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Ukrainians are giving Americans two lessons about democracy that we've forgotten
He stands guard today atop a granite pedestal near a riverbank in Concord, Massachusetts -- a stout, handsome farmer clutching a musket while scanning the horizon for the advancing enemy.
He is the iconic "Minute Man" statue, a bronze monument built to commemorate the first battle of the Revolutionary War. That's when patriots fired "the shot heard around the world," taking on the mightiest army of their era to preserve the birth of democracy in America.
Ukrainians are now building their own monuments to democracy, with their blood. For more than a week, the world has been transfixed by their battle to repel the mighty Russian army and preserve the birth of democracy in their homeland.
In recent days stories of Ukrainian courage have also been heard around the world: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky turning down an offer to evacuate him from the country by saying, "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride"; the besieged defenders of Snake Island who told a Russian warship to "go f**k yourself"; the images of Ukrainian civilians making Molotov cocktails and carrying assault rifles while heading to the front lines.
"Each passing day adds more stories that Ukrainians will tell not only in the dark days ahead, but in the decades and generations to come," the author and historian Yuval Noah Harari said in a recent essay. "This is the stuff nations are built from. In the long run, these stories count more than tanks."
But here's another reason why the Ukraine struggle is so inspiring:
This is also the stuff that built the US.
The war in Ukraine isn't just a geopolitical struggle -- it's a call to remember. The courage of the Ukrainian people is a reminder of what the US used to be -- a "beacon of liberty," where virtually every schoolchild memorized the "Concord Hymn" poem inscribed at the base of the Minute Man statue.
The Ukrainians are teaching Americans two lessons about democracy that many of us have forgotten.
Lesson 1: The most ferocious defenders of democracy are those who have been denied it
Ukrainian's democratic tradition bears little comparison to the US at first glance. The country has been independent for only 31 years.
And it's not clear that everyone opposing Russia is fighting for liberal democracy in Ukraine. There's evidence that ultra-nationalists and far-right groups are part of the armed Ukraine resistance.
Ukraine also borders Russia, an oppressive regime that has installed puppet governments in the country before. The country is familiar with brutal leaders imposing their will on its people. The Russian dictator Joseph Stalin caused the deaths of nearly 4 million Ukrainians in the 1930s by engineering a famine. The German invasion of Ukraine in World War II led to the deaths of an estimated seven million people.
But that history of brutality is partly why so many Ukrainians are willing to fight so hard for democracy.
Freedom tastes sweeter for those who have never had it.
This is the same dynamic that helped make the US.
The most fervent believers in American democracy tend to come from groups that have been denied liberty and equality -- either in the US or from their country of origin.
The first martyr in the fight for American independence was a runaway slave named Crispus Attucks, shot by British redcoats during the Boston Massacre.
The most decorated unit in US military history was a Japanese American regiment that fought during World War II. These "Nisei" soldiers volunteered for combat though they came from families that had their property confiscated and were placed in internment camps by the US government.
The first people who made a genuine democracy a reality in the US were Black civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, and other Southern cities. They forced the US to abandon its neo-apartheid political system by pushing Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
You can't talk about exclusion in the US without mentioning immigrants. The country's history is filled with spasms of intolerance and raw racism directed at immigrants. And yet many immigrants outwork, outvote and outfight many native-born Americans.
One in five Medal of Honor winners have been immigrants. Immigrants are nearly twice as likely to start businesses as native-born Americans. Nearly half of all Fortune 500 companies -- including Apple, Google and Amazon -- were founded by immigrants or their children.
Many of these immigrants left countries run by dictators and convulsed by civil wars and political violence because of one American trait: Our democratic ideas.
"Since World War II, that has been the single most important driver of American influence and power," said Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, in a recent interview. "Yes, we have a big military. Yes, we have a strong economy. But it's our ideas that attract others. Russia under Putin doesn't really have that power of attraction. He only has the power of coercion, and we are seeing that now in Ukraine in a brutal way."
Lesson 2: Ordinary people are the true heroes of democracy
When a CNN crew recently interviewed Ukrainan President Zelensky in a bunker in Kyiv, the country's capital, he said something that was revelatory.
A journalist asked him what it was like to go from being a comic actor to becoming a globally acclaimed wartime leader. But Zelensky was not interested in adding to the Western praise of his charismatic leadership.
"I'm not iconic," he said. "I think Ukraine is iconic."
It's the kind of statement that would have made the "embattled farmers" who fought at Concord during the Revolutionary War nod in recognition. Ordinary people, not charismatic leaders, sustain democracy. This was an abiding belief throughout US history.
There was a time when most young men were expected to join the military or go into government as part of some form of public service. This expectation also applied to the wealthy and the famous. That's part of the reason why former president George H.W. Bush, the grandson of a steel industrialist and scion of a wealthy family, enlisted as a fighter pilot in World War II.
Actor Jimmy Stewart turned down an offer to stay stateside as a flight instructor and volunteered for combat duty as a US Army Air Force pilot. He flew 20 bombing missions in harrowing combat conditions, an experience he rarely talked about after the war.
This attitude, though, wasn't confined to World War II. It was there at the nation's beginning. It was Nathan Hale, an American Revolutionary War officer, who reputedly said, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."
And it wasn't confined to the military. There's a generation of Americans who entered the Peace Corps because of what President John F. Kennedy declared at his 1960 inaugural address:
"Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can for your country."
When asked what he learned from studying US history, historian Howard Zinn once said, "Democracy is not what governments do; it's what people do, too."
His message: Don't depend on saviors.
"Don't depend on the founding fathers, on Andrew Jackson, on Theodore Roosevelt, on Lyndon Johnson, on Obama," Zinn said. "Don't depend on our leaders to do what needs to be done, because whenever the government has done anything to bring about change, it's done so only because it's been pushed and prodded by social movements, by ordinary people organizing.
"Lincoln was pushed by the antislavery movement," he added. "Johnson and Kennedy were pushed by the Southern Black movement..."
This power of ordinary people is what Zelensky evoked when he released a taped appeal to the Russian and Ukrainian people before Russia's invasion. He said there was one group that could ultimately prevent war: "Regular people. Regular, normal people."
It's a lesson many contemporary Americans have seem to have forgotten. Our political discourse is driven by searches for a savior: a charismatic leader who will vanquish the other side; a pivotal Supreme Court appointment that will finally "take back" the country, a commentator who will "destroy" opponents on TV.
Many have stopped believing that ordinary people can change anything because of political gridlock.
The spirit of democracy in the US feels like it's under siege
More Americans even now doubt the power of their democratic ideas. One recent poll showed that 64% of Americans believe their democracy is "in crisis and at risk of failing." Another recent poll found 72% of Americans say the US used to be a good model of democracy for other countries to follow but has not been in recent years.
It's not as if the Democratic spirit has been extinguished in the US. The 2020 presidential election was held during a pandemic but saw the highest voter turnout in a century. The nationwide protests after the murder of George Floyd that same year have been described as the largest movement in the country's history. And there was a palpable hope early in 2020 that the pandemic would bring Americans together.
But that burst of civic participation was followed by 19 states passing voter restriction laws. The pandemic became a political wedge issue. And the US still lags behind most developed nations when it comes to voter turnout.
Today it's Ukranians -- not Americans -- who are embodying Kennedy's exhortation: They're asking what they can do for their country, not the other way around.
Ukrainian citizens are blocking Russian tanks with their bodies. Ukrainians are leaving safety and well-paying jobs in Europe to go fight for their homeland. Famous figures like Ukrainian boxer Vasiliy Lomachenko, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, are giving up lucrative paydays to go home and join a defense battalion. Ukrainian tennis star Sergiy Stakhovsky left his wife and their three young children in Hungary to join the fight in his homeland.
And now Americans and other foreign fighters are traveling to Ukraine to defend the country.
These stories don't just inspire, they force people in the West to reexamine our cynicism, Tom McTague wrote in a recent Atlantic essay.
McTague said the US and Western Europe have lost their sense of being a force for moral good and taking on heroic struggles in the cause of freedom. Instead we follow cynical opportunists in shows like "Succession" and "Billions" and pragmatic, cautious leaders who lack any overt idealism, he said.
Ukraine changes that, McTague said. One of the reasons why Zelensky reduced hardened politicians -- and even a translator -- to tears in his appeals to freedom is because "Western countries don't have this type of leadership anymore: unembarrassed, defiant belief in a cause."
In standing up to Putin, McTague wrote, "Ukraine is articulating a certain idea of itself that is righteous and dignified and heroic -- virtues we long ago dismissed as old-fashioned. How tragic it is that Zelensky's idea has to be attacked for us to be reminded of ours."
It would be more tragic if Americans could no longer remember the ideas we stand for at all.
Our country's history is filled with brutality. It is also riddled with hypocrisies. Yet that's why monuments like the Minute Man still stand. They remind us of who we are at our best, that democracy is something worth fighting, and dying for.
Ukrainians know that. We used to know that.
Their story echoes our story.
Let us not forget.
Ukrainians are giving Americans two lessons about democracy that we've forgotten
He stands guard today atop a granite pedestal near a riverbank in Concord, Massachusetts -- a stout, handsome farmer clutching a musket while scanning the horizon for the advancing enemy.
He is the iconic "Minute Man" statue, a bronze monument built to commemorate the first battle of the Revolutionary War. That's when patriots fired "the shot heard around the world," taking on the mightiest army of their era to preserve the birth of democracy in America.
Ukrainians are now building their own monuments to democracy, with their blood. For more than a week, the world has been transfixed by their battle to repel the mighty Russian army and preserve the birth of democracy in their homeland.
In recent days stories of Ukrainian courage have also been heard around the world: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky turning down an offer to evacuate him from the country by saying, "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride"; the besieged defenders of Snake Island who told a Russian warship to "go f**k yourself"; the images of Ukrainian civilians making Molotov cocktails and carrying assault rifles while heading to the front lines.
"Each passing day adds more stories that Ukrainians will tell not only in the dark days ahead, but in the decades and generations to come," the author and historian Yuval Noah Harari said in a recent essay. "This is the stuff nations are built from. In the long run, these stories count more than tanks."
But here's another reason why the Ukraine struggle is so inspiring:
This is also the stuff that built the US.
The war in Ukraine isn't just a geopolitical struggle -- it's a call to remember. The courage of the Ukrainian people is a reminder of what the US used to be -- a "beacon of liberty," where virtually every schoolchild memorized the "Concord Hymn" poem inscribed at the base of the Minute Man statue.
The Ukrainians are teaching Americans two lessons about democracy that many of us have forgotten.
Lesson 1: The most ferocious defenders of democracy are those who have been denied it
Ukrainian's democratic tradition bears little comparison to the US at first glance. The country has been independent for only 31 years.
And it's not clear that everyone opposing Russia is fighting for liberal democracy in Ukraine. There's evidence that ultra-nationalists and far-right groups are part of the armed Ukraine resistance.
Ukraine also borders Russia, an oppressive regime that has installed puppet governments in the country before. The country is familiar with brutal leaders imposing their will on its people. The Russian dictator Joseph Stalin caused the deaths of nearly 4 million Ukrainians in the 1930s by engineering a famine. The German invasion of Ukraine in World War II led to the deaths of an estimated seven million people.
But that history of brutality is partly why so many Ukrainians are willing to fight so hard for democracy.
Freedom tastes sweeter for those who have never had it.
This is the same dynamic that helped make the US.
The most fervent believers in American democracy tend to come from groups that have been denied liberty and equality -- either in the US or from their country of origin.
The first martyr in the fight for American independence was a runaway slave named Crispus Attucks, shot by British redcoats during the Boston Massacre.
The most decorated unit in US military history was a Japanese American regiment that fought during World War II. These "Nisei" soldiers volunteered for combat though they came from families that had their property confiscated and were placed in internment camps by the US government.
The first people who made a genuine democracy a reality in the US were Black civil rights marchers in Selma, Alabama, and other Southern cities. They forced the US to abandon its neo-apartheid political system by pushing Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
You can't talk about exclusion in the US without mentioning immigrants. The country's history is filled with spasms of intolerance and raw racism directed at immigrants. And yet many immigrants outwork, outvote and outfight many native-born Americans.
One in five Medal of Honor winners have been immigrants. Immigrants are nearly twice as likely to start businesses as native-born Americans. Nearly half of all Fortune 500 companies -- including Apple, Google and Amazon -- were founded by immigrants or their children.
Many of these immigrants left countries run by dictators and convulsed by civil wars and political violence because of one American trait: Our democratic ideas.
