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.
Very good question, A Node.
Further on Iran. How very democratic of the EU.
EU unable to justify its anti-Press TV move: Hamid Reza Emadi
http://www.presstv.com/detail/2013/03/13/293321/eus-antipress-tv-move-baseless/
re definition of a troll
Thank you for your speedy reply, Nevermind (11h45), but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to try again because you appear don’t seem to have understood the word “define”. Let me help you.
The Shorter OED (2 vols) gives the following : “To set forth what (a word, etc) means”. One cannot define a word by saying, as you do, that it is something else. To give you an easy example, you cannot define an apple by saying it is a banana or, conversely, that it is not a pear.
If you’ve now understood that, then you will immediately see that to say, as you did, that “troll = Habbabkuk” is not a definition.
Could I therefore please ask you to try again? Thank you.
BTW, if you don’t possess the Shorter OED (2 vols) O would definitely recommend you to invest in a copy. It will do wonders in helping you make the right choice of word s when you write (because you will have understood the meaning of words before you use them, and it will also be very useful for your spelling. Let me know if you’d be interested in improving grammar and spelling and I’ll try to recommend a book for those as well. No charge!
*********
So the position is as follows at the moment: Nevermind has had a stab at answering and will try again; the other replies are still awaited (John Goss, Clark, Villager,Jives and Mary).
KRF
Mr Murray might try, but I doubd that gulnara will understand. She lives in different normative dimensions. Good or bad for her is measured by the number of zeros on ones account and influence one has over politics. Blood, human sacrifice, starvation, war is out of her normative outlook.
Guano: “Where is there to go after the truth?”
You can not be serious! (borrowed from John McEnroe).
H is for hunger. DO NOT FEED! Especially, during Lent.
Sorry, must be missing something. Is the implication that RWB are lying about the situation in Iran?
@ Doug Scourge :
You are indignant – nay, you seem positively livid – about 7 recent executions in Saudi Arabia.
But I somehow don’t recall you ever having said anything on this blog about the thousands of death sentences pronounced and carried out every year in China?
But perhaps you post about them on another blog?
**********
La vita è bella, life is good! (and death is bad – even in China)
Habbakuk tells us:
“To set forth what (a word, etc) means”. One cannot define a word by saying, as you do, that it is something else.
Very good.
So, now can you please define “fascism” as you were politely asked to do, and this time without reference to “something else”, like Germany or Italy.
Just define the term.
I appreciate that good burst of current news articles and angles there.
About Gulnaras recent blogged accusations, i dont see them having propogated. The only other google hit for “Craig Murray” and “bekzod akhmedov” is on news aggregator topix linking Craigs Article on it.
Radio Free Europe Free Liberty has an article on “Gulnara: Groomed For Greater Things?” seems informative and fair,
http://www.rferl.org/content/gulnara-karimova-uzbekistan-next-president/24805374.html
Resident D – ‘Reporters without Borders’ has it’s own agenda and one must exercise judicious judgement in forming opinions on so called ‘free speech’ and media freedom.
Maghreb’s editor, Amir Mousa Kazemi is somewhat ethereal and when pressed agrees for instance that Iranian exporters running the stands at food fairs face challenges unknown to their competitors from other countries. For the past year, Iran has been mostly shut out of the international banking system by Western sanctions imposed over Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.
Amir also agreed it was immature and juvenile when U.S. ambassador to the United Nations nuclear watchdog walked out of an agency meeting this Wednesday in protest when Iran’s representative accused Washington’s ally Israel of ‘genocide’ towards the Palestinians.
Former president and Western puppet Khatami publicly backed defeated candidate Mirhossein Mousavi during the 2009 presidential election, which reformists said was rigged. Iran denied the accusation and has put Mousavi under house arrest for more than two years, along with fellow opposition leader Mehdi Karoubi.
We remember this nasty piece of propaganda (discretion advised)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=185vPe_gROA&feature=channel_page
“Former president and Western puppet Khatami ”
Mark; Isn’t Khatami a big supporter of Hezbollah? Is that a cover for him?
Really Mary your rubbishing technique has hit something of a new low. If anyone bothers to look at the RWB website they will see that it is more than prepared to criticise Western governments when they take action that damages the freedom of the press or where journalists are threatened. But nevertheless in your mission to inform you are prepared to give preference to sources such as PressTV or Russia Today whose sponsors are not above murdering the odd journalist or two and whose standard response to those sections of the press with whom they disagree is harassment and often much worse.
Those with reasonable memories also might remember that in the past RWB was a strong supporter of Wikileaks and even for a time ran a mirror site for Wikileaks. They had a fairly public falling out with Wikileaks over Wikileaks failure to redact the names of certain Afghan informers whose lives were then put at risk – something which the more sensible elements within Wikileaks acknowledges as a failure, but I daresay member of the cult now see RWB as having a somewhat lower standing than their current favourites in Russia and Ecuador (the RWB has lots of details regarding respect for press freedom in those countries btw).
I know where the 99.9% stand when it comes to deciding whether it is RWB or PressTV/RussiaToday/the Assad Broadcasting Corporation which represents a more informative and accurate organisation in reporting on matters regarding press freedom.
Re the reason why PressTV was banned in the UK the simple answer is that they broke our law which requires that whoever holds the broadcasting licence should be the same person/entity that controls the broadcaster, which is an eminently sensible law at least in my eyes. PressTV were given the opportunity to put this right but declined to do so. There was also the little matter of an unpaid fine for broadcasting an interview obtained under duress from a foreign journalist that the thugs who control Iran had arrested. If anyone wants the background they can find it here http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/jan/20/iran-press-tv-loses-uk-licence
Of course you could just dismiss this as the work of a troll/shill/agent of Mossad etc.etc.
