Criminal accusations of corruption have been made against Craig Murray:
”
he lobbied so-called businessmen including those from Pakistan willing to get cotton and other state contracts, those people had contacts with different Uzbek clan representatives including Bekzod Akhmedov. Akhmedov was seen many times in Craig Murray and his pseudo businessmen’s company in dens of iniquity of the capital, Bekzod Akhmedov’s favorite venues.
”
The allegations must be taken extremely seriously because they come from an Ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva. The lady in question is of course Gulnara Karimova, daughter of the President of Uzbekistan. As is her usual method, she gave an interview to a glossy magazine journalist in Switzerland not given to probing questioning. Even this publication baulked at publishing these extraordinary statements, so she gave the full works on her blog:
For example yesterday in Geneva, on the first day of spring, we had another “support team” visiting us, those who are always ready to work off their payments while not having anything else to do, any other interests, hobbies or a properly paid job. A group of a few people including a cameraman, a lady of Uzbek origin Mutabar Tadjibaeva, who introduces herself as a president of the «Club des Coeurs Ardents» and guess who else? Exactly! Craig Murray – ex-ambassador to Uzbekistan, who had been scandalously fired from the British Foreign Office. He lived in Tashkent for a long time and had a relationship and even got married to a strip-bar dancer, he lobbied so-called businessmen including those from Pakistan willing to get cotton and other state contracts, those people had contacts with different Uzbek clan representatives including Bekzod Akhmedov. Akhmedov was seen many times in Craig Murray and his pseudo businessmen’s company in dens of iniquity of the capital, Bekzod Akhmedov’s favorite venues. It seems like the group of people that visited us in Geneva wanted to congratulate us with spring and express their grievance by screaming and as they said they wanted me or my sister Lola to come out. They attempted to sneak inside and walk around the house recording it all on video and we had nothing to do, but call the police and make our own video of this March invasion of “human right defenders” as they call themselves.
It is obvious, that those people mentioned above, a group of bloggers and professional PR firm such as R&R were not catalyzed accidentally. The core of the artificially initiated scandal is lost, constant threats, that someone will say something, someone like Bekzod Akhmeodv who is wanted by Interpol due to his relation to the investigation of MTS activities in Uzbekistan, who from the beginning was under the MTS-Russia protection and requested on January, 9 2013 refugee status with his big family. Also threats came for last three months from lawyers who were stating that they will have newspapers like Financial Times publish all they have, all that Bekzod Akhmedov could compose over almost a year which was accepted with pleasure by MTS lobbyists. Where else could you see such involvement at official level and could this be possible without high-reaching goals, even if it is done in such a straight way?
I might as well state for the record that to my knowledge I have never met or had any contact with Mr Bekzod Akhmedov, I have certainly never been in his social company, let alone on a “den of inquity” (though that does sound fun). I have never met any Pakistani businessmen in or to discuss Uzbekistan and I have never sought any role for myself in trading Uzbek cotton.
I certainly did visit Gulnara’s US $25 million mansion in Geneva, because I wanted to see where the proceeds of forced child labour in the Uzbek cotton fields went. I intend to do so again. I hope lots of people will – its at No. 7, Rue Prevote, Cologny, Geneva.
Gulnara’s peculiar attack on me for the “crime” of looking at her house appears a rather desperate reaction to increasing knowledge of her activities. The Chief Executive of Telesonera, Sweden’s largest telecommunications firm, had to resign recently over corrupt payments to Gulnara. In a decision reminiscent of Blair’s shutdown of the BAE Saudi bribes prosecution, Swedish authorities decided there was no public interest in prosecuting. Gulnara’s Swiss registered holding company Zeromax has been declared bankrupt, owing half a billion dollars to the state in taxes, and its assets confiscated then reprivatised to … Gulnara. Russian Telecoms giant MTS has been kicked out of Uzbekistan, substantially reducing available services there.
All of the above were examples of Gulnara kicking out fellow oligarchs from business interests which she held in partnership with others, to take the lot for herself. That has left a lot of despoiled oligarchs rather rueful. This centralisation of cash prior to a succession battle is a very high risk strategy. It is telling that Gulnara refers to my contact with Uzbek “clans”. In the Uzbek context, this does not mean tribe, but rather something more akin to regionally based mafia groupings, with whom the common people of the region have no identity. Gulnara is in the middle of a major rupture with Gafur Rakhimov, the largest mafia boss whose alliance with Karimov had been central to the regime’s stability.
