Dept of Energy Computers, ah Really Nuclear Management

Posted on April 12, 2016April 12, 2016 by Denise Simon

We often wonder just what kind of work the Department of Justice is doing if so many of the cases and crimes in the news never seem to have real consequences for the criminal…ahem Holder and Hillary.

Anyway, we will never know the scope of crimes that really do occur across the country and for sure those against the homeland from a foreign power or rogue actors.

There was the recent posting on this site about the industrial espionage or rather agricultural espionage by China against our farmers. Then there is the matter of drug cartels and money laundering. For sure you can think of other cases and your comments are welcome.

Rarely do we understand the matter of cyber intrusions or attacks. The case noted below is but one such case.

Justice News

Department of Justice

U.S. Attorney’s Office

District of Columbia

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Monday, April 11, 2016

Former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Employee Sentenced To Prison for Attempted Spear-Phishing Cyber-Attack On Department of Energy Computers

WASHINGTON – Charles Harvey Eccleston, 62, a former employee of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), was sentenced today to 18 months in prison on a federal charge stemming from an attempted e-mail “spear-phishing” attack in January 2015 that targeted dozens of DOE employee e-mail accounts.

The sentencing was announced by Assistant Attorney General for National Security John P. Carlin, U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips of the District of Columbia, and Assistant Director in Charge Paul M. Abbate of the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

Eccleston pleaded guilty on Feb. 2, 2016, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, to one count of attempted unauthorized access and intentional damage to a protected computer. In his guilty plea, Eccleston admitted scheming to cause damage to the computer network of the DOE through e-mails that he believed would deliver a computer virus to particular employees. An e-mail spear-phishing attack involves crafting a convincing e-mail for selected recipients that appears to be from a trusted source and that, when opened, infects the recipient’s computer with a virus.

In addition to the prison time, U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss ordered Eccleston to forfeit $9,000, an amount equal to the sum the FBI provided to Eccleston during the course of the undercover investigation. Following his prison term, Eccleston will be placed on three years of supervised release.

“Eccleston’s sentence holds him accountable for his attempt to compromise, exploit and damage U.S. government computer systems that contained sensitive nuclear weapon-related information with the intent of allowing foreign nations to gain access to that information or to damage essential systems,” said Assistant Attorney General Carlin. “One of our highest priorities in the National Security Division remains protecting our national assets from cyber intrusions. We must continue to evolve and remain vigilant in our efforts and capabilities to confront cyber-enabled threats and aggressively detect, disrupt and deter them.”

“Charles Harvey Eccleston is a scientist and former government employee who was willing to betray his country and his former employer out of spite,” said U.S. Attorney Phillips. “His attempts to sell access to sensitive computer networks demonstrate why the government must be so vigilant to prevent cyber-attacks. Thanks to the FBI, this defendant was apprehended before he could do any damage. Together with our law enforcement partners, we will continue to make the detection and prevention of cyber-crimes a top priority.”

“Today’s sentencing sends a powerful message that no one will be allowed to sabotage the U.S. Government’s cyber infrastructure or threaten our national security through the illicit sale of information to a foreign intelligence service,” said Assistant Director in Charge Abbate. “The FBI will continue to investigate and pursue those who attempt to disclose sensitive knowledge about our nation’s information systems and bring them to justice.”

Eccleston, a U.S. citizen who had been living in Davao City in the Philippines since 2011, was terminated from his employment at the NRC in 2010. He was detained by Philippine authorities in Manila, Philippines, on March 27, 2015, and deported to the United States to face U.S. criminal charges. He has been in custody ever since.

According to court documents, Eccleston initially came to the attention of the FBI in 2013 after he entered a foreign embassy in Manila and offered to sell a list of over 5,000 e-mail accounts of all officials, engineers and employees of a U.S. government energy agency. He said that he was able to retrieve this information because he was an employee of a U.S. government agency, held a top secret security clearance and had access to the agency’s network. He asked for $18,800 for the accounts, stating they were “top secret.” When asked what he would do if that foreign country was not interested in obtaining the U.S. government information the defendant was offering, the defendant stated he would offer the information to China, Iran or Venezuela, as he believed these countries would be interested in the information.

