Free Republic

A tape apparently recorded by murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko a year before he was poisoned has revealed he was digging up links between Vladimir Putin and one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists. A Telegraph investigation uncovered the audio recording, in which the dissident claims from beyond the grave that Russia’s president had a “good relationship” with Semion Mogilevich - a Ukrainian crime boss who was on the FBI's most wanted list and whom Mr Litvinenko believed was selling weapons to al-Qaeda. The apparent recording of Mr Litvinenko is published for the first time ahead of a public inquiry...

The IRA Bagman and Kim Jong Il's hot dollars Sean Garland is legendary in Ireland for his violent republican past. But was he also a frontman for a counterfeiting scheme run by the communist regime of North Korea? America wants to extradite the Workers Party chief claiming he smuggled millions of dollars in fake $100 bills  David McKittrick reports 08 December 2005 It is a tale of codenames and counterfeiting, of the United States secret service, Russia and North Korea, of international political and criminal conspiracy and intrigue, of millions of dollars in illicit currency. Kim Jong Il, the...

An Irish republican leader is responsible for flooding the UK money markets with near-perfect counterfeit money, it has been claimed. The BBC's Panorama programme has traced the supply of millions of fake US dollars to Sean Garland, a leader of the former paramilitary group, the Official IRA. Panorama also reveals that the profit from passing the currency is used to fund the republican group - which split with the better known Provisional IRA in 1970. The fake currency - known to intelligence agents as "superdollars" because it is so realistic - is believed to be printed in North Korea. It...