Posted on 03/20/2002 7:52:49 AM PST by Nita Nupress
Ted Maher -- former Special Forces; Neonatal Intensive Care nurse
American Green Beret veteran and accomplished neonatal nurse Ted Maher has now been held 537 days without trial in Monaco's prison on trumped-up and false charges -- charges of causing the deaths of billionaire banker Edmond Safra and Ted's fellow nurse, Vivian Torrente on December 3, 1999. In truth, Ted fought valiantly against two armed, masked intruders to defend Edmond and Vivian and save their lives. During the struggle, Ted suffered severe knife wounds that required one hundred staples to close.
Billionaire banker Edmond Safra was cooperating with the FBI, who was investigating the IMF/Russian loans. Needing a convenient scapegoat for the murder of Safra, Monaco police subjected Ted to three days of grueling torture designed to extort a false confession from him. (see description in "BASIC TIMELINE" in Thread 1 - http://206.112.97.70/forum/a3ad8b097272d.htm ).
Monaco continues to hold Ted incommunicado, preventing him from sending or receiving mail. In fact, they restrict his communication with his family to one telephone call a week. This call is only allowed to last a few minutes and is always monitored closely to prevent any discussion of the case. Ted is forced by his jailers to take a psychotropic medication and is regularly "interrogated" by the Monaco judge -- Patricia Richet. Reports have been received that Judge Richet is a violent person who has displayed unstable behavior in the past. She allegedly has a history of assaulting a fellow judge, putting him in the hospital for a week. She also tears up letters from Ted's children in front of Ted rather than let him read them.
Hundreds of family, friends, work associates, parents of patients, and Army veterans who served with Ted have vouched for him as being a loyal husband, loving father, and an exemplary professional of great skill and compassion. Ted has also been defended by then-chairman of the House International Relations Committee Ben Gilman and Ted's congresswoman Sue Kelly, who have written Prince Rainier III of Monaco on Ted's behalf. Monaco has no evidence of any crime by Ted; they have no witnesses and no credible case against him. Even worse, Monaco has planted false evidence and suppressed vast amounts of exculpatory evidence -- even passing a special Monaco law that enables them to hold Ted four years without trial.
The Geneva prosecutor has said that Safra was killed for his cooperation with the FBI regarding the laundering through Safra's Republic National Bank of $4.8 billion in IMF loans to Russia.
Regardless of the reason "why," it is obvious that Ted Maher is a scapegoat for a murder by others. We are working to obtain his release and to correct the grave injustice being done to an American Green beret veteran and medical professional.
Ted Maher -- a giver of life, not a taker -- needs our help.
============================================
To read the "BASIC TIMELINE" that describes the events surrounding the night of December 3, 1999, click here:
American Green Beret Veteran TED MAHER Held Hostage by Monaco for 498 Days and Counting... (Thread I)
To read the "BASIC TIMELINE
American Green Beret Veteran TED MAHER Held Hostage by Monaco for 537 Days and Counting... (Thread II)
American Green Beret Veteran TED MAHER Held Hostage by Monaco for 544 Days and Counting... (Thread III)
American Green Beret Veteran TED MAHER Held Hostage by Monaco for 544 Days and Counting... (Thread IV)
American Green Beret Veteran TED MAHER Held Hostage by Monaco for 615 Days and Counting... (second Thread IV)
American Green Beret Veteran TED MAHER Held Hostage by Monaco for 629 Days and Counting... (Thread VI)
American Green Beret Vet TED MAHER Held HOSTAGE by Monaco for 629 Days (Thread 6) second thread 6"
American Green Beret Vet TED MAHER Held HOSTAGE by Monaco for 629 Days (Thread 10)
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Monaco Guest Book
(You can write in English on the French page and scroll down to read. Please note they have a tendency to delete messages regarding Ted - not "fairytale-correct.")
Bump for Ted Maher and his loving family......In Jesus' Precious Name, Amen.
-BTTT-
Why would Edmond Safra die in suspicious circumstances?
Why would Monaco suppress exculpatory evidence and manufacture incriminating evidence?
