Oligarch Boris Berezovsky may have been murdered by British spies from MI5 or MI6 to stop him leaking state secrets to the Russians, a leading supporter of Vladimir Putin argued today.

Fears in the West that the tycoon was planning to make peace with the president and end his 13-year UK exile may have led to him being assassinated, Kremlin insider Sergei Markov has said.

After falling out with Putin in 2000, the 67-year-old fled to Britain where he was later given political asylum.

But after losing a £3billion High Court battle with Roman Abramovich last year, Berezovsky is said to have ‘begged’ for Putin’s forgiveness in a letter and asked if could could return home.

‘It became clear that he was ready to give out all information to the Russian secret services on those Western secret services who are trying to work on throwing Putin down. So they got rid of him,’ Sergei Markov said today.

Berezovsky’s death is still ‘unexplained’ according to police after his body was discovered by a bodyguard on the bathroom floor of his mansion in Ascot, Berkshire, on Saturday.

He apparently left no note and sceptical friends are convinced he was murdered because ‘suicide was not in his DNA’

‘Unfortunately, the British secret services can be suspected in the death of Berezovsky. And may be not only the British,’ Markov said.

‘There is no trust for the British secret services. After their participation in the plot aimed at occupying Iraq, their role in the plot targeting the leader of Libya, then the plot aimed at knocking down the government in Syria, it is clear that their methods are highly dirty.

‘I think they may have guessed that Berezovsky would give away all information, and they decided to get rid of him,’ he said.

Sergei Markov was an elected MP but is now a member of a presidential advisory body, the Public Chamber, and the deputy rector of the highly respected Plekhanov University of Economics in Moscow.

He denied that a Russian hit squad could have been sent to murder Berezovsky.

Details of his alleged secret ‘begging letter’ was revealed for the first time today and in it he pleaded for ‘forgiveness’ from Putin before his death.

The 67-year-old is said to have written from London to Moscow saying: ‘I made a lot of mistakes. I understand it may be hard to forgive me, but I got tangled here and I am begging (you) to forgive me’.

Russian TV say a source knows this was read to the Russian president and added that Berezovsky had asked his ally Andrey Lugovoy for help, who was named in Britain as the main suspect in the Alexander  Litvinenko poisoning in London in 2006.

Thames Valley Police have told MailOnline that his body has now been removed from the house and a post mortem will be carried out this afternoon.

Detective Chief Inspector Kevin Brown said forensic investigations at the multi-million pound house, the former home of TV and radio personality Chris Evans, were likely to continue for ‘several days’.

He said: ‘Scenes of crime officers are carrying out further forensic examinations at the property and these are expected to last several days.

‘A cordon will remain in place until this work has been completed, to protect the scene.

‘While this important investigative work continues, we are unable to comment on any items found within the property.

‘I would like to reiterate that we have no evidence of any third-party involvement at this stage and we will not speculate on the cause of death until the post-mortem examination has been carried out.’

Meanwhile, Boris Berezovsky regularly paid for teenage girls to fly from Eastern Europe or Russia to the UK for sex, the Mail has learned.

Police believe there was no ‘third party’ involvement in his death and a scarf was reportedly found next to Mr Berezovsky’s corpse.

During his 12-year political exile in Britain, he was known to have led a colourful and controversial existence, but for the first time a darker and more depraved side to the tycoon can be revealed.

He would order his drivers to reach speeds of 140mph on motorways in his £420,000 armoured Maybach limousine as girls as young as 16 performed sexual acts on him in the back seat.

Once, a 16-year-old wearing a pink tutu was ferried to see the oligarch at the five-star Lanesborough Hotel in London.

Close sources said it was an ‘open secret that he paid for sex with teenage girls at plush hotels and at his mansion’.

One, who had been flown from Riga in Latvia, asked to leave his home after one night because she did not like the way she had been treated.

He agreed but then told driver Mark Pendlebury, an ex-Paratrooper, to ‘ensure she missed her flight back to Riga’.

The chauffeur took her through notoriously congested routes in London to ensure she did not catch the plane.

When she realised she could not get home, the girl became tearful and was driven back to the mansion where she stayed for a further 24 hours.

‘Boris was very pleased and texted me a smiley face,’ the chauffeur said. ‘Such behaviour was accepted practice and not uncommon.

‘He seemed to have a steady supply of young girls from the same source. I felt very guilty about the way the girls were treated, particularly as most of them were the same age as my daughter.’

Mr Pendlebury, who was paid around £100,000-a-year, was often asked to take the female guests shopping.

‘Often I would have to meet a biker to collect envelopes of money for the girls,’ he said.

‘The patient and light-hearted way we handled his many guests made Boris’s life easier because the girls weren’t bored and complaining constantly.’

During the ‘white-knuckle rides’ on the motorway network, a security driver on a high-powered 800cc motorbike would drive ahead of the tycoon’s limousine to clear a path.

He would intimidate other motorists by driving close to their rear bumpers and keeping his full beam headlights on.

Mr Berezovsky was regularly driven from his home to his office in Mayfair or to meetings at hotels and restaurants.

Once in London, the convoy would allegedly drive at speeds of up to 70mph in 30mph zones, with a ‘no-holds bar attitude to law or safety’.

At one point Mr Pendlebury, 49, told his boss that ‘the greatest threat to Boris wasn’t the treat of assassination, but our driving’.

He said: ‘I admitted I enjoyed the breakneck speeds and the buzz of driving this way but said that “I’ve got children to worry about”.

‘The aggressive nature of driving like that all day and the long hours seriously affected our normal lives.

Mr Berezovsky was in a 15-year relationship with Elena Gorbunova, a Russian woman 21 years his junior, until last year.

It is unclear if she was aware of the tycoon’s penchant for teenage prostitutes. Sources said he took great efforts to keep the seedy side of his life a secret to those close to him.

Meanwhile friends who saw him just before he died said he had been in a Park Lane hotel drinking tea, dressed in black, struggling to control a shaking hand and looking ‘very depressed and lost’.

Witnesses described how he looked like a ‘mourner’ and had push his right hand against the table he sat at or against his body but continued to tremble.

Less than 24 hours later he was dead in his giant home, where he lived alone.

Lord Bell, Mr Berezovsky’s spokesman, said: ‘I saw him last two weeks ago and he was very depressed, very low.’

Firebrand ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky – founding leader of the hardline Liberal Democratic party – said he discussed a return to Russia with Berezovsky.

Zhirinovsky said Berezovskt ‘looked very, very low, depressed, his eyes were bleak.

‘Perhaps he felt that nothing was going right for him. He told me one thing that I was touched by, that he nearly cries when he watches Russian TV from Moscow.’

