The Magnitsky Myth & Other Keys

to the Geopolitical Hoax of the Century – Page 1

  

 

     "Russian girls would throw themselves at you – and into your bed – almost upon meeting. There was no sport to it at all, no chase, no courting,” Bill Browder says of his life before he was barred from entering Russia and convicted of multi-million-dollar tax-evasion.

 

  Hermitage Capital’s main-man reveals how he courts the press: “Originally, we would give one reporter the whole story. They would want to check every bit of it out, get the other side’s point of view, or ignore it, seeing this as too complicated and time consuming to pursue. Now we give a small piece of the story to a journalist and let them know that we’ll give it to someone else in three days if they don’t write anything. It seems that journalists are more concerned about losing the story to a competitor than almost anything else.”

 

  Confident he’s master of media relations, Browder appears less comfortable speaking under oath. A February 3, 2015 video shows him barrelling into a woman, scrambling through a waiting car, then jogging off down a slushy New York City street in a failed attempt to avoid a subpoena. With Browder this night is friend Juleanna Glover  the lobbyist who helped advance his dishonest "Magnitsky Act" agenda through Washington, DC's political corridors. Glover is better known for her stint as press secretary to Dick Cheney, former Halliburton-exec-and-US-VP, whose administration's orchestration of the catastrophic invasion of Iraq earlier this century – leaving an est. one million people dead and 7.6 million displaced – included use of  false intell claims re WMDs+.

 

  Private investigator Nicholas Casale succeeds in serving the legal papers – catching Browder at 6:44 pm as he leaves Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” taping (to promote his book, a ripping yarn about an evil empire and the tragic death of an accountant, Sergei Magnitsky). The thrill of the chase is evident in Casale Associates’ YouTube clip and this sporting encounter leads to a first date, (April 15, 2015), for Bill Browder – to be deposed by lawyer Mark Cymrot of BakerHostetler (the Prevezon case).

 

 

 Under-oath #1 no accounting for Sergei Magnitsky and Yakir Daniel Sha'ashoua (alt. spellings incl. Jakir, Shasoua, Sha’ashua + variants) in Bill Browder-fed-fantasy

 

  And so begins this series to let Bill Browder’s own words and deeds, and those of his team and network, dispel “The Magnitsky Myth

 

William F. Browder Videotaped Deposition #1 Transcript

.

Shredded Browder's credibility, and key elements of his Magnitsky myth, in his first video-taped deposition April 15, 2015 – full transcript of which can be viewed/downloaded by clicking the image above

 

Prevezon Exhibit 5 - Bill Browder myths exposed

 

  American government investigators chose to rely upon Browder and co. falsities – click on the above image to read more

 

USA c. Prevezon - Bill Browder undone

 

  Browder and the Hermitage narrative undone – click on the above image to read more, and, for the full court docket, click here

 

  As time allows, I’ll draw from my own files – for a prequel of sorts – tracing Bill Browder’s path from protégé of press-baron Robert Maxwell (prior to “The Bouncing Czech”s mysterious death-by-drowning in ’91) and billionaire Edmond Safra (before the banker’s mysterious death-by-smoke-inhalation in ’99) to his own turn at the helm. Safra seeded Hermitage and his Republic National Bank of New York was involved with more than a dozen dodgy deals on Canada’s stock exchanges (which is how, and where, I first learned of Safra, Browder and co.’s dealings.)

 

   I  gave up active investigations of financial swindlers et al 20 years ago – my final case revealing the presence of Russian 'mafiya' money behind YBM Magnex International Inc. - which, at its peak in 1997/98, had a market cap of CDN $1billion on the Toronto Stock Exchange (and then went to $zero). David Peterson, former Ontario Premier, was among the directors of YBM before it was publicly exposed as a fraud and a front for Russian money-laundering.

 

BBC's "Panorama" program did a feature on Semion Mogilevitch, (“The Billion Dollar Don”), the eminence grise behind this and other North American paper-plays (alt. spellings incl. Semeon + Mogilevich). Here’s a link to the BBC documentary cued up to the TSE/Canadian segment:

 


In the 1990s, Russian criminals looked west, and western scammers looked east...

