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POPS'Mafia state' leader Putin knew of poison plot that killed former KGB spy in London
The cables were just part of a set of new messages released last night that painted Russia as being awash in corruption, with government officials, oligarchs and gangsters working hand-in-hand to create a 'virtual mafia state.' A senior Spanish investigator alleged to the U.S. that 'organised crime groups do whatever the government of Russia cannot acceptably do as a government'. Jose Grinda Gonzalez is Spain's national prosecutor with has ten years chalked up fighting the Russian mafia. He is responsible for the pursuit of Zakhar Kalashov, believed to be the most senior Mafia figure to be jailed outside Russia. On January 13, he gave a 'detailed, frank' briefing to U.S. officials in Madrid in which he said that organised crime had a huge grip on the global economy. He said Russia, Belarus and Chechnya were 'virtual mafia states' and that for each of the countries 'one cannot differentiate between the activities of the government and organised crime groups.'
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POPSThe Russians Have Always Favored Overkill Vladimir Putin had ordered the assassination of Russian journalists and capitalists before Litvinenko, of course. But the Litvinenko murder defined him for the world -- or at least the sane and sensible fraction of the world --- just as Don Corleone in the Godfather ordered the decapitated horse's head to be placed in Jack Woltz' bedroom. Like the bloody horse head, Polonium poisoning signaled a public but deniable threat to Putin's enemies: Defy me, and I can use the rarest poison in the world to kill you anywhere I choose. And I will get away with it, because everybody else is cowed. Which is exactly what happened. Putin never paid a price, and in the manner of bullies everywhere, he was emboldened when the Brits failed to respond to Litvinenko's assassination in the middle of London. That is why Putin's invasion of the small, free, and democratic Republic of Georgia was predictable. Today the Russian threat to the Ukraine is just as obvious.
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POPSKremlin Charges Two Russian-Americans With Industrial Espionage RIA Novosti reports that the FSB specifically accused the Zaslavskys of "illegally gathering secret commercial information for the benefit of several foreign oil and gas companies, in order to give them advantages over Russian competitors." The Russian authorities' attention to the Zaslavskys' ties to the British Council has further soured relations between Britain and Russia. The Guardian reports that in January, Russia closed the regional offices of the British Council in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg as part of the ongoing diplomatic conflict between the two nations over the murder of former KGB agent and British resident Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. But Thompson Financial reports that the Russian government said the Zaslavskys' arrests were "not connected to the present state of Russian-British relations."
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POPSGeorgian Billionaire Found Dead In Surrey Feared Plots Russian Alexander Litvinenko also had links with the Georgian businessman. Sources in Tbilisi have told The Times that he stayed at Mr Patarkatshvili's residence in Georgia en route to Turkey when he fled Russia to seek asylum in London in 2000. Russian prosecutors claim that Mr Litvinenko also visited Mr Patarkatsishvili as well as Mr Berezovsky in London shortly before he was poisoned. They accuse Mr Berezovsky of involvement in the murder of the former Federal Security Service (FSB) agent as part of a plot to damage President Putin's international image.
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