Shaken oligarchs keep their money on Yanukovich

The sight of hundreds of thousands of protesters in Kiev has rocked Ukraine's business oligarchs who mostly backed the bid by Viktor Yanukovich, prime minister, for the presidency.

Business leaders assumed the authorities would deliver the required result and deal effectively with any public backlash in favour of the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.

But the scale of the demonstrations, road blocks and strikes has shocked them, and their influence is critical, as they have acquired their wealth and power by working closely with Leonid Kuchma, the outgoing president.

Most remain wedded to Mr Yanukovich, especially the barons of his political heartlands in the industrialised Donetsk region. But a few are beginning to wonder whether Mr Yanukovich still offers the best protection for their interests.

Many are also coming under pressure from employees who are openly supporting Mr Yushchenko - putting up posters in factories and workplaces and taking time off for demonstrations.

Much will hinge on the attitudes of the country's two wealthiest men. One is Viktor Pinchuk, Mr Kuchma's son-in-law and head of a business empire that ranges from manganese to media, including the Novy Kanal, STB and ICTV television channels.

The other is Rinat Akhmetov, the chief of a steel and coal empire based in Donetsk and Mr Yanukovich's main business backer.

Mr Pinchuk has profited hugely from his relationship with Mr Kuchma and has encouraged his broadcasters to back Mr Yanukovich.

However, Mr Pinchuk has in past Financial Times interviews portrayed himself as a middle-of-the-road figure interested in integrating Ukraine's economy with the west as well as with Russia.

Olexander Tkachenko, the head of Mr Pinchuk's Novy Kanal, said yesterday that business people such as Mr Pinchuk could "act as a bridge between those who are in power now" and Mr Yushchenko and his allies. "I believe they want to have a consensus," he said.

Mr Tkachenko, who has previously backed Mr Kuchma and almost certainly voted for Mr Yanukovich, said he would now support Mr Yushchenko.

He criticised the authorities for confirming Mr Yanukovich as the official election winner on Wednesday, thereby reducing the scope for compromise. This was not the way to promote stability, he said.

Mr Tkachenko's views are widely shared by people employed in the media, financial services and other sectors in central Kiev.

But backing away from Mr Yanukovich would be risky for Mr Pinchuk. Mr Yushchenko has pledged to review the controversial privatisation of Kryvorizhstal, Ukraine's biggest steel mill, which was sold to Mr Pinchuk and Mr Akhmetov earlier this year for $800m (€604m, £424m), far less than foreign bidders were prepared to offer.

If Mr Pinchuk has little room for manoeuvre, Mr Akhmetov has even less. Having backed Mr Yanukovich to the hilt he stands to gain if his man is confirmed as president.

One of his executives yesterday told the FT: "This looks like hysteria. Yushchenko should take his complaints to the courts. But I think Yanukovich's victory will be validated."

However, even Mr Akhmetov might be concerned if the crisis brings a collapse in relations with the west.

In a recent interview with the FT, he said he was modernising his businesses by developing ties with western-educated managers, consultants and banks.

Elsewhere in the Ukrainian business elite, a few individuals have long been sympathetic to Mr Yushchenko, notably Sergey Taruta, head of the Donbas Industrial Union. Most, though, have seen backing Mr Yanukovich as the best way of retaining money and power. So have Russian business people who have invested heavily in Ukraine.

As a last resort, they may ditch Mr Yanukovich but would fight to retain the system he represents. Alexander Rahr, director of the German Council for Foreign Relations, says bluntly: "The oligarchs will see how things develop. But they have put too much into backing Yanukovich to pull back now."

I found this when I googled Len Blavatnik.

THE HAVANA CARTEL ALLIES ITSELF TO THE MEGA-GLOBALISTS OF THE RUSSIAN MAFIA OF ALFA GROUP AND USES CHAVEZ ' VENEZUELA - By: Máximo Tomás - January 26, 2004

During a recent visit by Fidel Castro to Venezuela - which was planned so that it would coincide with the visit of Russia's Foreign Relations Minister Igor Ivanov, and with the visit of a group of executives from Crown Resources AG, from the Russian consortium Alfa Group - the final touches were given to an agreement which will allow Venezuela and Russia to exchange crude oil in order to permit them to supply "their respective markets" while Cuba - which enters this trade agreement with sugar and its Russian oil refinery in Cienfuegos - guarantees its supply of oil even in the case of a political change in Venezuela.

