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.
Well done Craig and friend.
Can we see the photos anywhere?
This is the Google map short URL for that address. No street view – what a surprise. http://goo.gl/maps/tI2cK It looks like a building site with the crane etc. Is it the one next door?
Occupy Connaught Street too. Mr and Mrs Bliar’s home, or the main one to be correct.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2204154/Tony-Blair-takes-4-2m-loan-central-London-des-res-U-S-bank-advises.html
Should be easy to spot from the plod presence outside. His protection costs the taxpayers £250k pa and I bet that is an understatement.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2192814/Blairs-400-000-year-taxpayers-Multi-millionaire-ex-PM-enjoys-perks-pension.html
There seems to be an absence of snapshots on google maps of this particular location, I sense it may be your civic duty to place your location shots of the dwelling into the public domain, so we can all enjoy the view.
The address is No. 7 Chemin de la Prévôté, Cologny, Geneva. Put it in Google maps and use Street View to see the tower crane and the building work that was being done at the time. Also check out her sister’s place across the golf course at No. 14 Chemin Vert, Vandoeuvres, Geneva. While Uzbeks struggle to get forex at the official rate, these two crooks don’t seem to have any problem. The article in L’Hebdo here tells how Lola and her husband overpaid by about 20m Swiss francs (7000 per sq metre when the going rate was half that). Andrew Rosenfeld (yes, one of our Labour party supporters), the vendor probably did not have 24 carat gold loo seats, so I guess the overpayment on the price really was an overpayment due to the easy availability of funds from theft.
Pete
Don’t worry we will! Absence on google somewhat intersting.
…. the film ‘looking for Gulnara’ coming soon, promise…
Well done! Respect to you and Mutabar for your demonstration against a country which harbours criminals of all nationalities, and protects their ill-gotten gains from being returned to those from whom they stole them.
The link I forgot is here
http://www.hebdo.ch/la_saga_des_karimova_77690_.html
“our Labour party…” should have been “your Labour party… ”
“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. ”
There is a Swiss law to prevent people using money derived from crime to set up home there. Gulnara and Lola may have circumvented scrutiny of their funds by having UN and UNESCO jobs that come with an automatic “autorisation valable de séjour”. There was a formal written question asked by a Mme Lydia Schneider Hausser about it here:
http://www.ge.ch/grandconseil/data/…/IUE01175A.pdf
Gulnara doesn’t exactly get a good press in the West, nor does her father. If I were them I’d be a bit worried as to the longevity of their operation. It’s almost as if they’re being set up for a future fall.
Apparently she doesn’t like being called a “dictator’s daughter”.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2013/01/12/songs-of-a-tyrant-meet-googoosha-dictators-daughter-and-pop-star/
Kudos old boy !!
KarimovaRevengeFantasist 4 Mar, 2013 – 11:17 am
I did in the first comment and left a link. There is no street view only the satellite overhead view.
PS and OT The Cleggovers are using the same school as the Bliars for their eldest child, The London Oratory, a Catholic state school we are told.
Not to say anything bad about all Swiss nationals but Switzerland is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Yes, yes. Corruption has many faces. It could be blunt and brutal like in Uzbekistan or it could be modern or (white collar) like in Switzerland. Swiss economy is so adopted the nature of money laundering (financial operations in Swiss language) that they are totally depended on this nowadays. It was bad enough when in 70th and 80th Soviet Communist party high flyers ‘invested’ in Switzerland it is much worse now when almost all dictatorships in the world have accounts in Swiss banks and set up companies in Switzerland.
I am afraid that Swiss government will do nothing against it. It is too important for Switzerland and they care too LITTLE about Human Rights in places like Uzbekistan.
Oh, diddums you. The Swiss population is no more incensed about stuff that doesn’t directly affect them than say, the population of the UK, USA or some other shamocracy. How dare they be the same as us i.e. human. Your use of ‘fascist’ in the title is curious to say the least – feeling emotional? If fascist is reserved for Switzerland, what is left for the truly anti-democratic regimes like the EU and its founding member states.
Above directed at Craig’s article, not Uzbek.
Uzbek,
have you got a source for all the corruption stuff in the Swiss financial sector? The thing is, although the Swiss in general are probably not all that interested in foreign dictators’ money, they are nowhere near as politically apathetic as people in the UK, and unlike people in the UK they can affect change. So in principle, foreign dictators should not be any more welcome there than say the UK, Luxemburg or any other tax haven.
However the Swiss have just voted to cap executive pay:
http://www.euractiv.com/euro-finance/swiss-vote-executive-pay-curbs-news-518209
‘mon the Swiss.
Evgueni
You fail entirely to address the question of why the Geneva police wish to question Mutabar Tadjibaeva
They look like big houses! Before my system went down I had discovered that if you leave the 7 off the street name Google maps give it. We just need to know in what direction to go when the Chemin de la Prévôté, Cologny, Geneva meets Ch. Cheneviére-Munier when Ch. Cheneviére-Munier. Advice please Mr. Murray.
Evgeuni’s comments have much merit and I second them.
“Fascist” Switzerland? I don’t think so.
Your post comes at a particularly curious time when you note that Switzerland is the first country to vote – by popular initiative referendum (this feature of the Swiss Consitution itself being the very antithesis of fascism)a limitation – to limit the amount of money executives can pay themselves and to limit bonuses and golden handshakes and goodbyes to a more decent amount.