His ex-wife Galina arrived at the house when paramedics were there and has apparently told friends that he former husband was found with a scarf next to him, according to The Guardian.

Nikolai Glushkov, who had been one of his closest friends, said: ‘Boris was strangled. Either he did it himself or with the help of someone. [But] I don’t believe it was suicide. This was not just a normal death.’

His body could now be flown to Russia for burial after the Kremlin confirmed they would not oppose such a request by his family.

Police say they are trying to ‘gain a better understanding’ of what his life was like before he died.

Ascot neighbours today paint a picture of paranoia and secrecy behind the high fences surrounding his home.

One local man said that he was trimming his hedge when he was approached by bodyguards asking what he was doing in an area where a lot of exiled rich Russians live.

‘They won’t tell us the names of the Russians. They’re hardly ever here. One of them only travels in by helicopter. They’re all paranoid,’ he said.

The widow of poisoned Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, who saw Boris Berezovsky a month ago, believes that someone killed him.

Marina Litvinenko said: ‘From my point of view it is not likely that he committed suicide.

‘He had a lot of enemies. He was an outspoken person and never tried to hide what he thought.’

In an informal interview with a Russian journalist on the night before he died, Mr Berezovsky reportedly said: ‘My life no longer makes sense. I have no desire to take part in politics. I don’t know what I should do. I am 67 years old and I don’t know what I should do from now on.’

The journalist, Ilya Zhegulev, claims the tycoon was desperate to return to Russia and hated being in exile.

Meanwhile the mystery surrounding his death deepened last night after radiation experts spent hours combing the Berkshire mansion where his body was found.

A two-mile safety cordon was set up amid fears the exiled tycoon had been murdered with radioactive poisoning.

The alert had been raised when a paramedic’s radiation alarm was triggered as he left the £20million property after failing to revive Mr Berezovsky, whose body was discovered by a bodyguard on the bathroom floor.

There is currently no evidence to suggest anyone else was involved in the death of the 67-year-old businessman, police said.

Berezovsky last year lost a multibillion-pound High Court battle with Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich.

He was reportedly discovered in his bathroom after taking his own life.

Detective Chief Inspector Kevin Brown of Thames Valley Police said: ‘It would be wrong to speculate on the cause of death until the post mortem has been carried out. We do not have any evidence at this stage to suggest third party involvement.’

Some friends said they believed Mr Berezovsky may have been the victim of a professional hit for speaking out against Russian president Vladimir Putin’s regime.

Others thought he had killed himself after becoming depressed over the loss of his wealth and status.

The controversial tycoon, who was once worth £3billion, was to be a key witness at the inquest of murdered spy Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated with radioactive poisoning in London six years ago.

Historian Yuri Felshtinsky, who has known Mr Berezovsky since 1998, said: ‘We do not have facts yet but we must bear in mind that there have been several questionable deaths of Russian emigres in the UK.

‘It is more plausible to me that [Berezovsky] was killed as an act of revenge for speaking out against the Kremlin or perhaps as a warning to others not to cross them.’

The Kremlin admitted that earlier this year Putin received a begging letter from the tycoon, pleading for forgiveness.

‘I made a lot of mistakes. I understand it may be hard to forgive me, but I got tangled here and I am begging (you) to forgive me,’ it stated, according to a Russian TV programme.

Source

Boris Berezovsky was discovered dead yesterday afternoon at his home in Ascot, Berkshire. Reports from Russia said he was found in the bath.

lya Zhegulev, a commentator with the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, met the 67-year-old oligarch in the restaurant of the Four Seasons hotel on Park Lane on Friday evening.

Mr Berezovsky said had had lived through “many disappointments” in London. He said: “I’ve lost the point… there is no point [or meaning] in my life. I don’t want to be involved in politics. I don’t know what to do. I’m 67 years old. And I don’t know what I should do from now on.”

He said he wanted to return to Moscow: “I want nothing more than to return to Russia. Even when they opened a criminal case against me, I wanted to return to Russia… that was my main miscalculation: that Russia is so dear to me that I cannot be an émigré.”

Friends of Mr Berezovsky today claimed he may have been victim of a Russian hit. However, there are conflicting reports that he may have committed suicide after suffering from severe depression.

Friends raised the possibility of suicide and said Berezovsky had been “destroyed” by losing a £3billion legal action with his former business partner, Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club. Berezovsky had been living in exile in Britain since 2000.

He was given asylum in 2003, which created tensions between London and Moscow.

Once worth as much as £3billion, he had suffered financial and personal problems, his friends said.

News of Berezovsky’s death emerged in a posting on Facebook by his son-in-law, Egor Schuppe. Mr Schuppe simply posted: “Boris Berezovsky is dead.”

Berezovsky, an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, had long feared for his life and had survived repeated assassination attempts — although none in recent years.

He had been due to be a witness at the inquest next month into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB spy who was murdered in 2006 after being poisoned by radioactive polonium-210 in what is believed to have been a Kremlin-sanctioned assassination.

The police investigation into Berezvosky’s death is the first of its kind since the murder of the spy. The scale of the investigation was announced at 1am this morning by police in a reflection of its seriousness.

Mr Putin’s spokesman said the Russian president had been informed of Berezovsky’s death.

The spokesman claimed that in recent weeks the oligarch had written a letter to Mr Putin “asking for forgiveness” and seeking “help to return to the motherland”.

Such a move would have been a dramatic change for Berezovsky as he had been for 13 years an enemy of the Kremlin. In a report which deepened the mystery, Russia’s Channel

One state television claimed that Berezovsky had suffered several heart attacks in the past week.

Specialist officers were called in to investigate whether he had been killed by a chemical or biological agent

Lord Bell, the PR executive who had acted as Berezovsky’s spokesman and was also a good friend, told The Sunday Telegraph that he had last seen the oligarch three weeks ago.

“He was extremely depressed,” said Lord Bell. “He has been very low since the court ruling against him. He had huge financial problems and personal problems, too.”

Berezovsky had sued Mr Abramovich over allegations that he had been intimidated into selling the football club owner shares in Sibneft, the Russian oil conglomerate. The ensuing legal battle is thought to be the most expensive of all time, with legal costs as high as £100million.

In a devastating ruling against him in August last year, Mrs Justice Gloster had “found Mr Berezovsky an unimpressive, and inherently unreliable, witness, who regarded truth as a transitory, flexible concept, which could be moulded to suit his current purposes”.

Lord Bell said yesterday that the ruling had wrecked his reputation and that he had never recovered. “That judge destroyed his morale. It destroyed his self-esteem,” he said.

Lord Bell added: “He was an extremely nice man, very kind to me and all the people around him. I had a huge amount of admiration for him.”

Berezovsky said after the trial: “Sometimes I have the impression that Putin himself wrote this judgment.”