The treaty - after negotiations finalized between December 22 and December 23 of 2003 - in which the Havana dictatorship participates, would permit Russia to process oil at an oil refinery (Oel GmbH) which is a joint venture between Venezuela and the Veba Oelen Gelsenkirchen company from Ruhr, Germany, and which would be acquired by the Russia consortium Crown Resources AG while Petroleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) would invest funds in the modernization of an old and obsolete refinery which Moscow began to construct in Cuba during the Soviet-era.

As the Venezuelan journalist Marianella Salazar reveals, the current PDVSA vice president, Aires Barreto, was the assessor and the representative of the Alfa Group in Canada until he was contacted by PDVSA's Ali Rodriguez to rejoin PDVSA.

The treaty's secret terms are not known, but the exchange of Venezuelan interests in the German refinery for those of a semi-ruined and antiquated Russian refinery in Cuba is, in all views, a clear misfortune for Venezuelan interests - which would have to spend more than $200 million dollars in order to put into operation the Russian refinery at Cienfuegos, Cuba - and very convenient to those who could inherit political power in Cuba because they would receive "guarantees" of a steady supply of oil even if Chavez is forced to leave power in Venezuela. Additionally, Cuba solidifies an advantageous association with the all-powerful Alfa Group.

Crown Resources AG is one of the consortiums of the mega-globalist Alfa Group empire that will assume control of interests once owned by Venezuela in the German refinery, which currently honors crude oil contracts with PDVSA. Cuba acts as an active intermediary in the transaction.

Crown Resources AG is a vital part of the vast umbrella of companies belonging to Alfa Group, which has become one of Russia's largest financial and industrial conglomerates, with important investments in the petroleum industrial sector (specially in the fourth largest Russian oil-producing company Tyumen Oil Company); in the banking world with Alfa Bank (the firstmost private bank in Russia); and in raw materials, insurance and telecommunications.

The founder and president of Alfa Group is Mijail Fridman, who is an associate of American Marc Rich, accused by the New York District Attorney Office of more than 50 cases of fraud, illegal oil trade with Iran, and of fiscal fraud involving more than $48 million dollars.

Rich, one of the most generous contributors to the political campaigns of his close friend ex-president Bill Clinton, caused a scandal in the United States after receiving one of the many presidential pardons issued by Clinton upon his departure from the presidency. The pardon prevents any possibility of Rich being tried for the fifty charges of which he was accused. Rich was probably one of the economic sources of funds that paid the lawyers that represented the father of young Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy that came to Florida from Cuba in a raft, and was later deported after a paramilitary operation without precedent in cases of such type in the United States.

Fridman himself is considered one of the 12 largest Russian oligarchs. At 39 years of age, Forbes calculates his worth to be $210 billion dollars, which puts him in ninth place in the list of the richest people in the world younger than 40 years. According to the Spanish newspaper Diario Vasco, Fridman started his fortune in the tea, sugar and cigarette commerce, moving on to the commerce of oil and its derivatives. At the beginning of the 1990s Fridman was importing sugar from China, but it is alleged that he was involved in trafficking with illegal drugs. Personal friend of Russian presidents Yeltsin and Putin, Fridman is vice president of the Jewish Congress of Russia, president of which is Vladimir Gusinsky, known to be the owner of a communications media empire and also one of the people who pulls the strings of the Russian petroleum industry.

Nevertheless, it is said that relations between Fridman and the Kremlin are infinitely better than those of Gusinky's. Having been during his university years a school chum of Putin's right hand man, Vladislav Surkov, with whom he developed a close friendship, is one of the best credentials Fridman has with the administration.

According to a vigorous investigative report by Digital Liberty, Fridman, "to protect his businesses, acted as an informant to the police. His ability to split his profits with policemen and politicians allowed him to succeed in the environment of total corruption that currently exists in Russia. His enterprises form a web which cover the entire world."

It is reported that Fridman frequently transacts his oil business through fiscal havens where he has numerous phantom companies dedicated to the laundering of illegal capital. Among those fiscal havens is Cuba.