Thereafter, Eccleston met and corresponded with FBI undercover employees who were posing as representatives of the foreign country. During a meeting on Nov. 7, 2013, he showed one of the undercover employees a list of approximately 5,000 e-mail addresses that he said belonged to NRC employees. He offered to sell the information for $23,000 and said it could be used to insert a virus onto NRC computers, which could allow the foreign country access to agency information or could be used to otherwise shut down the NRC’s servers. The undercover employee agreed to purchase a thumb drive containing approximately 1,200 e-mail addresses of NRC employees; an analysis later determined that these e-mail addresses were publicly available. The undercover employee provided Eccleston with $5,000 in exchange for the e-mail addresses and an additional $2,000 for travel expenses.

Over the next several months, Eccleston corresponded regularly by e-mail with the undercover employees. A follow-up meeting with a second undercover employee took place on June 24, 2014, in which Eccleston was paid $2,000 to cover travel-related expenses. During this meeting, Eccleston discussed having a list of 30,000 e-mail accounts of DOE employees. He offered to design and send spear-phishing e-mails that could be used in a cyber-attack to damage the computer systems used by his former employer.

Over the next several months, the defendant identified specific conferences related to nuclear energy to use as a lure for the cyber-attack, then drafted emails advertising the conference. The emails were designed to induce the recipients to click on a link which the defendant believed contained a computer virus that would allow the foreign government to infiltrate or damage the computers of the recipients. The defendant identified several dozen DOE employees whom he claimed had access to information related to nuclear weapons or nuclear materials as targets for the attack.

On Jan. 15, 2015, Eccleston sent the e-mails he drafted to the targets he had identified. The e-mail contained the link supplied by the FBI undercover employee which Eccleston believed contained a computer virus, but was, in fact, inert. Altogether, the defendant sent the e-mail he believed to be infected to approximately 80 DOE employees located at various facilities throughout the country, including laboratories associated with nuclear materials.

Eccleston was detained after a meeting with the FBI undercover employee, during which Eccleston believed he would be paid approximately $80,000 for sending the e-mails.

The investigation was conducted by the FBI’s Washington Field Office with assistance from the NRC and DOE. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas A. Gillice of the District of Columbia and Trial Attorney Julie A. Edelstein of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section. Trial Attorney Scott Ferber of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section assisted in the investigation of this matter. The Department of Justice’s Office of International Affairs and the government of the Philippines also provided significant assistance.

Is there Anything the Chinese Wont Steal?

Posted on April 11, 2016April 11, 2016 by Denise Simon

In Iowa corn fields, Chinese national’s seed theft exposes vulnerability

ARLINGTON, Iowa (Reuters) – Tim Burrack, a northern Iowa farmer in his 44th growing season, has taken to keeping a wary eye out for unfamiliar vehicles around his 300 acres of genetically modified corn seeds.

Along with other farmers in this vast agricultural region, he has upped his vigilance ever since Mo Hailong and six other Chinese nationals were accused by U.S. authorities in 2013 of digging up seeds from Iowa farms and planning to send them back to China.

The case, in which Mo pleaded guilty in January, has laid bare the value — and vulnerability — of advanced food technology in a world with 7 billion mouths to feed, 1.36 billion of them Chinese.

Citing that case and others as evidence of a growing economic and national security threat to America’s farm sector, U.S. law enforcement officials are urging agriculture executives and security officers to increase their vigilance and report any suspicious activity.

But on a March 30 visit to Iowa, Justice Department officials could offer little advice to ensure against similar thefts, underlining how agricultural technology lying in open fields can be more vulnerable than a computer network or a factory floor.

“It may range down to traditional barriers like a fence and doing human patrols to making sure you get good visuals on what’s occurring,” Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, head of the Justice Department’s national security division, said when touring Iowa State University.

But agriculture sector executives say fences and guards are not feasible, due to the high cost and impracticality of guarding hundreds of thousands of acres.

Tom McBride, intellectual property attorney at Monsanto — one of the firms whose seeds were targeted by Mo — said it safeguards its genetically modified organism (GMO) technology by protecting its computers, patenting seeds and keeping fields like Burrack’s unmarked. Monsanto says it is not considering physical barriers like fences or guards.

