Socrates saw it. Interestingly, Plato attacked Athenian democracies for mistaking anarchy for freedom. He saw it as an irresponsible form of government lacking coherent unity. Plato concluded that such democracies were a mere group of individuals rather than a form of political organization. Indeed, Biden holding 1.3% of the popular vote is not a mandate to go after the other 50%, as that is the very thing that leads to civil unrest and plants the seeds of revolution. The American Revolution battle cry was, “No Taxation Without Representation!” That is still the result when one claims a mandate with only a 1.3% majority. The only way to create a fair system demands such policies to require a two-thirds vote. Otherwise, history warns that the

United States will not likely be defeated by an external enemy. It will die as all other republics in history from its own internal corruption, as was the case with the Roman Republic.

If we just look at the tax code, we see the result of this default that a republic always dies from its internal corruption. Depending on which party seizes power, they immediately proceed to oppress their opposition. The whims of the present are reflected in this chart of defining the rich. The tax code has been so unstable that it has driven companies offshore. The definition of “the rich” flips back and forth like a pendulum. Thanks to Marxism, wealth is the exception to equal protection of the law. Those described as “rich” changes dramatically based upon the self-interest of those in power at that moment. The unstable tax code in the U.S. has driven capital offshore. Why open a plant to manufacture some product based upon the current economic conditions, only to find the politics

changes and now they become the hated “rich” for political purposes? Nobody would rent an apartment if the lease allowed the landlord to double the rent because he wants to buy a new car whenever he feels like it. Politicians no longer know how to run for office without Marxism promising to take from one person to hand to another. Equal Protection of the Law has been intentionally defined to omit wealth and class to enable Marxism to be implemented on a discriminating basis. Forecasting the future can really only be accomplished on a consistent basis using the entire globe and not isolated to a single domestic market. It also takes the real facts— not fiction and human prejudices. This is why I developed a model that incorporated everything from economics, climate, war, and even civil unrest. This computer Array maps out the future for 12 years. You can find this forecast Array published in 1999 on our site using the Wayback Machine. This Array even correctly forecast a Panic Cycle in 2008, ten years in advance. The trends are far more complex than we could ever imagine. This Array is accomplished with 72 models. We must understand that the theories of Marx created the idea that government holds the power to alter society. He failed to grasp that he was trying to transform humanity into worker bees, ending the freedom found in human nature. We are all not the same. I may be better at research than a quarterback, and he is better at throwing a football than me.

This is the Array of International War and Civil Unrest that sometimes leads to domestic revolutions. My deepest concern is that we are heading into a dangerous period because of political mismanagement that will threaten our way of life, which was constructed on the pain, suffering, and blood of so many during World War II. The fiscal mismanagement of all governments borrowing endlessly with no intention of paying anything back has brought us to the very brink of collapse. Central banks have been stripped of the power they thought they had under Keynesian Economics. All they can do is manipulate interest rates, yet they have no control over the fiscal budget.

We must be mindful of how empires, nations, and city-states have risen and fallen throughout history. Each society always assumed they were the exception; this time, it is somehow different. As Julius Caesar (100-44 BC) observed a long time ago, people believe what they want to believe. All I can do is warn that we are trying to dance between the raindrops and ignore history as we always do.

The history books of the Great Depression omitted any discussion about the massive sovereign debt defaults of 1931 when Europe, most of Asia, and South America defaulted. Why? Because they were pushing socialism with FDR, so they just omitted the truth from all the history books. I had to read Galbraith’s Great Crash in high school. There is no mention of any sovereign debt defaults. I was shocked when I found a rare copy of President Herbert Hoover’s Memoirs. I recommend reading his chapter on 1931, which is now available online. Winston Churchill often said that history is written by the victors. Napoleon Bonaparte said, “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” I have tried to present the facts without the bias of a partisan. I have learned that those with an agenda far too often write history. Nowhere did I previously read about NATO offering full membership in 1991 to Gorbachev. Perhaps society prefers being lied to so the truth is not painful.