 

   Exposing corruption can be less-than-cheering work – and, so, it’s with huge pleasure that a recent return to this territory has introduced me to an inspiring person – the sort of journalist that I’d thought could no longer be found in America.

 

  Lucy Komisar's been on the front-lines of truth-telling since 1962/63 when she traveled from NY to Jackson, Mississippi to be a newspaper editor. Clayborne Carson, Stanford University Professor of History, entrusted by Coretta Scott King to edit and publish the papers of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., cites "Lucy's Komisar's Mississippi Free Press" alongside the SNCC's "Student Voice" as those journals that lit his awareness during the battle for black civil rights, especially in America's Deep South.

 

  Lucy K. also worked with/for Betty Friedan et al's National Organization for Women (NOW). A "freelancer" since 1969 she’s published in Scientific American, The Nation, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe etc. It's understating things to note Lucy's an amazing story herself. And a positive one :)

 

  Along with being a force for good in the civil rights and womens' rights movements, she's exposed kickback schemes behind US school lunch programs, authored a book on Corazon Aquino, another on feminism, and one on the history of the American welfare system. By the start of this century, Lucy Komisar's addressed the common denominator to the corruption and injustices she's exposed throughout her life - the financial rackets/racketeers. Her website is content-rich, with links to source documents, and containing info and analyses missing from today’s corporate and state press. “The Komisar Scoop” is akin to I.F. Stone’s “Weekly Reader” in this digital age. For her exceptional work, Lucy Komisar’s received the Gerald Loeb Award, the major US prize for financial journalism (est. 1957)

 

 

    Failure of our popular press contributes to the Magnitsky myth. Legendary journalist Lucy Komisar attends a session of the Council on Foreign Relations "think tank" in New York City, 05.12.2018, and questions why legacy media refuse to report the truth of this matter.

 

   “The Komisar Scoop” includes this great primer on Bill Browder-related matters: "Did Bill Browder's Tax Troubles in Russia Color Push for Sanctions?"  As well, Browder and cohorts merit a section, "The Browder Hoax"

 

  Helping us catch Browder under oath is journalist and teacher Lee Stranahan, co-host with Garland Nixon of "Fault Lines", who’s posted the entire 6 hours, 55 minutes, and 49 seconds of recorded deposition of Bill Browder in the Prevezon case @:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pu9DMxfTGhY - Part 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBjO0TIb7pw   -  Part 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9LsoeTKloE  -  Part 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPjZC7RAdu4  -   Part 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wb_DoXqibYs   -  Part 5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSF1qVYChlo   -   Part 6

 

  NB Stranahan and team note: For the full deposition transcript and other resources go to:  https://www.Populist.TV/Browder


 Safra's Golden Sweepstakes: Republic National Bank of New York

  “Edmond Safra! Safra was the owner of the Republic National Bank of New York, and his name was like gold,” claims the Bill Browder character in ‘Red Notice’ (a fictional autobiography of the Hermitage head honcho). “If Edmond Safra was willing to join this venture, it would be like winning the lottery.”


Edmond Safra - Republic National Bank of New York - photo

Edmond J. Safra – together with Beny Steinmetz funded Hermitage Capital/Fund's launch

 

  Browder and/or his ghost-writer chose to say it's "like" gold and it'd be "like" winning the lottery. In Canada, where I sit, Safra’s Republic National Bank of New York is associated with deals that proved quite unfortunate for the public in the 1990s – a time when Browder aspired to team up.

 

  In 1989, Forbes magazine's inimitable Joe Queenan branded the Vancouver Stock ExchangeScam Capital of the World.” Intense media glare on VSE-centric chicanery helped drive swindlers southward and due east to score their jackpots. On November 29, 1999 the scandal-ridden VSE was shuttered. Corrupt “venture capital” schemes, once the stock-in-trade of British Columbia’s marketplace, over the final decade of the 20th century brought notoriety to players in provinces of Alberta, Ontario and beyond

 

Sonartec aka Sonatel aka Cycomm: a certain sinking feeling

 

Illustrative of such currents are Canuck-harboured stock promotions of the era which received Republic National Bank of New York (RNBoNY)’s support. Cycomm International Inc. is a worthy exemplar.