The FBI and the U.S. Justice Department say cases of espionage in the agriculture sector have been growing since Mo was first discovered digging in an Iowan field in May 2011. Over the past two years, U.S. companies, government research facilities and universities have all been targeted, according to the FBI.

Although prosecutors were unable to establish a Chinese government link to Mo’s group, the case adds to U.S.-China frictions over what Washington says is increasing economic espionage and trade secret theft by Beijing and its proxies.

A U.S. law enforcement official told Reuters the agency looked for a connection between the Chinese government and the conspiracy carried out by Mo.

“In cases like this, we can see connections, but proving to the threshold needed in court requires that we have documents that the government has directed this,” the official said. “It’s almost impossible to get.”

A Chinese embassy spokesman in Washington, Zhu Haiquan, said he did not have detailed information on the Mo case but that China “stands firm” on the protection of intellectual property and maintains “constant communication and cooperation” with the U.S. government on the issue.

On his visit to Washington last September, President Xi Jinping reiterated China’s denial of any government role in the hacking of U.S. corporate secrets.

Mo, an employee of Chinese firm Kings Nower Seed, pleaded guilty to stealing seed grown by U.S. firms Monsanto, Dupont Pioneer and LG Seeds.

Prosecutors say he specifically targeted fields that grow the parent seeds needed to replicate GMO corn. The FBI says it suspects he was given the location by workers for the seed companies, but did not charge any employees.

DuPont Pioneer and LG Seeds declined to comment for this story.

Mo, whose case was prosecuted by the Justice Department as a national security matter rather than a simple criminal case, now faces a sentence of up to five years in prison. Five others charged in the case are still wanted by the FBI and are believed to have fled to China or Argentina. Charges were dropped against a sixth Chinese suspect.

NATIONAL SECURITY

The number of international economic espionage cases referred to the FBI is rising, up 15 percent each year between 2009 and 2014 and up 53 percent in 2015. The majority of cases reported involve Chinese nationals, the U.S. law enforcement official told Reuters. In the agriculture sector, organic insecticide, irrigation equipment and rice, along with corn, are all suspected to have been targeted, including by Chinese nationals, the official said.

Mo Hongjian, vice president of Kings Nower Seed’s parent company, Beijing Dabeinong Technology Group, declined to comment on the case or on the company’s connection with the Chinese government.

The parent firm is privately owned, but says it receives government money for research in “science and technology.”

China bans commercial growing of GMO grains due to public opposition to the technology and imports of GMO corn have to be approved by the agriculture ministry. Still, President Xi called in 2014 for China to innovate and dominate the technique, which promises high yields through resistance to drought, pests and disease.

In January, a Greenpeace report found some Chinese farmers are illegally growing GMO corn whose strains belong to companies including Monsanto, Syngenta and DuPont Pioneer.

Monsanto, which supplies Burrack’s seed, said it can block foreign groups who request to tour their lab and learning center in Huxley, Iowa. For the past few years, Monsanto says it has run its own background checks on Chinese delegations that ask for a tour, and, if they are approved, boosts security to be sure they do not steal anything or take pictures.

In Washington, U.S. senators have called for a review of the $43 billion deal by state-owned ChemChina to buy Swiss seed group Syngenta, which generates nearly a quarter of its revenue from North America.

Acquiring GMO seed and successfully recreating a corn plant would allow Chinese companies to skip over roughly eight years of research and $1.5 billion spent annually by Monsanto to develop the corn, the company says.

Burrack’s farm itself was not targeted by Mo, though he grows the Monsanto parent seed that the Chinese national was digging for. Burrack grows the corn in two fields in front of and behind his house where he can watch them, a small part of his 2,800-acre farm.

He said he is told by Monsanto where and when to plant the parent seed, but has never been told to keep what he is planting a secret.

“What no one seems to understand is that they’re stealing from people like me,” Burrack said. “They’re stealing the research that farmers pay for when they buy Monsanto seed.”

Panama Papers Snares Another Clinton Tax Haven?