I do not imagine Gulnara really believes I am connected to any of these rival mafia interests, though it is possible she is really that crazy. But plainly she is very rattled, or she would not be drawing all this attention to her business interests.
Two small points from the above. Firstly, one passage seems to reveal that the “interviewer” from Bilan was a chum of hers.
and guess who else? Exactly! Craig Murray – ex-ambassador to Uzbekistan,
I don’t think an ordinary Swiss journalist would have any idea who I was, let alone know I had called at the house.
This is one of my all time favourite tough journalist questions:
You are leading the list of most popular personalities from Central Asia in 2012 on search engines such as Google and Yandex. You are almost every day active on Twitter where you post many of your photos. How is this all related?
Final point – the first sentence of this post refers to me in the third person not because I have gone delusional, but so it works well as a retweet.
I have every hope the Karimov regime will fall in spring 2015.
RIP – Mahmoud Al-Titi PBUH -murdered by an Israeli assassination squad in the West Bank village of Fawar, southwest of Hebron.
Carve their names on Israel’s wall in memoriam to the new world.
http://mondoweiss.net/2013/03/israeli-palestinian-activist.html
For all those mesmerised by the stepping down of Ratziner, some factual links to horrendous goings on, no doubt a concern to those at present cloaking themselves in black smoke.
http://ratzingersbendict.blogspot.co.uk/
troll= resident H.
Now, he is a boxer and you are not anonymous.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2013/mar/12/english-boxer-curtis-woodhouse-twitter-troll
This is a catastrophe of immense and tragic proportions. T
This collection of minority political party speed daters are really hell bent on wrecking the economy further.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/mar/13/owen-paterson-ban-pesticides-bees
open nomination 26.03.-5.04.2013, if you’re not up for it, find someone who you trust and back him to your best avail.
How noble of the arms salesman. He is going ALONE to Tech City, sans Maman. http://www.london24.com/news/prince_andrew_to_make_solo_visit_to_tech_city_in_queen_s_absence_1_1976009
The BBC sent Rory Cellan Jones along yesterday to Buck House to interview him on Tech City and his family’s use of technology. Handy for booking the next ski trip or holiday in the sun I would think.
Tech City – by Royal Appointment.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21744418
What tosh.
Reminder – Cellan Jones is married to the Vice Chairman of the BBC Trust Diane Coyle, a former adviser to HM Treasury and author. Nice one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Coyle
That is terrible news Nevermind.
Neonicotinoids are banned in some EU countries. Patterson obviously in the grip of Big Agrichem just as Theresa May and others are in the grip of the drinks industry. She has Prime Ministerial ambitions we hear. God help us.
I am going to this opera at the Royal Holloway on Sunday with a friend.
Sticking together: Opera about bees combines art and science to launch Royal Holloway Festival
A new opera that explores the dangerous decline in bumblebee populations in the UK will receive its world première at Royal Holloway on Sunday 17 March and launch the start of Royal Holloway Science Festival.
The Silence of the Bees: A Science Opera, sees the Department of Music, the Department of English, and the School of Biological Sciences working together to produce a piece that highlights this important ecological issue. Dr Mark Brown’s research into the decline of bees and work to protect endangered species and reintroduce extinct types back to the UK, was the main inspiration.
/..
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/aboutus/newsandevents/news/newsarticles/stickingtogetheroperaaboutbeescombinesartandsciencetolaunchroyalhollowayfestival.aspx
There are many scientific studies on bee population decline taking place at Royal Holloway.
http://www.rhul.ac.uk/search?q=dr+raine+bees
Does Patterson know of the evidence and does he care? Without bees, we starve and die.
Oh, I don’t know, Mary – it was a bit of an anti-climax of a post, coming after the information that the bees are goners, but it wasn’t ‘tosh’. Don’t let Habbakuk make you too self critical 🙂
Jeesus, the bees. The bees! I guess we don’t need bees for GM wheat.
Thanks for that ‘buzzing opera’ news, Mary
“Jeesus, the bees. The bees! I guess we don’t need bees for GM wheat.”
GM, engineered and patented for market shares, with dubious claims and horrendous consequences, has now been rejected for over two decades in this country.
