Stephan Adolphus Koch

[David Guyatt]

I have always wondered what was behind the Asil Nadir story. I also wondered why he returned to London after such a long absence - only to be arrested and imprisoned. Why did he do this? Was he told he would be okay, now that many of the prominent players had passed away?

And speaking of passing away, it is indeed curious that Stephan Koch died on 27th October 2008, and his boss at Midland Bank, Sir John Cuckney (Baron Cuckney) died three days later on 30th October 2008.

Anyway, thanks to a small piece in the latest issue of Lobster Magazine (Summer 2013), we have a link to a website that details many of the shady arms deals of the Thatcher premiership - that Nadir was drawn into. The website, Janjon.com, provides declassified documents from the CIA that, to my astonishment, speak openly of state sponsored assassination of 4 persons (Dr. Gerald Bull, journalist Jonathan Moyle, Andre Cools, Belgian politician, and Lionel Jones - all because they threatened to blow the lid on a host of covert arms to Iraq that Koch was involved with.

The question I have is how did Nadir, or whoever represents him on this website, obtain an un-redacted copy of the CIA Research paper SW91 - 10076X intelligence summary? If this document truly is genuine then as Robin Ramsay says it is explosive. Even the names of SAS soldiers hired by Koch to assassinate Gerald Bull are named.

There is much here to ponder.

Much to ponder indeed.

I spotted the lobster article a couple of months ago, had a quick chunter around the AD site and had it all flagged for a more in-depth look. What with incessant techie diversions and, I must confess, mild nervousness about posting the CIA pdf on Wikispooks, for obvious reasons etc etc, It had slipped my mind until your post.

It deals with the UK era I am becoming most interested in but it clearly involves the murkiest and dirtiest of dealings at the very highest political/intel levels. From what I know already, there's probably good reason to be nervous about rooting around in it too.

I agree Peter. There's already been bodies strewn around, which demonstrates how sensitive a subject it was/is. And I suspect this goes a lot deeper than simply the arms to Iraq affair - that has been covered thus far.

As I mentioned above, and elsewhere, I met Koch a few times, including a strange meeting in the offices of the London law firm Carter Ruck to meet Alasdair Pepper and others (at least I think it was him - could've been confused about this but it sure looked like him). And Sir John Cuckney was my overall divisional boss during the heydays of my time at Midland - in that he was the boss of MBGITS who wholly owned my mob.

For quite awhile, I was in periodic contact with Gerald James, who I first met to interview at the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall. Gerald provided me with a list of members of a particular "Luncheon Club" - arms "defence" insiders all, as I recall. This was, he intimated, where real power lay.

From my reading of the Asil Nadir website, it is bang on what I already knew, all but Nadir's involvement. Although I do recall he was a Midland client too.

It has also just struck me that Nadir is a Turkish Cypriot, so I wonder about any pre-connections with this whole US-UK arms to Iraq and Iran story and the story of Sybil Edmonds and Gladio B?

And, if one is particularly cynical in looking at connections, then the possible role of Murdoch in spiking the Sunday Times 4 - part investigation into the Edmonds story could be quite telling. Of course, this is an assumption on my part since the reporter in question declined to be specific. Well, you would, wouldn't you, if he's your overall boss.

Dirty dealing by the dirty digger seems to me second nature, imo, a theory I tried to demonstrate in another post yesterday.