Of course, the only principle that rules Alfa Group is "the more money, the better," according to Victor A. Cheretski, quoted by Digital Liberty. That is why he only leases ships from the most doubtful and unscrupulous of companies, such as the ship "Prestige." (The "Prestige" was a tanker ship which sank on November 19, 2002 off the coast of Galicia, Spain, creating an ecological disaster for these coasts in northwestern Spain.) Safety is not an issue, what is important is to "save" some money. Since Crown Resources AG is involved in the sale of low-quality petroleum products, among other items, the "Prestige" loaded up with fuel oil in Letonia and set course for Gibraltar.

The associates of Fridman in the board of directors for Alfa Group are: Rodney Chase, first counsel to the general manager of British Petroleum (BP); Len Blavatnik, president of the board of directors for Access Industries; Viktor Vekselberg, president of the board of directors for Renova, and principal executive officer for TNK; Brian Gilvary, vice president of oil refinement for BP; Andy Inglis, vice president for oil extraction for BP; Alex Knaster, general manager of Alfa Bank; Tony Hayward, principal manager of BP's oil extraction and production; Patrick Chapman, treasurer for BP.

The importance of this economic alliance of Cuba and the mega-global empire of the Alfa Group is unimaginable, and the consequences for Latin America could be incalculable.

The great strategy of Havana's Mafioso cartel is to primarily ensure the solidification of its ties to very powerful allies in the Grand Game of global politics and economics, allies which would guarantee a "transition" inside Cuba on the terms and the interests of Cuba's actual "establishment." This move would unite the heirs of the political power in Cuba to Russian and American investors, and would weaken considerably the influence of European investors in Cuba, reducing their capabilities to maneuver and influence.

The current transitional formula - proposed by European globalists, by the Spanish chancellery, the Vatican, and certain political sectors of the US and European international companies, involving Carlos Lage and his ally of convenience, major of the revolution Ramiro Valdés Menendez, and married to the proposed transitional Proyecto Varela, whose major exponent is Oswaldo Payá - is not the transition favored by the Havana cartel.

The alliance with the mega-globalists Russian Mafiosi and their American partners - Rich and other clintoists from the neo-colonial American Left - will give the Castro Clan the independence to carry out their own version of Cuban transition: total control in a capitalist political environment similar to Communist China's. The "democratization" of the country, as it is perceived in the West, giving space to "opponents", be they domesticated, negotiated, or genuine, is not an acceptable factor. The Havana Cartel believes that democracy can wait for a few generations more, just as China's leadership has believed all along.

The economic heart of the Havana Cartel is the Group for the Administration of Enterprises, S.A. (GAESA) under the leadership of the Castro Clan and a group of generals and military figures addicted to the governing Castro family. GAESA, with is recent hostile takeover of Cubanacan - which accounts for 40% of all tourism-related income into Cuba - accrues and controls between 75% and 85% of all of tourist-related revenues. (By 1997 GAESA's executive general director Major Luis A. Rodriguez Lopez-Callejas reported a yearly total income for GAESA of around $970 million dollars, according to a report that appeared in the Madrid newspaper Diario 16 on June 24, 2001 under the headline "The Economic Power of the Castro Brothers".)

GAESA, under whose protection is found the most important conglomerate of the pro-Castro neocapitalists, currently has as president of its board of directors Division General Julio Casas Regueiro, and its executive general director, Lopez-Callejas, is married to Raul Castro's eldest daughter, Deborah Castro Espin. (Department VI of the Cuban Military Counterintelligence is an essential part of GAESA. Until very recently Department VI had been under the command of a Colonel Peralta, but currently Raul Castro's son-in-law Lopez-Callejas heads it. Located on the fourth floor of the Armed Forces Ministry building, Department VI monitors and controls all of GAESA's operations, including its internal and external policies, the security, the spying, and the checking and rechecking of all of the public and private activities of GAESA's personnel.)