"Since World War II, that has been the single most important driver of American influence and power," said Marie Yovanovitch, the former US ambassador to Ukraine, in a recent interview. "Yes, we have a big military. Yes, we have a strong economy. But it's our ideas that attract others. Russia under Putin doesn't really have that power of attraction. He only has the power of coercion, and we are seeing that now in Ukraine in a brutal way."
Lesson 2: Ordinary people are the true heroes of democracy
When a CNN crew recently interviewed Ukrainan President Zelensky in a bunker in Kyiv, the country's capital, he said something that was revelatory.
A journalist asked him what it was like to go from being a comic actor to becoming a globally acclaimed wartime leader. But Zelensky was not interested in adding to the Western praise of his charismatic leadership.
"I'm not iconic," he said. "I think Ukraine is iconic."
It's the kind of statement that would have made the "embattled farmers" who fought at Concord during the Revolutionary War nod in recognition. Ordinary people, not charismatic leaders, sustain democracy. This was an abiding belief throughout US history.
There was a time when most young men were expected to join the military or go into government as part of some form of public service. This expectation also applied to the wealthy and the famous. That's part of the reason why former president George H.W. Bush, the grandson of a steel industrialist and scion of a wealthy family, enlisted as a fighter pilot in World War II.
Actor Jimmy Stewart turned down an offer to stay stateside as a flight instructor and volunteered for combat duty as a US Army Air Force pilot. He flew 20 bombing missions in harrowing combat conditions, an experience he rarely talked about after the war.
This attitude, though, wasn't confined to World War II. It was there at the nation's beginning. It was Nathan Hale, an American Revolutionary War officer, who reputedly said, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."
And it wasn't confined to the military. There's a generation of Americans who entered the Peace Corps because of what President John F. Kennedy declared at his 1960 inaugural address:
"Ask not what your country can do for you -- ask what you can for your country."
When asked what he learned from studying US history, historian Howard Zinn once said, "Democracy is not what governments do; it's what people do, too."
His message: Don't depend on saviors.
"Don't depend on the founding fathers, on Andrew Jackson, on Theodore Roosevelt, on Lyndon Johnson, on Obama," Zinn said. "Don't depend on our leaders to do what needs to be done, because whenever the government has done anything to bring about change, it's done so only because it's been pushed and prodded by social movements, by ordinary people organizing.
"Lincoln was pushed by the antislavery movement," he added. "Johnson and Kennedy were pushed by the Southern Black movement..."
This power of ordinary people is what Zelensky evoked when he released a taped appeal to the Russian and Ukrainian people before Russia's invasion. He said there was one group that could ultimately prevent war: "Regular people. Regular, normal people."
It's a lesson many contemporary Americans have seem to have forgotten. Our political discourse is driven by searches for a savior: a charismatic leader who will vanquish the other side; a pivotal Supreme Court appointment that will finally "take back" the country, a commentator who will "destroy" opponents on TV.
Many have stopped believing that ordinary people can change anything because of political gridlock.
The spirit of democracy in the US feels like it's under siege
More Americans even now doubt the power of their democratic ideas. One recent poll showed that 64% of Americans believe their democracy is "in crisis and at risk of failing." Another recent poll found 72% of Americans say the US used to be a good model of democracy for other countries to follow but has not been in recent years.
It's not as if the Democratic spirit has been extinguished in the US. The 2020 presidential election was held during a pandemic but saw the highest voter turnout in a century. The nationwide protests after the murder of George Floyd that same year have been described as the largest movement in the country's history. And there was a palpable hope early in 2020 that the pandemic would bring Americans together.
But that burst of civic participation was followed by 19 states passing voter restriction laws. The pandemic became a political wedge issue. And the US still lags behind most developed nations when it comes to voter turnout.
Today it's Ukranians -- not Americans -- who are embodying Kennedy's exhortation: They're asking what they can do for their country, not the other way around.
Ukrainian citizens are blocking Russian tanks with their bodies. Ukrainians are leaving safety and well-paying jobs in Europe to go fight for their homeland. Famous figures like Ukrainian boxer Vasiliy Lomachenko, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, are giving up lucrative paydays to go home and join a defense battalion. Ukrainian tennis star Sergiy Stakhovsky left his wife and their three young children in Hungary to join the fight in his homeland.
And now Americans and other foreign fighters are traveling to Ukraine to defend the country.
These stories don't just inspire, they force people in the West to reexamine our cynicism, Tom McTague wrote in a recent Atlantic essay.
McTague said the US and Western Europe have lost their sense of being a force for moral good and taking on heroic struggles in the cause of freedom. Instead we follow cynical opportunists in shows like "Succession" and "Billions" and pragmatic, cautious leaders who lack any overt idealism, he said.
Ukraine changes that, McTague said. One of the reasons why Zelensky reduced hardened politicians -- and even a translator -- to tears in his appeals to freedom is because "Western countries don't have this type of leadership anymore: unembarrassed, defiant belief in a cause."
In standing up to Putin, McTague wrote, "Ukraine is articulating a certain idea of itself that is righteous and dignified and heroic -- virtues we long ago dismissed as old-fashioned. How tragic it is that Zelensky's idea has to be attacked for us to be reminded of ours."
It would be more tragic if Americans could no longer remember the ideas we stand for at all.
Our country's history is filled with brutality. It is also riddled with hypocrisies. Yet that's why monuments like the Minute Man still stand. They remind us of who we are at our best, that democracy is something worth fighting, and dying for.
Ukrainians know that. We used to know that.
Their story echoes our story.
Let us not forget.
U.S., Poland consider deal to give fighter aircraft to Ukraine: reports
BY LEXI LONAS - 03/05/22 10:28 PM EST 0
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U.S., Poland consider deal to give fighter aircraft to Ukraine: reports
© Alik Keplicz / Associated Press
The U.S. and Poland are considering a deal that would provide fighter aircraft to Ukraine, multiple news outlets reported Saturday.
Four U.S. officials told Politico, which first reported on the discussions, that the two countries are in talks about an arrangement that would see Poland sending used MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine and in turn receiving U.S.-made warplanes.
“We are working with the Poles on this issue and consulting with the rest of our NATO allies,” a White House spokesperson told Politico. “We are also working on the capabilities we could provide to backfill Poland if it decided to transfer planes to Ukraine.”
The administration has “in no way opposed Poland transferring planes to Ukraine,” the spokesperson said.
The Wall Street Journal also reported on the potential deal Saturday, citing U.S. officials.
The spokesperson indicated that it would be difficult for the U.S. to transfer American F-16s to Poland. It could take a long time to authorize, Politico noted.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked members of Congress on Saturday for more airplanes as his country continues to fight Russian troops who invaded more than a week ago.
He also asked for the establishment of a no-fly zone over Ukraine and for the U.S. to stop buying Russian oil.
Blinken meets with officials in Poland amid Russia-Ukraine war
Lawmakers in both parties see limits on US help for Ukraine
Multiple lawmakers have expressed support for a ban on Russian oil imports, with the White House saying Friday that President Biden is considering steps to reduce U.S. consumption of Russian energy.
But both the U.S. and NATO have rebuffed Ukraine's requests for a no-fly zone to be established over the country, saying implementing such a zone could lead to large-scale war.
The Hill has contacted the White House for comment.
https://thehill.com/policy/international/597034-us-poland-consider-deal-to-give-fighter-aircraft-to-ukraine-reports
That won't be avoiding, just delaying, the threat will always be there only worse. What ever works for him, he just continues, and he has every plan to continue. Just like the first fight with the school yard bully, he shakes his fist, pushes, punches, and constantly terrorize until you call him on it. You have to push the fear aside, take whatever hits come at you, deal with it and make it so that he never punches and pushes you again.
I know describing it that way is overly simplistic and not anything to the degree that the world finds themselves in now. But it is still true and comparative.
Nuclear weapons was always stated and supposedly used as a "deterrent". It is no longer that, it is a weapon of choice for Putin and uses it to attack and conquer and will continue to use it to attack, kill, and destroy millions for his ever growing need of power and ideals. So much for any "deterrent" to ever work again and really shouldn't be called that now. Unfortunately it will be only used as a weapon by not just Putin, but other authoritarian leaders seeing the success.
I'm sorry to say, it time for "do or die" and for him to get kicked out of the %1 club. He's a threat to that "club" and their pockets and will do nothing but continue to disrupt the club's order of things, so they need to kick him permanently out of it. It's a tough act to write, but still needs to be done, and eliminate the threat to them and everybody else's. Or we will be just rewriting this play over and over again, and Putin will be the editor.
Pretty serious stuff I know, but that's the way I see it.
It is only part of his continuing plan and the beginning of future plans if he succeeds.
In reality there is no "exit" for him here (other than an exit from the "club"). That time has been eliminated by Putin's actions.
Only an "end" is required to this type of dominance, terrorism, and just plain bad and evil behavior. That "end" is going to cost, and there are no good solutions or half ass ones, and will come at a high cost. If an "exit" is formed, the expense will be much, much greater.
Ukraine is NOT a state of Russia, Putin has no say in that fact.
This statement of his is his way of declaring war, which he has in fact already done, in the midst of, and won't ever stop unless the world stops him. He has also ALREADY used nuclear weapons, by using the very threat of them, and by purposely and meticulously targeting first the nuclear waste sites, and then the nuclear reactors, and I'm sure will sabotage them upon loosing control. These acts are not careless nor unplanned. If he succeeds in his control he will continue his plans if allowed.
His history of taking control forcefully or by the weapon of threats, or by his expert management and knowledge of the disinformation wars is well known and documented. He fully believes in Stalinism and rejects any thought that the USSR separations are valid. Putin I'm sure feels he's already batting a 100, and sees no end to his successes, along with perceptions of his Stalin idol successes. If one looks at all his previous history, one might agree.
Russian- American Military analyst Dmitri Alperovitch recently summarized Putin’s track record of opportunism, It is quite impressive:
-1999 Second Chechen War — won
-2006 Litvinenko poisoning — done
-2014 Crimea annexation — mission accomplished
-2015 Syrian military intervention — key regional ally protected
-2016 U.S. election interference — disrupted key adversary
-2017 French election interference — weakened democratic legitimacy of key NATO member
-2018 Skripal poisonings — sent a message to traitors, actual and potential
-2019 Chechen militant assassination — enemy eliminated
-2020 Navalny poisoning — Putin’s greatest adversary weakened
If you think about each of these (often distasteful) events as Putin would — as new ventures of a sort — then you can understand that Putin sees himself as a winner with an unbroken winning streak. An opportunist par excellence.
Ukraine is INDEPENDENDT from Russia and their control, Independence and autonomy accepted by the world and it's people 31 years ago (can be argued many years before that) and cannot be changed with acts of war perpetrated by Putin nor is it under his authority for them to lose that independence by mere statements of lies and criminal acts of violence upon them.
It is the same as if Great Britain or the UK just stating, or by means of atrocious declaration of war and War Crimes, or using nuclear means in ANY WAY, that the United States independence is not valid and just a possession of the British or European nations for ANY reasons (made up or not).
https://www.britannica.com/summary/Causes-and-Effects-of-the-American-Revolution
What is so different between Ukraine's Independence and our own history of independence? There is a collection of similarities, but there is a major difference also. It can be argued that all the reasons and causes of the American War of Independence were miniscule, and just a fragment when compared with Ukraine Independence. The magnitude of misery, pain, hardships, and suffering that the Ukrainians have had to endure for their independence with the Soviet hell rained down upon them and is still be forced upon them today are where the comparisons end. That fact is portrayed by the amount of years enduring alone.
Facts have been documented and books have been written. Reality is what it is and what it will be, controlled by what we do now. There is definitely going to be, no matter what is done at this stage, a MAJOR shift and change in geo-political and geo-economic ways from what we are accustom to now. There will be extreme dues to pay for this change that positively is going to happen and take for years to formulate. It's going to be painful and dramatic. Reducing the severity and length of time is the only goal.
https://www.history.com/.image/c_limit%2Ccs_srgb%2Cq_auto:good%2Cw_700/MTYzNDA4MTM0NzMwMjk0ODkz/ukrainian-famine-gettyimages-170982794.webp
How Joseph Stalin Starved Millions in the Ukrainian Famine
Cruel efforts under Stalin to impose collectivism and tamp down Ukrainian nationalism left an estimated 3.9 million dead.
PATRICK J. KIGERAPR 16, 2019
Children collect frozen potatoes in a collective farm's field during the Ukrainian famine. (Credit: Sovfoto/UIG/Getty Images)
At the height of the 1932-33 Ukrainian famine under Joseph Stalin, starving people roamed the countryside, desperate for something, anything to eat. In the village of Stavyshche, a young peasant boy watched as the wanderers dug into empty gardens with their bare hands. Many were so emaciated, he recalled, that their bodies began to swell and stink from the extreme lack of nutrients.