Still our party politicians are pumping money into this vested interest white elephant. I don’t think that a GM bun and butter beats the adage of lasciviously spread jam.
That said, animal feeds, not that of horses mind, is most likely not conventional soya, despite the promises made by the likes of Cargill not to mix it with GM. That’s the official line, the unofficial policy is to contaminate the food chain with as much GM varieties as it is possible, to destroy the organic argument and guarantee cross contamination.
I would not want anybody to be deprived of their GM wheat, but its a bit bland without the fruits and jams we consume thanks to bees.
for anything genetic, try this collective of activists and scientists.
http://ngin.tripod.com/
Mary
The PressTV page you link to is comical – it claims to have “recently discovered and annihalated” the BBC’s broadcasting to Iran – but then somewhat undermines itself by describing how the BBC have been broadcasting to Iran for 50 years. And despite its annihalation I still believe that the BBC continues to do so.
Doug Scorgie, 13 Mar 11:11am
“According to a 2010 Pew Global Attitudes survey, 86% of Jordanians polled supported the death penalty for those who leave Islam; 58% supported whippings and cutting off of hands for theft and robbery; and 70% support stoning people who commit adultery.”
Don’t let those statistics fool you. Islam is a “religion of peace”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_of_Peace
What “hypocrisy” is that, Doug Scorgie?
“According to a 2010 Pew Global Attitudes survey” – had it not occurred to you that the answers to the survey might, just a little, have been influenced by the regime? No?
‘According to a 2010 Pew Global Attitudes survey, 86% of Jordanians polled supported the death penalty for those who leave Islam; 58% supported whippings and cutting off of hands for theft and robbery; and 70% support stoning people who commit adultery.’
Where is there to go after the truth?
Why should society tolerate theft?
Who needs their children being sexually abused by weirdos picked up by their ex-wives?
Neoconicides. Sounds like a good idea to me. Could be sprayed over Brussells, London, Washington, Tel Aviv at twice monthly intervals until only those who wish to pollinate truth justice and peace are left in charge of the world. Could we have double acting neoconicides with extra penetrating power for neocon shills?
Resident Dissident. Whatever! They can however spell ‘annihilated’ correctly. 😉
an·ni·hi·late (-n-lt)
v. an·ni·hi·lat·ed, an·ni·hi·lat·ing, an·ni·hi·lates
v.tr.
1.
a. To destroy completely: The naval force was annihilated during the attack.
b. To reduce to nonexistence.
c. To defeat decisively; vanquish.
2. To nullify or render void; abolish.
v.intr. Physics
To participate in annihilation, as an electron and a positron.
Dave Lee Travis has been arrested on further sexual offence allegations in Operation Yewtree. If only Sa Vile was alive to face the music, and his victims.
This is also breaking news. I bet there is some shaking in the shoes.
13 March 2013 Last updated at 13:17
‘Significant’ sex abuse arrests due says prosecutor
Sexual abuse allegations against Jimmy Savile emerged after his death
Jimmy Savile scandal
Mark Easton: Credibility and justice
Legal options for Savile’s victims
Police-NSPCC report: Key points
Q&A: Jimmy Savile abuse
A senior prosecutor says “significant” arrests are being planned in the coming weeks of people suspected of sexual abuse.
/..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21772529
Ali Imad Takla captured by ex SAS mercenaries according to a British close protection officer and handed to the Free Syrian Army(FSA) is used here to create propaganda that blames Iran for providing armed support to President Bashar al-Assad.
http://english.alarabiya.net/en/News/2013/03/12/Syrian-soldier-admits-to-Hezbollah-interference-in-Syria-FSA.html#
Operating in Talkalakh it is clear some Hezbollah members are working with villagers to expel foreign fighters taking refuge and regrouping in remote barns and outhouses that also act as arms caches for terrorists to pickup before entering heavily populated areas.
WRT the ‘Bees’ Poland has kicked Monsanto out (it’s the bee’s knees)
http://www.naturalnews.com/036010_Poland_Monsanto_GM_corn.html
“I have every hope the Karimov regime will fall in spring 2015.”
Me too.