Lord Bell said his friend, whom he had known for 14 years, had long lived in fear of his life after making enemies with Mr Putin.

“Russia is a very dangerous place,” said Lord Bell, the founder of Bell Pottinger, the public relations company.

The alarm over Berezovsky was raised at one of his homes in Ascot by his bodyguard. His private lawyer told Lord Bell that an ambulance had been called but that Berezovsky could not be revived.

A South Central Ambulance Service spokesman said: “We were called at 3.18pm by a caller who was concerned for the welfare of a gentleman at an address in Ascot. A 67-year-old man was confirmed dead at the scene. The death is unexplained and is being investigated by Thames Valley Police.”

Berezovsky had been facing a new legal battle brought by his former girlfriend, with whom he had two children.

Elena Gorbunova had sat at Berezovsky’s side throughout his High Court battle with Mr Abramovich.

But the couple subsequently split up and in January she had applied to the court to freeze £200million of his assets to prevent the sale of property in Britain and France.

At a preliminary hearing Mr Justice Mann said: “On the evidence, Mr Berezovsky is a man under financial pressure.”

Berezovsky, a former mathematician who had made his fortune in oil, aviation and television in the immediate aftermath of the fall of Communism, fled Russia in 2000 and was put on the country’s official wanted list in 2001 on charges of fraud and money laundering.

The British Government granted him political asylum in 2003 and he used London as a base from which to launch critical attacks on Mr Putin and to call for his overthrow.

Among his circle of exiles was Mr Litvinenko, who lived in a house in north London which was owned by Berezovsky.

The oligarch had survived several assassination attempts while in Russia, including a bomb that decapitated his chauffeur. Demyan Kudryavtsev, a journalist and former associate of Berezovsky, yesterday wrote on Twitter: “There were no signs of violent death.”

Alexander Dobrovinsky, a lawyer whose partnership has offices in Park Lane — where Berezovsky was also based — told Russia’s Rossiya 24 channel that he had been called from London and told the oligarch had committed suicide.

“He was in a terrible, awful state recently. He had so many debts, he was practically ruined,” said the lawyer. Dmitry Peskov, Mr Putin’s spokesman, claimed that Berezovsky had been in contact with the president in recent weeks, asking for forgiveness.

Mr Peskov told Rossiya 24: “Berezovsky addressed Putin in a letter, written by him personally, in which he admitted he made a lot of mistakes and was asking for forgiveness and to help him to return to the motherland.”

Thames Valley Police said Berezovsky’s death was being treated as “unexplained” and had cordoned off the property while investigations were carried out.

During his conversation with the Russian Forbes journalist, which was not recorded, Mr Berezovsky is said to have compared his life to that of the oil tycoon, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was jailed on fraud charges after clashing with the Kremlin. He suggested that Mr Khodorkovsky had “preserved himself” despite being in prison.

Mr Berezovsky reportedly added: “I have changed many of my views, including those about myself, and concerning what is Russia and what is the West.

“I had an absolutely idealistic idea about the possibilities for building democracy in Russia. And an idealistic idea about what democracy is in the centre of Europe. I underestimated the inertia of Russia and overestimated the West.”

Source

There is an excellent article on VoltaireNet.org entitled “The Real Crime of M. Khodorkovsky“ by F. William Engdahl, which I recommend.  In his short article, Engdahl explains how Khodorkovsky was working with George H.W. Bush, Jacob Rothschild, Henry Kissinger, and George Soros to take over the vital oil assets of Russia – in order to destroy Russia as a “functioning state”.  This plot was clearly not hatched in Washington nor was this being carried out to benefit the American people.  The only beneficiaries of this criminal plot were the small group of men behind it. 

The astute reader will notice that this is the same group of people who, I contend, are at the highest-level of the global hoax and cover-up of 9/11.  I am listed in something called the Encyclopedia of American Loons because my research and findings indicate that these people are the real culprits behind 9/11.  As the Encyclopedia says of my thesis :  “9-11 was the product of a Zionist conspiracy (in particular organized by the Rothschild family) – the Zionist conspiracy that controls the US government and media.”  (See “Slaying the Debt Spider“)

As Engdahl explains in his article, Khodorkovsky had a contractual agreement with Jacob Rothschild that in the event of his arrest and incarceration, Khodorkovsky’s shares of 40 percent of Yukos would belong to Rothschild.  This is a pretty good indication of who was financing Khodorkovsky’s attempt to take over the vital oil assets of Russia.  Khodorkovsky was a Rothschild-funded agent on the front line in the war to plunder Russia.  Engdahl explains that Khodorkovsky was working closely with Henry Kissinger, George H.W. Bush, and George Soros, which raises the question of who is the top dog.  It’s pretty clear that these men are merely senior officers in Rothschild’s army, as are the Clintons and Obamas. 

As Eustace Mullins wrote in Secrets of the Federal Reserve: The House of Rothschild:

“The fact was that in 1910, the United States was for all practical purposes being ruled from England, and so it is today. The ten largest bank holding companies in the United States are firmly in the hands of certain banking houses, all of which have branches in London. They are J.P. Morgan Company, Brown Brothers Harriman (George H.W. Bush is the son of Prescott Bush, a founding partner of Brown Brothers Harriman), Warburg, Kuhn Loeb and J. Henry Schroder. All of them maintain close relationships with the House of Rothschild, principally through the Rothschild control of international money markets through its manipulation of the price of gold. Each day, the world price of gold is set in the London office of N.M. Rothschild and Company.

“Although these firms are ostensibly American firms, which merely maintain branches in London, the fact is that these banking houses actually take their direction from London. Their history is a fascinating one, and unknown to the American public, originating as it did in the international traffic in gold, slaves, diamonds, and other contraband. There are no moral considerations in any business decision made by these firms. They are interested solely in money and power.”

9/11 – THE GLOBAL HOAX

When we consider the 9/11 cover-up, we find the former president and C.I.A. director George H.W. Bush and his son the president perfectly placed to block a blue-ribbon investigation and push a pack of lies on the public in order to wage a war of conquest in Afghanistan.  Henry Kissinger was President Bush’s first choice to chair the 9/11 commission.  Kissinger’s partner, the late Richard Holbrooke, served as Obama’s special envoy to the Afghanistan-Pakistan war until his death last year.  The C.I.A. is obviously engaged in the 9/11 deception while it wages its own covert war in the region using the pack of lies it peddles to the public through the controlled media.  Remember, the C.I.A. was holding a plane-into-building drill on the very morning of 9/11, which oddly resulted in the employees of the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in Chantilly, Virginia being sent home after the first plane struck the World Trade Center.  The C.I.A. is clearly not serving the interests of the American people or republic, but simply works on behalf of the people behind the evil plot. 