"You could see them walking about, just walking and walking, and one would drop, and then another, and so on it went," he said many years later, in a case history collected in the late 1980s by a Congressional commission. In the cemetery outside the village hospital, overwhelmed doctors carried the bodies on stretchers and tossed them into an enormous pit.
The Holodomor's Death Toll
The Ukrainian famine—known as the Holodomor, a combination of the Ukrainian words for “starvation” and “to inflict death”—by one estimate claimed the lives of 3.9 million people, about 13 percent of the population. And, unlike other famines in history caused by blight or drought, this was caused when a dictator wanted both to replace Ukraine’s small farms with state-run collectives and punish independence-minded Ukrainians who posed a threat to his totalitarian authority.
“The Ukrainian famine was a clear case of a man-made famine,” explains Alex de Waal, executive director of the World Peace Foundation at Tufts University and author of the 2018 book, Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine. He describes it as “a hybrid…of a famine caused by calamitous social-economic policies and one aimed at a particular population for repression or punishment.”
In those days, Ukraine—a Texas-sized nation along the Black Sea to the west of Russia—was a part of the Soviet Union, then ruled by Stalin. In 1929, as part of his plan to rapidly create a totally communist economy, Stalin had imposed collectivization, which replaced individually owned and operated farms with big state-run collectives. Ukraine’s small, mostly subsistence farmers resisted giving up their land and livelihoods.
Ukrainian Famine
Grain confiscated from a family derided as "kulaks" in the village of Udachoye in Ukraine.
Sovfoto/UIG/Getty Images
Resistant Farmers Labeled as 'Kulaks'
In response, the Soviet regime derided the resisters as kulaks—well-to-do peasants, who in Soviet ideology were considered enemies of the state. Soviet officials drove these peasants off their farms by force and Stalin’s secret police further made plans to deport 50,000 Ukrainian farm families to Siberia, historian Anne Applebaum writes in her 2017 book, Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine.
“Stalin appears to have been motivated by the goal of transforming the Ukrainian nation into his idea of a modern, proletarian, socialist nation, even if this entailed the physical destruction of broad sections of its population,” says Trevor Erlacher, an historian and author specializing in modern Ukraine and an academic advisor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Russian, East European, & Eurasian Studies.
Collectivization in Ukraine didn’t go very well. By the fall of 1932—around the time that Stalin’s wife, Nadezhda Sergeevna Alliluyeva, who reportedly objected to his collectivization policy, committed suicide—it became apparent that Ukraine’s grain harvest was going to miss Soviet planners’ target by 60 percent. There still might have been enough food for Ukrainian peasants to get by, but, as Applebaum writes, Stalin then ordered what little they had be confiscated as punishment for not meeting quotas.
“The famine of 1932-33 stemmed from later decisions made by the Stalinist government, after it became clear that the 1929 plan had not gone as well as hoped for, causing a food crisis and hunger,” explains Stephen Norris, a professor of Russian history at Miami University in Ohio. Norris says a December 1932 document called, “On the Procurement of Grain in Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and the Western Oblast,” directed party cadres to extract more grain from regions that had not met their quotas. It further called for the arrest of collective farm chiefs who resisted and of party members who did not fulfill the new quotas.
An armed man guards emergency supply grain during the Ukrainian famine of early 1930s.
An armed man guards emergency supply grain during the Ukrainian famine of early 1930s.
Sovfoto/UIG/Getty Images
Decrees Targeted Ukrainian 'Saboteurs'
Meanwhile, Stalin, according to Applebaum, already had arrested tens of thousands of Ukrainian teachers and intellectuals and removed Ukrainian-language books from schools and libraries. She writes that the Soviet leader used the grain shortfall as an excuse for even more intense anti-Ukrainian repression. As Norris notes, the 1932 decree “targeted Ukrainian ‘saboteurs,’ ordered local officials to stop using the Ukrainian language in their correspondence, and cracked down on Ukrainian cultural policies that had been developed in the 1920s.”
When Stalin’s crop collectors went out into the countryside, according to a 1988 U.S. Congressional commission report, they used long wooden poles with metal points to poke the dirt floors of peasants’ homes and probe the ground around them, in case they’d buried stores of grain to avoid detection. Peasants accused of being food hoarders typically were sent off to prison, though sometimes the collectors didn’t wait to inflict punishment. Two boys who were caught hiding fish and frogs they’d caught, for example, were taken to the village soviet, where they were beaten, and then dragged into a field with their hands tied and mouths and noses gagged, where they were left to suffocate.
As the famine worsened, many tried to flee in search of places with more food. Some died by the roadside, while others were thwarted by the secret police and the regime’s system of internal passports. Ukrainian peasants resorted to desperate methods in an effort to stay alive, according to the Congressional commission’s report. They killed and ate pets and consumed flowers, leaves, tree bark and roots. One woman who found some dried beans was so hungry that she ate them on the spot without cooking them, and reportedly died when they expanded in her stomach.
“The policies adopted by Stalin and his deputies in response to the famine after it had begun to grip the Ukrainian countryside constitute the most significant evidence that the famine was intentional,” Erlacher says. “Local citizens and officials pleaded for relief from the state. Waves of refugees fled the villages in search of food in the cities and beyond the borders of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.” The regime’s response, he says, was to take measures that worsened their plight.
By the summer of 1933, some of the collective farms had only a third of their households left, and prisons and labor camps were jammed to capacity. With hardly anyone left to raise crops, Stalin’s regime resettled Russian peasants from other parts of the Soviet Union in Ukraine to cope with the labor shortage. Faced with the prospect of an even wider food catastrophe, Stalin’s regime in the fall of 1933 started easing off collections.
A string of carts with bread confiscated from peasants, circa 1932.
A string of carts with bread confiscated from peasants, circa 1932.
Sovfoto/UIG/Getty Images
Russian Government Denies Famine Was 'Genocide'
The Russian government that replaced the Soviet Union has acknowledged that famine took place in Ukraine, but denied it was genocide. Genocide is defined in Article 2 of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) as "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” In April 2008, Russia's lower house of Parliament passed a resolution stating that “There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines.” Nevertheless, at least 16 countries have recognized the Holodomor, and most recently, the U.S. Senate, in a 2018 resolution, affirmed the findings of the 1988 commission that Stalin had committed genocide.
Ultimately, although Stalin’s policies resulted in the deaths of millions, it failed to crush Ukrainian aspirations for autonomy, and in the long run, they may actually have backfired. “Famine often achieves a socio-economic or military purpose, such as transferring land possession or clearing an area of population, since most flee rather than die,” famine historian de Waal says. “But politically and ideologically it is more often counterproductive for its perpetrators. As in the case of Ukraine it generated so much hatred and resentment that it solidified Ukrainian nationalism.”
Eventually, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine finally became an independent nation—and the Holodomor remains a painful part of Ukrainians’ common identity.
BY PATRICK J. KIGER
FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.
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I here what you're saying, but what we're doing now is NOT counterproductive, no way, no how. It comes at a great cost yes, and it might not reach the complete goal, but it definitely will succeed at some things, major things.
Doing nothing, or even not doing everything we can do, would be the most idiotic thing imaginable. Would just be accessory to it all.
It would also be the most irrational and irresponsible thing to do. As far as the emotional aspect, there has to be some and always is, that's human. Ones that are lacking in that department, are people like Putin. But it is logical, moral, and smart to do what we can.
Doing nothing and letting the evil do what it has a history of doing, and certain that it won't stop with just Ukraine, would be the utmost foolishness and all the costs that we will be experiencing will come down upon us at a later time 10 fold.
We didn't allow Hitler, shouldn't have waited any time that the world did, and acted upon immediately. Any costs we pay now with Putin, with the human tragedy that's occurring, is a really good investment for everybody involved (which is pretty much everybody on the planet)
That regime has killed many before, and it will continue to kill again (along with enabling other tyrants) if not drastically addressed.
Hey, I'm ok with my ratios for that part. I have the other ends too. My wife has a 401k, deductions maxing out the bank's match, I have an IRA, plus a couple of long accounts for the long lower risk vehicles. Not arguing that respect. Don't have as much in the long stock area as I did have, looking for areas to build back, but it's pretty iffy with most. Don't really like gold or monopoly money right now, due to what might happen there in the future with those things geo-politically. I not comfortable shorting the market, just not my style, to each their own. I'll just step aside and have it go crazy with all of this liquidity the Fed is doing before that.
But all of that wouldn't be there though and wouldn't be a market much at all if it wasn't for all the short term trading daily. Nor would we be here talking about it. It is what it is.
You also have issues with long terms. Is it even keeping up with inflation, did an Enron debacle wipe out anything that took yrs, maybe decades of low risk "safe" returns. There can be major events (and boy we have a doozy coming in that is like nothing we have seen in our lifetime) that can just total an account.
If your young, one can live through it and recover -- maybe (many haven't). But if your older, those kind of hits and the kind of hits that are coming can be devastating. Just take the housing crash, look how many retirees that was counting on using their life's efforts in those "safe" long accounts. I saw plenty of them, trying to go back to work with all the age discrimination and time out of the workplace spitting back at them. I saw many of them cleaning toilets or going to gov assistance.
Needless to say the many people that lost their homes, some never to get one back, but they thought they had a solid investment.
I was originally responding to the futures of wheat/grain and really only was focused on that sector and what is it going to do and how to set up for that, not just any old stock picking. It was just a search for info and ideas to share, I'll definitely being doing hrs and hrs research on my own.
There is no way to stop the consequences of what's going on, ignore it will be the biggest mistake. On another note I see that JJG now is reaching new highs to the extreme. No brag, just a lucky dart throw, and just noting the one area of extreme in the market. Things are just starting to hit the fan is the note.
Not trying to pump stuff, just trying to survive and brain storm here, throwing darts doesn't give checking stuff out, only minimum and charting temporarily till I can. Just sitting and not taking advantage the best we can, even if its just a day trade, is what I try to do. I can go in and out of anything at will, just like anybody else. Definitely not counting on any one thing to prepare for what comes. No need to get snooty. Throw some ideas yourself, just kicking some stuff around, for betterment of all.
You know, we have a situation here that is hurting a lot of people, and what's coming is going to hurt a lot more. And I wasn't remarking on my abilities (I'm lucky if I'm right half the time), but I was remarking on the markets action and reaction that is going on.
Did throw a couple of darts out there like JJG and it's already up over a buck from when I got it less than a hour ago.
Producing much at all is questionable. Obvious that it's mostly written in stone without help from the world, the abilities for them are going to be very limited for this summer anyway. It's going to be hard now even with any outside help for Ukraine. I'm sure that was all part of the diabolical plan (Putin saying I'm going to have it all or nobody gets it).
Sometimes I wish I could hibernate with the cicadas and come out when it's all over. Like there is enough work and time to figure out stuff in normal times, and now we have this mess to contend with. Along with the water shortage expense and other environmental expense coming our way, we're going to be tightening up our belts quite a bit.
I agree, so what's any opinion or consensus on which stocks, etf, etc that look good. Just taking opinions here, nobody responsible for me, make my own decisions, but just picking brains. Or should we just start throwing darts here.
Of course China is the main one and the most to profit, why they are in cahoots with Russia in all this.
Along with controlling over half of lithium mining, 3/4 of all mega battery factories, and say they own Taiwan with the chips, on and on.
https://www.reuters.com/business/russia-ukraine-conflict-highlights-wheat-supply-vulnerability-2022-03-03/
Major exporters holding only one-fifth of wheat stocks
China now accounts for nearly half of global wheat stocks
U.S. wheat futures climb to the highest level in 14 years
PARIS/LONDON, March 3 (Reuters) - The threat to wheat supplies from Russia's invasion of Ukraine has been exacerbated by a shift in global stocks away......
Looks like they are just controlling it between around 430-440 now. Of course since I said that they will break one direction or the other today. lol No matter, it's still just being controlled, nothing much real.
New Data: Biden’s First Year Drilling Permitting Stomps Trump’s By 34%
Thousands of Permits OK’d Despite President’s Authority to End Drilling by 2035
WASHINGTON— New federal data shows the Biden administration approved 3,557 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first year, far outpacing the Trump administration’s first-year total of 2,658.
Nearly 2,000 of the drilling permits were approved on public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management’s New Mexico office, followed by 843 in Wyoming, 285 in Montana and North Dakota, and 191 in Utah. In California, the Biden administration approved 187 permits — more than twice the 71 drilling permits Trump approved in that state in his first year.
