Globalists In Russia

• At first glance, you would think that all of the money laundering, financial tinkering, currency speculation and hidden off-shore accounts occurring in Russia were the criminal activities of organized crime. As it turns out, it's the globalists who claimed they were straightening out Russia's economy.

Harvard University recently an nounced that the scandal-ridden Harvard Institute of International Development (HIID), which is under investigation by the Justice Department and the House Banking Committee, will be shut down in June and its functions transferred to other agencies. Jeffrey Sachs, Andre Shleifer and Jonathan Hay, its leading figures, have been assigned elsewhere.

HIID, or the "Harvard Project," was contracted by the U.S. Agency for International Development to establish private ownership and capitalism in Russia.

With Yegor Gaidar and Anatoly Chu bais in the Russian government implementing the program, HIID had been involved, or implicated, in the privatization program, which turned over the major industrial and mining enterprises of the former Soviet Union to a small group of oligarchs -- sometimes referred to as the "Chubais Clan."

Since some major U.S. banks (e.g., New York's Chase Manhattan, Credit Suisse First Boston) are suspected of having laundered oligarch money when some of the proceeds returned to this country, the House Banking Committee is also investigating these billion-dollar transfers.

If the charges are true, billions of dollars of Russian industrial and mineral wealth have been put into the hands of unworthy individuals and billions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars, ostensibly transferred to Russia to build up its economy, have found their way into criminal pockets.

CHEATING THE RUSSIANS

The Russian people have certainly been cheated. Russia is deeply indebted to foreign banks, thereby permitting foreigners to intervene in the national economy.

Now, finally, American observers have also zeroed in on the International Mon etary Fund's (IMF) failure to responsibly monitor the disposition of the loans after they reach Russia. Most of the corruption endemic in the "Russian" government today can be directly tied to the failure of their economic advisers and financial institutions, most especially those affiliated with HIID, to effectively manage the "reforms" in Russia.

The totally unfair distribution of wealth is believed to be a direct consequence of corruption and favoritism in the privatization program and collusion between local oligarchs and U.S. program "supervisors."

Russia's Central Bank has been systematically siphoning off billions of transferred dollars and stashing them in tax havens abroad, most notably the Fi nancial Management Company (FIAMCO) in Jersey, one of England's Channel Islands. Moreover, Russia's Central Bank, through its western companies, has invested commercially -- considered a highly irregular practice. Following these revelations, Russia's Central Bank an nounced plans to assign the U.S. ac counting firm Price Water house-Coopers to audit FIAMCO. The results are un known.

In December 1998, Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin was assured by former IMF director Michel Camdessus and the head of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, that, despite all difficulties, Russia would receive its next $700 million portion providing certain preconditions, 21 in all, were met.

Since the IMF and World Bank "recommendations" came just one week af ter the Russian government had established its Temporary Ex traordin ary Commis sion for Strengthening Tax and Budget Discipline, the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya complained that not only does the IMF dictate terms to Russia, but Camdessus and Wolfensohn seem to know everything that happens in the Russian government at precisely the time it happens.

OLIGARCHS WIN

Unfortunately, the real winners in the 2000 elections in Russia were Boris Bere zovsky and his fellow oligarchs with bank ing connections in New York, Washington, Switzerland, Israel and other financial centers. As financial adviser and godfather to the Yeltsin "family," Berezovsky collaborated with the former president to elect Putin.

Because Yeltsin's own political party had almost no public support, Berezovsky helped fund the "Unity" party, which acted as a surrogate for Yeltsin's bankrupt party. The ploy worked.

Although the grip of the Zionist oligarchs over Russia has not loosened, war over the spoils of that ravished country has broken out between two major factions -- the Berezovsky empire and the Vladimir Gusinsky "MOST" empire.

Like almost everyone of importance in Putin's Russia, Berezovsky and Gusinsky are third generation communists, privileged with access to the best universities (Moscow and Leningrad).

Like the Putin government, the oligarchs rely on battalions of former KGB agents for their security and intelligence.

But whereas Berezovsky has and remains the king maker in the Yeltsin-Putin administrations, Gusinsky is in a slightly lower order of capitalist angels.

The Moscow-based MOST media and financial company, headed by Gusinsky, is reported to have a security force of about 1,000 men, many of whom are KGB graduates.

NTV, MOST's TV station, routinely criticizes the Chechen War, tweaks Orthodox believers, highlights an exotic black female spiritualist "Khanga" and presents other such irreverent trash that better educated Russians find very offensive.

In general, the Russian media mo guls -- the oligarchs -- emulate the mainstream media in the United States in choosing and formatting the news and entertainment for the people. The news is often tendentious and the entertainment vulgar.

On May 11, Putin authorized a police raid on Media MOST, which had always supported the Yeltsin regime. Police charged Gusinsky with embezzlement.

President Clinton, on his June visit to Putin's Russia, made a point of delivering his address to the Russian people on Media-MOST's Echo Moskvy radio and NTV television channel.

Much of Gusinsky's protection and intelligence force has been provided by former KGB Fifth Directorate Chief Filipp Bobkov, who under the Brezhnev regime had tracked political and religious dissidents, until he was eventually fired for the brutal repression of Lithuania's freedom movement.

Bobkov is also suspected of having organized the "Moscow Narco-Group," which coordinates drug-running operations in Romania, Columbia, Peru and Cuba. Supplies emanate from the Rus sian naval base in Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.

Gusinsky has hired PR experts in New York and Washington to "prettify" his American image and a retired congressman to introduce him around Capitol Hill.

Gusinsky is head of the Congress of Rus sian Jews and a vice president in the World Jewish Congress.

As for Berezovsky's protection and intelligence, he too uses a multitude of former KGB men for physical protection and the ATOLL security firm for intelligence.

Being the "king maker" in Russian politics at least to this day, he has routinely supported the Yeltsin "family" as financial and investment advisor and has been richly rewarded by the government in the privatization program.

ATOLL has been used to gather information on business and political rivals, since there, as here, both spheres are closely interrelated. ATOLL is said to have collected potentially harmful information about Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov (Yeltsin's and Putin's competitor), Primakov's cancer, and Gusinsky's business deals.