Newsletter No 405

                                                                               ISSN 1440-9828
                                                                                                  September 2008
                                                                    No 405

The publication of the US Senate report into tax haven banks spells bad news for Frank Lowry. Lichtenstein bankers are not known for expressing their emotions. The service they provide to wealthy clients is punctual and discreet. Correspondence is marked by a crisp and to the point Germanic briskness. But the size of the Frank Lowry account got the LGT Groups Peter Widmer uncharacteristically excited. Behind the foundation is Mr Frank P Lowy, one of the richest men in Australia. Widmer wrote in an internal bank memo dated January 29, 1998, and headed ‘Lupela Foundation’, “The mandate is to be classified as one of the largest business affairs of the LGT BIL (has up to this point brought CHF7 million!). For exactly this reason it must be ensured that no fees or transactions occur through the Lupela account that makes the clients nervous in principle”, Widmer wrote.

Nervous, however, is probably how shopping centre magnate Frank Lowy has been feeling since the last year when the United States Internal Revenue Service began asking questions about whether one of his family companies had held any off-shore accounts. A few months earlier four DVDs loaded with thousands of internal LGT Bank documents had begun to be passed around tax authorities, sparking tax haven investigation in at least 11 countries.

A sense that something distinctly unpleasant was around the corner has been hanging over the billionaire businessman ever since. And this week it arrived.

The 77-year-old appetite for Liechtenstein accounts has led to public scraps with a taxman before. In May 1995 the details of a long-running tax dispite over a Liechtenstein-based trust account called ‘Yelnarf’ emerged in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal prompting a newspaper article headlined: ‘Tax Office hits Lowy family with bill for $20 million’. Lowy quickly settled the case for $25 million. It was later discovered that another dispute between his Westfield Holdings and the ATO had settled three years earlier.

In June 1995 the Keating Labor Government appointed him to the Reserve Bank of Australia Board. But controversy returns in July when it was revealed that once penalties and outstanding interest were factored in, the ATO claimed Lowy owed $50 million – twice what he settled for. The settlement had reportedly caused concern among tax office staff, with two investigators taking stress leave. In October a federal Liberal backbencher, Ken Aldred, attacked Lowy’s appointment to the RBA and accused him of using his status to obtain a special deal with the tax office.

The next day, after a phone call direct from Lowy, the then leader of opposition John Howard defended him in parliament as a good friend and a man “who has been a great success story and who has made a very philanthropic contribution to the Australian community”.

In a mark of the changing times, this week Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was noticeably quiet.

The ownership of Yelnarf, the trust at the centre of the 1990s tax dispute, had bedevilled tax authorities although its name provided a clue (if you spell Yelnarf backwards it becomes Franley, one of the Lowy’s main companies and the moniker derived from the combination of Frank and his wife Shirley’s name.

But thanks to Heinrich Kieber, a former LGT employee, who stole bank account records and last year sold them to tax authorities, the IRS and ATO this time don’t have to worry about playing word games.

They are sitting on wads of internal bank correspondence in which bank employees discuss Lowy’s affairs. And on Thursday a US Senate sub-committee investigation into tax haven domiciled banks that help wealthy US citizens to evade taxes decided to upload 72 pages of it directly on to the Internet.

Such tactics are unknown in Australia where the federal government’s heavily publicised Wickenby Taskforce is grinding on into its fourth year of investigations into tax fraud by hundreds of Australians – to date there has been only one conviction. Then naming and shaming by the Americans marks a wildly different approach; it may not lead to any charges but it brought an avalanche of bad publicity for Lowy. In response he said he had been denied natural justice and attacked the report for drawing inferences from the documents and stating them as facts, without verifying their contents.

But the documents, if they are genuine, appear to speak for themselves.

They reveal how in late 1996, as his wealth cracked one billion and he was moving into his second year as an RBA board member, Lowy went to extraordinary length to ensure tax authorities would not become aware of the assets tucked away in LGTs vaults.