The following are some key extracts from Engdahl’s article, which can be read in its entirety with links at: http://www.voltairenet.org/article168007.html

“At the time of his arrest Khodorkovsky was in the process of negotiating via his Carlyle friend George H.W. Bush, father of the then-President George W. Bush, the sale of 40 percent of Yukos to either Condi Rice’s former company, Chevron, or ExxonMobil in a move that would have dealt a crippling blow to the one asset left Russia and Putin to use for the rebuilding of the wrecked Russian economy: oil and export via state-owned pipelines to the West for dollars.”

The final decision in the Russian trial against former oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky has drawn dramatic statements of protest from the US Obama Administration and governments around the world labeling Russian justice as tyrannical and worse. What is carefully omitted from the Khodovkorsky story however is the true reason Putin arrested and imprisoned the former head of Russia’s largest private oil giant, Yukos.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s real crime was not stealing Russia’s assets for a pittance in the bandit era of Yeltsin. His real crime is that he was a key part of a Western intelligence operation to dismantle and destroy what remains of Russia as a functioning state. When the facts are known the justice served on him is mild by comparison to US or UK standard treatment of those convicted of treason against the state. Obama’s torture prison at Guantánamo is merely one example of Washington’s double standard.   …

Prior to his arrest in 2003 Khodorkovsky (in the photo with first Russian President Boris Yeltsin) funded several Russian parties, including the Communist Party, most of which were in competition with each other.  In an auction run by his own bank, Khodorkovsky paid $309 million for Yukos.  In 2003 the same company was assessed as worth $45 billion ($45,000,000,000 or 145 times the purchase price), and not owing to Khodorkovsky’s management genius.

With his new billions in effect stolen from the Russian people, he made some powerful friends. He set up a foundation modeled on US billionaire George Soros’ Open Society, calling it the Open Russia Foundation. He invited two powerful Westerners to its board—Henry Kissinger and Jacob Lord Rothschild. Then he set about to develop ties with some of the most powerful circles in Washington where he was named to the Advisory Board of the secretive private equity firm, Carlyle Group where he attended board meetings with fellow advisors such as George H.W. Bush and James Baker III.

Jacob Rothschild was Khodorkovsky’s key partner…along with Rothschild’s high-level agents Henry Kissinger, George Bush, and the late Richard Holbrooke.

However, the real crime that landed Khodorkovsky behind Russian bars was the fact that he was in the middle of making a US-backed coup d’etat to capture the Russian presidency in planned 2004 Russian Duma elections. Khodorkovsky was in the process of using his enormous wealth to buy enough seats in the coming Duma elections that he could change Russian laws regarding ownership of oil in the ground and of pipelines transporting same. In addition he planned to directly challenge Putin and become Russian President. As part of the horse trade that won Putin the tacit support of the wealthy so-called Russian Oligarchs, Putin had extracted agreement that they be allowed to hold on to their wealth provided they repatriate a share back into Russia and provided they not interfere in domestic Russian politics with their wealth. Most oligarchs agreed, as did Khodorkovsky at the time. They remain established Russian businessmen. Khodorkovsky did not.

Moreover, at the time of his arrest Khodorkovsky was in the process of negotiating via his Carlyle friend George H.W. Bush, father of the then-President George W. Bush, the sale of 40% of Yukos to either Condi Rice’s former company, Chevron or ExxonMobil in a move that would have dealt a crippling blow to the one asset left Russia and Putin to use for the rebuilding of the wrecked Russian economy: oil and export via state-owned pipelines to the West for dollars. During the ensuing Russian state prosecution of Yukos, it came to light that Khodorkovsky had also secretly made a contract with London’s Lord Rothschild not merely to support Russian culture via the Open Russia Foundation of Khodorkovsky. In the event of his possible arrest (Khodorkovsky evidently knew he was playing a high-risk game trying to create a coup against Putin) the 40% share of his Yukos stocks would pass into the hands of Lord Rothschild.

The crocodile tears of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the violations of Khodorkovsky’s human rights hide a far deeper agenda that is not being admitted. Washington used the Russian to try to reach its goal of totally destroying the only power left on the earth with sufficient military strike power to challenge the Pentagon’s Full Spectrum Dominance strategy—control of the entire planet. When seen in that light the sweet loaded words “human rights” take on a quite different meaning.

Sources and Recommended Reading: 

“The Real Crime of M. Khodorkovsky”, by F. William Engdahl, VoltaireNet.org, 5 January 2011
http://www.voltairenet.org/article168007.html 

“Slaying the Debt Spider”, by Christopher Bollyn, 20 July 2010
http://www.bollyn.com/slaying-the-debt-spider-2

Source

Two years ago, George Soros said he wanted to reorganize the entire global economic system. In two short weeks, he is going to start – and no one seems to have noticed.

On April 8, a group he’s funded with $50 million is holding a major economic conference and Soros’s goal for such an event is to “establish new international rules” and “reform the currency system.” It’s all according to a plan laid out in a Nov. 4, 2009, Soros op-ed calling for “a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order.”

The event is bringing together “more than 200 academic, business and government policy thought leaders’ to repeat the famed 1944 Bretton Woods gathering that helped create the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Soros wants a new ‘multilateral system,” or an economic system where America isn’t so dominant.

More than two-thirds of the slated speakers have direct ties to Soros. The billionaire who thinks “the main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat” is taking no chances.

Thus far, this global gathering has generated less publicity than a spelling bee. And that’s with at least four journalists on the speakers list, including a managing editor for the Financial Times and editors for both Reuters and The Times. Given Soros’s warnings of what might happen without an agreement, this should be a big deal. But it’s not.

What is a big deal is that Soros is doing exactly what he wanted to do. His 2009 commentary pushed for “a new Bretton Woods conference, like the one that established the post-WWII international financial architecture.” And he had already set the wheels in motion.

Just a week before that op-ed was published, Soros had founded the New York City-based Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), the group hosting the conference set at the Mount Washington Resort, the very same hotel that hosted the first gathering. The most recent INET conference was held at Central European University, in Budapest. CEU received $206 million from Soros in 2005 and has $880 million in its endowment now, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

This, too, is a gathering of Soros supporters. INET is bringing together prominent people like former U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and Soros, to produce “a lot of high-quality, breakthrough thinking.”

While INET claims more than 200 will attend, only 79 speakers are listed on its site – and it already looks like a Soros convention. Twenty-two are on Soros-funded INET’s board and three more are INET grantees. Nineteen are listed as contributors for another Soros operation – Project Syndicate, which calls itself “the world’s pre-eminent source of original op-ed commentaries” reaching “456 leading newspapers in 150 countries.” It’s financed by Soros’s Open Society Institute. That’s just the beginning.

