Switzerland will still go to any lengths to protect the ultra-rich dictators and mafia who flock there. Mutabar Tadjibaeva – multiple rape victim, survivor of repeated torture and still dogged human rights activist, is wanted for questioning by Geneva Police for the crime of ringing the bell of Gulnata Karimova’s 25 million dollar house and asking to speak to her.
That is absolutely all she did. I know, as I was there and did it too. We both left our visiting cards, took some photos from the streets so the children of Uzbekistan could see where the profits from their slave labour in the cotton fields went, and then we left on the bus, as we came.
Uzbekistan is the World’s sixth most corrupt country according to Transparency International. I doubt one in ten of the houses in Cologny is bought with earned money. This is Gulnara’s 25 million dollar home, with the cranes then building a massive extension at the back.
I can understand that Gulnara does not want people to know she lives at 7 Rue Prevote (both e’s have acutes), Cologny, Geneva. A weird, weird village that also houses Gulanara’s sister Lola and the children of the Presidents of Kazakhstan and Armenia, among others. There are lterally thousands of CCTV cameras. At this time of year none of the homewoners are there, just security guards in Adidas wear. The only noise is the barking of guard dogs. The 4 wheel drive Porsches, Range Rovers and Mercedes G wagons are sat still and cold on the drives.
That a speaker at the FIDH human rights film festival is harassed in this way is bad enough. But Mutabar was also there to give formal depositions in human rights cases to the United Nations. That dictatorships can use the Geneva police to harass dissidents visitng the UN is scarcely healthy.
Switzerland attempted to clean up its image as the repository of illegal cash by adopting anti money-laundering legislation. But that legislation specifically exempts real estate – you can buy your Cologny mansion without having in any way to declare how you got all that cash. The ever corrupt Swiss exempted it because Switzerland makes money from it. Outbreaks of democracy on the streets of Cologny are liable to be bad for property values – hence the interest of the Geneva police, in the world’s best disguised fascist state.
I wonder in I can interest Occupy and the human rights groups in an annual summer camp for activists at Cologny? Let’s give the Geneva police some more difficult field of anti-democratic harassment than a small torture victim.
^and that folks — is show Business.
Take a bow Hubbubcook.
Habbakuk
You don’t appear to have defined your terms above. This relates to my observation yersterday that your claim to “refining terms for accuracy”, is a nonsense believed only by yourself.
If your dispute with others arises over usage of the term “fascism”, then it’s very very dim that you don’t yourself say what you mean by it.
Don’t you know?
Mutabar should not have had any fear. Swiss police would have only asked her some questions and seeing no bad intent would let her go. For sure they would not arrest her. There is no offence in ringing somebody’s door. Police in Geneva have experience with various activists and events, it has happened in Geneva many times before, many dictators used to (or still) have houses and mansions in Confederatio Helvetica.
Now, for those who are looking at the Google images of the houses, I would advice not to asses the grandeur of the mansions, rather, how much they were paid for. Everyone here in Switzerland knows how it works. Money-laundering. You offer 10 million for a 3 million house, and then get your 6 million back in cash and one million goes to get the seller of the house interested in the deal. The prices are not fixed here, aproximate. Similarly, Lola who paid 42 million francs, and Gulnora who paid 21 million francs for their relatively small houses, intended not only to buy a house, but also get some real cash money on their accounts. That explains why they keenly overpaid (through canton Zug based Zeromax I suppose? It is where German companies who did not get paid 68 mln euros for their work in UZB, have to look for their money, in Geneva).
The idea of “occupying” those places sounds hilarious.
PS: One should not forget that the Swiss also often freeze bank accounts of former dictators, especially if money is not flowing in anymore, and the person is not at business or power. That happened with ex African dictators. Kazakh president also knows the bitter taste of such a “moody” character of the Swiss. His 200 million USD was blocked after bribery allegations, and Swiss banks agreed only to pay back 80 million USD to charity funds in Kazakhstan with a certain expiration date. Lola and Gulnora should not think that the overly friendly Swiss will not turn their backs when suddenly the family is not at power anymore or kick on their bottoms.