A report by sub-committee staff concluded that the documents make it clear that LGT was aware that Mr Lowy and his sons were hiding assets in the new foundation from Australian tax authorities. Both the ATO and the IRS are investigating.

In LGT’s headquarters in Vaduz, nothing it seems was too much trouble for Herr Lowy. The businessman received all kinds of special treatments from the LGT Group thanks to his status, as noted on bank documents, as Australia’s second richest man. He was charged a special all-in-one fee of 0.7 per cent levied on the Luperla Foundation’s assets which came to a total of $US68 million ($69.74 million).

He and his family were given special dispensation from having to travel to Switzerland or Liechtenstein to deal with the bank – the bank came to him in Sydney, Los Angeles and London.

And extraordinary efforts were made to hide the Lowy’s dealings. Lowy had been doing business with LTG for some time when in November 1996 he and his son, David, their family lawyer, Joshua Gelbard, and long-time adviser and Westfield director, David Gonski, met LGT staff in Sydney to discuss Luperla for the first time.

The day before, the Lowy’s had raised $94 million by selling shares in their Westfield America property trust. They now wanted the assets from another Liechtenstein entity called Crofton put into Luperla, and Lowy was insistent that all bank records of Crofton and his other accounts were to be destroyed. A memo of a second meeting two months later in Los Angeles explained the Luperla assets were to be invested “very long term and rather conservatively” as they were “insurance” for the Lowy family – seemingly cutting across Lowy’s statement this week that the money was given to an Israeli charity.

The lawyer, Gelbard, was to be the only person connected to the account and had full power of attorney, which meant that the Lowy’s didn’t have to visit Vaduz again. “The Lowy’s have decided that they never want to go to Liechtenstein or Switzerland in connection with these companies”, a memo notes.

It also had the benefit of providing the Lowys with another veil of secrecy. At the last meeting between Lowy and LGT employees in March 1997 in London, Lowy explained that he had recently settled a dispute with the ATO for $25 million and he thought that any transfer of money into Australia would be carefully watched.

“Special caution is to be used”, a memo of the meeting prepared by LGT employees notes. “The entire documentation and assembly is to be done in such a manner that (Mr Lowy) and his attorneys can testify before court in Australia without hesitation.

Luperla was born in March 1997 with $US54.7 million and CHF3.6 million. The US dollars came from Crofton, via a British Virgin Islands company specially acquired to help disguise the transfer of assets into the Luperla account.

The identity of the beneficial owners was hidden further through a device in which a subsidiary Lowy family company, Beverley Park Corp, would have the power to designate the owners. “This structure served the ownership of Luperla assets out of Luperla records and deepen the secrecy surrounding the identity of its beneficiaries,” the Senate report notes.

These efforts – money coming in through a BVI shell company, giving the lawyer full power of attorney, destroying the records of other accounts – all seems like a lot of bother for money that’s earmarked for charity.

But Lowy’s fear that the ATO might come at him again over the $25 million and his desire for family “insurance”, may reflect a Holocaust survivor’s attitude to hiding something away because, when the world changes, it can be stripped away.

Lowy’s father went to work one day and was never seen again. Eventually the family found out he had been killed at Auschwitz.

Despite all these efforts towards anonymity, and as the Senate report observes, internal LGT memos “are clear that Luperla’s financial beneficiaries were the father and his three sons”.

On 25 June, 2001, for undisclosed reasons, the process of stripping Luperla of its assets began. On instructions from David Lowy, the assets, then worth $68 million, were distributed into two accounts at Bank Jacob Safra in Geneva. At that point the paper trail goes cold.

In late 2007 the IRS began asking questions of the Lowy’s as to whether the Beverley Park company ever held off-shore assets. Beverley Parks director, Leon Janks, said it did not and Peter Lowy said while he “does not have sufficient personal knowledge”, regarding Beverley’s interest “no reason to doubt” Janks’ statement.

The Senate report sets out how, given that a subsidiary of Beverley Park was the entity that was given the power to designate the beneficial owners of Luperla, and given that Beverley park is ultimately controlled By Frank Lowy Family Trust in Australia, these answers appear to have been false.