The speakers include:

• Volcker is chairman of President Obama’s Economic Advisory Board. He wrote the forward for Soros’s best-known book, ‘The Alchemy of Finance’ and praised Soros as “an enormously successful speculator” who wrote “with insight and passion” about the problems of globalization.
• Economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute and longtime recipient of Soros charity cash. Sachs received $50 million from Soros for the U.N. Millennium Project, which he also directs. Sachs is world-renown for his liberal economics. In 2009, for example, he complained about low U.S. taxes, saying the “U.S. will have to raise taxes in order to pay for new spending initiatives, especially in the areas of sustainable energy, climate change, education, and relief for the poor.”
• Soros friend Joseph E. Stiglitz, a former senior vice president and chief economist for the World Bank and Nobel Prize winner in Economics. Stiglitz shares similar views to Soros and has criticized free-market economists whom he calls “free market fundamentalists.” Naturally, he’s on the INET board and is a contributor to Project Syndicate.
• INET Executive Director Rob Johnson, a former managing director at Soros Fund Management, who is on the Board of Directors for the Soros-funded Economic Policy Institute. Johnson has complained that government intervention in the fiscal crisis hasn’t been enough and wanted “restructuring,” including asking “for letters of resignation from the top executives of all the major banks.”

 Have no doubt about it: This is a Soros event from top to bottom. Even Soros admits his ties to INET are a problem, saying, “there is a conflict there which I fully recognize.” He claims he stays out of operations. That’s impossible. The whole event is his operation.

INET isn’t subtle about its aims for the conference. Johnson interviewed fellow INET board member Robert Skidelsky about “The Need for a New Bretton Woods” in a recent video. The introductory slide to the video is subtitled: “How currency issues and tension between the US and China are renewing calls for a global financial overhaul.” Skidelsky called for a new agreement and said in the video that the conflict between the United States and China was “at the center of any monetary deal that may be struck, that needs to be struck.”

Soros described in the 2009 op-ed that U.S.-China conflict as “another stark choice between two fundamentally different forms of organization: international capitalism and state capitalism.” He concluded that “a new multilateral system based on sounder principles must be invented.” As he explained it in 2010, “we need a global sheriff.”

In the 2000 version of his book “Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism,” Soros wrote how the Bretton Woods institutions “failed spectacularly” during the economic crisis of the late 1990s. When he called for a new Bretton Woods in 2009, he wanted it to “reconstitute the International Monetary Fund,” and while he’s at it, restructure the United Nations, too, boosting China and other countries at our expense.

“Reorganizing the world order will need to extend beyond the financial system and involve the United Nations, especially membership of the Security Council,’ he wrote. ‘That process needs to be initiated by the US, but China and other developing countries ought to participate as equals.”

Soros emphasized that point, that this needs to be a global solution, making America one among many. “The rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system in order to ensure that they will be active supporters.”

And that’s exactly the kind of event INET is delivering, with the event website emphasizing “today’s reconstruction must engage the larger European Union, as well as the emerging economies of Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Asia.” China figures prominently, including a senior economist for the World Bank in Beijing, the director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the chief adviser for the China Banking Regulatory Commission and the Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations.

This is all easy to do when you have the reach of George Soros who funds more than 1,200 organizations. Except, any one of those 1,200 would shout such an event from the highest mountain. Groups like MoveOn.org or the Center for American Progress didn’t make their names being quiet. The same holds true globally, where Soros has given more than $7 billion to Open Society Foundations – including many media-savvy organizations just a phone call away. Why hasn’t the Soros network spread the word?

Especially since Soros warns, all this needs to happen because “the alternative is frightening.” The Bush-hating billionaire says America is scary “because a declining superpower losing both political and economic dominance but still preserving military supremacy is a dangerous mix.”

The Soros empire is silent about this new Bretton Woods conference because it isn’t just designed to change global economic rules. It also is designed to put America in its place – part of a multilateral world the way Soros wants it. He wrote that the U.S. “could lead a cooperative effort to involve both the developed and the developing world, thereby reestablishing American leadership in an acceptable form.”

That’s what this conference is all about – changing the global economy and the United States to make them “acceptable” to George Soros.

- Iris Somberg contributed to this commentary.

Source

Vladimir Putin has had a lavish £600 million Italianate palace built for himself near a Black Sea resort with the proceeds of “corruption, bribery and theft”, a Russian businessman has alleged.

The claim, made in a letter to Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s president, was boosted on Monday after the Novaya Gazeta newspaper obtained what it said was an authenticated copy of the original contract for the palace signed in 2005 by Vladimir Kozhin, the Russian presidential property manager. Mr Putin, now prime minister, was president at the time.

Set in 74 hectares of prime land near the Black Sea coast with its own vineyard, the palace is reported to be almost eight million square feet and has its own helipad. Other features include an indoor cinema, a summer amphitheatre, a casino, swimming pools, a gym and a clock tower. Sergei Kolesnikov, the businessman who claims the palace is Mr Putin’s, has likened the structure to a palace built for Russia’s Tsars outside St Petersburg. He said that the Russian prime minister had personally approved the design and materials.

Mr Kolesnikov has called on President Medvedev to investigate his controversial claim. “A palace is being built on the Black Sea coast for the personal use of the Russian prime minister,” Mr Kolesnikov wrote in his original letter. “As things stand, the cost of the palace is $1 billion. The funds were mostly raised through a combination of corruption, bribery and theft,” he said. It was in President Medvedev’s powers, he added, to show ordinary Russians that everyone was equal before the law including Mr Putin. Mr Putin’s spokesman has dismissed the allegation out of hand however, as has Mr Kozhin, the Kremlin official whose signature allegedly appeared on the original contract. President Medvedev has not responded to the allegations either, at least not publicly.

But Mr Kolesnikov, who said he was involved in the project himself until 2009 when he was removed for raising concerns about corruption, is sticking to his story and pictures of the lavish residence have appeared on a Russian whistle-blowing web site. Mr Kolesnikov said that a state construction company was being used to build the palace and that state funds had been illegally diverted to the project.

“Corrupt officials building themselves personal palaces at a time when children are dying due to lack of funds for medicines is Russia’s shame,” he wrote. A Russian magazine, Kommersant Dengi, reported last month that Mr Putin and Mr Medvedev share between them at least two dozen palaces, villas and mansions. In his official income declaration last year, Mr Putin said he earned the equivalent of around £80,000. Mr Putin may contest a presidential election which is due next year. His supporters believe the claim about the palace has more to do with politics and may be part of a dirty tricks campaign against him.

Source  

More photos here.

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations impose 21st-century Marxism on democracies.