Does anybody know any other government in this pity world, whose embassies abroad try to get own citizens into a prison (whom it is supposed to protect)? 🙂
Sounds like a fair stick Zokirsho, but mightn’t play out, like Pinochet?
@ Herbie :
I think that you might agree that most educated people know what fascism is (was). Those who don’t could profitably read up on those two egregious examples of fascism in practice, pre-war Italy and Germany.
So, whereas it might be very, very silly of me not to define every word I use in my comments, it is even sillier for you, in the light of those two examples, to ask for a definition of fascism and sillier still, in the light of those two same examples, for people like Clark to claim that the US, the EU and Australia are “fascist” states.
Habbakuk
You may well think that most educated people know what fascism is, but it’s not quite that simple I’m afraid.
That’s why I asked you what you meant by the term. You’d agree surely that if your dispute with others is their use of the term, inappropriately you say, then you’d really need to be clear yourself on what precisely you mean by it.
So what was it about these German and Italian regimes that made them examples of fascism. It’s a straighforward question.
What are the defining features of fascism, according to you.
Sweden, like Switzerland claimed neutrality during the Nazi’s heydays, but they laundered the gold taken from Holocaust victims, had poor refugee provisions, if any at all, and have never apologized for their culpability.
No, they didn’t wear storm-trooper togs, or SS skull and crossbones, but they might as well have.
The worst type of Nazi is the stealth Nazi.
Habbabkuk (La vita è bella!)
5 Mar, 2013 – 5:06 pm
You say:
“I think that you might agree that most educated people know what fascism is (was).”
From various strands on Wikipedia:
“Fascists seek to unify their nation through a totalitarian state that seeks the mass mobilization of the national community.”
The USA after 9/11?
“Fascists are hostile to liberal democracy, socialism, and communism.”
The USA? Israel?
“Fascist movements share certain common features, including the veneration of the state, a devotion to a strong leader, and an emphasis on ultra-nationalism, ethnocentrism, and militarism.”
The USA? Israel?
“Fascism views political violence, war, and imperialism as a means to achieve national rejuvenation and asserts that “superior” nations and races should attain living space by displacing weak and inferior ones.”
The USA? Israel?
You say:
“Those who don’t [know what fascism is] could profitably read up on those two egregious examples of fascism in practice, pre-war Italy and Germany.”
See:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8316271.stm
Not quite so simple is it?
errr…you forgot the collusion and merging of government and corporatism – leading to a communist state run by corporate interests…
@ Herbie : have you morphed into a schoolmaster asking questions of his pupils?
You know perfectly well what fascism is, I know it, and most educated people know it. And most intelligent people know that it is absurd to call the US, the EU and Australia “fascist”. That is the essential point, and I’m not going to help you distact people’s attention from it by entering into any silly-clever question and answer session which you will seek to draw out for ever.
By the way, do you consider the US, the EU and Australia to be fascist?
Habbakuk writes
“You know perfectly well what fascism is, I know it, and most educated people know it.”
Why Habbakuk’s continued reluctance to define the term “fascism”, despite his argument being about inappropriate use of the term.
Is there a worry perhaps that the details may be all too familiar.
Come now pseuds – theres no time for this mental masturbation. Is Westminster, the EU and the USA not slowly and plainly merging with the corporations? Yes i think is the answer
Uzbek,
thanks again I will add the titles you recommend to my reading list. I don’t want to be misunderstood though – imagining and speculating is precisely what I wish to avoid. It is a natural human tendency to imagine the worst and to speculate endlessly in the absence of information as this blog demonstrates amply.
I expect to find that the Swiss banks are very effective at attracting international hoarders including those of the evil dictator variety. For me that is beyond dispute. It is also not at all surprising that we don’t know about the dictators’ accounts until after they are formally accused of crimes in a legal sense. That is client confidentiality, not exclusively a Swiss prerogative. Do you know of any banks around the world that publish lists of their most notorious clients? Why demand a higher standard of the Swiss?