Posted on April 11, 2016April 11, 2016 by Denise Simon

First the Panama Papers revealed the Podesta Group. John and Tony Podesta, the founders have connections to a Russian bank which is blacklisted. John Podesta is the architect of the Hillary presidential campaign.

John Podesta, a real operative in the White House for years.

John Podesta was an Obama advisor and upon leaving that role, he said his greatest regret not revealing more about UFO’s. Sheesh…

The mailman must be real busy and overworked at the address below.

This Delaware Address Is Home to 200,000 Shell Companies—Including Hillary Clinton’s

In wake of ‘Panama Papers’ scandal, renewed interest in tax avoidance efforts

FreeBeacon: The address “1209 North Orange Street” in Wilmington, Del., has become known in recent years as the epicenter of U.S. corporate secrecy. The squat, split-level building is the official address of over 285,000 companies, many of which are looking to take advantage of Delaware’s Panama-like secrecy rules, tax incentives, and business-friendly case law.

In the wake of the recent “Panama Papers” scandal, this unassuming brick office has received renewed scrutiny from the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Telegraph, and advocates for corporate tax reform.

But one of its tenants may come as a surprise—a company owned by Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

Hillary and Bill Clinton quietly set up two shell companies listed at “1209 North Orange Street” in 2008 and 2013, the Washington Free Beacon has found. The names of the companies, but not their location, were first made public in tax filings released by Hillary Clinton last year.

According to records, one of the Clintons’ “1209 North Orange Street” companies is WJC, LLC, which was set up by Bill Clinton in 2008 as a pass-through for his consulting fees.

Another company at the same location, ZFS Holdings, LLC, was set up in February 2013, one week after Hillary Clinton left the State Department. Hillary Clinton received $5.5 million from her book publisher, Simon & Schuster, through the company.

The “1209 North Orange Street” building is the headquarters for the Corporation Trust Company. The firm acts as a registered agent for thousands of corporations that are not actually located in Delaware, including the Clintons’ companies.

Anti-secrecy advocates say the building is prime evidence that Delaware has become a corporate haven that’s comparable to more well-known, offshore locales.

“If you imagined a building with 1,000 corporations in it, you’d imagine a building like the Empire State building,” said Richard Phillips, a senior policy analyst with Citizens for Tax Justice. “But apparently 285,000 companies claim [1209 North Orange Street] is their address.”

“What this shows is this is not really the address of companies that are doing real business. This is the address of a lot of companies that are just shell companies,” he added. “In this case, it doesn’t even look like they have mailboxes. They just claim that address as the places they’re doing business, even though they’re not doing business there.”

Similar registered agents have come under scrutiny in recent years. While campaigning in 2008, President Obama slammed the “Ugland House,” a five-story building in the Cayman Islands that is reportedly home to over 18,000 companies.

“That’s either the biggest building in the world, or the biggest tax scam on record,” said Obama.

The Clinton campaign declined to comment on why the Clintons, who live in New York and have no evident residential ties to Delaware, set up companies in the state. But the presidential candidate isn’t alone. Experts say Delaware is the most popular place to register a company in the United States, due in part to its established system of business case law and tax incentives for intellectual property and real estate holdings.

One of the biggest draws may be the state’s lack of disclosure requirements—businesses can be created completely anonymously, allowing the owners to avoid public detection and even hide income from U.S. authorities.

According to advocates for corporate tax reform, Delaware’s laws rival well-known secrecy havens like the Cayman Islands and Panama.

“General secrecy laws and the ability of these corporations to hide the identities of those who own it, that’s what makes [Delaware] an onshore tax haven, and that’s what makes it just as bad as the Cayman Islands,” said Phillips.

Hillary Clinton has promised to crack down on tax havens on the campaign trail. Referring to the Panama Papers last Wednesday, Clinton condemned “outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting in Panama and elsewhere.”

The Clinton Foundation also has three shell companies in Delaware, according to its amended financial disclosures released last year.

One is the Acceso Fund, LLC, which was registered by the Corporation Trust Company at 1209 North Orange Street in 2009. The Clinton Foundation has used the company to channel money to its Colombia-based private equity fund, Fondo Acceso.

The private equity fund, which is run out of the Clinton Foundation’s Bogota office, has invested in telecom and food processing companies in Colombia, the Free Beacon reported last November.

