| -Caveat Lector-
----- Original Message -----
From: Vladimir Krsljanin
Sent: Monday, December 02, 2002 5:35 PM
Subject: Carla del Ponte - a dirty washer of NATO dirty laundry
(translation from Konkret, 12, 2002) TRANSLATION OF INTERVIEW BY JURGEN ELSAESSER WITH FELIPE
TUROVER ON CARLA DEL PONTE (source, Konkret, December 2002) Translated
by Colin Meade 02/12/02 [quotation]
Felipe
Turover: "Carla del Ponte told the hit-men where to find
me". [Introduction] "Justice
is a woman", said UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan about Carla del Ponte,
currently Chief Prosecutor in the Hague trial of Slobodan Milosevic. Felipe
Turover's experience of the Swiss jurist is very different. 37-year old Felipe comes from a Spanish
Republican family whose parents fled with him from Franco to the Soviet
Union. After the death of the
dictator, Felipe returned to his native land before going back at the end of the
1980s to Moscow as a financial expert. From 1992 to 1999 he worked for the
Yeltsin government managing debts with Western creditor
banks. [Interview] Elsässer: You are the chief witness in the Mabetex
case, also known as Russiagate.
What is it about and how does Carla del Ponte come into
it? Turover: Mabetex is a construction company based
in Lugano in Italian Switzerland.
It belongs to the Kosovo Albanian Beghijet Pacolli who now has a Swiss
passport. In the 1990s Pacolli and
his business partner Viktor Stolpovskich won some two billion euros-worth of
orders from the Kremlin, supposedly for building and restoration work in the
government and presidential complex.
It has been proved that billions of dollars vanished from Russia through
this operation, with millions being spent on bribes in Moscow in return. Pacolli acted as guarantor for credit
cards for Yeltsin and both his daughters, according to the Banca del Gottardo
which issued the cards. Carla del
Ponte, at that time a Swiss public prosecutor contacted me in 1997 and asked me
to be ready to testify in the case.
Later she invited the Russian investigating prosecutor Yuri Skuratov to
Switzerland and put me in touch with him.
At that time she already had a reputation as a great fighter for justice
and I therefore did as she asked.
That was an almost fatal error. Elsässer: Why? Turover: I was dependent on her honesty and had
made it clear to her from the start that my testimony placed my life in
danger. I was still at the time
working as an advisor to the Russian authorities, i.e. for the very people I was
incriminating with these documents.
So what did Ms del Ponte do?
She gave my full name and job to the press. This was as if I had given information
to the US Drug Enforcement Agency about the Escobar Clan out of Medellin and
then, while still in the lions' den, read in the New York Times that I was the
chief witness against Escobar. In
my case, it was Moscow rather than Medellin and the newspaper was the Corriere
della Sera but the effect was the same. I was in big trouble and saved my life
by hurriedly getting out of Moscow.
Since then, for the past three years, I have been living undercover. I have Carla del Ponte to thank for
this. She told the hit-men where to
find me. Elsässer: Isn't that an exaggeration? How is a Swiss Federal Prosecutor
responsible for an article in an Italian newspaper? Turover: Both the Corriere journalists got all
their information from del Ponte, including my mobile phone number. They told me so themselves, because they
knew my life was in danger. Elsässer: Del Ponte has denied
that. Turover: Then she's not telling the truth. And I've already said this many times
and she has never threatened to sue for slander. The reason is simple: she has no proof, but I
do. Elsässer: Mabetex boss Pacolli is not only a
construction magnate, but is also said to have close ties to the Kosovo Albanian
KLA terrorists. Turover: That's right. He himself has stated that at least
until 2000 his group owned the Kosovo Albanian daily "Bota Sot" which even the
OSCE condemned for racist articles.
Its agitation was aimed mainly at the Serbs, but it also made an
anti-Semitic attack on me as the "Jew Turover". Elsässer: If it were the case that the Yeltsin
clan had received Kosovo Albanian bribes, this might explain his behaviour in
spring 1999. As NATO prepared for
war against Yugoslavia, he didn't lift a finger to help the Serbs, his supposed
brother people. At the Rambouillet
Conference, when the NATO states took an extremely biased pro-Albanian position,
Moscow didn't protest, although its diplomats were at the negotiating
table. Did the Kosovo Albanians buy
Yeltsin's passivity? Turover: That's possible. We're looking here at a symbiosis of
politics, plunder and money laundering on a large
scale. Elsässer: And del Ponte? Turover: All the preliminary inquiries in the
Mabetex case in Switzerland were politically abandoned at the highest
level. Moreover, the documents that
del Ponte had received from her Russian colleague Skuratov somehow ended up in
Pacolli's possession. He reported
back to his Russian friends Yeltsin and Borodin and subsequently Skuratov, an
honest and competent lawyer, was shunted aside, in spite of three almost
unanimous resolutions in his support from the Russian Senate. The end of Skuratov was also the end of
the Moscow Mabetex case - the proceedings were finally abandoned in December
2000.
Elsässer: Was del Ponte acting to protect the
Albanian Mafia or the Yeltsin clan? Turover: Neither. She acts only in her own interest. She is indifferent to political
goals. Look at the point in time
when she made public what she knew about the Mabetex case, including my name -
the end of August 1999. That was a
blow not only to me, but to Yeltsin too.
It's
true that she later failed to follow through on the case, but at that moment her
revelations did serious damage to Yeltsin.