We must be mindful of 2023 and look upon the world with new eyes. What emerges post-2024 does not look very

comforting in the least. The risk of international war is building after 2024, and the economic stagnation is stirring civil unrest that then comes back as finger-pointing. Ukraine is drawing the world into another war, as did Bosnia in 1914. The hatreds run very, very deep in that region. Yet, the economic decline in the face of rising inflation instigated by COVID lockdowns and sanctions on Russia are rippling through the economy, lowering the living standards of everyone. That historically demands retribution. Mixing in this climate change agenda of ending fossil fuels now, and worrying about any alternative later, is a recipe for serious inflation that will unleash civil unrest on a global scale. The third world will suffer much, and this conflict with fossil fuels alone will cost countless lives. Beware—everything changes in 2023 going into 2028. When economics impacts the people, we will see serious political upheaval.

Index A Afghanistan, 11, 155, 407, 428, 462, 485–86, 626 Agriculture, 511–12 AIG, 46, 84 American Neocons, 67, 79, 104, 144, 154–55, 184–85, 396, 414, 431, 623, 626 American Revolution, 18, 508, 580, 591, 635 Ancient Rome, 393, 420, 503 Artificial Intelligence, 511, 547–53, 555 Assassination, 12–13, 95–98, 216, 218, 226–30, 233, 239–41, 243, 251–52, 260–61, 267–69, 271–92, 370, 476, 620–21 character, 225, 294–95, 297 B Bailouts, 21, 63, 142, 304, 616 Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), 562, 601 Bank of England, 47, 536 Bank of New York, 109–14, 117, 125–26, 129–33, 157, 159, 238–39, 260, 281–82, 410–11, 596, 599 Bankruptcy, 3, 37, 40, 125, 138 Benex, 111, 132–33 Berezovsky, 70–78, 89–96, 98–103, 106–19, 122–24, 163–65, 168–70, 172–79, 181–85, 205–6, 211–25, 227–28, 232–40, 243–48, 250–54, 256–61, 277–78, 280–83, 288, 370–73 Boris, 67–68, 71, 111–12, 173, 175, 178, 212, 215–16, 218, 235–36, 253– 54, 273, 275, 280–81, 370 Biden, Hunter, 9, 315

Biden, Joe, 315, 481, 496, 543–44, 634 Biolab, 487 Blackmail, 107, 112, 116, 177, 242, 280, 290 Black-Scholes-Merton model, 52 Black Wednesday, 20, 536, 568 Bonds, 16, 39–40, 52, 59, 297, 393, 399, 523, 525 Bribes, 20, 44, 49–50, 55, 63, 84, 113, 118, 207, 235, 246 Browder, 196–202, 204, 254–57, 259–60, 269, 302–4, 307–13, 315–17, 319–32, 337–40, 342–52, 354–66, 368–82, 384–86, 389–91, 395–96, 399–401, 403–4, 414, 416 Bill, 53, 57–58, 110–11, 194–99, 256–57, 291, 301, 307, 309, 313–15, 317– 18, 322–23, 325, 341, 351, 396–97 Buffett, Warren, 25, 40, 43, 46–47, 402–3, 601 Business cycle, 504–6, 509, 526, 533, 537–38, 540, 559 C Caesar, Julius, 281, 294–95, 299, 392, 476, 530, 637 Capital flows, 51, 83–84, 567 Capitalism, 80, 85, 125, 183, 192, 194, 405 Carpetbaggers, 187–204, 319, 405 Case & Safra, 573–87 CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission), 13, 18, 42–44, 46–50, 64, 569, 571, 578–79, 581, 599, 607 Chaos theory, 539 Churchill, Winston, 295, 544, 558, 638 CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), 147–48, 283–84, 288, 385, 391, 452, 456, 569–70, 623–24, 629 Civil contempt, 2, 4–5, 7, 12, 283–84, 287, 582, 586, 589, 594–95, 598–99, 607, 609 Civil unrest, 103, 128, 445, 635–37, 639 Civil war, 423, 428, 437–38, 475–76, 481, 488, 494, 565, 571, 618–19, 624 Clinton, 85, 89, 140, 144, 152, 155, 170, 206–7, 246–47, 250–51, 596, 599 Bill, 26, 31, 55, 85, 116, 122, 144, 159, 206, 209, 439–40 Hillary, 11–12, 148, 155, 220, 294, 309, 408, 412, 417, 443