Like Maurice Strong who funds all sides of a UN debate, George Soros funds Democrats and Republicans in America for everything from judicial supremacy to abortion, euthanasia and sames ex “marriage.”

A key funder in a wide spectrum, from the liberal extremist MoveOn.org to funding John McCain since 2001, notice how the foreign policies of McCain, Obama and Soros are the same…

The globalist antics of Soros bring to mind the historical observation, “Where can nobler men be found in all history than those who conceived and processed the American Revolution which gave birth to our country, having freed it from the barbarism associated with the phrase ‘The Divine Right of Kings’.”

But as the worn out cliche goes, “Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it,” here we go again, with the “Divine Right of Soros.” Never has fiat currency in the hands of a single Illuminati made such an impact!

Known as the man who broke the Bank of England, 80-year-old Soros funds liberal activists in the United States. At least 80 wealthy liberals pledged $1 million or more, each, to fund a network of “think tanks” and advocacy groups to compete with a once-potent conservative infrastructure.

The result is a political class of liberals and Neocons committed to the de-Christianization of western civilization. Unrestrained executive orders and judicial supremacist rulings sweep America with the winds of Soros…

Soros wrote that to preserve “Our Global Open Society,” the world needs “Some Global System Of Political Decision-Making” in which “The Sovereignty Of States Must Be Subordinated To International Law And International Institutions.”

In other words, the goal is to make free America one more colony, destroying sovereignty through interdependence and worldwide privatization.

The Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska has rather weightier matters to worry about right now – such as, with credit markets still closed, where he’s going to find the money to refinance the $4.5bn (£2.7bn) he borrowed to buy a 25 per cent stake in Norilsk Nickel – but that hasn’t stopped him playing centre stage in Britain’s latest political bunfight.

It was unwise, to put it mildly, for the shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, to use confidences learnt while holidaying in Corfu as a guest of his old college friend Nat Rothschild to attack a political bruiser as formidable as Peter Mandelson. Mr Rothschild saw the smear campaign as a betrayal of his hospitality and has given Mr Mandelson all the ammunition he needs to bite back.

This is one of those stories that has got it all – luxury yachts, billionaire oligarchs, luxury villas, lavish cocktail parties, old money, new money, political chicanery and so on. The only thing missing is sex. That may only be a matter of time. But is it of any long-term significance? Despite the denials, the suspicion that Mr Osborne illegally attempted to solicit a political donation from Mr Deripaska will linger and may further erode the fast-dwindling lead the Tories enjoy in the polls.

My only excuse as a business editor in writing about what is essentially political mudslinging is that the newly ennobled Mandelson is now Britain’s Business Secretary. Wherever he goes, fireworks seem to follow, so his new charge can at least expect a lively couple of years, assuming he lasts that long. The trouble started almost immediately Mr Mandelson was summoned back from exile in Europe to be part of Gordon Brown’s political fightback.

According to stories leaked by Mr Osborne to newspaper diaries, he had by “chance” bumped into Mr Mandelson in a Corfu taverna over the summer holidays, and in the ensuing chat, the prince of darkness had dripped pure poison on the Labour Party leader he now claims to be so supportive of. This latter part of the story is entirely believable, but the former was a bit of an exaggeration.

There was little chance in their meeting and the taverna in question was as much the Rothschild holiday home – a beautiful place of peace and tranquillity with its own private beach which I once chugged longingly past in a motor boat – as the kebab house down the road. But there was much worse to come. Mr Osborne then briefed The Sunday Times to the effect that Lord Mandelson had holidayed with Mr Deripaska on his yacht, moored nearby. This was at best inappropriate, as Mr Mandelson was still at the time EU Trade commissioner, and as such responsible for rule changes that might have benefited the Russian aluminium tycoon.

But it wasn’t half as stupid as Mr Osborne, who it turns out also drank with Mr Deripaska on the yacht and at the villa, and even brought along Andrew Feldman, the Tory party’s chief fundraiser, also by chance staying just down the road, to entertain and keep him company.

Mr Rothschild’s motivation in accusing Mr Osborne of attempting to solicit a donation is a bit of mystery. Friends say that he was simply offended by Mr Osborne’s clumsy use of private meetings and confidences while a guest at his house. Yet Mr Rothschild is also a long-standing adviser to Mr Deripaska, who would not have taken kindly to seeing his name splashed over the UK press in connection with Mr Mandelson. In any case, Mr Rothschild claims to have a witness to the alleged solicitation – one Jim Goodwin, an American business associate.

Nat Rothschild is an interesting character in his own right. A former playboy, he once showed worrying signs of following other doomed young members of the Rothschild dynasty into oblivion, but was rescued when family money enabled him to buy into Tim Barrakett’s Atticus Capital, a hedge fund group which at the time was down on its uppers.

In the subsequent bull market, Mr Rothschild made hay and is now said to be worth $200m in his own right, assuming he didn’t keep his share of the profits in the hedge fund, which, along with the rest of the industry, has bombed over the past year. If it was privacy he was trying to defend, stepping into the row between Osborne and Mandelson was hardly the way to go about keeping it. Dangerous place, that Corfu. But perhaps the biggest lesson is that it doesn’t pay to mess with Mandy.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/jeremy-warner/jeremy-warner-oligarchs-mandelson-and-osborne-968751.html

Interesting to note how one of the lesser members of the Rothschild clan can have such influence despite his relative youth.

If nothing else, the above report illustrates how he is courting senior members of both leading British political parties. This is an old trick whereby backing both parties in a political contest the family are assured of a winner – whoever wins.

Even more intriguing is Rothschild’s involvement with the Russian oligarch. The Rothschild family have a history of shifting their base of operations with an uncanny foresight. One branch of the family moved to England before Victoria ascended the throne and made rich profits while the British Empire was at its height.

Then the family backed Barney Barnato, who was born Barney Isaacs in a Victorian London slum and together with Rothschild lackeys the Oppenheimers went on to reap rich pickings in South Africa’s gold and diamond fields.

Now they appear to be moving into Russia, which leads us to suspect that Putin’s apparent enmity toward the Russian oligarchs is no more than an act.

Whatever happens the Rothschild family appear to be preparing for a shift eastwards towards Moscow.

THE GEORGIAN “ROSE REVOLUTION” was funded by the Hungarian born Jewish financier, George Soros. The Rose Revolution forced President Eduard Shevardnadze out of office on November 23 2003 (St George’s Day in Georgia).

Soros installed Shevardnadze’s young protege, Mikhail Saakashvili, as the new and current President of Georgia. During the three months before the coup, Saakashvili, who was schooled & groomed in America, was glorying in lavish treatment from the Zionist led US State Department and the Jewish controlled media. And in the previous summer Soros had flown Saakashvili and his followers to a “revolution training seminar” in Belgrade Serbia.

