Interesting and Rare Inteview With 'John Le Carre''

[Jan Klimkowski]

Peter - thanks for posting.

Small footnote to Le Carre's comments as follows:

AMY GOODMAN: And the critics—I know you don’t read reviews, but the critics who say, "Oh, come on. This is so exaggerated. The legitimate economy does not rest on the illegitimate one, the illegal one."

JOHN LE CARRÉ: Well, alas, those critics don’t read their own newspapers, and nor perhaps have they noticed that a former head of MI5, our security service, who was translated to the House of Lords, was recently denied the senior post on a security committee on account of her connections with oligarchs in the Ukraine. These oligarchs were supposedly connected with criminal conspiracy.

We also have a charming case, which we look back on with embarrassment, where a leading member of the Rothschild family and our present Chancellor of the Exchequer—that’s finance minister—and the éminence grise of the Labour Party at that time, Lord Mandelson, were all found holidaying together off the coast of Corfu, sitting on the boat of a man called Deripaska, who at that time, I believe, was wanted in the United States for—on money laundering charges. So we have a certain amount of evidence before us which you would think would silence critics who say we’re all in perfect shape.

The "Lady" in question is presumably Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones:

MI5 'vetoed Security Minister over links to Ukrainian oligarchs'

The harmony of the Coalition Government faced new scrutiny last night after it was revealed that a Minister threatened to resign when her appointment to a key Cabinet role was vetoed.

Baroness Pauline Neville-Jones – the Shadow Security Minister when the Tories were in Opposition – was widely expected to take over the newly created role of National Security Adviser to David Cameron with overall responsibility for British intelligence policy at home and abroad.

But the pivotal security post was awarded instead to Whitehall mandarin Sir Peter Ricketts.

The Baroness, 70, was appointed Minister of State at the Home Office in charge of security and counter-terrorism – a more junior position, which restricts her responsibilities to domestic intelligence issues.

The demotion is said by sources to have ‘infuriated’ the feisty former career diplomat so much that she threatened to resign even before she took up the post.

A senior security source revealed that the Baroness’s appointment was blocked after MI5 produced a report about her links to two controversial Russian oligarchs.

According to a source, MI5 sent the Prime Minister’s aides a confidential briefing about her connections to two billionaires with alleged links to organised crime and a Russian mafia leader.

The source said: ‘The job of National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister needed a high-security vetting clearance because it involved knowing and handling sensitive state secrets.

‘As a result, Cameron’s private office at No 10 asked MI5 for any relevant information that was needed for the PM to make this appointment

(snip)

The two men at the centre of the controversy surrounding the Baroness are Ukrainian oligarch Dimitry Firtash and Russian tycoon Mikhail Chernoy.
Two years ago, the Baroness revealed in the House of Lords Register of Members’ Interests that her office received £20,000 a year from British businessman Robert Shetler-Jones, who oversees the assets of Mr Firtash.

(snip)

Mr Firtash became a billionaire through a lucrative gas trading company RosUkrEnergo (RUE), which until two years ago had a monopoly over supplies from Russia into Ukraine and onwards to EU customers such as Poland and Hungary.

RUE has been the subject of an investigation by the US Department of Justice over its alleged links to Semyon Mogilevich, 64, a Ukrainian-born billionaire who is said to control RUE and is one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives.

He is accused of mail, wire and securities fraud, racketeering, money laundering and falsification of books and records and has been nicknamed ‘The Brainy Don’ because of his business acumen and first-class economics degree.

He is believed by European and US federal law enforcement agencies to be the ‘boss of bosses’ of most Russian mafia syndicates in the world. Mogilevich has not travelled to the West, including the US, since the late Nineties.

He is understood to have an Israeli passport, but has lived and operated in the Moscow area until recently.

The second oligarch with whom the Baroness has been linked is Mikhail Chernoy, a 58-year-old Uzbekistan-born Israeli indust*rialist, who made billions from the Russian aluminium industry.

He is the main financial sponsor of the Intelligence Summit, a Washington-based Right-wing anti-terrorist think-tank, whose executive council has included the Baroness.

Chernoy has been banned from entering the US because of alleg*ations of money laundering, illegal business deals and claims of connections to the Russian mafia.

The billionaire has denied any wrongdoing or any ties to organised crime and has been cleared in several countries, including Switzerland, of links to the mafia.

The Baroness gave a keynote address to the Intelligence Summit on February 9, 2005. She shared her platform with Sir John Chilcot, the man in charge of the official inquiry into the Iraq War. Her speech was entitled ‘A look at the special relationship: policy and intelligence’.She also spoke at the Summit in 2006 and 2007.

It is not known whether she was paid a fee or expenses, but it is likely she was given her travel costs to and from Washington.

Chernoy, who is worth an estimated £2 billion, became a major player in Russia’s notorious ‘Metals Wars’ in the Nineties that saw former Soviet industrial giants swallowed up by tycoons who made dazzling fortunes.

They included Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea FC chairman, and fellow tycoon Oleg Deripaska, who came to prominence two years ago when he entertained former Business Secretary Lord Mandelson and current Chancellor George Osborne on his private yacht.

Chernoy has since fallen out with Deripaska after launching a £2 billion-plus lawsuit claiming a 20 per cent share in his former friend’s aluminium company, Rusal. Deripaska claims £130 million has been paid to Chernoy and no more is due.

Speaking at her £2 million Chelsea townhouse in West London yesterday, the Baroness said: ‘It was clear a very long way back that David Cameron wanted an official in that position [of National Security Adviser].

‘There was not at any stage a commitment on David’s part that I should have that position. It was not a position I ever discussed with him or sought. It was always my understanding that should the party win the Election I would have the position I now have.’

The Baroness denied having ever met Dimitry Firtash, Mikhail Cherney or Robert Shetler-Jones.

She said the donations to her office had been ‘properly registered’ by the Conservative Party and then allocated to her.

Last night neither the Home Office not the security services were prepared to comment officially on the Baroness’s appointment.

Read more: http://www.mailonsunday.co.uk/news/artic...z124z6RmwE