The immediate background was the spectacular coup by Russian elite units
in Kosovo in summer 1999; after the
ceasefire they occupied Pristina airport, getting there before NATO. According to the British head of KFOR,
Michael Jackson, this could have led to world war three. Moscow was playing for high stakes. It wanted its own occupation zone in
Kosovo to protect the Serbs. In
this situation Yeltsin had to be repudiated. The current US Foreign Minister,
Madeleine Albright, therefore met del Ponte at London Heathrow airport in July
1999 and probably spelt all this out to her. So then del Ponte went public with her
revelations about Yeltsin in Corriere della Sera and in mid-September
Albright in a statement on CNN stoked up the heat about Russian government
corruption. Yeltsin had to fear an
effort to impeach him and then prosecution. He was let off the hook by two bombings
in Moscow, allegedly by Chechen terrorists. Russian troops went into Chechnya and
public attention was diverted from Russiagate. Elsässer: Was del Ponte acting as an agent of
Washington in this situation? Turover: She is no more pro-American than she is
pro-Albanian. She acts in Swiss
interests, i.e. in the interests of the Mafia in
Switzerland. Elsässer: Explain. Turover: Switzerland and the Swiss banks live
mainly off money laundering. All
the world's dictators and major criminals deposit their money here. Above all the canton of Tessin is
exceptionally well placed for this. People simply carry millions in suitcases
and glove compartments over the border from Italy. Every politician in Tessin knows about
it and benefits from it. And as the
canton's public prosecutor del Ponte protected this activity even before the
Mabetex case at the end of the 1990s.
Take the case of a company in Chiasso accused of money laundering for the
Italian Mafia. She stopped the
proceedings. But basically del
Ponte is pro-del Ponte. She would
do anything for her career, even bring a case against George W. Bush. She is in any case a useless
lawyer. To my knowledge she has
never won a case in her entire career.
Her only talent is self-promotion,
self-marketing. Elsässer: Her agreement with Albright in any case
proved profitable. A little later
she became the Chief Prosecutor at the Hague, at Washington's behest. The Zurich Weltwoche expressed surprise: "why the
Americans wanted her to succeed the difficult and prematurely ousted Louise
Arbour remains a puzzle. After all
they had made no secret of the fact that they regarded the Court as a useless
waste of time". Turover: Del Ponte and the Swiss government
helped Albright and the Americans - they're honest people, they pay their bills
- therefore rewarded her with the Hague job. Here too she has sold herself
brilliantly. With her, the trial is
a total disaster. She has nothing
on Milosevic, and legally he ought therefore to be released immediately. And so Milosevic, who himself is nothing
but a bandit and con man, can present himself as an innocent victim of
persecution and Serb nationalism is on the rise as the recent elections showed[1]. Do people in the Hague really not know
that the Swiss Federal Government has appointed a special investigator to look
into the del Ponte affair? How can
a woman who is herself the subject of judicial investigation at the highest
level because of serious crimes stay on as Chief Prosecutor at the UN war crimes
tribunal? Elsässer: In March 2001 you reported Carla del
Ponte and persons unknown to the police for, among other things, endangering
your life and attempted murder (tentato assassinio) in connection with
Russiagate. But the Swiss Federal
Prosecutor, Valentin Roschacher, dismissed the charges against his
predecessor. So how can you say
that a special investigation of del Ponte is
ongoing? Turover: Roschacher protected del Ponte and I
have therefore brought a case against him for bias in her favour. This case has not only been taken up,
but in May 2002 the Swiss Federal Council appointed a special investigator,
Arthur Hublard, the former public prosecutor of Jura canton. He is investigating my accusations
against Roschacher - but the del Ponte case is obviously also involved
here. Furthermore, I have laid
charges against Switzerland at the European Court of Human Rights in
Strasbourg. Elsässer: Against Switzerland, not against del
Ponte? Turover: You can't bring cases against private
persons in Strasbourg. But in
substance the charges relate primarily to del Ponte because as the Swiss Federal
Prosecutor she placed my life in danger.
It's preposterous for her to continue to hold office in the Hague when
two such cases are pending. Elsässer: You are living in hiding, constantly
moving house. How long will you
keep this up? Turover: I have to, otherwise I'm dead because of
del Ponte. I have of course insured
myself by making sure that in the event of my demise even more explosive
information than hitherto will be revealed. But that does not provide me with real
security. So far at least five
prosecution witnesses in the Mabetex case have been cleared out of the way. The most recent victim was Pacolli's
personal secretary, a 32-year old woman, who was found dead in the bathroom,
allegedly from a blood clot. There
was no autopsy and she was cremated the next day. ENDS [1] Obviously, these disparaging remarks about Mr Milosevic do not represent the views of the ICDSM. The reason why Carla del Ponte has got nothing on Mr Milosevic is that the charges against him have no basis in reality. However incompetent del Ponte may be, she has had a multitude of "experts", investigators and compliant officials within and outside Yugoslavia to help her in her quest for "evidence". They have found nothing because there was never anything there to find.
To join or help this struggle, visit:
<A HREF="">www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
http://www.sps.org.yu/ (official SPS website) http://www.belgrade-forum.org/ (forum for the world of equals) http://www.icdsm.org/ (the international committee to defend Slobodan Milosevic) icdsm temporary address: http://emperor.vwh.net/icdsm/index.htm for your donations: http://emperor.vwh.net/icdsm/donations.htm Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="">Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om |