 

Cycomm launched in 1986 on the Alberta Stock Exchange (ASE) as Sonartec North America Inc. (before changing its name to Sonatel Telecommunications Corp. and then Cycomm). A perennial money-loser and operational failure, Cycomm continually exaggerated and misrepresented the status and saleability of its “products”.

 

During 1986/87 it pitched allure of an air-propelled, ropeless, floatless, crab-pot (or trap) – a device to catch up to 900 pounds of marketable seafood per hour as it rose from the ocean’s depths. This would-be marine marvel, (or, at least, sketches of it), came to the Canadian stock-play by way of Robert Paul Martin, director of Sonartec Ltd. – a related entity listed on Australia’s exchange.

 

In July 1986, as Sonartec N.A. (Cycomm) was being floated in Canada, investigation ‘down under’ discovered serious problems endangering the Western Australia Teachers’ Credit Society. By 1987, a major political scandal erupted around it and several other Oz institutions+. In July ’87 Martin was charged with bribing a public servant, Len Brush, Chairman of WA’s State Superannuation Board. Found not guilty of paying off the pension fund manager, post-trial Robert Martin was charged with illegally tapping telephone lines of a witness in the bribery case. Convicted of phone-bugging the stock-and-land-dealing crab-pot visionary went to jail in 1990.

 

As well, in 1988/89 trading in the Alberta-listed stock by a London-based “bucket shop”, T.C. Coombs & Co., warrranted attention of securities investigators in Canada and the U.K. In 1991 British authorities shut down T.C. Coombs which had been dealing in various dodgy shares across Canada, Europe and Australia.

 

(By 1993/94, Coombs’ “guiding light”, Andrew Kent, cleared of “conspiracy to defraud” charges at a criminal trial held in London, was behind a shiny new venture – diamond exploration in Russia’s Arkhangel'sk region via Canadian-listed Archangel Diamond Corp. and its subsidiary, Almazny Bereg, said to be listed on the “Central Russian Universal Exchange”. Archangel attracted such institutions as Switzerland’s Banque Julius Baer and Lugano-based Banca del Gottardo plus a pipeload of controversy before, earlier this century, the enterprise dissolved through a liquidation trust in Colorado, USA. Good geology, as in this case, may not trump the motivations + machinations of those milling behind-the-scenes.)

 

Turbulence aside, Cycomm’s Canadian stock promotion sailed forth under a succession of corporate flags – heralding claims about, and touting enormous sales potential for, products that never materialized. From 1987 - 1991, Cycomm hyped three products which did not even exist in commercially viable form: the AdZapper, a non-existent black box that promised commercial-free-television home videotaping; the AdSwapper, a larger, equally non-existent, form of the AdZapper; and the PL2000 (an illusory black box billed as capable of converting telephone party-lines into single-use lines).

 

The AdZapper, AdSwapper and PL2000 were all said by Cycomm to be the inventions of Dieter Blum, a "widely respected" engineer who had "obtained both a Bachelor of Science degree from Basel University, Switzerland and a Masters of Science degree in Electronic Engineering from Roosevelt University, Belgium."

 

  The company could now point to a successful invention – Dieter Blum’s credentials. Blum, a high school drop-out with a string of fraud-related criminal convictions to his name, was serving time in a Canadian penal institution on charges of false pretenses at the time Cycomm certified he was receiving his degrees. To note that Basel University did not offer a Bachelor of Science degree and, further, that there is no Roosevelt University in Belgium may, under the circumstances, be academic. (Questioned in 1992, Cycomm's Vancouver, BC-based accountant, Steven M. Blacklock – a tax auditor with no pretense of being billed a lawyer – said efforts to confirm details with the non-existent Belgian university had been frustrated by summer recess and differences in time-zones.)

 

Republic National Bank of New York took down shares in two private placements – one tranche in late 1991, when the company was called Sonatel, and another tranche in June 1992 once Cycomm was its handle. RNBoNY also appears alongside key Cycomm players as shareholder in a Tasmanian entity (explored in greater detail in the next segment of this series). Ironically or not, Cycomm, in the wake of Robert Martin’s imprisonment for phone-hacking, shifted focus to promoting cellular voice privacy and encryption technologies.