I also wonder about this – financial advisers invariably talk of spreading the risk. Dictators presumably get the same eggcellent advice 😉 Are they then ignoring it? Or are there less transparent tax havens even than Switzerland that we don’t hear about.
The really interesting questions to me are these. Is there a practical way to implement an unambiguous legal framework that would allow the banks to distinguish between evil dictators and merely borderline corrupt authoritarians? What would be the legal test. And, can we reasonably expect the Swiss authorities to take unilateral action in this regard?
My original question was if there is credible evidence that the Swiss financial sector welcomes dirty money more than any other financial sector. It still stands, because I can see another reason for Swiss banks’ popularity with this type of ‘investor’, namely the Swiss franc’s proven track record of resistance to debasement.
With regard to Craig’s extrapolations from the irregular / incomprehensible facts of this incident. Generalising from a statistical sample of one is very poor practice.
Several have mentioned negative experiences arising from visiting Switzerland. I think they experienced culture shock. I have experienced it myself several times in my life, most recently on moving from Surrey to Bucks 🙂 Joking aside though, the first 3-6 months are always tough and I remember being constantly wound up by some of the Swiss peculiarities. It soon wore off. I also hated it with a passion on first arrival in Marseille, but regretted having to leave at the end of a year’s stay. My very first culture shock – England at the age of 16, lasted a whole year. After 14 months living in London I intentionally went back to (Soviet then) Ukraine, leaving my parents and sister behind in London. The events of August 1991 scappered my plan. It was in that first year in London that I experienced my only arrest – Metropolitan police officers decided that I was far too foreign to be allowed to remain in the strategic location of Green Park tube station exit (my job was handing out free advertising magazines). Several hours in a cell without explanation was a valuable lesson. By comparison the Swiss police spot check in a Zurich street was a breeze – though surprised to find such an obvious eastern European type carrying a UK passport, they apologised and let me on my way. You can see I won’t be falling for ‘our police are better than their police’ fairy tales.
If you like to Swiss-bash and you need ammo you could do a lot worse than reading David Hampshire’s Living and Working in Switzerland. Highly recommended, though no substitute for actual experience. Plenty of examples of infuriating (to a Brit) Swissness.
Craig, and others – generalising naively about ‘the Swiss’ and ‘Switzerland’ has its pitfalls. It is a confederation in practice and not merely in word, meaning that only those powers are delegated to the federal level that the cantons willingly give away (canton is in practice represented by local parliament which is constrained by the people through referendum and initiative rights). The Swiss federal government is not omnipotent as we reflexively assume based on our only experience of governments – our own shamocratic ones. Factor in the considerable cultural differences between the German and French cantons and any generalisations about the Geneva police practices being ‘very Swiss’ are plainly bunk. Again. How very Craig Murray 😉
> Except they still want to question her about this non-incident.
Just wondering – how was she “informed” that she was wanted by the police ? In written form ? If not could it some sort of hoax ?
Sorry my bad – just realized by reading the “Temps” article that she was called over the phone by a french speaking individual. Did she – or anyone else – validate that the call was really from the Geneva police. Did the person introduce itself ? I certainly don’t want to exonerate them of anything yet but do we know for fact that this was really the local authorities calling ?
Thank you, Evgeni, for your two posts; it is refreshing to read comments which have been thought out and based (although I realise that this can not always be the case) on facts and personal experience rather than abstract theorizing and blind hearsay or, worse, prejudice. As I know Switzerland rather well, I would endorse what you say.
I do however find that you are somewhat hard on Craig in the last sentence of your second post. Craig has admitted that his comment about Switzerland being fascist was a polemical one and that’s fair enough, I guess. Far more objectionable (and ill-founded) were the comments from various Eminences who were obviously unable to resist adding another figure to their demonology (the EU, the global Zionist plot, the Rothschilds, the corporations, the USA, the climate change “deniers” et ainsi de suite…).