Clinton Administration, 9, 12, 24–25, 67–69, 121, 148, 165, 176, 316, 318, 327 Cohen, Alan, 54, 283, 286, 579, 584, 598, 607, 610 Coinage, 392, 504, 516, 518, 520–21, 523–24, 526, 619 Coins, 294, 317, 420, 501, 503, 516–19, 524, 618 Cold War, 78, 149, 155, 327, 418, 428, 465, 569 Comey, James, 12, 202, 294, 408 Commodities, 40, 45, 48, 54, 433, 628 Communism, 80, 183, 185, 190, 194, 197, 405, 430, 509, 512, 530, 631, 634 Conspiracy, 34, 133–34, 170, 321, 331, 338, 411, 419, 595–96, 602–4, 612 Crimea, 35–36, 229–30, 259, 477, 479–80, 482, 536, 571 annexation of, 229, 480 Cuban Missile Crisis, 422, 446, 450, 570, 623, 625 Currency, 20, 23, 29, 58, 83, 454, 461, 467, 491, 502, 564–65 D Davos, 9, 53, 68, 76, 145, 197, 259, 291, 310, 316, 345 Davos Pact, 9, 29, 31, 68, 98, 103, 137, 142, 145, 316–17, 320, 420, 422 Debt, 56, 59, 104, 150, 167–68, 179–80, 183, 465–66, 468, 508, 517 consolidate member-state, 468 domestic, 57 foreign, 57, 141, 261 sovereign, 621, 631 Debt defaults, massive sovereign, 535, 638 Democracy, 209, 212, 293–94, 298, 317, 423, 427–29, 435, 449, 525, 530, 544–45, 634–35 Department of Justice (DoJ), 2, 7–8, 13, 111, 283, 285, 310–11, 313, 574, 578 Deposition, 310, 338, 357, 360 Depressions, 504, 509, 525, 543 Devaluation, 535

DoJ. See Department of Justice Donbas, 230, 266, 289, 437–38, 449, 453, 463–64, 475, 493–94, 622–25, 629 Draghi, Mario, 54 E ECM (Economic Confidence Model), 435, 471, 491, 542 Economic Confidence Model. See ECM Edmond, 63, 65, 110–11, 197–99, 272–83, 285, 288, 291–92, 302–4, 306, 317–18, 320, 340–41, 575–78 Einstein, Albert, 504, 529, 544, 632 Empires, 138, 250, 392, 430, 477, 518, 521, 523–24, 629, 637 Enron, 577 Epstein, Jeffrey, 3, 31, 391, 615 ERM Crisis, 20, 568 Espionage, 32, 149, 417, 603–4 Estemirova, Natalia, 226, 231 Ethnic cleansing, 449, 452–53, 623, 629 Eugene, Prince, 473 Euromaidan, 471 Euromaidan Revolution, 423 F FBI, 4–5, 7, 12, 124–25, 130–32, 385, 391, 408–10, 414, 562, 596 FCPA (Foreign Corrupt Practices Act), 49 Federal Reserve, 52, 56, 61–62, 133, 505, 513, 532, 534, 568, 575 Firestone Duncan, 200–202, 301, 308, 318–19, 342–43, 346, 348, 353–55, 359–60, 364, 367 First Punic War, 520 Forecaster, 4, 18, 22, 24, 26, 123, 272, 316, 370, 598, 602 FSA (Financial Supervisory Agency), 573, 575–76 FSB, 90–91, 93–94, 96–98, 139, 142–43, 206–8, 219, 230, 233, 236, 238, 240, 244–45 Fuels, fossil, 445, 451, 496–97, 555, 639