Another Clinton Foundation company, Acceso Worldwide Fund, Inc., was registered in 2013 by the Corporation Services Company, located in Wilmington, Delaware.

A third company, the Haiti Development Fund, LLC, was registered in 2010 by National Corporate Research, Ltd, located in Dover.

In Delaware, limited liability companies such as WJC, LLC, and ZFS, LLC, are not required to file annual statements disclosing their directors or owners. The Clintons also registered both companies in New York after they were established.

There is no evidence the Clintons are using the entities for any nefarious purposes, and it is perfectly legal for non-residents to set up corporations in Delaware. But even if corporations stay within the law, critics say Delaware shell companies can sometimes be used to legally circumvent taxes in other states.

According to a report published last December by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Delaware’s popularity as a hub for shell companies is “responsible for the loss of billions of dollars in revenue in other U.S. states.”

“It’s legal tax avoidance,” said Phillips. “We would say it’s immoral, or not the best thing for the country.”

Anti-secrecy advocates also say the laws make it easier for criminals to evade federal taxes or finance terrorism, all under the radar of the public and U.S. authorities.

“Some anonymous shell companies have financed terrorism and supported corruption and human trafficking and Delaware is a traditional hub for creating these fake companies,” said Andrew Hanauer, campaign director at the Jubilee USA Network.

Jubilee USA Network and other groups have been advocating for legislative reform. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.), Rep. Peter King (R., N.Y.), and Rep. Carolyn Maloney recently put forward legislation that would force U.S. companies to disclose their actual owners.

The Clinton campaign did comment on whether Hillary Clinton supports the legislation. The campaign also did not comment on whether she or Bill Clinton have any other companies registered in Delaware.

But the concerns over corporate secrecy and tax avoidance have trickled into the Democratic presidential race, with Sen. Bernie Sanders incorporating it into his stump speeches. Clinton has also railed against tax havens on the trail and vowed to take action.

“Some of you may have just heard about these disclosures about outrageous tax havens and loopholes that super-rich people across the world are exploiting in Panama and elsewhere,” said Clinton during a campaign event last Wednesday.

“Now some of this behavior is clearly against the law, and anyone who violates the law anywhere should be held accountable,” she added. “But it’s also scandalous how much is actually legal.”

Venezuela, There She Blows

Posted on April 10, 2016April 10, 2016 by Denise Simon

Statement of Secretary Lew on the Venezuela Executive Order
3/9/2015

U.S.Treasury: We are committed to defending human rights and advancing democratic governance in Venezuela through the use of financial sanctions.

We will use these tools to target those persons involved in violence against anti-government protesters, serious human rights abuses, and those involved in the arrest or prosecution of individuals for their legitimate exercise of free speech.

Corrupt actions by Venezuelan government officials deprive Venezuela of needed economic resources that could be invested in the Venezuelan people and used to spur economic growth. These actions also undermine the public trust in democratic institutions and the human rights to which Venezuelan citizens are entitled. This Executive Order will be used to protect the U.S. financial system from the illicit financial flows from public corruption in Venezuela.

Beginning in 2013, perhaps earlier:

Venezuela is running out of money fast and has started selling its gold

CNN: The cash-strapped country could default by next year when lots of debt payments are due. Venezuela’s reserves, which are mostly made up of gold, have fallen sharply this year as the country needs cash to pay off debt and tries to maintain its social welfare programs.

Venezuela owes about $15.8 billion in debt payments between now and the end of 2016.

But it doesn’t have enough to make good on its payments. Venezuela only has $15.2 billion in foreign reserves — the lowest amount since 2003. A lot of those reserves are in gold.

Less than $1 billion of Venezuela’s reserves are in cash, and it has a couple billion in reserves at the IMF.

Venezuela risks a descent into chaos

©AFP

Police arrest students during a protest against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in San Cristobal. Two officers died and four more were hurt

FT: At the main morgue of central Caracas, the stench forces everyone to cover their nostrils. “Now things are worse than ever,” says Yuli Sánchez. “They kill people and no one is punished while families have to keep their pain to themselves.”