Back in Georgia from his training by Soros in Belgrade, Saakashvili led thousands of demonstrators brandishing fresh red roses in their takeover of the President’s palace. This occurred in the freezing Georgian winter when fresh roses had to be flown in — courtesy of the Jew, George Soros, who had spent $42 million on his new Georgian puppet. No sooner had Saakashvili taken office that he vowed to bring the Russian supported South Ossetia & Abkhazia breakaway provinces back under Georgian control.

Soros and the US State Department, indeed, had publicly committed themselves to propping up the current anti-Russian Georgian President, Mikhail Saakashvili, considered by many to be an authoritarian thug. A confrontation between Russia and the US was now in the works. And it has come to a head with the recent conflagration in South Ossetia.

AMERICA’S PRO GEORGIAN POLICY is explained by Georgia’s access to the Caspian Sea’s oil wealth. The US backed British Petroleum (BP) pipeline, running from the Caspian Sea through Georgia, then below the Black Sea into Turkey, delivers oil to Europe and the US. The US & its European allies have been competing with Russia for control of the Caspian oil rich region.

The pipeline runs only 60 miles south of the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, which sits right smack in the middle of northern Georgia. South Ossetia broke away from Georgia in the early 1990s and exists as an independent state with full Russian support. Most South Ossetian residents hold Russian passports.

The US considers Georgia as an ally and supports its desire to join NATO and the EU. Moscow opposes both goals. Georgia’s pro Western stance has riled Russia because Moscow regards the entire region as its own sphere of influence.

In April 2002, the US started the “Georgia Train and Equip Program” which involved US training of Georgian forces. Soon after, Georgian militaries were sent to Iraq to form part of the US/UK occupation forces there. With regard to the current South Ossetia conflict, the US has been supplying Georgia with both equipment and military advisers. And Russia is now accusing the US of orchestrating the war.

Moreover, the US partner in Zionist international hegemony, the State of Israel, assisted Georgia in its August 8 2008 attack on the South Ossetian capital, Tskhinvali, with a bevy of its own military advisers. This brought the conflict to a military climax.

Thus, Georgia will continue to be a cold war hotspot with Russia and the US competing to control the Caspian oil bonanza. And the Jew, George Soros, and his puppet, Mikhail Saakashvili, have brought this new cold war centered in Georgia to a boiling head.

For More See: “George Soros: An Evil Rothschild Agent!” Click Here

And: “US State Department Is Run By Jews” Click Here

And: “A Christian Russia Emerging” Click Here

And: “Is Putin A True Christian Leader?” Click Here

Source: South Ossetia-The War Has Begun @ Rense.com Here

Original source: http://www.realjewnews.com/?p=248

Millions watched as Roman Abramovich suffered the agony of defeat alongside Chelsea fans. They knew him from the gossip, sport and news pages, in which he regularly crops up spending millions on art or enjoying London’s nightlife, with his beautiful girlfriend on his arm.

Yet the Russian billionaire remains an enigma. Little is known about where his vast fortune came from, or about his complex relationship with Russia’s rulers, and in particular with Vladimir Putin, the former President.

Today The Times can disclose that Alexander Litvinenko, the spy poisoned in Britain in a suspected Russian plot, made the astonishing suggestion that Mr Abramovich effectively vetted Mr Putin – on behalf of Russia’s powerful oligarchs – to succeed Boris Yeltsin as President.

Litvinenko also told The Times that the football-loving billionaire controlled so much of Russia’s economy that he was in danger of being killed by the Kremlin’s special services.

He said in his broken English: “Mr Abramovich have good contact with Putin before Putin was President. Russia oligarch select people who will be President. In 1997-98 Mr Abramovich was the best person who is check these candidates to be President. Now Mr Abramovich has good relationship with Putin.”

Mr Putin took over as acting president in 1999 and won the post in an election the following year. Mr Litvinenko added that the football chief helped to fund his campaign.

Mr Litvinenko, a former KGB man and an outspoken critic of Mr Putin, died of radiation poisoning in London in 2006 after being contaminated with polonium-210.

His words are given an intriguing new significance by a Commercial Court battle in London between Mr Abramovich and the exile Boris Berezovsky over $4 billion (£2 billion) of Russia’s oil and aluminium riches.

Mr Litvinenko met Mr Abramovich through a business club run by Mr Berezovsky. Mr Putin was summoned to the Kremlin in 1996 to serve in high office under President Yeltsin at a time when Mr Berezovsky was the President’s close aide and Mr Abramovich, in turn, was an ally of Mr Berezovsky.

In an unpublished interview two years before his death, Mr Litvinenko said: “I know Putin’s team since 1991 in St Petersburg. I know who Mr Putin is. I have meetings with Putin 1998. In 1999, my way and Mr Abramovich were different. Mr Abramovich stayed near Mr Putin. Who has stayed near Mr Putin for five years?”

According to a biography, Abramovich: the Billionaire from Nowhere, Mr Abramovich interviewed the candidates for Mr Putin’s first Cabinet in 1999. But the claim that he effectively vetted Mr Putin too goes farther than any previous account.

Mr Litvinenko believed that the Chelsea boss was in danger from a corrupt mafia around President Putin. “Mr Abramovich in the future 100 per cent have a lot of problems from Russia special service,” the spy said. “Maybe killed, maybe put in prison. Maybe push under contracts.”

Mr Litvinenko made his remarks in a telephone interview with The Times, which at the time was investigating the sources of Mr Abramovich’s £12billion fortune.

Only businessmen tolerated by the security services could survive in Russia, he suggested. Others, such as the billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, found themselves prosecuted for corruption and jailed.

“Abramovich is not political. He is not philosopher. He is fortune,” Mr Litvinenko said. He added that Mr Abramovich may have become too powerful a businessman for the security services to tolerate.

“[He] took a lot of Russian commercial company under himself,” he said. Mr Litvinenko gave warning that Russia’s special services would remove Mr Abramovich by killing or imprisoning him or taking out a contract. If he tried to flee, they would get him back by seeking his extradition on some crime charge.

“If Mr Abramovich escapes from Russia and takes his money, if he is like control his money, Russia special service send crime case to this country where Mr Abramovich stayed.”

In the event, a more peaceful solution was found. Mr Abramovich went on to divest himself of Russian assets, selling his oil business Sibneft to the Russian State for £6.6billion in 2005.

The Times put the allegations to Mr Abramovich’s spokesmen but they declined to comment.

Mr Litvinenko’s own downfall came after he antagonised Mr Putin, at the time head of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, by staging a televised press conference in 1998 amd announcing that the FSB had ordered the assassination of Mr Berezovsky.

