Murky waters

A perfect environment for competent investors

Having kept silent for 10 years, Senate Committee members finally revealed that Saudi Arabian government may be linked to 9/11 attacks.

All these years public non-governmental organizations such as "Transparency International" were deflecting attention away from Saudi Arabia money in the U.S. telling stories of African dictators and Russian mafia.

Last Wednesday the Moscow City Court upheld the Lublin District Court decision on
a lawsuit filed by Yulia and Vladimir Kokorev against Spanish newspaper "El Mundo" and the Russia's "Infox" news agency.

Russia's line

On October 12, 2011 the Lublin District Court decided that the abovementioned media sources published materials that do not correspond to the facts and discredit the plaintiffs' honor and dignity, and ordered them to publish a retraction within 10 days.

In brief the case is as follows. In autumn of 2009 "El Mundo" journalist  Antonio Rubio published an article claiming that Spanish prosecutors were allegedly investigating a high-profile corruption case involving the Kokorevs, a married couple living in Spain.

Antonio Rubio was accusing Vladimir Kokorev and his family of nothing short of laundering $26.4 million through his shipping company "Kalunga" on behalf of Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang.

By the way, despite the fact that Vladimir Kokorev-owned Panamian shipbuilding and repair company had more than 300 employees from Russia and the former USSR, the Spanish journalist claimed Kalunga was "a phantom firm belonging to president Obiang".

The media frenzy quickly spread to Russia - as a result the Kokorevs spent nearly 3 years in court in a bid to protect their honor and dignity. They filed 5 lawsuits against various media, and have so far won all these cases.

Another Spanish journalist Jose Maria Irujo writing for the major Spanish newspaper El Pais spares no effort in a bid to expose Vladimir Kokorev.

Every year he thoroughly and almost word-for-word re-publishes in his newspaper the story about Kokorev once spun by Antonio Rubio. It's a rather curious fact of co-operation between the newspapers that are normally rivals.

There's something strange about this though. Every year two major national newspapers of a European state, governed by the rule of law, are writing about some court number 5 in Las-Palmas allegedly hearing the Kokorevs case, and Spanish relevant authorities are turning a blind eye to this.

Instead of putting the "Russian criminal" in prison or at least summon him for interrogation, they scrupulously issue him and his relatives certificates of no criminal record by Spain.

Vladimir Kokorev translates thoroughly these certificates into Russian, notarizes them and presents them in court.

And again we could stop here and marvel at the manic persistence with which Spanish press is hounding Kokorev, who managed to defend his honor in court again, and finally put the matter to rest, if it weren't for another publication in the "New-York Times" on February 29, 2012.

Once upon a time in America

You can read the full version by clicking here.

Summing up what the article is about, it quotes ex-senators Bob Graham and Bob Kerry who led a joint 2002 Congressional inquiry into the 9/11attacks.

They issued sworn statements that the Committee has ample evidence that the government of Saudi Arabia, has played a certain role in the terror attacks. However, for some reason they have revealed this only 10 years after the attack, in February 2012.

Why?

It's widely believed that Patriot Act (federal law adopted in 2001, which increased government surveillance powers) is first and foremost important for preventing money laundering and terrorist financing.

What sort of sums of money are we talking about here, if the devastating attacks of 9/11 cost only a hundred thousand dollars to execute?

Terror attacks in Madrid and London were significantly less expensive and, according to the results of the investigation, got funding through street crime, pick pocketing and retail drug trade.

Was it worth introducing a global financial monitoring system, that undermines the very basis of capitalism, because what kind of capitalism can we talk about without confidentiality of commercial and transactions or banking secrecy?

The U.S. lawmakers themselves have been often saying they have taken the risk not so much to keep track of suspicious transactions worth not more than several thousand dollars, but identify those who benefit from terrorism.

Those who adopted the Patriot Act were aware that some traders who had short positions earned themselves billions of dollars, closing them right before the 9/11 attacks. All they needed was inside information. And they didn't necessarily need to be hiding in the mountains at Tora Bora with Osama bin Laden to get it. They didn't even need a telephone connection with his cave.

Princes and princesses

The mechanism of trading on inside information has long been known. People who have some knowledge or are capable of getting information that is unobtainable by ordinary mortals are calling themselves competent investors and are setting up investment funds, managed by just as qualified brokers.