Our MSM at it as usual
From Medialens:
“Death Of A Bogeyman – The Corporate Media Bury Hugo Chávez”
“Following the death of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez on March 5, the BBC reported from the funeral:
‘More than 30 world leaders attended the ceremony, including Cuban President Raul Castro, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.’
‘A message was read out from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.’
“Following the same theme, a BBC article appeared beneath a grim photo montage of Osama bin Laden, Chávez, Kim Jong-il, Muammar Gaddafi, Fidel Castro and Saddam Hussein. The report asked: ‘Is the era of the anti-American bogeymen at an end?”
http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/alerts-2013/724-death-of-a-bogeyman-the-corporate-media-bury-hugo-chavez.html
And while we are at it we might wish to consider which account of press freedom in Uzbekistan is a better reflection of reality is it this
http://en.rsf.org/uzbekistan.html or is the non existent criticism of Uzbek human rights violations to be found on the Russia Today and Voice of Russia websites? I’ll let Mary and Mark decide for themselves.
Res Diss says to Mary;
“you are prepared to give preference to sources such as PressTV or Russia Today whose sponsors are not above murdering the odd journalist or two and whose standard response to those sections of the press with whom they disagree is harassment and often much worse.”
And that’s precisely the position in the UK and US too.
The main reason people are interested in Press TV and RT is that they tell the stories that US and UK media downplay or ignore, so you’ll be better informed as a result. In the case of Press TV and RT their motivations actually work to the interests of a US or UK population who want to be better informed.
“and one must exercise judicious judgement in forming opinions on so called ‘free speech’ and media freedom.”
And what should that judgement be based upon – your opinion of the regime suppressing free speech and media freedom. Real ends justify the means stuff on your part I’m afraid.
Res Diss wails about:
“the non existent criticism of Uzbek human rights violations to be found on the Russia Today”
“The last release of WikiLeaks diplomatic cables has shown that US special services continue to co-operate with Uzbekistan, despite acknowledging the violations of human rights that have taken place in this country since its foundation 20 years back.”
http://rt.com/politics/violates-human-rights-us-219/
Oh dear…
Herbie
By all means be misinformed by PressTV and RT but just reflect that here in the UK you can indulge such a human right and the chances of being murdered are somewhat less than in Iran or Russia. And where do you go to be informed of all the things in Iran and Russia that the regimes there don’t want you to hear?
@ Resident Dissident :
“Of course you could just dismiss this as the work of a troll/shill/agent of Mossad etc.etc.”
You must be joking, RD, of course she won’t. She rarely has the guts to defend the substance (such as it is) of any of her posts, she leaves it to members of DOMA (*) to do the job for her (and there are enough of those “useful fools” around).
(*) Defenders of Mary Association
PS – I haven’t been following this closely, but as far as I can gather her post was doing the dirt on Reporters sans fontiéres? Has RSF been criticising one of her favorite states and/or butchers?
I was thinking it was too good to last. We have had about eight hours of peace and harmony and they are back with their hectoring, interrogations, cross examinations and hole picking. They do not like to hear some truths and will not accept that any opinion opposite to theirs is acceptable.
Clear off.
PS I have already said that there will be never any reply forthcoming to the RI from me.
Herbie
And how many news articles were there on Uzbekistan altogether and how many mentioned human rights? Particularly after the UZbeks agreed not to have any foreign military bases last August? Of course RT will attack Karimov if he is getting too cosy with the US – which is really the story being reported in the article to which you link.
And for your next task you can go and look for RT’s sustained campaign against human rights abuses in Belarus – good luck.
Res Diss
Where’s the misinformation in RT?
What they do is correct the misinformation in US and UK media. It’s actually a very good station, far far better than the tiresome propaganda you get at the BBC.
The whole point is that US and UK media protect their paymasters by lying to us. That’s fairly obvious to even the most ill-informed twit at this stage. What RT does is provide those stories which are an embarrassment to US and UK paymasters.
“They do not like to hear some truths and will not accept that any opinion opposite to theirs is acceptable”
Rather your speciality, I should have said.
And now tug at our heart-strings again with another personal anecdote, it’s a great tactic.
Res Diss
You claimed, that “criticism of Uzbek human rights violations” in RT was “non existent”.
I showed that your claim was wrong.
It’s a reminder that you make extravagant claims which turn out to be false and a warning to other readers to scrutinize your claims more closely.
Habbakuk responds to Mary’s:
“They do not like to hear some truths and will not accept that any opinion opposite to theirs is acceptable”
with:
“Rather your speciality, I should have said.”
And wrong again!!
RT provides the balance to a stodgy diet of US and UK media. That’s the whole point!
Mary
And which truths did you provide? A link to Press TV and ignoring what RWB say about press freedom in Iran because they don’t meet the same exacting standards for independence as Press TV and RT? Are you prepared to account for anything that you say?
Please note that I have had no communication with H yet he/she comes in on this page with one go at Nevermind, another at Doug Scorgie, then follows with a derogatory indirect comment about me to Resident Dissident and then a direct obscure dig at me above. Was talking about the price of chicken feed ‘a tug at the heart strings’ or maybe the visit to the pigs? I think not. He/she becomes more ridiculous by the day. Even the use of the word ‘tactic’ is telling. Crazy.
The men in red have chosen a new pope.
Herbie
No problems with being scrutinised – I look forward towards your scrutiny of my response and the little task I set you on Belarus.
“Where’s the misinformation in RT?”
Might I suggest the buckets of whitewash it throws over the activities of its paymasters – if you think that there is no self interest in their corrections of what you say is misreporting in the West then you are being incredibly naive. If you wish to understand the Russian regime better might I suggest the novels of Mario Puzo