My comment on the interview in Bilan is reproduced here, if anyone is interested:
Uzbekistan is in the bottom 6 of the most corrupt countries in the world year after year. Gulnara has what appears to be a value-added jewellery business (discretionary product with high price tag so it is not a money spinner), a perfume business (the Guli brand is a no-hoper in a competitive market dominated by big brands), a song production business (negligible sales outside Uzbekistan even with the attempt to pass herself off as the popular Iranian singer, Googoosh, by using the name “Googoosha”) and finally a clothes fashion business, which is going nowhere (it failed to exhibit as
intended in New York).
The businesses I’ve mentioned are probably just a smokescreen to cover up where she has really got her billion dollar fortune from; she is suspected of using the whole apparatus of the Uzbek state to manipulate the business environment in her favour to secure businesses or business opportunities (invariably where there is an economic rent involved, particularly if the anticipated future stream of super normal profits over many years can be realised as a single lump sum by a sale of the business to foreigners for hard currency). The sorts of businesses that have “economic
rents” (i.e. where there is abnormal high value creation due to scarcity) are mining companies (the economic rent is created by rises in metal prices of several hundred percent over the metal price cycle in relation to the costs of production),mobile telephone companies (the economic rent arises from controlling the scarcity of operating licences) and property (the economic rent arises from controlling the scarcity created by planning restrictions). The Uzbek judiciary is notoriously corrupt
and lacks independence. There has been a pattern of using bogus bankruptcy procedures of part foreign owned businesses (at times in the economic cycle where a substantial economic rent is visible) to transfer ownership of that economic rent at nil value to members of the Uzbek elite, usually by depriving the business of inputs or by preventing it from completing the final stage of production that leads to revenue receipt. There is no paper trail leading all the way to Gulnara and her sister, Lola, but control of their investment vehicles in Uzbekistan can be achieved in other ways: e.g. by torturing the CEOs or by locking up their families, so Gulnara’s assertion she had nothing to do with Zeromax in this article is as interesting as the facts Mr Miradil Djalalov, the CEO, was taken into police custody at one time, and that Mr. Bekhzod Akhmedov, (the CEO of Uzdonrobita, the mobile phone company) has disappeared. The fact Gulnara claims Bekhzod Akhmedov inflated prices of goods purchased abroad (a money laundering technique?) is interesting when you bear in mind Lola Karimova’s husband, Mr Tilyaev, paid twice the market price per square metre for 14 Chemin Vert, Vandoeuvres, Geneva, the vendor of which was a donor to the UK Labour party, so the property probably did not have 24 carat gold bath fittings, thus it is likely an overpayment of about 20m Sw Fr was made. What Gulnara accuses her friend Bekhzod of, her sister’s husband may actually have
done. Alternatively, the ease with which money comes from theft led Lola and her husband not to bargain very hard.
The two sisters may also have evaded Swiss scrutiny of the source of their funds to make purchases of property totalling 60m Sw Fr by having jobs with the U.N. and UNESCO and thus by having an “autorisation valable de sejour” and by declaring their homes as their principal residences.
Anyway, in short I think you should be a little more circumspect about things in Uzbekistan notwithstanding your experiences there. Gulnara’s “charity work” probably needs to be seen in the context of her fortune – it is perhaps another smokescreen, and the amounts raised doing it are in stark contrast to the size of both the fortune she has and the publicity she garners for the charity work. Even the picture of herself in this article may be part of an elaborate deception – she is wearing a WHITE blouse, and the photographer looks to have used Vaseline on the lens filter to give a soft focus effect that makes her look ten years younger than the 40 year old she is. The clincher for me was U.S. Ambassador Purnell’s confidential remark that Gulnara is the single most hated woman in the country – well she would be if she does charity work while robbing at the same time.
Mary
And what do you think annihilation means to those agents of the evil BBC who were captured – however it is spelt? Do you believe that annihilation is a fitting punishment for those passing news to a foreign news network? Do you think Galloway should use his position to complain?
That’s cheering news about Monsanto Ben Franklin.
Nevermind refers to GM. The different brands of chicken layers’ pellets I buy all used to be GM free and cost £6 or so for 20 kgs. Yesterday I could not find any that did not contain GM soya meal and the cheapest was nearly £10 for 20 kgs.
Of course those wishing for a more balanced view than PressTV as to what is really happening in Iran with regard to press activities may wish to look here
http://en.rsf.org/iran.html
Resident Dissident
Can you suggest a reason why our government banned Press TV from the British airwaves? Perhaps their evil propaganda was a threat to our freedom of speech?
