Alexander Lebedev, the Russian owner of Britain's Independent and London Evening Standard newspapers, suffered another bruising blow to his business empire today after police carried out a raid on his luxury hotel in Ukraine.
Dozens of tax officers burst into the More resort in Alushta, on Crimea's south-eastern coast, early yesterday. They seized documents and computers. Officials from Ukraine's SBU security service swarmed over the hotel today.
The raid came 48 hours after masked, gun-toting special forces stormed Lebedev's National Reserve Bank in Moscow.
Russian police said the search on Tuesday was connected to a criminal investigation into employees from another bank.
Lebedev today told the Guardian it had been a bad week. But he said he would not bow to forces within Russia's murky power structure who were apparently hellbent on making him flee.
"I'm still here [in Russia]. I live here," Lebedev said. He added that he had spent the past three days trying to "decipher" the blunt "psychological" message sent by the bank raid. "In the worst-case scenario the message is: 'Get out of Russia.'" [my note: "apparently enemy - secretly brother"?]
Lebedev said that when detectives burst in, he was in the bank's underground swimming pool. "I frankly thought they had come to arrest me," he said, adding: "I decided to keep swimming, thinking I would enjoy the pool for the last time."
Lebedev, a billionaire who co-owns the airline Aeroflot and the Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, said it would be wrong to link the two investigations against him in Russia and Ukraine. Nor would it be correct to blame Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, he said.
Instead, he pointed to Ukraine's president, Viktor Yanukovych, a close ally of the Kremlin. He said Yanukovych had ordered in the tax police after taking offence at an article in this week's Evening Standard.
The story, which appeared with no byline on Tuesday, recalled how during Ukraine's election campaign Yanukovych had hailed the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov as "a great Ukrainian poet". Ukraine's leader had committed a "Dubya-like gaffe", the Standard wrote.
Lebedev said he had nothing to do with the article. "He [Yanukovych] thinks I was preparing the article myself. He thinks a publisher like myself has influence on British newspapers." It appeared just before Yanukovych was to travel to London, compounding what the president perceived as a deliberate slight, Lebedev said. The tycoon consistently denies exerting any influence on his British newspapers.
He went on: "Yanukovych doesn't know what the world is. He's not very educated. I don't think he really understands what life is in Moscow, Paris or London."
One Ukrainian diplomat today dismissed Lebedev's claims as "ridiculous", adding: "The Standard is hardly the FT, the Guardian or the Wall Street Journal." He said: "Lebedev co-operates with the governments of Ukraine and Russia. He's in Russia's political elite rather than out." [my note:  is speaking a diplomat of a pro-Putin government].
Asked if further attacks on his Russian interests would have a negative impact on his British newspaper titles, Lebedev replied: "I hope not." But he conceded that he was now in a vulnerable position. "The worst-case scenario is somebody decides to crash it [his business]," he said.
Lebedev's seaside complex in Alushta includes a hotel, holiday villas, a pool, a spa and a narrow rocky beach, set among steep cliffs and attractive subtropical gardens of palm trees and pines. The resort is the biggest in Crimea and one of the largest in Europe. It employs 1,500 people.
Today Lebedev said he had invested $100m in the complex, and was one of the region's biggest taxpayers. He added that he would close down the hotel on Monday, plunging locals into unemployment, if the tax authorities continued their campaign. He also alleged that Yanukovych was trying to seize the Hotel Ukraine in Kiev. Lebedev is a co-investor with the Ukrainian government in the hotel, and has spent $40m on its renovation. The development has been mired in legal battles.
Lebedev is one of the largest foreign investors in Ukraine, with assets including a bank and an insurance company. He spent ¤10m renovating the country's Chekhov theatre, which hosts an annual Chekhov festival, and has been visited by Sir Tom Stoppard, Kevin Spacey and John Malkovich.

Lebedev's assets

Four British newspapers The Independent, Independent on Sunday, i, and Evening Standard
One bank The National Reserve Bank, with $1.5bn of capital
One potato farm
One airline Aeroflot (he is the Russian airline's biggest private shareholder, owning 30% of the company)
Several luxury hotels in Europe (a ruined castle in Perugia, Umbria, property in Switzerland, and the More holiday resort in Crimea)
Shares in Gazprom, Russia's state energy giant
A London restaurant
A bank and an insurance company in Ukraine
The Russian opposition newspaper Novaya Gazeta, co-owned with Mikhail Gorbachev and an editorial collective
 *   *   *

 So Alex claims to be a "victim of Putin".... Oh really?
"............Yevgeny's easygoing personal style makes it hard to imagine that he grew up in family wedded to the KGB, but his father's loyalty to his former employer has never been in doubt. Lebedev senior once said: "I have never made a secret of my past." Indeed, he recently neogtiated to buy a monument that he wanted to place in his bank's head office in Moscow. It was one of many toppled when communism fell - a larger-than-life statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the brutal founder of the Soviet Russian secret police. "Let the monument stand here to keep order," his spokesman said. A very Russian joke, with a rather chilling edge. . Additional reporting by Rachel Belton (c)2006. Associated Newspapers Ltd.. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved......."