True, the widow's windfall makes her one of the world's richest women possessing a fortune to die for.
But Edmond Safra was the banker with the secrets in his head.
An investment banker with a career in the Boston and New York houses said there "was an odor about Republic".
Surely this in the Times of London of 1999 addresses that:
http://www.russiatoday.com/frames/frames.php3?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sunday-times.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fpages%2Ftim%2F2000%2F07%2F25%2Ftimfgnrus01002.html
According to yesterday's report, on August 14, 1998, the $4.8 billion was transferred from the New York Federal Reserve to accounts at the Republic Bank of New York, controlled by Edmund Safra, the billionaire Lebanese banker who died in a fire at Monte Carlo last year. The Russian Central Bank defaulted on most of its short-term debt three days later, triggering the crash.
In the chaos that ensued, Mr Safra received instructions from the Central Bank and the Russian Ministry of Finance to move the $4.8 billion quickly to "other foreign accounts" through a tortuous series of international transfers, the report claims.
Afraid that the investigations that followed would tarnish his name, Mr Safra allegedly decided to co-operate with the FBI and Swiss officials, setting out in detail the mechanisms by which Russians had been using American banks to launder their money.
Mr Safra's death soon afterwards has been blamed on his male nurse. But the chief prosecutor in Geneva has reportedly said he believes the murder was a result of Mr Safra's decision to help the FBI
Of course, Lily's attorney Stanley Arkin defended Natasha Kagalovsky in the Bank of New York money laundering case.
Natasha's husband Konstantin headed Russia's Menatep Bank, one of the largest.
Arkin also defended the CIA's Central American head in Iran- Contra, while Lily's attorney Brendan Sullivan defended Oliver North in that matter.
It was a master stroke of housekeeping to eliminate the CEO of Republic on the eve of its sale to HSBC.
Walking back the cat, Safra had schmoozed with the FBI about the billions the year prior to his death.
In the spring, Monaco's chief inspector Olivier Jude did the ten-week FBI National Academy at Quantico.
He then went on to supervise the three-day four-point restraint, sleep-deprivation and threats upon Ted Maher.
Ted's wife was kidnapped from the sidewalk in front of the Monaco police station, her passport stolen and used in the threats.
Michael Griffith protested the incident to our Consulate in Marseilles, and it is the subject of a current suit.
Monaco director of juridical affairs Patrice Davost wrote Sue Kelly that Monaco had given Ted a mint on the pillow at night.
Yet Davost was implicated in Charles Duchaine's Judge in Monaco as part of the corruption obstructing investigations:
The Guardian, Pierre Tran, 29 June 2002
on : lundi 1 juillet 2002 à 15:18
Senior justice officials in Monaco blocked an investigation of Italian mafia activity in the principality because it was getting too close to Princess Stephanie, according to a book published by a French investigating magistrate who worked there in the 90s.
Charles Duchaine said his inquiry uncovered evidence against a man alleged to have ties to the princess.
The allegation is a further embarrassment to the Monaco authorities, who are under fire from France and the international community to clean up the principality's tax system, which attracts money earned from arms, drugs and prostitution.
It is also a blow to the Grimaldis, Europe's longest reigning royal family.
Monaco nurtures an image of respectability and discretion but Mr Duchaine, disgusted by his experience there in 1995-99, portrays it as a place where money talks and the law obeys.
"I only tried to do my duty," he writes in his book, Judge in Monaco.
"I say 'tried', because Monaco is in reality a tax haven which often circumvents the bilateral agreements signed with my country.
"Here, money has no smell and the justice system is blocked at every level to better protect the rich investors who are behind the fortune and prestige of this princedom."
Monaco's desire to present itself as a law-abiding playground for the rich is exemplified by the way the mafia inquiry was stifled, he said.
He told Le Monde that, acting on a warrant from an Italian judge, he was looking into a fraud involving the Mafia which led to a man then alleged to have connections to Princess Stephanie.
When the Monaco authorities realised that the inquiry involved accusations of money laundering he was told to cancel the warrant documents and not to communicate with the Italian authorities, he said.