Ms Sánchez’s 14-year-old nephew, Oliver, was shot five times by malandros, or thugs, while riding on the back of a friend’s motorcycle. His uncle, Luis Mejía, remarked that in a fortnight three members of their family had been shot, including two youths who were shot by police.

An economic, social and political crisis facing Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s unpopular president, is being aggravated by a rise in violence which is prompting fears that this oil-rich country risks becoming a failed state.

“What can we do?” Mr Mejía asks. “Give up.” The morgue employee in charge of handling the corpses notes that a decade ago he received seven or eight bodies every weekend. These days, he says, that number has risen to between 40 and 50: “This is now wilder than the wild west.”

Critics say that the Venezuelan government is increasingly unable to provide citizens with water, electricity, health or a functioning economy which can supply basic food staples or indispensable medicines, let alone personal safety.

Last month alone, Venezuelans learned of the summary execution of at least 17 gold miners supposedly by a mining Mafia, the killing of two police officers allegedly by a group of students who drove a bus into a barricade, and a hostage drama inside a prison at the hands of a grenade-wielding criminal gang. On Wednesday, three policemen were killed when an armed gang busted a member out of a lock-up in the capital.

At least 10 were killed in a Caracas shanty town after a confrontation between local thugs armed with assault rifles, while a local mayor was gunned down outside his home in Trujillo state last month. There are widespread reports of lynchings.

All this is creating a broad unease that Mr Maduro is unable to maintain order. Venezuela has the world’s fastest inflation and its dire recession is worsening. Mr Maduro last week declared every Friday a holiday for the next two months to save electricity as a prolonged drought has exacerbated chronic power shortages. There is a lack of basic goods. Analysts warn that the economic crisis risks turning in to a humanitarian one.

The evidence of state failure is very concrete in the country that sits on top of the world’s largest oil reserves– Moisés Naím, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

“Failed state is a nebulous concept often used too lightly. That’s not the case with today’s Venezuela,” says Moisés Naím a Venezuelan distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The evidence of state failure is very concrete in the country that sits on top of the world’s largest oil reserves.”

Venezuela is already one of the world’s deadliest countries. The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, a local think-tank, says the murder rate rose last year to 92 killings per 100,000 residents. The attorney-general cites a lower figure of 58 homicides per 100,000.

In 1998, a year before former leader Hugo Chávez took office, the rate was 19 per 100,000, says the think-tank’s director Roberto Briceño León, adding that after 17 years of socialist “revolution”, it is the poor who make up most of the victims.

Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's president, gestures while speaking at a rally to commemorate the 24th anniversary of former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's failed military coup in Caracas, Venezuela, on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016

©Bloomberg

“I think it is evident that the Venezuelan state cannot act as a state in many areas of the country, so it could be considered failed,” says Mr Briceño, adding that the state now “lacks a monopoly on violence”.

But the state is indeed to blame for some of that violence, according to a report by advocacy groups Human Rights Watch and the Venezuelan Human Rights Education-Action Programme presented to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

“Venezuelans are facing one of the highest murder rates in the hemisphere and urgently need effective protection from violent crime,” said José Miguel Vivanco HRW’s Americas director. “But in multiple raids throughout the country, the security forces themselves have allegedly committed serious abuses.”

Their findings show that police and military raids in low-income and immigrant communities in Venezuela have led to widespread allegations of abuse, including extrajudicial killings, mass arbitrary detentions, maltreatment of detainees, forced evictions, the destruction of homes, and arbitrary deportations.

Country’s bitter power struggle reflects institutional weakness across the region

The government usually blames violence within its borders on Colombian rightwing paramilitaries engaged in a war against its revolution. But as David Smilde and Hugo Pérez Hernáiz of the Washington Office on Latin America, a think-tank, recently wrote: “Attributing violence in Venezuela to paramilitary activity has been a common rhetorical move used by the government over the past year, effectively making a citizen security problem into a national security problem.”

For many Venezuelans it no longer matters who is to blame. “It is a state policy of letting anarchy sink in,” says a former policeman outside the gates of a compound in Caracas.

That former police station now houses the Frente 5 de Marzo, one of the political groups that consider themselves the keepers of socialism’s sacred flame. The gates bear the colours of the Venezuelan flag and are marked with bullet holes. The man believes there is something akin to a civil war going on.