 

In the upcoming instalment(s), we dive deeper into Cycomm and other dealings of Republic National Bank of New York, the flagship of Edmond Safra, Bill Browder’s mentor and role-model. We up-periscope to survey a social organization and cultural milieu in which “business as usual” can mean golden opportunities for insiders. And we follow colourful threads that unravel today’s “Magnitsky myth” and more.

 

Sonartec Ltd. windup

 

 

  Afterword: During the 1980s and ’90s I investigated white collar / organized crime. Joining forensic accountants, lawyers, police, journalists, victims – we did our best to track, expose and stop predation, pollution and other destructive acts. Reportage of those cases resides in archives of: Canada Stockwatch, The Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail, The Financial Post, Equity, Macleans, BC Business, The Financial Times of Canada, CBC fifth estate, CTV W5, HVG, Time, Forbes, Barron’s, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, US News & World Report, Businessweek, ABC TV Primetime Live, The Observer, The Economist, Channel Four Dispatches, BBC Panorama, ABC Radio Background Briefings and dozens more regional, national and international print and broadcast media outlets in Canada, the USA, Central + South America, Eastern + Western Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and ’ere else.

 

Author of a non-fiction chap-book, “Sideshow: The Howe Street Carnival”. Three-time recipient of the Western Magazine Award for Business features. In May of 1999, David Baines, intrepid reporter with The Vancouver Sun, and I received a National Newspaper Award (Canada’s top print journalism award) for our 1998 coverage of the YBM Magnex / Semion Mogilevitch story.

 

  In its acknowledgement, the NNA noted: The Vancouver Sun’s David Baines, working with freelance securities investigator and writer Adrian du Plessis, unraveled the intriguing tale of YBM Magnex International Inc., the Canadian company that operated as a money laundering vehicle for the Russian mafia. The Sun began its early work on the company’s murky business dealings and links to organized crime even as investors were driving its share prices to record levels on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Judges called it a thoroughly comprehensive effort that combined extraordinary initiative, research, analysis and writing."

 

 Semion Mogilevich - FBI Most Wanted - YBM Magnex International Inc. 300x388  Semion Mogilevich - FBI Most Wanted - YBM Magnex International Inc. 300x388 page 2

 

My last investigation before retiring from the field in the 1990s exposed the presence of Semion Mogilevitch and Russian 'mafiya' in North America's financial markets via YBM Magnex International Inc. Three years after breaking this case in Canada, state-side a new Director of the FBI was appointedRobert Mueller.

 

Semion Mogilevich YBM Magned FBI Most Wanted Robert Mueller

 

  That  was  then. I retired 20 years ago and had no plans to revisit this territory until our nation's public broadcaster, CBC Radio, in June 2018 aired news of a geopolitical hoax rooted in too-familiar, toxic, soil. At once singularly transparent and harmful, American-turned-British tax-evading con-man Bill Browder is now championing a pair of Russian fraudsters, Igor and Irina Bitkov, seeking refugee status and asylum in Canada.

 

KNIA - Scam of the Year - Igor and Irina Bitkov North West Timber Co. / Vilda Consult LLC

 

"SCAM OF THE YEAR" Igor and Irina Bitkov North West Timber Co. / Vilda Consult LLC: analyses published in Spring 2009 by KNIA = Kaliningrad Independent Information Agency click on cover to download full report (in Russian language). From at least 2005 onward, Russian media outlets exposed the activities of Igor and Irina Bitkov's NWTC and related entities – revealing the enterprise as a giant "Ponzi" / pyramid-type loans+-scheme.

 

  The propaganda campaign of Browder and co. includes various elements along with the Magnitsky myth. The bogus Bitkova efforts to recast Russian fraudsters as persecuted victims is another current key. Aiding this script is Canada's Ofelas Group (lawyers and publicists) and members of the USA's Helsinki Commission such as Chris Smith, Marco Rubio, Roger Wicker and Mike Lee.

