Gladio B: Gladio Revisited

[Jan Klimkowski]

Getting back to First Merchant Bank, they were the number one bank for al-Qaeda. Long before 9/11, the FBI was regularly reporting their activity with criminal targets to two places, the State Department and Commerce. State Department did nothing during the late 90's through 2001. 9/11 happens and the FBI is livid, demanding this be shut down and that arrests be made. The government shut down a number of banks involved with Palestinian causes, but the Commerce Department did not do anything about First Merchant until 2004! Why? Edmonds believes it was going to take that long (from 9/11 to 2004) for continuing operations to be concluded so they could switch to other banks. There are so many ways to launder money, one way First Merchant operated that caught Edmonds' attention was by converting the funds to government bonds. She's not quite sure exactly how it all worked, but it all falls within money laundering watchdog expertise.

Corbett finds it interesting how it involved the Cyprus branch, because they are famous for being connected to the Russian mafia and Russian oligarchs; Cyprus is actually Russia's largest foreign investor. Edmonds says there are two sides to Cyprus banks, a Greek side and Turkish side. Russia and NATO are both using Cyprus, she believes Russia is probably using the Greek side as US/NATO is using the Turkish side. She finds the intrigue between the two sides fascinating, especially in light of Russia saying they are going to kick out US NGOs. Explaining how the cliche used to be the spies in foreign countries were placed in embassies, she says because everyone knows that it would be the dumbest thing to do now; that's the first place the host nation would look! So for the United States, the number one place we put our top intelligence gathering officers and informants are NGOs.

Very provocative and timely information about the divided island of Cyprus.

At one level it's a war between elite criminal cartels.

Above that are the Secret Team puppetmasters, who are pursuing the Stategy of Tension.

Ordinary people are always flotsam and jetsam, entirely disposable in these criminal and geopolitical games.

Anyone here remember Jan Willem Matser? Of course not. How could we be asked to remember something we never knew about? Thanks to our media here the name wouldn't ring a bell with anyone except a few irate members here who read my piece last June.
Matser, a Dutch Lieutenant Colonel in Staff to NATO Secretary General George Robertson in charge of Eastern Europe, whose job gave him access to classified NATO material, was arrested on February 2003 in Wemmel, Belgium, and charged with trying to launder at least $200 million for an international drug cartel from his office at the alliance's HQ in Brussels. Other criminals involved in Matser's case were Mohammed Kadem, a Moroccan, and Pietro Fedino, a wealthy Sicilian with a previous conviction for cocaine smuggling.
Here is some background as reported by Times UK :
According to documents seen by The Sunday Times, the investigation began last September after customs police at Schiphol airport in Amsterdam received a tip-off about a FedEx parcel sent from Colombia to an address in the Netherlands. The parcel was found to contain a receipt for a £120m deposit at a bank in Bogotá and a fake document authorising the transfer of the same amount of money to Tender SA, a company registered in the Romanian town of Timisoara. The company is not suspected of any wrongdoing.

And here is some more background on the investigations from the same report by Times UK:
The information was passed to a police unit working for the Dutch finance ministry that specializes in combating organised crime. The package was fitted with a bug and resealed. It was allegedly received by Fedino, who is suspected by the Dutch police of being an Italian mafia boss. Five agents monitored him around the clock and listened to his telephone calls. It was this surveillance that led police to Matser. In a call taped on September 7, a man later identified as Matser said he was "going to be leaving NATO in half an hour".

In a further conversation, on December 27, Matser allegedly said: "I'll make false documents for the entire transaction . . . It's no problem; my computer's very patient and I can even recreate the official notary seals from old documents." Matser also held several meetings with his alleged accomplices. One meeting with Kadem on Christmas Eve at the Airport hotel in Rotterdam was filmed by the surveillance team. Kadem was already the focus of four international drug investigations and had been sought by Interpol since 1996."Investigators believe Matser helped to set up the scheme when NATO sent him to Romania last year to instruct central European intelligence chiefs on how to raise standards."

Interestingly Dick Cheney's Halliburton happened to be another contender for control of Romania's Petrom. Here is the Interesting' Connection:
Matser and Tender are further connected by their failed attempt to gain control of PETROM National Society (SNP), a soon-to-be privatized Romanian oil-company, which produces 10% of the Romanian GDP. Tender, Matser and Halliburton formed a consortium in an effort to gain controlling stakes 51% estimated to be worth approx. US$ 1 billion. A few days following the announcement of this trio's interest, Matser was arrested. Subsequently, Romania's Economy Ministry has made it known that the consortium had not met its criteria and was no longer being considered."

For those of us who've watched, with curiosity, the career of George Robertson, a completely talentless non-entity who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time just before his meteoric rise, this comes as little suprise.

Compromised, bought and owned.