You have to admire the chutzpah(although I’m sure they wouldn’t approve of that word) of PressTV criticising the journalistic impartiality of another broadcaster.
Sorry, I failed to make clear in my previous post the comment was in response to Axel Porsche who seemed to have an unduly rose tinted view of the country. He probably does not realise that Zeromax ripped off loads of German companies in building the Palace of Forums. The list of both Uzbek and foreign businesses ripped off is endless. A neat thing about bogus bankruptcy procedures is you can get gullible foreign companies to lose even more money by investing further funds to rescue the subsidiary that is the target of the bogus bankruptcy proceedings, and the foreign company can be screwed again by the phoney exchange rate.
KRF
Good comment. I hope Gulnara or one of her underlings have read it.
I too hope that karimov’s regime will fall in 2015 and although I do not anticipate significant economic or social improvements, regime change is better than present stagnation.
You have to ask the question; ‘cui bono?’ when you speak of our beloved watchdogs the Press.
10 years since the beginning of the Iraq war.
“But that system’s failure casts a dark shadow on the news business that has not entirely lifted. The press needs to challenge what government officials say, whether it is about war or weapons or Wall Street, or whether the impact of federal budget cuts is being exaggerated. The low level of public confidence in the media has many causes, but one of them stems from what happened back in 2003.”
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/11/opinion/kurtz-iraq-media-failure/index.html
@Uzbek in The UK
Thanks. I think Craig should point out to Gulnara that it is better not to have a proper job than one that has been granted to facilitate money laundering of stolen business proceeds under diplomatic cover.
As more and more stories about ‘sinkholes’ emerge, and houses, people get swallowed up, the evidence that increased earthquake activity is connected to fracking (that short-cut to cheap energy) gets more scrutiny.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-20/fracking-linked-earthquakes-spurring-state-regulations.html
Très indépendant!
Funding
According to the annual accounts, its total budget is €4,000,000, which is mostly financed by sale of photo-albums (of which the authors freely grant copyright, and which are freely distributed by the Nouvelles Messageries de la Presse Parisienne, or NMPP), as well as extras such as T-shirts, etc.[11]
More than 20% of its funding comes from private groups, such as Sanofi-Aventis (€400,000, 10% of its budget),[11] François Pinault, the Fondation de France, the Open Society Institute of George Soros, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, Benetton, or the Center for a Free Cuba (which donated €64,000 in 2002).[11][12] Furthermore, Saatchi & Saatchi has created various communication campaigns of RWB for free (for instance, concerning censorship in Algeria).[13]
Funding (12% of total in 2007) also comes from governmental organisations.[14] According to RWB president Robert Ménard, the donations from the French government account for 4.8% of RWB’s budget; the total amount of governmental aid being 11% of its budget (including money from the French government, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, UNESCO and the Organisation internationale de la francophonie).[15] Daniel Junqua, the vice-president of the French section of RWB (and also vice-president of the NGO Les Amis du Monde diplomatique), states that funding from the National Endowment for Democracy, a branch of the U.S. State Department [11] does not compromise RWB’s impartiality.[15] RWB’s Chinese website credits support from Taiwan Foundation for Democracy,[16] a quasi-government organization funded by the ROC Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[17]
Reporters Without Borders books are sold by the French leisure chains and supermarkets Fnac, Carrefour, Casino, Monoprix and Cora, the websites alapage.com, fnac.com and amazon.fr, as well as A2Presse and over 300 bookshops throughout France.[14]
Journalist Salim Lamrani has estimated that RWB would have to sell 170,200 books in 2004 and 188,400 books in 2005 to earn the more than $2 million in the organisation’s income statement.[18] In fact, Reporters Without Borders book sales were 230,000 in 2007.[14]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reporters_Without_Borders
KRF
I am sure German Federal government covered private German losses in Palace of Forums bubble. It would be naive to think that karimov is satisfied with 15 million euros annual fee for the use of Termez airfield by Bundersver.
On the matter of riskiness of the foreign investments in Uzbekistan, only the most ignorant investors still count Uzbekistan is even relatively safe investment. If the list of businesses that were entrapped by karimov gang is put on the map, it would be obvious that the karimov and his gang are scammers on a global scale. From San Francisco to Vladivostok – list of countries will include.
Those who are still advising that investments in Uzbekistan are safe are worse than Moody which awarded triple A to subprimes.