G Gates, Bill, 25, 212, 396, 402 Gazprom, 150–51, 163, 166–68, 179–81, 183, 200–201, 261, 309, 344, 453, 465 Glass-Steagall Act, 54–55 Gold, 19, 21, 23, 27–28, 110–11, 187, 189, 237–38, 501–2, 504, 521–22, 535, 563, 566–67 Gold coinage, 520, 522 Goldfarb, 222–23, 246, 250, 254 Alexander, 213, 250 Goldman Sachs, 19–21, 28, 38–39, 41–42, 54–55, 61, 84, 305, 584, 595, 601 Gorbachev, 8, 33–37, 75, 97, 115, 207, 436, 536, 625, 638 Mikhail, 33, 36, 90, 190 Graham, 437, 439 Lindsey, 437 Great Depression, 27, 54–55, 89, 440, 535, 638 Great Reset, 448, 450, 463, 631 Guaranteed trade, 18–20, 22, 45, 49–51, 60–65, 81, 83, 111, 191, 197–200, 303–6 Gusinsky, 68–70, 137–39, 141–54, 156–57, 159, 161–72, 174, 176, 178–83, 213–14, 247, 257, 259–60, 272, 395–97 H Hedge funds, 27, 52, 60–61, 303, 532, 534 Hermitage Capital Management, 110–11, 145, 194, 197–99, 201, 256–57, 259, 262, 291–92, 301, 308 Hersh, Seymour, 455 Hill, Fiona, 497–99 Hitler, Adolf 295, 298, 448, 535, 605 HSBC, 3, 6, 65, 110, 204, 285–86, 303, 306–8, 574–75, 577–78, 597, 609– 10, 615

Human rights, 3, 267, 317, 323–24, 327, 332, 334–35, 434, 608 Hussein, Saddam, 485 Hyperinflation, 16, 40, 523 I IBM, 549–50 IMF (International Monetary Fund), 29–30, 51–52, 56–57, 60, 62–63, 81– 83, 119–22, 124, 126–27, 129, 132, 207, 304–6, 466–67 Immunity, 142, 162, 185, 348, 426 absolute, 549, 595, 605 Industrial Revolution, 507 Inflation, 40, 289, 462, 502, 543, 628, 639 Institute for the Study of War (ISW), 486 Interest rates, 56, 513–14, 545, 553, 637 International Monetary Fund. See IMF Investment Real Returns (IRR), 292 Iran, 28, 307, 397, 419, 427, 434–35, 485, 562, 570 Iraq, 10, 78, 80, 316, 427–28, 434, 450, 453, 462, 486–87, 566 invaded, 161, 450, 572 ISIS, 434–36 K Kagan, 484–86 David, 497 Donald, 485 Frederick W., 485 Robert, 484 Kameya, 330, 346, 353–55, 368 Kennedy Assassination, 9, 440, 634 Keynes, John Maynard, 504, 510, 526, 543, Keynesian Economics, 637 KGB, 33–36, 74, 90, 96, 115, 142, 144, 195, 206–7, 209, 214

Khashoggi, Adnan, 562 Khimina, Yelena, 328 Khodorkovsky, 125–26, 130, 260–61, 263, 266 Mikhail, 71, 125, 226, 256, 262, 313, 341 Khokhlov, Nikolai, 239 Khrushchev, 229–30, 436, 463–64, 629 Kidnapping, 133, 258, 273, 379 Kissinger, Henry, 390 Koch, Alfred, 167, 180–81 Kodanev, Mikhail, 236 Komisar, Lucy, 200, 323, 357, 365, 385, 395 Krainer, Alex, 322 Kremlin, 72, 113, 118, 137, 164, 170–71, 176–77, 180, 182, 212, 214, 226– 28, 242, 263, 265–66 Kristol, Bill, 484 L Lenin, 15–16, 184, 194, 447 Liquidity crisis, 57, 533 Litvinenko, 91, 93–94, 216, 221–22, 236, 240–47, 249–53, 371 Alexander, 92, 107, 178, 212, 226, 239, 243–44, 247, 252–54, 371 Livshits, Alexander, 59 LNG (liquefied natural gas), 444 Loans, 62–63, 138, 147, 154, 163, 166–67, 193, 199, 468, 470, 551 Lockheed Martin, 486 Long-Term Capital Management. See LTCM LTCM (Long-Term Capital Management), 52, 56, 62, 84, 125, 532 Lugovoy, Andrei, 216, 250 M Magna Carta, 399

