Some 25 percent of Gazprom is owned by the Bank of New York (the same bank
that was money laundering billions of dollars for the Russian Mafia in the
1990s for Mogilevich et al).
Stefan Lemieszewski
=================================
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2014 9:50 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [politics] The New U.S. Sanctions Against Russia Are For Real
STILL MISSING:
[*] Alexei Miller, the CEO of Gazprom
[*] Igor Sechin, the CEO of the state oil company Rosneft
The New U.S. Sanctions Against Russia Are For Real
You may not have heard of them -- but the new targets are Putin's actual
inner circle.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/miriamelder/the-new-us-sanctions-against-russia-are-for-real
posted on March 20, 2014 at 12:16pm EDT
The names on the latest list of sanctions released by the White House on
Thursday read like a who's who of Vladimir Putin's innermost circle --
ex-KGB colleagues, top advisors and the men believed to hold the Russian
president's personal pursestrings.
There's Boris and Arkady Rotenberg, who Putin brought with him from St
Petersburg and who have grown enormously wealthy since. There is Gennady
Timchenko, a secretive oil trader who handles a large bulk of Russia's
lucrative oil shipments and who once sued The Economist for merely calling
him Putin's friend. The two are said to be judo buddies. There's Vladimir
Yakunin, the head of Russian Railways and a top champion of the Russian
Orthodox Church. The list goes on and on and includes ministers, lawmakers,
businessmen all with two things in common: their wealth and their proximity
to Putin.
The Kremlin must be freaking out.
The first round of sanctions announced by Obama on Monday was symbolic but
ultimately toothless, targeting people with big mystiques but little power
in today's Kremlin -- people like the former gray cardinal, Vladislav
Surkov, and Yelena Mizulina, who authored Russia's anti-gay law. Those on
the list quickly laughed it off. Surkov said he was fine being slapped with
sanctions and a visa ban: "In the U.S. I care about Tupac Shakur, Jackson
Pollack, and Allen Ginsberg. I don't need a visa to enjoy their works," he
told a Russian newspaper. Dmitry Rogozin, a bombastic deputy prime minister,
spent the day teasing Obama with cartoons on Twitter.
These sanctions are different. They hit as close to Putin without targeting
the man himself. There are a couple notable absences from the list -- Alexei
Miller, the CEO of Gazprom, and, more importantly, Igor Sechin, the CEO of
the state oil company Rosneft and one of Putin's hardline advisors. But by
reaching to his favorite oligarchs, the U.S. has hit Putin where it hurts.
There's a reason most outside Russia have never heard of these people -- in
Russia those with the real power stay in the shadows.
InfoUkes Inc. Gerald William Kokodyniak
Suite 185, 3044 Bloor Street West Webmaster InfoUkes Inc.
Etobicoke, Ontario [email protected]
Canada M8X 2Y8 http://www.infoukes.com/
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