“Venezuela is pure chaos now. It seems to me there is no way back,” he says.

****

Iran has been outsourcing for many years and that includes to Iran:

Iran’s ambassador to Venezuela said Tuesday that a check worth about $70 million, found by German authorities in the luggage of Iran’s former central bank chief, was going to be used by an Iranian company for its expenses while building public housing in Venezuela.

Iranian Ambassador Hojattolah Soltani made the remarks in an interview with the Venezuelan television channel Globovision, saying the check for 300 million Venezuelan bolivars was to be used for the expenses of the Kayson Company, a Tehran-based construction business that is building thousands of homes for the Venezuelan government.

The Iranian ambassador noted that the man with the check whom German authorities stopped last month is not currently a government official. Soltani said that Tahmasb Mazaheri, a former chief of Iran’s central bank and former economy minister, has been working as an adviser to the Iranian company.

Venezuelan authorities had to comment on the issue, and stressed that everything was above board (link is external). The Iranian Ambassador to Caracas would later recant his opinion, as cited by AP above, saying about the caught check-courier (link is external) “[he] is by no means an official of the Government (of Iran); neither has his name been affixed to the confiscated check”, and adding that the check “was signed in Iran and Mr. Mazaheri was on his way to Venezuela to bring the check to cash it in Banco Venezuela.”

So Mazaheri, who is not an official of the Government of Iran as per Iran’s Ambassador to Venezuela claims, was entrusted to carry a check worth $70 million, just like that? Mazaheri was a director of Banco Internacional de Desarrollo (link is external), an OFAC-designated entity targeted by the U.S. Treasury Department “for providing or attempting to provide financial services to Iran’s Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL). (link is external)” The European Union also included the bank in its list of sanctioned entities involved in “nuclear or ballistic missiles activities

– See more at: http://infodio.com/250414/venezuela/corruption/kayson/tahmasb/mazaheri#sthash.8z4z99bY.dpuf

Invest in Gold, Documents: bin Ladin Agreed

Posted on April 10, 2016April 10, 2016 by Denise Simon

Newly released documents show bin Laden encouraged Al Qaeda leaders to invest ransom money in gold

BusinessInsider: Notorious terrorist leader Osama bin Laden was bullish on gold, telling Al Qaeda leaders in a 2010 letter to invest in the precious metal while “overall price trend is upward,” The New York Times reported this week.

The letter was part of a trove of documents released by the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence last month. In it, bin Laden implores Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, Al Qaeda’s general manager, to earmark $1.7 million of a $5 million ransom for gold bars and coins.

Bin Laden also advocated buying euros, Kuwaiti dinars, and Chinese yuan. He outlined specific instructions on how to spend the money.

“As for the money you received in local currency, it should be gotten rid of, because its value has been declining and it continues to go down,” bin Laden wrote. He then detailed how much of the ransom money should go to various currencies and said al-Rahman should “use the euros first, then the dinars, the yuan and then the gold.”

He then goes on to analyze the outlook on gold.

“The overall price trend is upward,” bin Laden wrote. “Even with occasional drops, in the next few years the price of gold will reach $3,000 an ounce. Right now it is at $1,390 an ounce, but before the events in New York and Washington it was $280 an ounce.”

The Times noted that this would have been a “bad bet,” because on the day the letter was dated, December 3, 2010, gold closed at $1,414.08 an ounce. Today gold is at about $1,230 an ounce.

It’s unclear whether al-Rahman followed bin Laden’s instructions in this case, according to The Times.

Bin Laden wasn’t alone in his assessment of gold’s potential. The Times said:

Bin Laden may have lacked investing acumen — gold peaked at $1,900 an ounce five months after his death in 2011 — but he seems to have had a keen sense of the financial zeitgeist. His belief in gold’s bright future was shared at the time by many Americans and a number of financial luminaries, including George Soros and John Paulson, both of whom were investing heavily in the precious metal. Demand was so high that in 2010, JPMorgan Chase reopened a long-closed vault used to store gold under the streets of downtown Manhattan.

Read the full letter below:

Osama Bin Laden gold letter by Pamela Engel