Magnitsky, 201–2, 301–3, 310, 312, 314–15, 318–22, 329–33, 335–40, 342–43, 345–48, 354, 356–57, 359–68, 370, 372–73, 378–84, 386, 431 Magnitsky Act, 267–68, 309, 312–14, 318, 322–28, 335, 355, 360, 365, 384, 386, 426, 431 Magnitsky’s death, 204, 320, 339, 342, 348, 385 Maidan Revolution, 465, 571, 623 Manchester, William, 558 Mandelbrot, Benoit, 541 Manipulations, 23, 45–46, 83, 178, 182, 249, 351, 505, 533, 569, 600 Markelov, 230, 321, 365, 369, 373–74, 380 Marx, 504, 506, 526, 543, 636 Karl, 212, 474, 506, 543, 548, 631 Marxism, 405, 418, 506, 509, 544–45, 549, 631, 635–36 Maxwell, 31–34, 36–39 Ghislaine, 31 Robert, 32, 37–38 McCain, 157, 326, 328, 407–9, 411–16, 419–24, 426–27, 429–31, 434–39, 621, 629 John, 79–80, 184–86, 326–27, 384, 386, 407–9, 411–16, 419, 422–23, 429–30, 435–39, 612, 621, 623–24 McFaul, 323, 384 Michael, 303, 323 Media-MOST, 150–51, 154, 156, 166–68, 179–80 Medvedev, 232, 465 Merkel, Angela 232, 492–96, Metal, 27–28, 459 MI6, 213, 215, 220, 223, 243, 247–49, 251, 266, 272, 283, 288 Milgram, Stanley, 296, 472 Minsk Agreement Hoax Exposed, 463–99 Minsk Agreements, 438, 449, 463–64, 493–96, 622, 629 Money laundering, 29, 111, 124, 126, 128–29, 132, 157, 199, 237–38, 262, 585–86

Money plane, 30, 278, 283, 288, 615 Murder, 97–98, 228, 232, 237, 242, 250, 261–62, 267, 320, 322, 328 N NASA, 511 NATO, 8–9, 25, 33–34, 73, 75, 415–16, 418, 422–24, 426, 446–48, 450, 452, 494, 496, 625 expanding, 424, 426 Natural gas, 434, 453, 456 Nazis, 32, 195, 358, 428, 470 Nemtsov, 171, 257–60, 263–67 Boris, 171, 226, 237, 253, 256–57, 269 Neocons, 11–13, 25, 35, 326–27, 407, 409, 411, 461–63, 484, 487–88, 497, 621, 625–26 Neo-Nazis, 266, 414, 424, 437, 449 Nekrasov, Andrei 314–15, 319, 321, 333, 348, 356 Nesbett, Richard E., 558 New York bankers, 3, 13, 19, 115, 214, 271, 505, 527, 594, 598, 615 Nixon, Richard, 634 Nord Stream, 434, 443–62, 495, 622 destruction of, 453, 622 North Atlantic Treaty, 447 Nuclear weapons, 51, 84, 450, 473, 499, 572, 625 Nuland, 456, 459, 482–84, 487 Victoria, 455, 482, 484, 488, 497 Nuremberg trials, 293, 472 O Obama, 141, 297, 315, 421, 434–37, 494, 544, 626, 634 Offshore accounts, 113, 132–33, 308 Oil, 38, 124, 126, 227, 243, 262, 431, 435, 444, 602 Oktai Gasanov, 364–65, 367, 369