The blow against Cubanacan was a strategic imperative of the Mafiosi Havana Cartel. The political and economic moment was opportune. Cubanacan was the only civil emporium with a significant amount of control over a key portion of the Cuban economy; an economy that only has as viable industries the laundering of money, tourism, and the remittances of dollars from the more than 2 million exiled and repatriated Cubans otherwise known as "worms". Additionally, Cubanacan aspired to make investments in the field of the petroleum industry and had very important political allies in the civil-technocrat class which competes inside the sphere of power to control the process of succession in Cuba.

The heirs of Castro's power may not be as interested in "liberating" Latin America as in facilitating it for the Russian globalists, and their associates, as a sort of third-world proletariat mega-plantation whose riches are incalculable and whose cheap labor force as an enslaved entity could be very well controlled by "populist" regimes through the use of a totalitarian security police force, whose vast experience in controlling whole populations would allow the annulment of all protest or rebellion, and would eliminate the always-present threat from strong and organized labor unions. The Cuban experience is their best hand.

Soros sure picked an interesting guy to sell his shares to!

I wonder if any of the companies named here links to the Russian end of the Oil for Food bribes, which Soros' associate Rich was also linked to (Marc Rich Tied to U.N. Oil for Food Scandal (NewsMax)). Here is a list of the Russian companies named as OFF recipients (along with the Ukranian ones, since that also might be worth cross-referencing with the Ukranian situation to see where in the political spectrum the various players fall):

The Saddam Oil Vouchers Affair (Details)

Russia 1. The Russian State 1.366 billion 2. Zarubesneft 174.5 million 3. Russneft Ampex 86.9 million (for the office of the president, including 1 million to Mr. Tetzenko, Russian Ambassador to Baghdad) 4. Communist Party Companies 137 million 5. Amircom (Unity Party/ Ministry for Emergencies) 57 million 6. Mishinoimport 1 million 7. Al-Fayco (Russian Foreign Ministry) 128.8 million 8. Yatumin (Russian Foreign Ministry) 30.1 million 9. Slavneft 25.5 million 10. Zan Gaz 49.1 million 11. Rosneft Company 35.5 million 12. Caspian Investment 8.5 million 13. Kamaneft Company 7.5 million 14. Gasprom 26 million 15. Tatneft 1 million 16. LUKoil 63 million 17. Surgut Neftegas 4 million 18. Siberia Oil & Gas company 1 million 19. Nafta Moscow Company 25.1 million 20. Onaco Company 22.2 million 21. Sidanco Company 21.2 million 22. Sibneft 8.1 million 23. Transneft 9 million 24. Yukos 2 million 25. Liberal Democratic Party (Zhirinovsky) 79.8 million 26. Peace and Unity Party 34 million (the list mentions party chairwoman Sazhi Umalatova) 27. Russian Committee of Solidarity with the People of Iraq 6.5 million (its chair, Sergei Rudasev is mentioned) 28. Russian Association for Solidarity with Iraq 12.5 million (its chair, [Zhorafilon] is listed) 29. Russneft-Gazexport 12.5 million 30. Uralinvest (Stroyev) 8.5 million 31. Moscow Science Academy 3.5 million 32. Romain (son of former ambassador to Baghdad) 19.7 million 33. Zarabsneft (Gobkin University) 3.5 million 34. Nordvest Group) 2 million 35. Zarbshneft & Gas (Mr. Hassan) 3 million (only one million delivered) 36. Soyuzneftgaz (Yuri Shafrannik) 25.5 million 37. Nikolayi Ryzhkov 13 million 38. Stroyneftgas 6 million 39. Akht Neft Company 4.5 million 40. Chechna Administration 2 million 41. 'Adel Al-Jablawi (I.N.M. Airways) 6 million 42. Khrozolit 5 million 43. Trader Nafta 3 million 44. Chief of the President's Bureau 5 million 45. Russian Orthodox Church 5 million 46. Russian National Democratic Party 3 million

Ukraine 1. Social Democratic Party 8.5 million 2. Ukraine Communist Party 6 million 3. Energy Resources 2 million 4. Fazmash Ampex 2 million 5. Neftogas 8 million 6. Hugh Company (Sokolov) 5 million 7. Orshansky 4.5 million 8. Fideralty Torkovy 1 million 9. Trans Isko 1 million 10. The Ukranian House 1 million 11. F.T.D. 2 million 12. Socialist Party of Ukraine 2 million

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