"What I deplore most of all is the way the story was hushed up," he told Le Monde.
"If the [officials] had been honest, they would have told me: 'This case directly hurts the royal family, it is our responsibility not to follow it up and not to give you the case.'
"They wanted to win on both fronts: shelve the case while making out that they were cooperating. Monaco's obsession is to preserve an image of respectability."
There is no suggestion that Princess Stephanie was involved in anything criminal or knew of any alleged mafia connections.
Patrice Davost, the director of judicial services, told Le Monde: "The criticisms contained in Mr Duchaine's work are no longer relevant.
"Monaco magistrates, even now, are fighting with no holds barred against organised crime and money laundering.
"I have not been submitted to interference from the prince [Rainier], nor from an adviser, on any case. We are free to investigate as we see fit."
A survey by the Bank of France shows there were 340,109 bank accounts held in Monaco in 1998, 60% of them in the names of non-residents.
The principality has only 30,000 residents.
With gross domestic product of about $27,000 (£17,750) a head, about a third higher than France's, Monaco is one of the richest countries in the world.
It has more police officers in relation to its population than any other country, although their duties seem to consist mainly of directing traffic rather than solving crime.
The principality levies no income tax or inheritance tax on its residents, who include champion tennis players, racing drivers and pop stars.
There are no levies on capital gains, no taxes on interest-bearing accounts and no dividend tax, and its strict laws ensure banking secrecy.
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development says that Monaco has failed to commit to transparency in its tax system and to provide effective help in tracking down tax cheats.
It may take measures against the principality if it does not commit itself to reforms by next year.
Edmond Safra's brain has been thrust down the memory hole of Orwellian fame.
Nothing to see here.
The Monaco po-lice, experts in directing traffic, determined, sans investigation, that Safra's widow was beyond suspicion in the death of her husband, even though she stood to gain $3 million by his death. No motivation there; the Monaco po-lice said so.
Bump for Ted Maher and his loving family......In Jesus' Precious Name, Amen.
In other fraud news, former Bank of New York employee Svetlana Kudryavtsev was indicted on Jan. 27 for lying to FBI agents investigating money laundering at BONY. The indictment revealed the new estimate of funds in the Benex account at BONY: $4.85 billion.
$4.8 billion, $4.8 billion. . .the figger seems oddly familiar.
The Times
TUE 25 JUL 2000
Russian leader faces Pounds 3bn questions
Swiss officials are eager to question Mikhail Kasyanov,the Russian Prime Minister, over a $4.8billion (Pounds 3.2 billion) International Monetary Fund loan, a Moscow newspaper said yesterday.
Edmond Safra was not available for comment, although the chief prosecutor of Geneva was cited in The Times Russia Today as having said Safra was killed for cooperating with the FBI in the laundering of $4.8 billion in IMF loans to Russia through his Republic Bank.
A London analyst told Reuters (Dec. 3): “The thing that is worrying now is to what extent Safra’s business was worth buying. Safra kept his cards so close to the chest that his business was always a mystery... He is the only guy who knows where all the bodies are and his is dead.”
The New York Post (Dec. 4, 1999) reported that Mr. Safra was only in Monaco to hold meetings with HSBC’s John Bond.
The sale of Safra's bank to HSBC was approved after his death (Dec. 6), and his widow Lily retained attorney Stanley Arkin, who had defended the Natasha Kagalovsky below:
September 3, 1999
Bank of New York Dismisses Second Employee in Laundering Case
By RAYMOND BONNER
NEW YORK -- The Bank of New York said Thursday that it had dismissed a second employee involved in its investigation into possible money laundering at the bank.
The employee, Svetlana Kudryav tsev, was discharged for failing to cooperate with the bank's internal investigation into the suspected money laundering, a person close to the inquiry said. The bank refused to elaborate on the ouster.
Ms. Kudryavtsev joined the bank in 1994 and was an international bank associate in the Eastern European division in New York, a low level position akin to an administrative assistant, the person close to the investigation said.