*********
La vita è bella (ed anche la Svizzera!)
Correction:
They look like big houses! Before my system went down I had discovered that if you leave the 7 off the street name Google maps shows it. We just need to know in what direction to go when the Chemin de la Prévôté, Cologny, Geneva meets Ch. Cheneviére-Munier, when Ch. Cheneviére-Munier is on the right. Advice please Mr. Murray.
Evgueni, I’ve always appreciated your comments about Direct Democracy in Switzerland, and I tend to accept your arguments that it improves matters for the Swiss. But the substance of Craig’s post highlights a general failing of nation-state democracy; no matter how good it is, no matter how much it heightens citizen involvement within a country, the voters have decreasing direct experience of their country’s influence the further you look beyond their border. For international matters, the feedback process is degraded.
This does not imply that direct democracy has zero influence upon foreign policy. Matters concerning, for instance, the sending of troops to fight in distant lands, have routes of direct feedback upon the home population, as it is citizens themselves and their friends and relatives who would be sent to fight. But we would expect the effectiveness of the feedback to be diminished beyond the voting boundary.
Direct Democracy for the entire globe!
@ Craig (Murray) :
You say that someone is wanted for questioning for the “crime” of ringing a doorbell. To classify ringing a doorbell as a crime would indeed be strange : can you enlighten us as to which article of the Swiss Penal Code this action might fall under; idem which article of any of the codes of the Canton or City of Génève?
Furthermore, I believe it is legal – in Switzerland as in most other countreis – to protect your home with CCTV cameras, guard dogs or any other means provided that these means are not contrary to law. Are these meaans contrary to Swiss law?
Geneva’s an absolute toilet, been once, won’t go again.
“Geneva’s an absolute toilet, been once, won’t go aqain”
Relevance, DtP ?
Let’s not forget that Switzerland’s corruption surfaced big-time during the Iran-Contra scandal, and was not cleaned up by the Swiss legislature or the American Congress, especially John Kerry’s most limited sub-committee inquiry into the massive plot.
Geneva became the center of the cover-ups when Uwe Barschel, the former premier of West Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein, was murdered in Geneva’s Beau-Rivage Hotel, for wanting answers for Iran-Contra’s use of the province for Its illegal arms shipments. CiA’s Executive Action Chief Ted ‘Blond Ghost’ Shackley apparently lured him there, and had him drugged, and a deadly suppository put up his anus which killed him. He was found, floating in the bathroom tub.
His murder had been caused by the fiasco which was triggered by the assassination of Sweden’s Olof Palme – what was intended to end the Cold War without nuclear armageddon – and those in the know were dropping like flies or were being rounded up for life-long prison terms to avoid disclosure of the the vast fiasco.
Barschel would probably have been lured to a hotel in Cologny, but doesn’t have any. The Beau Rivage was only than two miles away, making it the ideal site for the state-sponsored assassination, more and more of which are drawing renewed interest in their unsolved or inadequately solved status.
Given the USA’s central role in all this, particularly Kerry’s efforts, it doesn’t look like Washington will want to do much about any of it.
Well at least the buses and trains run on time…
Ha! P Philip said that apparently about the Third Reich.
Prince Philip pictured at Nazi funeral
by ANDREW LEVY, Daily Mail
Last updated at 09:17 06 March 2006
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-379036/Prince-Philip-pictured-Nazi-funeral.html
Craig, it’s an interesting situation. Presumably, the police wish to question Mutabar Tadjibaeva because someone at Karimova’s house has made a complaint, presumably fabricated. But the police apparently don’t wish to question you, and yet you were a witness. Probably, the complaint didn’t mention you, for obvious reasons.
Could this be a silly assumption by the people at Karimova’s house that if you report an “undesirable”, the police will inevitably drag them in and intimidate them, like they would back home? If house security did submit a complaint, the police may have a duty to investigate, even though the complaint was dishonest.
I’ve read the article by using Guugel Tronslaight, but I’m not sure how to interpret the words “convene” and “mandate”.
Evgueni
It is interesting that you question me on this instead of doing some very basic research on the internet and finding a lot more than below.
http://www.avaaz.org/en/stealing_from_haiti
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/03/switzerland-identifies-1bn-dictators-assets
http://www.dailypressdot.com/former-arab-dictators-have-money-in-swiss-banks/757033/
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-Issues/2011/0225/Swiss-freeze-Qaddafi-assets-How-dictators-stash-their-cash-101
http://en.novayagazeta.ru/politics/8654.html
And also ‘Currently an estimated 28 percent of all funds held outside the country of origin (sometimes called “offshore” funds) are kept in Switzerland’. Guess whose money are this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Switzerland
Clark,
You are right of course that honest swiss police need to investigate a claim made by most certain dishonest people.
The irony here is that they (honest swiss police) are going to interrogate the victim of multiple physical as well as psychological abuse by the very people who made this (possibly dishonest claim). The bottom line here is that for swiss police (and presumably the government) it is much more convenient (or honest) to deal with people whose hands are deep in human blood (but also whose accounts are in multimillion swiss franks) than with those who suffer abuse and want to just speak to some of their abusers and (possibly) find out answers to some questions that should be concern of any liberal western society (especially the one that of permanent neutrality).
Dr Fischer of Geneva is a great book. Graham Greene was not only a genius as a writer, but a brilliant social analyst, aside from his universally acknowledged genius at dissecting personal ethical dilemmas.