“Let us overlook the fact that individuals like Clark and Never-a-mind obviously have no idea of what facism is.”
Let us overlook that Habbakuk does not really know much about his own history never mind that of Germany.
Firstly, its fascism, dear old boy, your personal piss taking aside, tell us
are you really a prick or do just carry it up your backside.
please elucidate.
@Uzbek in the UK
Thanks for the info about your country. I think I understand the business environment very well in your country – nobody makes any money there without paying off Lola and Gulnara, although some of the ways they extract profits from businesses are not evident to many people in the U.K. and are perhaps not straightforward to understand without an understanding of corporate finance – Gulnara knows all about how to create “economic rents” from scarcity and how to secure them for herself to the exclusion of her business partners. The phoney exchange rate is also great for ripping off foreign businesses. It is not for nothing Uzbekistan is usually in the bottom five or six most corrupt countries in the world, year after year. And of course Gulnara has extra options like chucking people into jail if they don’t do what she wants.
President Karimov can’t have another term as President after this one, and I think he has not much time left, so the jockeying for succession must already have started. The more forex you have stashed outside the country, the more power you have, hence Gulnara’s $10m Moscow apartment. I have been searching in countries that Uzbekistan Airways airline flies to. I will not be surprised if she has properties in Spain, France, the UAE and even in Thailand and Iran. (There have even been articles about her in the Persian language press).
The purpose of writing to Teliasonera is so that the CEO can’t get out of knowing just how unsafe it is to have any business interests in Uzbekistan. Gulnara and Lola are addicted to theft, so of course they will suck every cent out of Ucell (Teliasonera’s Uzbek subsidiary) at some point, and then the Teliasonera shareholders at some future AGM will be able to sack their CEO. It is interesting Takilant didn’t exercise its put option to force Teliasonera to increase its stake in Ucell for an extortionate sum of Swedish Krone.
I think the USA and UK would be wise to do a volte face on supporting Karimov as soon as we have got our troops out of Afghanistan. The damage Lola and Gulnara are doing is incalculable. And of course if Iran collapses, we might not even need Uzbekistan any more to keep our troops in Afghanistan supplied with all the morale boosting stuff from home they need.
@ Never-a-mind (11h01) :
“Let us overlook that Habbabkuk does not really know much about his own history never mind that of Germany”
The above comment is a substantive and thoughful addition to the debate, but is unfortunately marred by two small flaws :
1/. when you say “your own history”, I suppose you don’t mean my own personal life story but the history of my country? Just tell which that country is and I’ll tell you if you’re right or not.
2/. I know enough about the history of Germany for present purposes. But please fell free to point out any error of historical fact I may have made.
I await your answers with bated breath.
Your Rektor,
Dr Dr Habbabbkuk
Habbabkuk,
it was a tit for tat. I was recycling Craig’s polemic technique to expose how silly it is. Only 0.3% of readership are likely to read his admission, most will remember only the headline. This is how MSM operate. If he adopts their method he ought to understand the consequences – in case they turn out to be not as intended.
Ms. Tadjibaeva has got a mention here.
http://www.uznews.net/news_single.php?lng=ru&sub=top&cid=30&nid=22289
Millions of Ordinary teachers, doctors and nurses are being deprived of their miserable wages by the government, stating that is a ‘payment’ for the gaz supply.In fact, no one seen neither used gaz throughout minus twenty winter colds, neither during cold spring.
So there their money go…Switzland!Geneva…God Dumn them all.
Your post was very informative thank you for that
Another purchased damage-limitation article replete with soft slightly out-of-focus photo of herself in a WHITE blouse; but clean of theft of hundreds of millions of dollars, she is not. The article is “exclusif” – well it would be if you pay Bilan to write about you.
http://www.bilan.ch/economie-les-plus-de-la-redaction/gulnara-karimova-des-adversaires-ont-associe-mon-nom-cette-affaire
Gulnara = fleur de Grenadine. LMAO.