Okulova, Yelena, 113 Oligarchs, 8–9, 67–80, 89–90, 103–6, 137–42, 159–60, 162–64, 168–74, 176–78, 182–84, 188, 190–92, 194, 222–24, 242–44, 256–59, 341–42, 395–98, 420–22, 468 OPEC, 27, 567 Ottoman Empire, 274, 448 Owen, 248–49, 582, 590, 597 Richard, 581 Owen, Judge, 3–4, 248–50, 578, 580–83, 590, 592, 594, 598, 607 P PACE (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe), 269, 355, 380 Panic, 58–60, 89, 477, 502, 514, 527, 531, 572, 576, 628 financial, 392–93, 618 Panic Cycle, 565, 636 Parliamentary Assembly, 269, 355, 380 Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. See PACE Pavlov, 365, 368, 373–74, 380 Perepilichnyy, Alexander, 254–56 PhiBro, 28–29, 40–41, 43, 45–46, 48 Pi target, 533, 535–37 Platinum, 42, 44, 111, 189, 258, 562 Poisonings, 91, 216, 238–41, 248, 252, 295, 371–72, 381, 443 Politkovskaya, 241, 253 Anna, 226, 233, 252 Poroshenko, 481, 483, 488–92 Precious metals, 19, 28, 501, 620 Primakov, 76, 85, 89–90, 92, 94–104, 106, 108–9, 142–44, 147–50, 155– 56, 161–63, 165–67, 174–75, 177, 183–84 Princeton Economics International, 22, 575 Privatization, 37, 75, 105, 191–93, 198–99, 207, 241, 258–59, 266 Prokhanov, Alexander, 235

Prokhorov, Mikhail, 377–78 Propaganda, 9–10, 12, 24, 27, 148, 184–85, 220, 223, 323, 325, 449, 451, 617, 630, 632 Proxy war, 11, 407, 414, 434–35, 437–38, 440, 463, 572, 626 Putin, 72–73, 115–18, 137–44, 159–61, 163–66, 171–74, 176–78, 182–85, 205–10, 213–14, 216–69, 271–72, 280–82, 293–99, 316, 395–97, 401– 2, 416–24, 492–99, 624–26 Q Quantum Mechanics, 539 Quattrone, Frank, 3, 581, 592 R Randomness, 504–5, 539, 541–42 Receiver Alan Cohen, 571, 574, 580, 583 Red Notice, 198–99, 303, 348, 395 Red Square, 185, 264 Reforms, 33–34, 85, 89, 156, 160, 163, 192, 207, 420, 430, 521 constitutional, 163, 169, 629 Regime change, 2, 323, 397, 446–48, 484–87 Renaissance Capital, 376–80 Republic National Bank, 21, 29–30, 110–11, 115, 131–32, 194, 301, 306–7, 573, 575, 577 Reverse proffer, 410, 595 Reverse proffer session, 589–602, 612 Revolution, 15–16, 172, 194, 213, 215, 466, 471, 477–78, 489–90, 635 RICO, 256 Risk management, 57, 60, 198, 527 Roman Empire, 392, 400, 448, 516, 519, 522, 557, 618–19 Roosevelt, 1, 89, 196, 535 Rothschilds, 61, 274 RussiaGate, 12, 405, 411, 414, 417, 498 Russian Bond Crisis, 56, 85

Russian Financial Crisis, 18, 52, 56, 63–64, 85, 138, 147–48, 208, 218, 278–79, 302–4 Russian Mafia, 80, 93, 117, 124, 128, 274, 279–80, 288, 291, 452, 585 S Safra, 109–11, 198–99, 218, 259, 271–72, 274–78, 280–83, 286–88, 290– 91, 303, 316, 595–97, 602, 615 Edmond, 6–8, 29–30, 53, 109–11, 115, 194, 199–200, 206, 271–92, 301– 2, 307, 573, 575 Salomon Brothers, 28–29, 38, 40–41, 43, 53–54, 197 Sanctions, 288–89, 384, 386–87, 390, 397, 401, 418, 420, 443, 445, 451, 453, 617–18 Schiffer, Steven, 4, 581 Schiffer, Steven H., 582 Second Circuit, 285, 580, 582, 590, 593, 607 Second Circuit court of appeals, 3, 580, 590, 607 Secret Cycle, 532, 538 Separatists, 154, 436, 489, 492 Shadow personality, 425–26 Silver, 27–28, 42, 45–48, 258, 403, 502–4, 521–22, 628 Silver coins, 501–3, 522 Smith, Adam, 511–12, 543, 633 Socrates, 555–57, 634 Soros, 83, 246, 303, 305, 498 George, 20, 23, 25, 51, 68, 83, 178, 212, 246, 402, 446 Sotomayor, 594 Southwell, Alexander, 608, 611–12 Stalin, 10, 34, 77, 184, 196, 535 Stanley, Morgan, 40, 378 Stashina, Yelena, 328 State Duma, 9, 60, 85, 115, 156, 208, 229, 234, 240, 248 Steele Dossier, 12, 148, 202, 229, 294, 408, 411, 414, 499 Suicide, 4, 31, 80, 220, 269, 272