New Data: Biden’s First Year Drilling Permitting Stomps Trump’s By 34%
A controversial mining project near Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness may be dead after the Biden administration canceled two mineral leases on Wednesday.....
in a release. "This action by the Biden administration re-establishes the long-standing legal consensus of five presidential administrations and marks a return of the rule of law. It also allows for science-based decision-making on where risky mining is inappropriate."
....Mineral leases first issued in 1966 were eventually purchased by Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta [A FORIGN COMPANY], which in the early 2000s drilled millions of feet of core samples on the land. The project was halted in 2016 when the Obama administration denied Twin Metals' application to renew the leases. But the Trump administration reversed that decision and renewed the leases just three years later.
U.S. interior secretary Deb Haaland said the Trump administration made a mistake in reinstating the leases.
"We must be consistent in how we apply lease terms to ensure that no lessee receives special treatment," Haaland said in a press release. "After careful legal review, we found the leases were improperly renewed in violation of applicable statutes and regulations, and we are taking action to cancel them."
https://sports.yahoo.com/biden-administration-cancels-mining-permits-164702637.html
insert-text-here
And here one about our RE and probably part of the housing "bubble" that occurring.
As President Joe Biden vows to punish Russia with financial sanctions by seizing yachts, mansions and other assets, members of the real estate community and lawmakers are skeptical about how successful he’ll be at getting access to the money Russians have been pouring into real estate for decades. From Sunny Isles, Florida, to Cleveland and high rises in Manhattan, post-Soviet oligarchs’ money has poured into big cities and the heartland in recent decades with little recourse.
That’s because there is very little the government can do to find out who owns what real estate in the U.S., which has become a “destination of choice” for money launderers throughout the world, said Louise Shelley, the director of the transnational crime and corruption center at George Mason University, who has been an expert witness about how Russian money is laundered through real estate.
At a minimum, from cases reported in the last five years, more than $2.3 billion has been laundered through U.S. real estate, including millions more through other alternative assets, like art, jewelry and yachts, according to a report in August by Global Financial Integrity, a nonprofit group that researches illicit money flows.
In 2020, Congress passed legislation to empower the Treasury Department to stop tax evaders, kleptocrats, terrorists and other criminals from using anonymous shell companies to hide and launder assets, including those in real estate. It requires companies to self-report to the Treasury Department certain basic information, including the assets’ true owners. The information will be in a database for law enforcement, national security officials and financial institutions.
“There’s not enough teeth into regulations in terms of making Realtors report,” Shelley said. “And there’s not been enough emphasis on commercial real estate. It’s all about oligarchs’ buying real estate for themselves.”
While European countries have long had similar requirements, the latest legislation is a departure from the U.S.’s long-standing approach to private companies and disclosure requirements. Still, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is working on the final regulations necessary to activate the network. But it addresses only part of a much bigger problem. Experts say oligarchs can benefit from major disclosure loopholes in private equity and luxury goods.
“There’s this misunderstanding that you can just go out and seize these mansions, seize these yachts. For so many of them, it’s a complete black box,” said Casey Michel, the author of “American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History.”
“The U.S. provided all the tools of anonymity the oligarchs needed,” he said, and there’s no immediate executive action Biden can take to fix it.
Decades of investing
Russian money has been pouring into the U.S. since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 1999, Richard Palmer, who was the CIA’s Moscow embassy station chief, warned in congressional testimony that Russian kleptocrats and KGB officials had poured billions of dollars into private accounts across Europe and the U.S. in the dying days of the Soviet Union.
Michel said that after the passage in 2001 of the Patriot Act, which required disclosure of major banking transactions, much of the money was shifted into real estate property and luxury goods hidden through shell companies.
It has been a challenge for governments and academics trying to measure the scope of the wealth. By 2015, Gabriel Zucman, the director of the Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality at the University of California, Berkeley, estimated that 52 percent of Russia’s wealth was held outside the country. The Treasury Department maintains a “report on oligarchs and parastatal entities of the Russian federation.” While the list of 96 oligarchs is public, there is also a much longer classified version that includes a deep dive into the finances of the oligarchs and entities, including their sources of income and exposure to the U.S. economy.
New York-bound
During the real estate boom in 2006 and 2007, Russians flocked to Manhattan to buy up properties. They bought up floors at the Plaza Hotel and logged record sales at the Time Warner Center and 15 Central Park West. They also eventually attracted the attention of law enforcement. In New York. Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin whose name has been repeatedly raised in investigations involving Russia and former President Donald Trump, was linked to a home in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, even though he had not come to the U.S. in years, The Washington Post reported. (He was also connected to a home in Washington, D.C., through a Delaware-incorporated company. The FBI raided both properties in October.) Calls to Deripaska’s former lobbying firm, which ended its contract with him last week, were not returned. On Telegram, Deripaska denounced the war, saying: “The world is very important! Negotiations need to start as soon as possible.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/russian-money-flows-us-real-estate-rcna17723
Holodomor
Ukrainian history
Alternate titles: Famine of 1932–33, Great Famine of 1932–33
Date: 1932 - 1933
Location: Ukraine Soviet Union
Context: kulak Soviet famine
Key People: Joseph Stalin
Holodomor, man-made famine that convulsed the Soviet republic of Ukraine from 1932 to 1933, peaking in the late spring of 1933. It was part of a broader Soviet famine (1931–34) that also caused mass starvation in the grain-growing regions of Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan. The Ukrainian famine, however, was made deadlier by a series of political decrees and decisions that were aimed mostly or only at Ukraine. In acknowledgement of its scale, the famine of 1932–33 is often called the Holodomor, a term derived from the Ukrainian words for hunger (holod) and extermination (mor).
Holodomor
Holodomor
Dead child on the streets of Kharkiv, Ukraine, during the Holodomor, photo by Alexander Wienerberger, 1933.
Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer
Causes of the famine
The origins of the famine lay in the decision by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to collectivize agriculture in 1929. Teams of Communist Party agitators forced peasants to relinquish their land, personal property, and sometimes housing to collective farms, and they deported so-called kulaks—wealthier peasants—as well as any peasants who resisted collectivization altogether. Collectivization led to a drop in production, the disorganization of the rural economy, and food shortages. It also sparked a series of peasant rebellions, including armed uprisings, in some parts of Ukraine.
From famine to extermination
The result of Stalin’s campaign was a catastrophe. In spring 1933 death rates in Ukraine spiked. Between 1931 and 1934 at least 5 million people perished of hunger all across the U.S.S.R. Among them, according to a study conducted by a team of Ukrainian demographers, were at least 3.9 million Ukrainians. Police archives contain multiple descriptions of instances of cannibalism as well as lawlessness, theft, and lynching. Mass graves were dug across the countryside. Hunger also affected the urban population, though many were able to survive thanks to ration cards. Still, in Ukraine’s largest cities, corpses could be seen on the street.
The famine was accompanied by a broader assault on Ukrainian identity. While peasants were dying by the millions, agents of the Soviet secret police were targeting the Ukrainian political establishment and intelligentsia. The famine provided cover for a campaign of repression and persecution that was carried out against Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian religious leaders. The official policy of Ukrainization, which had encouraged the use of the Ukrainian language, was effectively halted. Moreover, anyone connected to the short-lived Ukrainian People’s Republic—an independent government that had been declared in June 1917 in the wake of the February Revolution but was dismantled after the Bolsheviks conquered Ukrainian territory—was subjected to vicious reprisals. All those targeted by this campaign were liable to be publicly vilified, jailed, sent to the Gulag (a system of Soviet prisons and forced-labour camps), or executed. Knowing that this Russification program would inevitably reach him, Mykola Skrypnyk, one of the best-known leaders of the Ukrainian Communist Party, committed suicide rather than submit to one of Stalin’s show trials.
As the famine was happening, news of it was deliberately silenced by Soviet bureaucrats. Party officials did not mention it in public. Western journalists based in Moscow were instructed not to write about it. One of the most famous Moscow correspondents at the time, Walter Duranty of The New York Times, went out of his way to dismiss reports of the famine when they were published by a young freelancer, Gareth Jones, as he “thought Mr. Jones’s judgment was somewhat hasty.” Jones was murdered under suspicious circumstances in 1935 in Japanese-occupied Mongolia. Stalin himself went so far as to repress the results of a census taken in 1937; the administrators of that census were arrested and murdered, in part because the figures revealed the decimation of Ukraine’s population.
Holodomor
Holodomor
Victim of the Holodomor, Kharkiv, Ukraine, photo by Alexander Wienerberger.
Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer
Although the famine was discussed during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine in World War II, it became taboo again during the postwar years. The first public mention of it in the Soviet Union was in 1986, in the aftermath of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster. That disaster too was initially kept secret by Soviet authorities.
Assessment
Because the famine was so deadly, and because it was officially denied by the Kremlin for more than half a century, it has played a large role in Ukrainian public memory, particularly since independence. Ukrainian poet Ivan Drach was the first to speak publicly about the famine, in 1986, after the Chernobyl disaster, citing it as an example of how damaging official silence can be. Monuments commemorating the Holodomor have been erected by the Ukrainian government as well as by the Ukrainian diaspora, and Holodomor Remembrance Day is observed around the world on the fourth Saturday of November. Ukraine has also invested in research on the famBy early 2019, 16 countries as well as the Vatican had recognized the Holodomor as a genocide, and both houses of the United States Congress had passed resolutions declaring that “Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against the Ukrainians in 1932–1933.”
Wonder how far that will go.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371
If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
If, however, the offense, the commission of which is the object of the conspiracy, is a misdemeanor only, the punishment for such conspiracy shall not exceed the maximum punishment provided for such misdemeanor.
(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 701; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, §?330016(1)(L), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2147.)
That's true janice, always a good thought. We should remember though, to feel some empathy sometimes too (a lot less apathy and not so much sympathy).
I mean where would we be today without the Greek Tragedies of long ago.
Some more fun facts that can show up with just a smidgen of real DD
The Keystone XL pipeline was not getting oil from the US, it would just be transporting(not "generating") it by Canada's TC Energy (then TransCanada) in Canada down to refineries in Texas (where a lot of the padding of politicians pockets took place and a few others along the way).
Then most of it is exported with all the risks of destroying our minimum water supply that is in the worst drought in 1200 yrs and getting worse (one of the big ass "bubbles" of expense coming our way). We're going to be paying more for water than any black, white, or yellow gold.
All the while, bypassing what economic support we're getting by transporting (importing) the oil from Canada the way they are doing now (the oil is still be transported/imported without the pipeline), just more profit for them and why they could pay millions$ to the politicians to yell out the lies they spew about it. And why the politicians pay out a cut to certain misinformation sources to keep ones attention to and fight about. Then it goes down the food chain on it's merry way.
Now with the thousands and thousands of new oil drilling permits/leases that would be coming online down the road, we already have at last count in 2020, 936,934 producing oil wells down from over a million in 2014 due to lower oil prices with less rig activity right here in the US. Maybe the numbers are off a few and they don't all produce equally, but still equates to a crap load of oil and oil product produced in the US.
This amount of oil and oil products from in the US today is being EXPORTED out of the country more than we import by the tune of about 120,000 barrels a day over what we import. We also export more refined product than crude.
That's right, we sell out, again padding the pockets of politicians and oil barons, MORE than we import. At least the US
did in the first half of 21.
Well we have a little disturbance in the big oil club, and things have to change around a bit and they need to make their cut back somehow, and we need to keep more of our own oil, stop exporting it so much (along with importing from other places to keep the status quo). So guess what -- increase costs at the supply. Got to supply that ATM to the politicians who then get paid to scream and holler (lie and obfuscate), the traitors and power mongers that they are. Just desecrating and abusing our first amendment rights, raking in millions/billions from the people with all their shenanigans.
Convincing as many as they can by going through this process what saviors they are, flag wrapping their ass and putting on a bible hat to replace the emperor's clothes. Maybe I just don't like liars, thieves, and crooks but they're worse than traitors as far as I'm concerned being in the positions they are in.
One good chuckle before you die, better than a cigarette and blindfold I guess. Well here's hope for a few to survive and be able to scrap out the metal for a little something to eat.
Here we are talking about silly things, entertained, while thousands are getting blown up, mutilated, and exterminated.
What kind of humans have we become?