   You can find the entire article from where i took the above excerpt in...:

Saturday, February 22, 2014

 The spy who came. 

http://control-avles-blogs.blogspot.it/2014/02/the-spy-who-came.html

     Of course that Iron Felix has to be rehabilitated by Putin, the announcement was in October,... precisely the  October of the previous year:
"......04:27 12/10/2013...
MOSCOW, October 12 (RIA Novosti) - The statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Bolshevik secret police, may be restored to its "rightful" place in Lubyanskaya Square in downtown Moscow, a senior Moscow lawmaker said.
...(.....)....
Dzerzhinsky is best known for establishing and developing the Soviet State Security forces under their original name Cheka (1917–26). The Cheka was notorious for torture and mass summary executions, performed especially during the Red Terror and the Russian Civil War....".
[read entire article in:  http://en.ria.ru/russia/20131012/184083199/Iron-Felix-Statue-Could-Return-to-Lubyanka--Moscow-Lawmaker.html ]

      But then only 6 days before the eruption of clashes in Kiev....
"......A period of relative calm in the anti-government demonstrations ended abruptly on 18 February 2014, when protesters and police clashed. At least 82 people were killed over the following few days, including 13 policemen; more than 1,100 people were injured......".
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution  ]
    .....we have this news:


"....

Moscow Duma Says Dzerzhinsky Will Not Return to Lubyanka

  • By D. Garrison Golubock
  • Feb. 12 2014 16:47
  • Last edited 16:49
......A statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky or Iron Felix, a Bolshevik revolutionary and founder of the Cheka, the predecessor of the KGB, will not be restored to its erstwhile location on Lubyanskaya Ploshchad, the Moscow Duma's committee on monuments announced Tuesday..........." 
[  http://www.themoscowtimes.com/arts_n_ideas/article/moscow-duma-says-dzerzhinsky-will-not-return-to-lubyanka/494412.html  ]


Of course in the Kremlin someone knew what was going to happen... maybe just since October when preventively the Iron Felix has been resuscitated...




Dzerzhinsky monument of Lebedev...:

 ".......You should also be aware of this Polish Roman Catholic Admund Dzerzhinsky who was controlled by the Jesuit Order. You should then note his son Felix Admundovich Dzerzhinsky a Roman Catholic also highly admired the Jesuit Order. Now what was Felix? The Head of the Cheka and a main man of Joseph Stalin. Why didn't the Bolsheviks or Stalin expell the SMOM from Moscow?...."

 http://www.davidicke.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-4264.html
http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.it/2007/08/wlodimir-vladimir-ledochowski-humanitys.html

    Ok, let's come back to my intro above,... if you check for an instant the "free" encyclopedia you perceive that "shiftward" as more and more present on the scene of that crime (see References for further interesting hypothesis about Smolensk air crash):
".......
In foreign affairs, Kaczyński noted that many of Poland's problems were related to the lack of energy security and this issue would have to be resolved to protect Polish interests. Strengthening ties with the United States while continuing to develop relations within the European Union are two main goals of Polish foreign affairs, as well as improving relations with France and Germany despite several problems in relations with the latter. Aside from those issues, his immediate goals were to develop tangible strategic partnership with Ukraine and greater co-operation with the Baltic states, Azerbaijan and Georgia. He was greatly admired in Israel, because he promoted educating Polish youth about the Holocaust. There was widespread grief in Israel over his death.[17]
Defense Minister Radosław Sikorski compared the planned Russia to Germany gas pipeline to the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact and Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga stated that the pipeline was a threat to Poland's energy security.[18]
........"
[URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lech_Kaczy%C5%84ski ]


Thursday, March 6, 2014


Not much more to add 

http://control-avles-blogs.blogspot.it/2014/03/not-much-more-to-add.html



------------------REFERENCES:

 http://henrymakow.com/2013/12/Polish-Elite-Didn%27t-Die-at-Smolensk-Site%20.html

"There was no air crash; it was all a hoax. False flag. TV show. The real action was in Warsaw and it was a coup d'etat, whereby contrary to the constitution a new "president", totally loyal to Moscow, an ignorant buffoon and a patent idiot, was installed. Russian circus, my friend. That's what it was. A cross between a circus, an operetta and bloody murder, Bolshevista style." - See more at: http://henrymakow.com/2013/12/Polish-Elite-Didn%27t-Die-at-Smolensk-Site%20.html#sthash.Qywvwcjv.dpuf