Sun Tzu, 54, 185 Supreme Court, 2, 195, 287, 415, 579, 594–95, 607–8 SWIFT system, 394, 567 Syria, 407, 427–29, 434, 436, 462, 485, 519 T Tatyana Yumasheva, 112, 185 Tax evasion, 49, 204, 243, 308, 331–32, 338, 340, 342–43, 354, 356, 490 Tax fraud, 307, 309, 338–40, 342–43, 345–46, 348–49, 352–54, 356, 361– 63, 371–72, 374, 376, 379, 386 Terrorism, 141, 216, 247, 395 Thatcher, Margaret, 96, 306 Thinking, linear, 555, 559 Thinking process, 37, 405, 555–59 dynamic, 556 Third Punic War, 521 Tiananmen Square, 530, 536 Transcripts, 2–3, 8, 13, 72, 132–33, 309–10, 321, 333, 345, 590, 592 Treason, 229, 245, 415, 466, 564 Trends, 295, 298, 503, 509, 515, 521, 526, 530, 537, 542, 636 Trepashkin, Mikhail, 92, 239 Trotsky, 223 Trump, 8, 11, 313, 315, 402, 405, 407–9, 411, 414, 417–18, 437, 439–40, 443, 446, 497–98 Donald, 160, 417, 439, 443, 446, 497 Tymoshenko, 466 U UBS (Universal Bank of Savings), 374, 378–79 Understanding Time, 529–45 United Nations, 427–28, 433–34, 446, 448 V Veselnitskaya, Natalia, 312

Vetter, Marcus, 123, 272, 370 Vietnam, 412, 419, 462, 473, 622, 634 Vietnam War, 10, 449, 455 Vilification, 293–95, 297–99 Vladimir Gusinsky, 69–71, 125, 145–46, 164, 182, 220, 225, 257–58 Volcker, Paul, 63, 505 Voronenkov, 229–30, 264 Denis, 226, 229 W Wages, 192, 435, 448, 624 Waterfall Events, 525 Wave, 258, 510, 532–33, 535–37, 543 catastrophic, 510 rogue, 510 Whistleblower, 202, 301, 318, 321, 333, 343, 348, 354, 356, 360, 383 WikiLeaks, 385 World Economic Forum, 9, 53, 68, 184, 259, 291, 345, 390, 446, 548, 631 World Trade Center, 18, 155, 533, 601 World War I (WWI), 15, 476, 510, 621, 628 World War II (WWII), 4–5, 296, 419–20, 447, 451–52, 499, 501, 571–73, 576, 621, 623, 631 World War III, 4, 325, 391, 408, 419, 451, 488, 499, 533, 571–72, 621 WTO (World Trade Organization), 323–24 Y Yanukovych, 229, 423, 465–66, 468–70, 478, 488–89, 571 Yeltsin, 68, 85, 89–90, 97–100, 102–18, 120, 122–24, 126–29, 137–38, 140–42, 146–47, 156–57, 159, 161–63, 181–84, 205–9, 228, 258–59, 278–81, 420–21 Boris, 9, 26, 36, 76, 84, 93, 103, 113, 154–55, 177, 190 Yeltsin Family, 114, 211

Yulia Chumakova, 202 Yulia Tymoshenko, 469, 481 Z Zelensky, Volodymyr, 154, 265, 437, 446, 449–50, 463, 475, 490–91, 493, 623–24, 629 Zyuganov, 103, 105, 112, 163