Ms. Kudryavtsev could not be reached for comment.
She was discharged six days after the bank ousted a vice president in the Eastern European division, Lucy Edwards. Ms. Edwards, who worked in London, was dismissed for "gross misconduct," said a person with direct knowledge of the dismissal, including the falsification of bank records, failure to cooperate with investigators and for never telling the bank that she was married to Peter Berlin.
Berlin had opened accounts at the bank in the name of a company called Benex. Federal investigators say at least $4.2 billion, and perhaps up to $10 billion, was channeled through Benex accounts at the bank over 18 months starting some time early last year.
Although little is known about Berlin, investigators say they believe that the money came from criminal activities, political graft and corporate embezzlement in Russia and that it was being laundered for figures in organized crime in Russia. Some of the money was also probably capital flight, Russian executives and American law-enforcement authorities said, secreted out of the country last year, when Russia faced a grave financial crisis and its banks and currency collapsed.
Press reports have speculated that some of the money may have been diverted from loans by the International Monetary Fund or from food-aid programs. But the I.M.F. and the United States Government said they had no hard evidence of that.
Berlin and his wife, who was born Lydmila Pritzker and emigrated to the United States from Russia more than 20 years ago, lived in the in the New York area until a few years ago, when the bank transferred Ms. Edwards to London.
Neither the bank nor any employees, including the two who were dismissed, have been charged with wrongdoing by legal authorities. According to Reuters, Ms. Edwards issued a statement Thursday through her lawyer in London in which she "strenuously denied" the allegations on which the bank based her ouster. The statement said that Ms. Edwards was "pursuing the remedies available against the bank, and we have notified the bank accordingly."
The statement did not say what the allegations were, and neither has the bank.
A lawyer in New York for both Ms. Edwards and her husband, T. Barry Kingham, told Reuters, "Both Peter and Lucy firmly deny any wrongdoing."
Sorting out the exact sources of the money and the extent to which its movement violated any laws will take many months, perhaps years, American officials said. Layers of companies were used to disguise the origins and destinations of the money, and many of the companies were registered in places like the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea and Antigua, which have strict bank-secrecy laws and few disclosure requirements.
American law-enforcement officials said the only hope that they had of eventually getting to the bottom of the activity at the bank was with the full cooperation of the Russian Government.
Another senior bank officer whom investigators say they are looking at closely is Natasha Gurfinkel Kagalovsky, who was in charge of the Eastern European division in New York and worked closely with Ms. Edwards. The bank suspended Ms. Kagalovsky, with pay, after the allegations of money laundering became public on Aug. 19.
Ms. Kagalovsky and her husband, Konstantin Kagalovsky, a prominent Russian businessman, have denied wrongdoing.
During an August 21 raid on the Bank of New York, U.S. federal investigators seized the files of Natasha Gurfinkel Kagalovsky, a senior vice president who supervised the bank’s East European division. She and the bank’s vice president in London, Lucy Edwards, were suspended. Ms. Kagalovsky is the wife of Konstantin Kagalovsky, Russia’s representative to the IMF in the early 1990s under Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar’s government. After Gaidar was replaced, Kagalovsky moved to Russia’s Bank Menatep, headed by Russian oil and banking baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Menatep snapped up a number of enterprises during Russia’s controversial "loan to share" privatization, including a controlling stake in the country’s second-largest oil company, Yukos. Menatep failed last year amid Russia’s financial crisis (see box on page 16). Kagalovsky is now deputy chairman of Yukos.
Investigators say Menatep and Kagalovsky increasingly are becoming a focus of the investigation. Federal and international law enforcement officials say they are looking into whether Kagalovsky helped construct a byzantine network of offshore corporations that politically connected or mob-linked Russians may have used to siphon hundreds of millions of dollars out of the country. Investigators say that sum may include part of foreign aid and funds pumped into Russia by the IMF to shore up the reeling Russian economy.
In other news, Ted Maher was screened for drugs and alcohol by Princess Grace Memorial Hospital, including the drugs he was forced to falsely confess to using by police torture.