 

Guatemala Human Rights Commission - Bitkova 1 Guatemala Human Rights Commission - Bitkova 2 Guatemala Human Rights Commission - Bitkova 3

 

  Guatemala Human Rights Commission responds to propaganda of Browder and co. and provides a thumbnail explanation of issues vis-a-vis the Bitkovs in that countryclick thumbnails to enlarge view

 

Bill Browder propagandizes Bitkov case - 1 Bill Browder propagandizes Bitkov case - 2 Roger Wicker propagandizes Bitkov case - 1

 

Above letters from con-man Bill Browder and US Republican Senator Roger Wicker to Alejandro Baltazar Maldonado Aguirre, President of the Republic of Guatemala (cc'd to then-US Secretary of State John Kerry and others) – click thumbnails to enlarge view

 

   Further, aided by politicians, bureaucrats, state intell, "think-tanks", lobbyists, lawyers and a legion of corporate + state journalists, Browder’s instigated enactment, in half-a-dozen countries, of “Magnitsky laws”named after Sergei Magnitsky, a tax accountant whom Browder falsely bills as “the lawyer’s lawyer”.

 

  Acts of Canada, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, the USA and UK are visible stains of a campaign founded on material misrepresentations, omissions of fact and flat-out lies.

 

 Sergei Magnitsky - G.V. Plekhanov Russian Economic University - 1993 diploma 500x375

 

  Sergei Magnitsky's university certification click image to see enlarged view 

 

In 1993 Sergei Magnitsky graduated from the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics "specializing in finance and credit". He subsequently worked in Moscow at Firestone Duncan, a firm offering tax and legal services. Through FD Magnitsky had the misfortune of working with/for Bill Browder and Hermitage. Employment and court records document that from 1995 onward Magnitsky was employed as an accountant and auditor, (certified as a qualified auditor in 1998), up until his arrest in connection with Hermitage-related tax evasion schemes – in 2008.

 

  Bill Browder calls Magnitsky "a thirty-five-year-old-attorney", "a highly educated tax lawyer" – "rumored never to have lost a case" at FD. So much of what's said by Browder and cohorts is plainly, demonstrably, misleading and/or false. Ivan Cherkasov, Hermitage COO, says of Sergei Magnitsky's experience with the Russian courts: "As a lawyer, uh, he understood that there is no law.”

 

Ivan Cherkasov - Hermitage Capital COO - Magnitsky Myth

 

  Ivan Cherkasov, Hermitage COO pictured above, falsely calls accountant Magnitsky a "lawyer"

 

  In civil, but not criminal, proceedings in Russia a layperson (ie. someone who's not a lawyer) can make an appearance – and this can save money on legal fees, among potential benefits. (If you choose, you can ask an accountant or plumber to help pull out your aching tooth. They may do as you ask – still, it won't make them a dentist however successful their extraction.) Magnitsky's certainly no lawyer. And, for Sergei, his wife, children, Mother and all loved ones there's untold tragedy in his meeting a group of people prepared to lie about so much more than his credentials.

 

  Positively, there’s a growing global community bringing full, true and plain disclosure.

 

It's not the "legacy" media speaking truth. It, so far, is MIA and/or misleading the public vis-a-vis the geopolitical hoax of Browder & co.

 

Right now, and for years, due diligence into these matters is being carried out by: the extraordinary American freelance journo Lucy Komisar; Andrei Nekrasov, Torstein Grude and Piraya Film AS Norway's multi-award-winning, Oscar-nominated, film production house behind revelatory documentary "The Magnitsky Act: Behind the Scenes" "based on a true story of a big lie"; Consortium News (the first-ever web-based investigative news magazine, founded in 1995 by Robert Parry, the, late, legendary reporter who broke key Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s published by Associated Press and Newsweek); always-incisive blogger Llamma; founder of Citizen Journalism School Lee Stranahan & team (whose current broadcast platform, Russia's Sputnik, on this topic, allows the sort of meaningful reportage that once found a home on state channels here in "the west" such as the UK's BBC & Canada's CBC); hedge-fund manager-turned-author, Croatia's Alex Krainer and others…

 

   NB Investigative journalist and author Robert I. Friedman, before his death in 2002, wrote a series of articles and books, including 2000's Red Mafiya (Little, Brown and Company), which are ground-breaking still and help illuminate the path today.

 

Together, we can defuse the deceit that's heedlessly fueling prejudice and misunderstanding and stoking unnecessary tensions in our world.

 

 

 

Index    Page 1    Page 2    Page 3    Page 4    Page 5    Page 6

J'Accuse contact


Contact: editor@jaccuse.news