The thing I read stated about a farmer, that's the only reason I said a farmer, was the woman driving the tractor, I thought she was in the tank. My bad. I guess we should get it straight for history (and the gravestones), they will probably be extinct as Putin gets his way.
https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/watch-ukrainian-farmer-tows-away-russian-tank-using-a-tractor-in-viral-video-4822112.html
WATCH: Ukrainian Farmer Tows Away Russian Tank Using a Tractor in Viral Video
https://www.news18.com/news/buzz/watch-ukrainian-farmer-tows-away-russian-tank-using-a-tractor-in-viral-video-4822112.html
Interesting, didn't realize that. Or did they just get a farmer with his tractor to help them out. Or do they not even have the word "farmer" over there. Originally Romanian?
I doubt it, it will probably still be in court when the kids pass, let alone TFG would be long gone. We have never indited a President, in or out of office, and I doubt it will ever happen (not that he doesn't deserve it and would be what he always believes in, trump first).
But maybe they can get some lingering assets. Probably laundered everything already, but might get some more of his buddies nailed. Maybe curb this problem a bit;
Russian money flows through U.S. real estate
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/real-estate/russian-money-flows-us-real-estate-rcna17723
Despite new sanctions, Russians have spent years pouring funds into properties
March 2, 2022, 4:00 AM MST
By Heidi Przybyla and Christine Haughney
As President Joe Biden vows to punish Russia with financial sanctions by seizing yachts, mansions and other assets, members of the real estate community and lawmakers are skeptical about how successful he’ll be at getting access to the money Russians have been pouring into real estate for decades. From Sunny Isles, Florida, to Cleveland and high rises in Manhattan, post-Soviet oligarchs’ money has poured into big cities and the heartland in recent decades with little recourse.
That’s because there is very little the government can do to find out who owns what real estate in the U.S., which has become a “destination of choice” for money launderers throughout the world, said Louise Shelley, the director of the transnational crime and corruption center at George Mason University, who has been an expert witness about how Russian money is laundered through real estate.
At a minimum, from cases reported in the last five years, more than $2.3 billion has been laundered through U.S. real estate, including millions more through other alternative assets, like art, jewelry and yachts, according to a report in August by Global Financial Integrity, a nonprofit group that researches illicit money flows.
In 2020, Congress passed legislation to empower the Treasury Department to stop tax evaders, kleptocrats, terrorists and other criminals from using anonymous shell companies to hide and launder assets, including those in real estate. It requires companies to self-report to the Treasury Department certain basic information, including the assets’ true owners. The information will be in a database for law enforcement, national security officials and financial institutions.
“There’s not enough teeth into regulations in terms of making Realtors report,” Shelley said. “And there’s not been enough emphasis on commercial real estate. It’s all about oligarchs’ buying real estate for themselves.”
While European countries have long had similar requirements, the latest legislation is a departure from the U.S.’s long-standing approach to private companies and disclosure requirements. Still, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network is working on the final regulations necessary to activate the network. But it addresses only part of a much bigger problem. Experts say oligarchs can benefit from major disclosure loopholes in private equity and luxury goods.
“There’s this misunderstanding that you can just go out and seize these mansions, seize these yachts. For so many of them, it’s a complete black box,” said Casey Michel, the author of “American Kleptocracy: How the U.S. Created the World’s Greatest Money Laundering Scheme in History.”
“The U.S. provided all the tools of anonymity the oligarchs needed,” he said, and there’s no immediate executive action Biden can take to fix it.
Decades of investing
Russian money has been pouring into the U.S. since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. In 1999, Richard Palmer, who was the CIA’s Moscow embassy station chief, warned in congressional testimony that Russian kleptocrats and KGB officials had poured billions of dollars into private accounts across Europe and the U.S. in the dying days of the Soviet Union.
Michel said that after the passage in 2001 of the Patriot Act, which required disclosure of major banking transactions, much of the money was shifted into real estate property and luxury goods hidden through shell companies.
It has been a challenge for governments and academics trying to measure the scope of the wealth. By 2015, Gabriel Zucman, the director of the Stone Center on Wealth and Income Inequality at the University of California, Berkeley, estimated that 52 percent of Russia’s wealth was held outside the country. The Treasury Department maintains a “report on oligarchs and parastatal entities of the Russian federation.” While the list of 96 oligarchs is public, there is also a much longer classified version that includes a deep dive into the finances of the oligarchs and entities, including their sources of income and exposure to the U.S. economy.
New York-bound
During the real estate boom in 2006 and 2007, Russians flocked to Manhattan to buy up properties. They bought up floors at the Plaza Hotel and logged record sales at the Time Warner Center and 15 Central Park West. They also eventually attracted the attention of law enforcement. In New York. Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin whose name has been repeatedly raised in investigations involving Russia and former President Donald Trump, was linked to a home in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, even though he had not come to the U.S. in years, The Washington Post reported. (He was also connected to a home in Washington, D.C., through a Delaware-incorporated company. The FBI raided both properties in October.) Calls to Deripaska’s former lobbying firm, which ended its contract with him last week, were not returned. On Telegram, Deripaska denounced the war, saying: “The world is very important! Negotiations need to start as soon as possible.”
I knew about the farmer, but not gypsies. Something new?
Crazy stuff everywhere. Massive money just shifting around, normal charting just out the window. Fundamentals just turning into an archaic word.
There was a whole different attitude then and the ability to have both; freedom and prosperity. Back then, it might of not been thought of that way, but I think in a way, that was what was accomplished.
Today, it might be said that we don't have either. For most, working for individual prosperity is equivalent to just survival with prosperity only in a dream. And an attitude of freedom is a lost thought, desecrated by abuse of what it really means.
Doing a lot of different oil/energy almost just throwing darts from WTI to XOP all up nicely.
Update on the wrangling of oil with the Iran deal going on;
Clock Ticks on Iran Nuclear Talks as Sides Wrangle Over Details
Golnar Motevalli and Jonathan Tirone
Wed, March 2, 2022, 8:10 AM·3 min read
(Bloomberg) -- Diplomats trying to salvage a landmark nuclear deal with Tehran wrangled around the clock over sticking points to an agreement that could bring Iranian oil back to the global market at a critical time for the world economy.
European and U.S. officials blew past their goal to clinch a deal in February and are now warning only days remain to reach a deal after more than 10 months of negotiations in Vienna. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has raised the diplomatic stakes.
“What we want now is an agreement in Vienna. It’s now the time to decide,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday at a news conference with his Israeli counterpart in Jerusalem.
Oil has surged to $110 a barrel since Russia’s military campaign began and OPEC+, a group of top oil exporting nations plus Russia, offered little significant relief at a low-key meeting on Wednesday, sticking to a preset plan for a modest supply increase.
If the nuclear talks collapse, crude could jump even more because many traders have been expecting a return of Iranian barrels to global markets this year. Iran, which holds the world’s No. 2 natural gas and No. 4 crude reserves, could probably raise exports by around 1 million barrels a day within months of any deal, according to traders.
The sticking points that remain in Vienna are few but significant.
Negotiators wrangled overnight over Iran’s demand that monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency end their investigation into its past atomic activities. Western diplomats rejected that bid, citing the watchdog’s independence.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi may speak to the issue at a press conference on Wednesday. The agency holds a key board meeting on March 7, where Iran could face diplomatic censure over its lack of cooperation with investigators trying to determine the origin of uranium particles detected at several undeclared sites.
“Safeguards are a fundamental part of the non-proliferation system and are separate,” U.K. negotiator Stephanie Al-Qaq wrote on Twitter. “We will always reject any attempt to compromise IAEA independence.”
Meanwhile, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi spoke with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin this week. Tehran’s hardline government has cultivated its ties with China and Russia and wants to develop longterm strategic alliances with the east, even if it reaches a deal with world powers over the nuclear program.
In addition to the IAEA investigation, negotiators remain bogged down over Iran’s demand for a U.S. commitment that it won’t again abandon the 2015 nuclear agreement, which capped Tehran’s activities in exchange for sanctions relief.
The Trump administration unilaterally ditched the accord four years ago and applied economic penalties, prompting Iran to retaliate by enriching uranium close to the levels needed for a bomb.
“If the negotiators fail to bridge the remaining gaps, the best fall back option is a moratorium that averts a perilous cycle of escalation,” said Ali Vaez, who directs Iran research at the International Crisis Group. Iran could offer to freeze its most worrisome activities in exchange for partial sanctions relief, he said.
They already have. There were some articles and talk the end of last yr projecting $200 this summer. And more and more talk now of that price point.
While the one sided war rages on, shifting players around a bit carries on. Getting close to a deal, but sticky points I guess are Iran wants less inspection of course and guarantees that US just won't back out of deal at some point (guess can't blame them for that). But it's just a oil/energy world where few controls all and I don't think we'll see a change to that.
A surreal footnote to a most surreal week in world affairs.
While hell broke loose in Ukraine , Western and Russian diplomats -- not to mention hard-line emissaries from Tehran -- sat calmly together in Vienna , dotting i's on a prospective reborn Iran nuclear agreement.
"Chances are better than even that the deal will be revived," says Eric Brewer , a senior director at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. "We should know by the middle of this week."
That could bring some respite for oil consumers who have watched crude prices climb more than 20% this year, with sanctions on Russia threatening to push them further. Iran can likely increase production by more than 1 million barrels a day this year if it exits the nuclear sanctions penalty box. That would raise global production by about 1.5%.
Maybe 200,000 more barrels a day could be eked out of another U.S. - sanctioned oil power: Venezuela . President Joe Biden and his administration have quietly eased the so-called maximum pressure campaign that Donald Trump imposed on Nicolas Maduro's regime, allowing more crude to leak out to China and other nondollar buyers. " Venezuela has found ways to adapt to sanctions, and the U.S. has spent less energy enforcing them," says Francisco Rodriguez , a fellow at the Council for Foreign Relations .
When he took office, Biden pledged to revive the multilateral Iran nuclear accord hammered out by Barack Obama and abrogated by Trump. Supporters say the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the formal name for the Iran deal, remains the best mechanism for keeping the Islamic Republic away from a nuclear bomb. "It's impossible to 'solve' the Iran nuclear issue," Brewer says. "JCPOA puts as much time and space as possible between Iran and nuclear weapons."
Biden's plans hit a snag last June when Iranian elections brought Ebrahim Raisi to power as president. He is a purported strict conservative with close ties to the country's religious leaders. Tehran walked away from talks until November. The prospect of selling more oil at eight-year highs nudged them back to the table, however.
The U.S. has its own cause for urgency. Iran is thought to be within a few weeks of having enough enriched uranium for a nuke. A deliverable weapon, mounted on a missile, would take longer, Brewer says. Tehran's progress is focusing minds, nevertheless.
The last sticking point in talks appears to be Iran's push for guarantees that the next U.S. president won't repeat Trump's actions and tear up whatever Biden signs now. The U.S. can't give that assurance: A formal treaty would require two-thirds approval by the Senate , a goal clearly out of reach as far as Iran is concerned.
Chief Iranian negotiator Ali Bagheri flew back to Tehran last week for consultations, leaving his U.S. , European Union , U.K. , Russian, and Chinese counterparts hanging in Vienna . Observers predict Iran will settle for keeping more centrifuges than last time so that their nuclear efforts are easier to pull out of mothballs. "What we hear from well- informed people in Tehran is that we really are close to a deal," says Scott Modell , managing director of Rapidan Energy Group .
An accord could take effect within a month and boost Iran's crude output to 3.6 to 3.8 million barrels a day by late 2022, from about 2,500 now, Modell says. That's not enough to reverse oil's bull run, but it "could be temporarily macro bearish," he predicts.
Venezuela's oil output has suffered no less than Iran's from U.S. sanctions. It dropped from more than 2 million barrels a day when Trump took office in 2017 to about 500,000 in 2020.
A grand political bargain looks still tougher with Caracas than with Tehran . The concession Washington demands from Maduro is existential: new elections that could unseat him. Biden is constrained on his side by a growing Venezuelan émigré voting bloc -- and Cubans who share their anti-socialist grievances -- in the politically key state of Florida . "Being tough on Maduro has paid off electorally," Rodriguez says.
Bumper prices and laxer enforcement has still bumped Venezuelan output to some 750,000 barrels a day starting last summer. The country could squeeze a bit more before needing large investment in depleted fields and infrastructure. " There's still some low-hanging fruit there," Rapidan's Modell says.
Extra volumes from Iran and Venezuela won't offset major disruptions in Russia , which exports more than 3 million barrels of oil a day. But an extra 1 or 1.5 million barrels isn't small change for a market that famously swings on the margins.
Stay tuned.
Write to editors@barrons.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
02-27-22 1705ET
Copyright (c) 2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Of course security of this country was never a concern with certain previous administrations, only with how much it could be up for sale. But to address the statement, I'm trying to see the connection.
