Fury at Forbes article labelling Cyprus as trafficking haven
snip
In the 1990s, it said, Cyprus was among 14 countries with businesses that illegally provided Saddam Hussein with conventional weapons. Forbes said this was cited in a report to the CIA on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Cyprus-registered companies also contracted to buy oil and chemical materials from Iraq in violation of the UN embargo, it said.
“One result of these dirty dealings with Saddam was the UN-backed oil-for-food programme, which itself proved easy to manipulate. Once again Cyprus was in the centre of a storm,” it added, referring to US accusations against Cypriot UN diplomat Benon Sevan.
The article also refers back to the early nineties when Cyprus was a magnet for Russian business, saying that $1 billion a month was flowing out of Russia into Cypriot banks.
“Much of it unclean. The Russian mafia controlled as much as 70 to 80 per cent of all business in the motherland during the mid-1990s, according to a report by Izvestiia. Sending money to havens like Cyprus kept it safe from tax collectors, on-the-take bureaucrats, creditors, other gangsters and shaky Russian banks… Today Russian crime has a different face in Cyprus, where a thriving sex trade draws women from former Soviet states.”
http://www.cyprus-mail.com/news/main.php?id=25350&cat_id=1
Cyprus, now that is interesting, I remember getting the plane crash article a couple days ago at your link, the article was odd enough.
I did note that there seemed to be a lot of modern tourist info on the site.
There is more than one plane with problems and didn't the guy who was going to blow up the Israeli cruise ships, intend to do it around Cyprus?
I know almost nothing about the history of Cyprus.
They change the names faster than I can keep up, as a stamp collector, I thought I knew something about almost every country, now I am so out of date and the names changed, so that there are countries that I do not have stamps for.
Oh, well, can't see them anyway.