Results were negative.
As Ted told U.S. Consul Patricia Feitz December 8, 1999, "What I do, I do for the safety of my family."
Three Years.....(Rm # 101).....Three Years!
Bump for Ted Maher and his loving family......In Jesus' Precious Name, Amen.
-BTTT-
Bump for Ted Maher and his loving family......In Jesus' Precious Name, Amen.
U.S. Code 22, Chapter 23, Section 1732. Release of citizens imprisoned by foreign governments
Whenever it is made known to the President that any citizen of the United States has been unjustly deprived of his liberty by or under the authority of any foreign government, it shall be the duty of the President forthwith to demand of that government the reasons of such imprisonment; and if it appears to be wrongful and in violation of the rights of American citizenship, the President shall forthwith demand the release of such citizen, and if the release so demanded is unreasonably delayed or refused, the President shall use such means, not amounting to acts of war and not otherwise prohibited by law, as he may think necessary and proper to obtain or effectuate the release; and all the facts and proceedings relative thereto shall as soon as practicable be communicated by the President to Congress.
The above has been recommended by the author of the book on Scott Speicher:
No One Left Behind: The Lt. Commander Scott Speicher Story
Amy Waters Yarsinske
Amy Waters Yarsinske, a former intelligence officer and Pulitzer Prize-nominated author, breaks the incredible true story of Lt. Comdr. Michael Scott Speicher, the first American pilot shot down during the initial air strike of the Persian Gulf War. Tracking this explosive story for the past eight years, Yarsinske interviewed top government and military officials, diplomats, pilots, informers, and Iraqi defectors to write a stunning account of the denials and cover-ups that obscured an essential fact: Speicher actually survived and has been in Iraqi custody eleven years after the US government left him for dead.
The author has worked eight years on the Speicher case--and now we have President Bush raising the Speicher case before the world. The author now advises that the above statute, used in the Speicher case, may now be used in the Maher case, which she is following.
The recently held trial produced no surprises or changes in the status quo. Ted Maher dutifully parroted the extorted false confession, as the alternative was immediate life imprisonment--this was told to him by his Monaco-assigned lawyers Georges Blot and Donald Manasse.
By Monaco law, Ted Maher was allowed to choose the lawyer to represent him at trial, and he chose Michael Griffith. Monaco tried to block Griffith's appearance, but Congresswoman Sue Kelly in conjunction with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House International Relations Committee brought the matter to the attention of Secretary of State Colin Powell.
Monaco fought to keep exculpatory evidence suppressed, and based its case on manufactured incriminating evidence. This is a matter of record available for review.
The evidence of Dr. Michael Baden, the acclaimed forensic DNA expert, was limited to 30 minutes, and matters of prime importance were suppressed, e.g., Edmond Safra had unidentified male DNA under his nails, and his blood was spattered on Vivian Torrente's bra, panties, and barrette/nursing cap. Vivian Torrente died of strangulation, not asphyxiation.
The forensics will be brought to the fore in the suit against the widow and others by the son and daughter of Vivian Torrente.
The general conduct of the trial has provided ample grounds for appeal, e.g., the abuse of defendant Ted Maher by Monaco guards in the persistent awakenings every 20 to 40 minutes despite defense objections.
It is in the nature of police states to deem themselves the be-all and end-all of all things politic. Delusion has never protected their diktats from being reversed by the world at large, and in this case, the intercession of regional authority and the national authority of the defendant's country.
American prisoners in North Korea were forced to confess to germ warfare they never committed, by means of the combination of pressures and techniques termed brainwashing.
Americans held by the North Vietnamese were likewise under insidious and unbending efforts to extort false confession of war crimes.
Ted Maher has been forced to sign a false confession by means of physical torture, sleep-deprivation and threats upon his family.
His case is more than a miscarriage of justice. It is an outrage by a foreign power on an innocent American and honorable veteran.
The so-called evidence does not bear examination.
Three Years.....(Rm # 101).....Three Years!
Bump for Ted Maher and his loving family......In Jesus' Precious Name, Amen.
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