No link, no explanation with how, whatever it was, connected to LAC. How did or how would it effect the value or price action now or in the future, at least WHAT was thought be effecting. Pretty lacking with the topic of LAC.
If one thinks that this administration has blocked ALL mining and oil leases or permits, in particular, any LAC permitting, then please show the link and document that would pertain to that. At least some resemblance of an explanation.
If not it shows poor research on the issues, or maybe no research at all, and isn't any help at all to analyze our investments into LAC. But maybe that's not the intent, not sure, beyond me to figure it out.
Which mining leases/permits are getting held up and why? Does it have anything to do with this company. We've recently been updated on certain legal processes and how that was related, but I'm very open to anything pertaining to LAC.
Are any denials for purpose that will effect here. Or is it just saving our water sources that we are in such short supply, worse than in like 1200 yrs. Pretty soon we're going to paying more for water than oil.
Maybe just not taking profit and resources for personal gains, doesn't matter how helter-skelter it's done, just take what's not theirs. Ravaging all the other resources around it. Is LAC doing things like those examples or anything that it will effect the value here?
If one just puts a little time into some real research and investing they would find out things like examples given below, but I can't find why it would connect to LAC. All ears for any input that is directly related to my investment and ATM, and what, why, where. This is just a few and the list can be extremely long, so I'll leave it up to others that need to hone their skills to come up with more for discussion:
New Data: Biden’s First Year Drilling Permitting Stomps Trump’s By 34%
Thousands of Permits OK’d Despite President’s Authority to End Drilling by 2035
WASHINGTON— New federal data shows the Biden administration approved 3,557 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first year, far outpacing the Trump administration’s first-year total of 2,658.
Nearly 2,000 of the drilling permits were approved on public lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management’s New Mexico office, followed by 843 in Wyoming, 285 in Montana and North Dakota, and 191 in Utah. In California, the Biden administration approved 187 permits — more than twice the 71 drilling permits Trump approved in that state in his first year.
biden-is-approving-more-oil-gas-drilling-permits-public-lands-than-trump-analysis-finds/
The Biden administration on Tuesday said it found “significant deficiencies” in a Trump-era environmental analysis of a mining road that would cut through wilderness and Indigenous territory in northwest Alaska.
The construction of Ambler Road is one of the most high-profile environmental issues in Alaska, as it would bring 211 miles of new road through one of the largest roadless areas in the country.
The Interior Department said in a statement that the road proposal — which includes about 50 miles of Bureau of Land Management and National Park Service land — would cross the traditional homelands of Alaska Native communities including the Koyukon, Tanana Athabascans and Iñupiat peoples.
In a federal court filing Tuesday, the administration asked the U.S. District Court for Alaska to send the permit approval back to the department so it can conduct a new environmental analysis. Interior said that it would suspend the right of way for the road while it carried out the new assessment “to ensure that no ground-disturbing activity takes place that could potentially impact the resources in question.”
Alaska Native groups endorsed the decision.
Some opponents of the road found the Biden administration’s decision lacking. Trustees for Alaska, an environmental group that has sued to stop the road, criticized the administration for not revoking the permits and said it “failed to acknowledge the full and long list of legal problems with the Interior Department’s approval process.”
“This project never should have been authorized in the first place, and the agencies can’t fix their broken analysis by papering over their mistakes after the fact,” Suzanne Bostrom, senior staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska, said in a statement.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/02/22/ambler-road-alaska/
A controversial mining project near Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness may be dead after the Biden administration canceled two mineral leases on Wednesday.....
in a release. "This action by the Biden administration re-establishes the long-standing legal consensus of five presidential administrations and marks a return of the rule of law. It also allows for science-based decision-making on where risky mining is inappropriate."
....Mineral leases first issued in 1966 were eventually purchased by Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of Chilean mining conglomerate Antofagasta [A FORIGN COMPANY], which in the early 2000s drilled millions of feet of core samples on the land. The project was halted in 2016 when the Obama administration denied Twin Metals' application to renew the leases. But the Trump administration reversed that decision and renewed the leases just three years later.
U.S. interior secretary Deb Haaland said the Trump administration made a mistake in reinstating the leases.
"We must be consistent in how we apply lease terms to ensure that no lessee receives special treatment," Haaland said in a press release. "After careful legal review, we found the leases were improperly renewed in violation of applicable statutes and regulations, and we are taking action to cancel them."
https://sports.yahoo.com/biden-administration-cancels-mining-permits-164702637.html
I understood. I guess I didn't express my understanding with enough clarity.
I/we don't know of every drop of blood on the ground, if the kill rate reaches 100 to 1, but I am aware. I am aware that there is expert forces on the ground, teams there, teams not far away, and teams very far away.
I know enough that the urgency that is being organized with the UN, US, EU, NATO, the top 1% in control, and the rest of the nations involved are of great concern and unprecedented in the magnitude and difficulty that it is today.
I'm not naïve, I am aware of the physics that dictate that no rag tag group carrying sticks and stones is putting the kind death and damage on the war machine that is in effect at the moment.
Putin is aware too.
I'm also aware of the vision purposely portrayed of the ones carrying the sticks and stones. I also know that it is very real, they are terrified, untrained, most in shock, ready to die, disrupted from everything they know, everything we know. The rubble that showers down upon them is real too. There isn't enough forces there to hold back the terror that is happening and is about to happen.
There is no good ending to all this, no matter which way you slice it. But any half ass drawn out turmoil where Putin takes that city and continues with his existence, and not extremes used to prevent it, will be the worst option and a never ending demise.
I'm also aware that I'm too aware, the effects that destroy from within and need some sleep. An old professor told me once that there's never a story that hasn't been told already, and Paul Harvey used to say "In times like these, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these". Not so sure right now.
good night
We know enough, plenty, the picture is totally clear, so much, that we hate to look at it all. Hating the color, hew, or artist doesn't change what we can already see.
But if you mean that we don't know what is going on this exact minute, the exact piece of gut splattering down on the dirt, doesn't matter, if it isn't something in the way that will dramatically turn this around, with the force necessary, in a dramatic short period of time, the victims will have lost, we will have lost. I hope for the dreams of nice surprises, I'll be a happy camper, sort of.
If things are half assed though, or spread out in some master plan into a longer period of time, we will only learn more regret. But I guess we're getting pretty good at that. Hope can be a hindrance and reality a bitch.
No it is not. This is already a War, it involves many countries around the World. Lethal arms are being stated for giving to people to kill other people. Innocent people are being slaughtered right now.
We can arm sit in cushy lives and see that nobody is getting harmed in our yard so we need a Label. Alright, call it a Police Action, call it Engineered Disturbance Management, call it WW2.0, don't give a fuck.
As long as we don't put that nasty roman numeral on it, we're good right?
We have major tyrant slaughtering to take whatever he wants. He's threatening and effecting a very large portion of this planet. Short term, long term, directly and indirectly. Russian leadership is being a World Bully, has declared WAR, acted upon it, and taking over parts of the WORLD that is not his.
He started killing major human life before, he's killing humans now, he won't stop the killing, and he will kill again.
We have about 12-24hrs maybe to get some major air support, supply drops, and personnel additions and replacement stopping this thing. The people there are begging the world to help in every possible way and proper words. Fighting valiantly for their lives and in turn, unwittingly fighting for ours, and the world.
But they will be annihilated very soon without the worlds support, real support, and violent support. Their cries will go to a murmur, drowned out by by our complaints of soft masks, how we're going to wrap the flag around our ass, and whether or not our stocks go up or down. Or whether or not we label all of this destruction, all of this major shitstorm that we are in the middle of currently right now, with the right dot or t.
If the decent part of this world does not do this now, it will only make the inevitable results worse. Or let's just admit to our defeat, and give everything to these mother fuckers, and go about whatever merry little way that they end up giving us. We didn't count up enough bullets, bombs, lives to get to categorize it a WAR. Great job people, way to go, high five.
Who is the pro-Moscow Ukrainian mogul Viktor Medvedchuk?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/28/ukraine-russia-medvedchuck/
Ukrainian tycoon Viktor Medvedchuk, left, speaks to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a meeting at the Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow in October 2020. (AP)
By David L. Stern
Today at 4:00 a.m. EST
16
MUKACHEVO, Ukraine — Russian President Vladimir Putin is godfather to his daughter. The two men vacation together and meet up to watch Formula One races.
Viktor Medvedchuk, leader of Ukraine’s most prominent Kremlin-friendly party, has leveraged his proximity to Putin to establish himself as one of Ukraine’s most influential behind-the-scenes political brokers for more than three decades. It also made him a very wealthy man: In 2021, Forbes magazine estimated he was worth $620 million.
But it’s his position as one of the Kremlin’s favorite Ukrainian politicians that may catapult him to prominence in the weeks to come.
Historic sanctions on Russia had roots in emotional appeal from Zelensky
If Moscow succeeds in occupying Ukraine, Medvedchuk’s Opposition Platform-For Life party may provide the pool of politicians from which the Kremlin will assemble a government more to its liking.
Medvedchuk has denied that the party is pro-Russian. Still, it pushes for closer political and economic ties with Moscow, and a number of its members parrot Kremlin talking points.
His relationship with Putin stretches back more than 20 years. Medvedchuk has visited the Russian leader at home in Moscow and Sochi, joining Putin to watch races and combat sambo tournaments.
After Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, the U.S. government sanctioned Medvedchuk for “contributing to the current situation in Ukraine” and for leading an organization at the time that “engaged in actions or policies that undermine democratic processes or institutions in Ukraine.”
But when the conflict with Moscow-supported separatists ignited in eastern Ukraine months later, Ukrainian officials found Medvedchuk to be a useful go-between with the Kremlin who could pass messages to Russian officials and help negotiate prisoner exchanges with the militants.
This mediator role came to an abrupt end with Volodymyr Zelensky’s victory in Ukraine’s presidential elections in 2019. In February 2021, Zelensky signed a decree that accused Medvedchuk of financing terrorism, freezing his assets.
The decree also blocked transmission of three television stations that are associated with Medvedchuk and are accused of broadcasting pro-Kremlin propaganda.
In May, prosecutors accused Medvedchuk of high treason and placed him under house arrest.
Moscow condemned the moves, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov calling the treason charges a witch hunt. Putin said it was “an absolutely obvious purge of the political field” that could turn Ukraine into “a kind of anti-Russia.”
Well, they have lots to work with and work to do.
Revealed: Credit Suisse leak unmasks criminals, fraudsters and corrupt politicians
Massive leak reveals secret owners of £80bn held in Swiss bank
Whistleblower leaked bank’s data to expose ‘immoral’ secrecy laws
Clients included human trafficker and billionaire who ordered girlfriend’s murder
Vatican-owned account used to spend €350m in allegedly fraudulent investment
Scandal-hit Credit Suisse rejects allegations it may be ‘rogue bank’
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/feb/20/credit-suisse-secrets-leak-unmasks-criminals-fraudsters-corrupt-politicians
Amassive leak from one of the world’s biggest private banks, Credit Suisse, has exposed the hidden wealth of clients involved in torture, drug trafficking, money laundering, corruption and other serious crimes.
Details of accounts linked to 30,000 Credit Suisse clients all over the world are contained in the leak, which unmasks the beneficiaries of more than 100bn Swiss francs (£80bn)* held in one of Switzerland’s best-known financial institutions.
The leak points to widespread failures of due diligence by Credit Suisse, despite repeated pledges over decades to weed out dubious clients and illicit funds. The Guardian is part of a consortium of media outlets given exclusive access to the data.
We can reveal how Credit Suisse repeatedly either opened or maintained bank accounts for a panoramic array of high-risk clients across the world.
Quick Guide
Suisse secrets
Show
They include a human trafficker in the Philippines, a Hong Kong stock exchange boss jailed for bribery, a billionaire who ordered the murder of his Lebanese pop star girlfriend and executives who looted Venezuela’s state oil company, as well as corrupt politicians from Egypt to Ukraine.
One Vatican-owned account in the data was used to spend €350m (£290m) in an allegedly fraudulent investment in London property that is at the centre of an ongoing criminal trial of several defendants, including a cardinal.
The huge trove of banking data was leaked by an anonymous whistleblower to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. “I believe that Swiss banking secrecy laws are immoral,” the whistleblower source said in a statement. “The pretext of protecting financial privacy is merely a fig leaf covering the shameful role of Swiss banks as collaborators of tax evaders.”