After being jailed and freed several times, Mr Litvinenko fled Russia.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article3987790.ece

As we suggested some years ago when an attempt to assassinate him went awry, Vladimir Putin is very much a pawn of the Oligarch’s. The assassination attempt was barely reported in the West, like the original source of Roman Abramovich’s fortune, which we believe lies with the Rothschild dynasty.

It was his knowledge of who was really behind the Russian Oligarch’s and his readiness to talk that ultimately led to Alexander Litvinenko being murdered.

Moreover, a very reliable psychic friend has echoed the point that the Oligarch’s hold sways over Putin, just as the Rothschilds effectively control the Western security services. Thus setting up the scenario whereby the Rothschilds actually control both sides in this murky war in the shadows.

Also see:
Russian national says recruited by MI6 – FSB

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=6771

Revealed: Poisoned ex-Russian spy Litvinenko WAS a paid-up MI6 agent

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=7433

More on the Killing of Alexander Litvinenko

http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=5580

The Russian authorities yesterday stood accused of orchestrating a campaign of intimidation against British interests in Moscow, where the ambassador has been harassed and the BBC Russian Service mysteriously taken off air.

With ties between the Kremlin and London already strained by the police inquiry into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, The Times has learnt that relations with Russia risk being further damaged by other serious diplomatic disputes.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) said yesterday that it had complained to the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs over the treatment of Tony Brenton, the British Ambassador in Moscow.

Mr Brenton has been the target of intimidation for the past four months by Nashi, a right-wing youth movement connected to the Kremlin. The group has trailed and heckled the envoy, picketed the embassy and triggered a violent incident outside his residence in September. There are fears for the safety of Mr Brenton and his family.

On Monday a protester shouted “Brenton apologise!” when the ambassador was taking part in a seminar at the Humanities University in Moscow with Tom Stoppard, the British playwright.

“It is a deliberate psychological harassment which is done professionally and which borders on violence,” Mr Brenton said.

The FCO said that it had been assured that concerns about the ambassador’s safety would be “addressed urgently” by the Russian authorities. But a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said later that the protests were lawful and protected by the country’s right to freedom of speech.

Privately British officials suspect that the entire campaign is being co-ordinated with elements inside the Russian regime angered by the ambassador’s speech to an opposition meeting in July.

At the time President Putin accused Mr Brenton of interfering in Russia’s domestic affairs, after the envoy spoke at the Other Russia opposition gathering held before the G8 summit in St Petersburg.

The Russians are also suspected of a hand in the disruption of the BBC’s Russian Service FM broadcasts in Moscow and St Petersburg, at the height of coverage of the Litvinenko poisoning.

The daily four-hour transmissions went off air in St Petersburg from November 13 to December 1, the period when the poison story broke, Litvinenko died and, in a final statement, accused Mr Putin of his murder.

In Moscow the broadcast went off air on November 24, the day after Litvinenko’s death, and has not resumed since. Sarah Gibson, the head of the BBC Russian Service, said that this was the first time that the FM transmissions had been stopped. She said that the Russians had blamed “technical difficulties” for the suspension.

The service is still broadcast on short wave and medium wave, although the FM transmission is the most accessible in the Russian capital, where most of the one million Russian Service listeners live.

A member of the Russian Service said that staff suspected that the broadcasts were taken off air to stop Muscovites hearing allegations that Russian security services were linked to the Litvinenko killing. The staff member added that the 40 Russian journalists working for the BBC in Moscow were fearful for their safety if the Litvinenko story continued to dominate the headlines

The mystery over the BBC Russian broadcasts is just the latest in a series of incidents that has plagued Anglo-Russian relations this year. In January Russia accused four British diplomats of espionage and released surveillance footage of a secret transmitter disguised as a stone in a Moscow park. Soon afterwards the FSB, the Russian security service, said that it had reopened an investigation into the activities of the British Council in St Petersburg.

All these issues have been overshadowed by the Litvinenko murder investigation led by Scotland Yard’s anti-terror squad. If detectives find a link between the killing and Russian agents it would provoke the biggest crisis in relations since the end of the Cold War.

Yesterday the key figure in Scotland Yard’s inquiry into the Litvinenko murder failed to meet detectives for the third time.

Andrei Lugovoy had been due to answer questions at a Moscow hospital where he is being treated for apparent radiation contamination. But the interview with Russian prosecutors and British detectives was postponed amid reports that he had fallen ill.

Mr Lugovoy insisted last night that he was in satisfactory health but was waiting for results of medical tests to be delivered next week.

His business partner, Dmitri Kovtun, is said to be seriously ill with radiation poisoning in the same hospital. The Interfax news agency, citing an unnamed hospital source, reported that Mr Kovtun, 41, had suffered “acute radiation sickness” with damage to his liver, kidneys and intestines.

He was interviewed by Russian prosecutors in front of British detectives on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Prosecutor-General’s Office then opened an inquiry into what it described as the attempted murder of Mr Kovtun after a spokeswoman said that it had “every reason to believe that Dmitri Kovtun and Russian Federation citizen Litvinenko were poisoned with radioactive nuclides”.
Mr Lugovoy and Mr Kovtun have said that they met Litvinenko on November 1, the day he fell ill, at the Millennium Hotel in London to discuss a business proposal. They have denied any involvement in poisoning him. Mr Lugovoy, a former FSB officer, who now runs a private security company, has insisted that Mr Litvinenko initiated the meeting at the hotel, and that his principal reason for being in London had been to attend the Champions League football match that evening between Arsenal and CSKA Moscow.

A third Russian businessman, Vyacheslav Sokolenko, told The Times yesterday that he had no involvement with Litvinenko. The men had finished their meeting by the time he came to the hotel lobby after a sightseeing tour.

“I don’t know Litvinenko, I had never met him. If I spoke to him, it was only to say hello like any civilised person,” said Mr Sokolenko, a former Kremlin security guard. “I had no business in London. I hadn’t been there for 11 years. I was just there to see the match because I’m really a big CSKA fan.”

Andrei Romashov, Mr Lugovoy’s lawyer, said he did not know that the meeting with detectives had been cancelled, but insisted that there were no health reasons to prevent him being interviewed.

A former FSB director said he was certain that Litvinenko had been murdered by people determined to damage Mr Putin. Sergei Stepashin, now chairman of Russia’s Audit Chamber, said: “Those who wanted to tarnish the current Russian authorities, and primarily the President, killed Litvinenko.”

Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the FSB, dismissed as “complete nonsense” allegations that Russian forces had used polonium-210 against separatist fighters in Chechnya. Akhmed Zakayev, the Chechen envoy in London, claimed that he had seen Litvinenko’s symptoms among people in Chechnya.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2495179_1,00.html