Suisse secrets graphic
The revelations may fuel questions over whether Credit Suisse’s challenges over the past few years are indicative of a deep malaise at the bank. Composite: Guardian/David Levene
Credit Suisse said that Switzerland’s strict banking secrecy laws prevented it from commenting on claims relating to individual clients.
“Credit Suisse strongly rejects the allegations and inferences about the bank’s purported business practices,” the bank said in a statement, arguing that the matters uncovered by reporters are based on “selective information taken out of context, resulting in tendentious interpretations of the bank’s business conduct.”
The bank also said the allegations were largely historical, in some instances dating back to a time when “laws, practices and expectations of financial institutions were very different from where they are now”.
While some accounts in the data were open as far back as the 1940s, more than two-thirds were opened since 2000. Many of those were still open well into the last decade, and a portion remain open today.
Zurich
Switzerland
Ukraine
Ukraine
1,000+ accounts
1,000+ accounts
Thailand
Thailand
1,000+ accounts
1,000+ accounts
Venezuela
Venezuela
2,000+ accounts
2,000+ accounts
Egypt
Egypt
2,000+ accounts
2,000+ accounts
Credit Suisse has more than 1.6tn CHF (£1.3tn) in assets under management and is one of Switzerland’s largest lenders, second only to UBS. It has almost 50,000 employees, including a significant workforce in Zurich, where the bank is headquartered.
However, many of its 3,500 ‘relationship managers’, who find and serve wealthy clients, are spread across the world. The leaked accounts are linked to Credit Suisse clients living in more than 120 jurisdictions, with a concentration of clients in the developing world.
Countries with some of the largest number of clients in the data, such as Venezuela, Egypt, Ukraine and Thailand, have long struggled with political and financial elites hiding their fortunes offshore.
Guardian graphic. By Niels de Hoog, Ashley Kirk and Paul Scruton.
The timing of the leak could hardly be worse for Credit Suisse, which has recently been beset by major scandals. Last month, it lost its chairman, António Horta-Osório, after he twice broke Covid-19 regulations.
That capped an unprecedented year of controversies in which the bank became embroiled in the collapse of the supply chain finance firm Greensill Capital and the US hedge fund Archegos Capital, and was fined £350m over its role in a loan scandal in Mozambique.
This month, Credit Suisse became the first major Swiss bank in the country’s history to face criminal charges – which it denies – relating to allegation it helped launder money from the cocaine trade on behalf of the Bulgarian mafia.
However, the repercussions of the leak could be much broader than one bank, threatening a crisis for Switzerland, which retains one of the world’s most secretive banking laws. Swiss financial institutions manage about 7.9tn CHF (£6.3tn) in assets, nearly half of which belongs to foreign clients.
The Suisse secrets project sheds a rare light on one of the world’s largest financial centres, which has grown used to operating in the shadows. It identifies the convicts and money launderers who were able to open bank accounts, or keep them open for years after their crimes emerged. And it reveals how Switzerland’s famed banking secrecy laws helped facilitate the looting of countries in the developing world.
Disgraced executives, fraudsters, traffickers – clients
When Ronald Li Fook-shiu approached a banker to open an account in 2000, he is unlikely to have been viewed as a run-of-the-mill client. A former chairman of the Hong Kong stock exchange, he was one of the wealthiest people in the city, where he was known as the “godfather of the stock market”. But he was perhaps better known for the time he spent in a maximum security prison.
Li’s career had ended in disgrace in 1990, when he was convicted of taking bribes in exchange for listing companies on the stock exchange. However, a decade later Li was nonetheless able to open an account that later held 59m CHF (£26.3m), according to the leak.
He has since died, but his case is one of dozens discovered by reporters appearing to show Credit Suisse opened or maintained accounts for clients who had serious convictions that might be expected to show up in due diligence checks. There are other instances in which Credit Suisse may have taken quick action after red flags emerged, but the case nonetheless shows that dubious clients have been attracted to the bank.
Ronald Li Fook-shiu
Ronald Li Fook-shiu was known as the ‘godfather of the stock market’. Composite: Guardian/Alamy
Like every other bank in the world, Credit Suisse professes to have stringent control mechanisms to carry out extensive due diligence on its customers to “ensure that the highest standards of conduct are upheld”. In banking parlance, such controls are called know-your-client or KYC checks.
A 2017 leaked report commissioned by Switzerland’s financial regulator shed some light on the bank’s internal procedures at that time. Clients would face intensified scrutiny when flagged as a politically exposed person from a high-risk country, or a person involved in a high-risk activity such as gambling, weapons trading, financial services or mining, the report said.
Relationship managers were expected to use external sources to verify customers and their risk levels, according to the leak, including news articles or databases such as the Thomson Reuters World-Check platform, which is used widely in the financial services sector to flag when people are arrested, charged, investigated or convicted of a serious crime.
Rodoljub Radulovic
Rodoljub Radulovic.
Such controls might be expected to prevent a bank from opening accounts for clients such as Rodoljub Radulovic, a Serbian securities fraudster indicted in 2001 by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. However, the leaked data identifies him as the co-signatory of two Credit Suisse company accounts. The first was opened in 2005, the year after the SEC had secured a default judgment against Radulovic for running a pump-and-dump scheme.
One of Radulovic’s company accounts held 3.4m CHF (£2.2m) before they closed in 2010. He was recently given a 10-year prison sentence by a court in Belgrade for his role trafficking cocaine from South America for the organised crime boss Darko Šaric. Radulovic’s lawyer did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Due diligence is not only for new clients. Banks are required to continually reassess existing customers. The 2017 report said Credit Suisse screened customers at least every three years and as often as once a year for the riskiest clients. Lawyers for Credit Suisse told the Guardian these periodic reviews were introduced “more than 15 years ago”, meaning it was continually running due diligence on existing clients from 2007.
The bank might, therefore, have been expected to have discovered that its German client Eduard Seidel was convicted of bribery in 2008. Seidel was an employee of Siemens. As the multinational’s lead in Nigeria, he oversaw a campaign of industrial-scale bribery to secure lucrative contracts for his employer by funnelling cash to corrupt Nigerian politicians.
Eduard Seidel
Eduard Seidel, convicted of bribery in 2008. Composite: Handout
After German authorities raided the Munich headquarters of Siemens in 2006, Seidel immediately confessed his role in the bribery scheme, though he said he had never stolen from the company or appropriated its slush funds. His involvement in the corruption led to his name being entered into the Thomson Reuters World-Check database in 2007.
However, the leaked Credit Suisse data shows his accounts were left open until at least well into the last decade. At one point after he left Siemens, one account was worth 54m CHF (£24m). Seidel’s lawyer declined to say whether the accounts were his. He said his client had addressed all outstanding matters relating to his bribery offences and wished to move on with his life.
The lawyer did not respond to repeated invitations to explain the source of the 54m CHF. Siemens said it did not know about the money and that its review of its own cashflows shed no light on the account.
While Credit Suisse said in its statement it could not comment on any specific clients, the bank said “actions have been taken in line with applicable policies and regulatory requirements at the relevant times, and that related issues have already been addressed”.
In some instances, Credit Suisse is understood to have frozen accounts belonging to problematic clients. Yet questions remain about how quickly the bank moved to close them.
One client, Stefan Sederholm, a Swedish computer technician who opened an account with Credit Suisse in 2008, was able to keep it open for two-and-a-half years after his widely reported conviction for human trafficking in the Philippines, for which he was given a life sentence.
Stefan Sederholm.
Stefan Sederholm. Composite: AFP
Sederholm’s crime first came to light in 2009, when police in Manila raided a storefront purporting to be the local chapter of the Mindanao Peoples’ Peace Movement, and discovered about 17 women in cubicles with webcams performing sex shows for foreign customers. He was convicted in 2011.
A representative for Sederholm said Credit Suisse never froze his accounts and did not close them until 2013 when he was unable to provide due diligence material. Asked why Sederholm needed a Swiss account, they said that he was living in Thailand when it was opened, adding: “Can you please tell me if you would prefer to put your money in a Thai or Swiss bank?”
Ferdinand and Imelda pillage the Philippines
Swiss banks have cultivated their trusted reputation since as far back as 1713, when the Great Council of Geneva prohibited bankers from revealing details about the fortunes being deposited by European aristocrats. Switzerland soon became a tax haven for many of the world’s elites and its bankers nurtured a “duty of absolute silence” about their clients affairs.
The custom was enshrined in statute in 1934 with the introduction of Switzerland’s banking secrecy law, which criminalised the disclosure of client banking information to foreign authorities. Within decades, wealthy clients from all over the world were flocking to Swiss banks. Sometimes, that meant clients with something to hide.
One of the most notorious cases in Credit Suisse’s history involved the corrupt Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife, Imelda. The couple are estimated to have siphoned as much as $10bn from the Philippines during the three terms Ferdinand was president, which ended in 1986.
The Marcoses
Credit Suisse helped Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos open Swiss accounts under fake names. Composite: Guardian
It has long been known that Credit Suisse was one of the first banks to help the Marcoses ravage their own country and in one infamous episode even helped them open Swiss accounts under the fake names “William Saunders” and “Jane Ryan”. In 1995, a Zurich court ordered Credit Suisse and another bank to return $500m of stolen funds to the Philippines.
The leaked data contains an account that belonged to Helen Rivilla, an attorney convicted in 1992 for helping launder money on behalf of Ferdinand Marcos. Despite this, she was able to open a Swiss account in 2000, as was her husband, Antonio, who faced similar charges that were subsequently dropped.
It is hard to know how Credit Suisse could have missed the money-laundering case linking the couple to the corrupt Philippine leader, which was reported by the Associated Press. The couple, who could not be reached for comment, were able to hold about 8m CHF (£3.6m) with the bank before their accounts were closed in 2006.
One former Credit Suisse employee at the time alleges there was a deeply ingrained culture in Swiss banking of looking the other way when it came to problematic clients. “The bank’s compliance departments [were] masters of plausible deniability,” they told a reporter from the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, one of the coordinators of the Suisse secrets project. “Never write anything down that could expose an account that is non-compliant and never ask a question you do not want to know the answer to.”
The 2000s was also a decade in which foreign regulators and tax authorities became increasingly frustrated at their inability to penetrate the Swiss financial system. That changed in 2007, when the UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld voluntarily approached US authorities with information about how the bank was helping thousands of wealthy Americans evade tax with secret accounts.
We are transparent, there is nothing to hide in Switzerland.
Swiss Bankers Association
Birkenfeld was viewed as a traitor in Switzerland, where banking whistleblowers are often held in contempt. However, a wide-ranging US Senate investigation later uncovered the aggressive tactics used by UBS and Credit Suisse, the latter of which was found to have sent bankers to high-end events to recruit clients, courted a potential customer with free gold, and in one case even delivered sensitive bank statements hidden in the pages of a Sports Illustrated magazine.
The revelations sent shock waves through Switzerland’s financial sector and enraged the US, which pressured Switzerland into unilaterally disclosing which of its taxpayers had secret Swiss accounts from 2014. That same year, Switzerland reluctantly signed up to the international convention on the automatic exchange of banking Information.
By adopting the so-called common reporting standard (CRS) for sharing tax data, Switzerland in effect agreed that its banks would in the future exchange information about their clients with tax authorities in foreign countries. They started doing so in 2018.
Membership of the global exchange system is often cited by Switzerland’s banking industry as a turning point. “There is no longer Swiss bank client confidentiality for clients abroad,” the Swiss Bankers Association told the Guardian. “We are transparent, there is nothing to hide in Switzerland.”
Switzerland’s almost 90-year-old banking secrecy law, however, remains in force – and was recently broadened. The Tax Justice Network estimates that countries around the world collectively lose $21bn (£15.4bn) each year in tax revenues because of Switzerland. Many of those countries will be poorer nations that have not signed up to the CRS data exchange.
Suisse secrets graphic
Banks that enable kleptocrats to launder their money are complicit in a particularly far-reaching crime. Composite: Guardian Design
More than 90 countries, most of which are in the developing world, remain in the dark when their wealthy taxpayers hide their money in Swiss accounts.
This inequity in the system was cited by the whistleblower behind the leaked data, who said the CRS system “imposes a disproportionate financial and infrastructural burden on developing nations, perpetuating their exclusion from the system in the foreseeable future”.
“This situation enables corruption and starves developing countries of much-needed tax revenue. These countries are the ones that therefore suffer most from Switzerland’s reverse-Robin-Hood stunt,” they said.
The whistleblower acknowledged that the leak would contain accounts that were legitimate and declared by the client to their tax authority.
“I am aware that having an offshore Swiss bank account does not necessarily imply tax evasion or any other financial crime,” they said. “However, it is likely that a significant number of these accounts were opened with the sole purpose of hiding their holder’s wealth from fiscal institutions and/or avoiding the payment of taxes on capital gains.”
It was not possible for journalists in the Suisse secrets project to establish how many of the more than 18,000 accounts in the leak were declared to relevant tax authorities.
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Media partners in the consortium wrote to more than 100 Credit Suisse clients in the data, asking whether they had disclosed their Swiss accounts to tax authorities. Five confirmed they had done so. Six said they were not required to declare their Swiss accounts. No others replied.
Links to another dictator … and another
Ferdinand Marcos may have been Credit Suisse’s most notorious client. He is arguably rivalled only by relatives of the brutal Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha, who is believed to have stolen as much as $5bn from his people in just six years. It has long been known that Credit Suisse provided services to Abacha’s sons, opening Swiss accounts in which they deposited $214m.
Credit Suisse was publicly contrite after being kicked off a sustainable investment index over the affair. “We understand that the index was not really happy with us being involved with Abacha – we were not happy ourselves,” a spokesperson said in 1999. “But we have addressed those problems and for several years we have taken internal measures to make sure nothing similar happens in the future.”
Banks that enable kleptocrats to launder their money are complicit in a particularly far-reaching crime. The consequences for already impoverished populations can be devastating, as state coffers are siphoned, basic standards are eroded and trust in democracy plummets.
Politicians and state officials are among the riskiest customers for banks because of their access to public funds, particularly in developing nations with fewer legal safeguards against corruption. Banks and other financial institutions are required to subject politically exposed persons, or PEPs, to the most stringent checks, known as “enhanced due diligence”.
The leaked Credit Suisse data is peppered with politicians and their allies who have been linked to corruption before, during or after they had their accounts. None are as well known as the Marcoses or the Abachas, but several wielded great power in countries from Syria to Madagascar, where they amassed personal fortunes.
They include Pavlo Lazarenko, who served a corrupt single year as prime minister of Ukraine between 1997 and 1998 before applying for an account at Credit Suisse. One month after pressure from rivals forced Lazarenko to announce his resignation, he opened his first of two Credit Suisse accounts. One was later valued at almost 8m CHF (£3.6m).
Pavlo Lazarenko, former Ukrainian prime minister
Pavlo Lazarenko, former Ukrainian prime minister. Composite: Guardian/Alamy
Lazarenko was later estimated by Transparency International to have looted $200m from the Ukrainian government, allegedly by threatening to harm businesses unless they paid him 50% of their profits. He pleaded guilty to money laundering in Switzerland in 2000, and was later indicted in the US for corruption and sentenced to nine years in prison in 2006 in relation to bribes received from a Ukrainian businessman.
His lawyer said those convictions did not relate to the theft of any money from the people of Ukraine. Lazarenko, who reportedly lives in California, has resisted returning to the country, where he still faces accusations he stole $17m. His lawyer said his Credit Suisse accounts had not been accessed for two decades and were frozen in connection with court proceedings against him.
It remains unclear why Credit Suisse allowed Lazarenko to open an account and deposit such huge sums in the first place, given his background; before entering politics, Lazarenko was a functionary in charge of a collective farm.
Monika Roth, an expert on money laundering and a professor at Lucerne University, said Swiss banks had for a long time struggled to properly challenge politicians and public officials who, after stints in public office on relatively modest salaries, turned up with huge sums to deposit. She said: “Nobody wants to have asked the question: how is that possible?”
Around the time it was doing business with Lazarenko, Credit Suisse appears to have also made inroads into the Egyptian political establishment under the dictator Hosni Mubarak, who was president for three decades until 2011. The bank’s clients included Mubarak’s sons, Alaa and Gamal, who established business empires in Egypt.
Alaa and Gamal Mubarak
Alaa and Gamal Mubarak. Composite: Guardian
The brothers’ relationship with the bank spanned decades, with the earliest joint account opened by the brothers in 1993. By 2010 – the year before the popular revolt that ousted their father – an account belonging to Alaa held 232m CHF (£138m).
After the Arab spring uprisings their fortunes changed, and in 2015 the brothers and their father were sentenced to three years in jail by an Egyptian court for embezzlement and corruption. They say the case was politically motivated, but after an unsuccessful appeal Alaa and Gamal paid an estimated $17.6m to the Egyptian government in a settlement agreement that made no admissions of guilt.
Lawyers for the brothers reject any suggestion they were corrupt, saying their rights were violated during the Egyptian case, and 10 years of wide-ranging and intrusive investigations into their global assets by foreign authorities has not uncovered any legal violations. They added that their Swiss accounts had been frozen for over a decade, pending the resolution of investigations by the Swiss authorities.
Other Credit Suisse clients linked to Hosni Mubarak were the late tycoon Hussein Salem – who acted as a financial consigliere for the dictator for nearly three decades, amassed a fortune through preferred tender deals and died in exile after facing money-laundering charges – and Hisham Talaat Moustafa, a billionaire politician in Mubarak’s party.
Hisham Talaat Mustafa and Hussein Salem
Hisham Talaat Mustafa (left) and Hussein Salem. Composite: AP/EPA
Moustafa, who could not be reached for comment, was convicted in 2009 of hiring a hitman to murder his ex-girlfriend, the Lebanese pop star Suzanne Tamim – but his account was not closed until 2014.
Another Mubarak henchman linked to Credit Suisse’s banking services was his former spy chief Omar Suleiman. His associates are listed in the data as beneficial owners of an account that held 63m CHF (£26m) in 2007. Suleiman was a feared figure in Egypt, where he oversaw widespread torture and human rights abuses.
Omar Suleiman
Omar Suleiman. Composite: Alamy
The data reveals Credit Suisse accounts held by several more intelligence and military figures and their family members, including in Pakistan, Jordan, Yemen and Iraq. One Algerian client was Khaled Nezzar, who served as minister of defence until 1993 and participated in a coup that precipitated a brutal civil war in which the military junta he was part of was accused of disappearances, mass detentions, torture and execution of detainees.
Nezzar’s alleged role in human rights abuses had been widely documented by 2004, when his account was opened. It contained a maximum balance of 2m CHF (£900,000) and remained open until 2013, two years after he was arrested in Switzerland for suspected war crimes. He denies wrongdoing and the investigation is ongoing.
If ordinary Algerians, Egyptians and Ukrainians have reason to complain that Credit Suisse may have aided nefarious leaders, their grievances pale in comparison with Venezuelans.
Khaled Nezzar
Khaled Nezzar. Composite: Guardian
Reporters working on the Suisse secrets project identified Credit Suisse accounts linked to almost two dozen business people, officials and politicians implicated in corrupt schemes in Venezuela, most of which revolved around the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA).
“Corruption has always been around in PDVSA, in varying degrees and levels,” said César Mata-Garcia, an academic at the University of Dundee specialising in international petroleum law. “The words ‘Venezuela’, ‘PDVSA’ and ‘oil’ are an alarm bell for banks.”
If so, that does not appear to have stopped Credit Suisse acquiring clients later revealed to be involved in numerous US investigations and prosecutions linked to PDVSA and the looting of the Venezuelan economy.
One case involves two US-based businessmen with Venezuelan connections, Roberto Rincón Fernández and Abraham Shiera Bastidas, who in 2009 set about bribing officials in exchange for lucrative PDVSA contracts with the help of an associate, Fernando Ardila Rueda. Among those who allegedly received bungs were the energy vice-minister, Nervis Villalobos Cárdenas, and a senior PDVSA official, Luis De Léon Perez.
Nervis Villalobos Cárdenas, Roberto Rincón Fernandez, Abraham Shiera Bastidas and Luis De Léon Perez
From left: Nervis Villalobos Cárdenas, Roberto Rincón Fernández, Abraham Shiera Bastidas and Luis De Léon Perez. Composite: Guardian
In 2015, US prosecutors began indicting the participants; court papers make repeated reference to payments into accounts in an unnamed Swiss bank. However, the leaked data reveals all five men had Credit Suisse accounts active at the time of the offences. Of the five, four have pleaded guilty. The exception, Villalobos, is resisting extradition to the US from Spain.
Some of the Venezuela-linked Credit Suisse accounts contained enormous sums; Villalobos had as much as 9.5m CHF (£6.3m) in his account and De Léon had as much as 22m (£15.5m). Rincón, the businessman paying their bribes, had more than 68m CHF (£44.2m) in his account as of November 2015, the month prior to his arrest.
‘How many rogue bankers before you become a rogue bank?’
When Credit Suisse’s ornate headquarters were constructed in the 1870s in Zurich, they were designed to symbolise “Switzerland as a financial centre”. More than 150 years later, Credit Suisse occupies the same grand premises and Switzerland remains a global offshore centre, much as it has done for the last 300 years.
It is only in recent decades that Credit Suisse, one of Switzerland’s oldest and most cherished banks, acquired its reputation for calamity. As one commentator observed earlier this week: “The bank boasts that its purpose is to serve its wealthy clients ‘with care and entrepreneurial spirit’, but at this stage most of them would probably be happy if it could just avoid yet another major scandal.”
Horta-Osório lasted less than a year before resigning last month. Shortly after Credit Suisse appointed its new chairman, Axel Lehmann, the bank reported a loss of 1.6bn CHF (£1.3bn) in the fourth quarter, in part because it had put aside more than 400m CHF (£320m) to deal with unspecified “legacy litigation matters”.
And there is no shortage of those. The scandals involving Greensill, Archegos and Mozambique bonds have dogged the bank over the past year.
Over the past three decades, Credit Suisse has faced at least a dozen penalties and sanctions for offences involving tax evasion, money laundering, the deliberate violation of US sanctions and frauds carried out against its own customers that span multiple decades and jurisdictions. In total, it has racked up more than $4.2bn in fines or settlements.
Cash graphic
Some of the accounts in the leak remain open today. Composite: Guardian
That includes the $2.6bn the Swiss bank agreed to pay US authorities after pleading guilty to conspiring to aid tax evasion in 2014; the $536m it was fined by the US five years before for deliberately circumventing US sanctions against countries including Iran and Sudan in 2009, and other payouts to Germany and Italy over tax evasion allegations.
Against this backdrop, the Suisse secrets revelations may fuel questions over whether Credit Suisse’s challenges are indicative of a deep malaise at the bank.
Jeff Neiman, a Florida-based attorney who represents a number of Credit Suisse whistleblowers, believes the sheer number of scandals involving the bank indicates a deeper problem.
“The bank likes to say it’s just rogue bankers. But how many rogue bankers do you need to have before you start having a rogue bank?” he said. Neiman alleges there has been a culture at the bank “which encourages its bankers probably from the top down to hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil, bury their heads in the sand on a good day, and on many days, actively assist folks to skirt whatever the law may be in order to best protect assets under management”.”
Such allegations are strongly rejected by Credit Suisse. “In line with financial reforms across the sector and in Switzerland, Credit Suisse has taken a series of significant additional measures over the last decade, including considerable further investments in combating financial crime,” the bank said in its statement, adding that it upheld “the highest standards of conduct”.
Its lawyers said it had fully cooperated with many of the investigations cited by the Guardian and that any past individual failings by the bank did not reflect its current business policies, practices or culture. In November, it announced it would put “risk management at the very core of the bank”.
The bank said its “preliminary review” of the accounts flagged by the Suisse secrets reporting project had established that more than 90% of those reviewed were now closed or “were in the process of closure prior to receipt of the press inquiries”. Of the remaining accounts, which remain active, the bank said it was “comfortable that appropriate due diligence, reviews and other control-related steps were taken, including pending account closures”.
The Credit Suisse statement added: “These media allegations appear to be a concerted effort to discredit the bank and the Swiss financial marketplace, which has undergone significant changes over the last several years.”
The debate over whether Switzerland’s banking industry has undergone sufficient reforms is likely to be renewed in light of the leak. The whistleblower who shared the data suggested that banks alone should not be blamed for the state of affairs, as they are “simply being good capitalists by maximising profits within the legal framework they operate in”.
“Simply put, Swiss legislators are responsible for enabling financial crimes and – by virtue of their direct democracy – the Swiss people have the power to do something about it. While I am aware that banking secrecy laws are partly responsible for the Swiss economic success story, it is my strong opinion that such a wealthy country should be able to afford a conscience.”
* Currency conversions are based on historical rates.
That's impossible unless he withdraws, home bound in shame, and would be just more of his bs same.
His eyes and expressions are saying that he's more afraid right now of holding something else back, and the crowd is just one of his least worries.
NYSE, Nasdaq halt trading in stocks of Russia-based companies
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