In her 2001 biography on Lowy, Pushing the Limits, Jill Margo notes how the publicity of the 1995 tax case hit Lowy hard. “Frank was distressed – he has always loathed litigation and unnecessary exposure”, she wrote. When a settlement was finally negotiated, Lowy was flooded with relief at being saved from having to defend himself in a public court.

Now without any prospect of a courtroom in sight, the phenomenally successful shopping centre developer has earned the ignominy of becoming a major target in the publication of a US Senate report on abusive tax haven practices.

The tactic marks a new and stunningly powerful tactic in US efforts to stamp out tax haven abusers. Using parliamentary privilege to pour disgrace on such a man would be unthinkable in Australia, where Lowy can pick up the phone and speak to both the prime minister and the leader of the opposition.

Now his name will forever be linked to ‘case study three’ of the US Senate sub-committee’s report into tax haven banks and US tax compliance.

The whistleblower caught in the middle of the Liechtenstein tax scandal confronted his bosses about corruption, links to dictators and shady business deals before going public but was always told the same thing: “None of your business, just stick to your designated job.”

The whistleblower, Heinrich Kieber, an employee of LGT Group has publicly detailed explosive revelations about how LGT, a Liechtenstein bank owned by the country’s royal family, operated an elaborate structure of Swiss bank account and special purpose vehicles to shield more than one hundred billion in Swiss franks ($100.8 billion) of their clients’ cash, securities, paintings and patents from overseas taxes.

He also revealed unusual and secretive internal policies that ensured the bank’s activities went unnoticed by tax agents around the world, including banning emails and mail, swearing clients to secrecy, warning them not to telephone the bank and, if they did, to use a series of secret codes. Kieber’s designated job at the bank before he became nosy and uncovered widespread tax evasion was simply to make sure clients’ files were properly scanned and indexed.

“It was then that I began to realize the very questionable business the LGT was often involved in and the dubious clients they were serving, the kind of business that was going beyond just facilitating massive tax evasions,” Kieber told a US sub-committee investigating the tax scandal.

“I got the very clear picture of the highly sophisticated and sometimes surprisingly simple tricks and methods used.”

Kieber began a deliberate and calculated expose of the bank, obtaining copies of vast internal documents, before leaving the company to blow the whistle.

Kieber says clients of LGT were told to follow specific instructions, including a vow of secrecy from their lawyers, family members, relatives or friends.

“The reason is, any human relationship can go wrong and a client may end up in a situation where blackmailing is possible.” Clients were told not to call LGT from home or from work but to use public phones instead. And while ther bank usually did not send any mail, if it did, it was via the Swiss or Austrian post office to bypass tax enforcement agencies looking for mail from Liechtenstein.

On average, clients were contacted by the bank only once a year. Kieber started work at LGT Trust, part of the LGT Group, in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, in October 2000, when the bank took on 20 employees to help it switch to a paperless office.

LGT Trust core trade was selling and managing Liechtenstein entities, such as foundations and establishments, clients transferred their assets into one or more of the legal entities, becoming the beneficial owner.

Every single legal entity from Liechtenstein pays an average flat tax rate of just SFR1000 a year, regardless of how much it earns or owns.

In a detailed example Kieber says the bank would transfer the bank’s assets out of the United States through a chain of several special purpose vehicles.

First, the money would go through an unsuspecting country such as Canada before being transferred through a series of other countries and jurisdictions, preferable countries with weak or non-existent compliance laws.

Finally, before reaching Liechtenstein, the assets would run through a Swiss bank, whose customers would have reciprocal rights with LGT.

For an additional layer of concealment, the Swiss bank or the LGT would often perform a fake cash-out transaction to make it look like the monies had been paid out in cash over the counter.

After one or two years in use the special purpose vehicles would be put into liquidation, then deleted, and new ones established. “The only purpose of all this is to make it extremely complicated for law enforcement agencies to follow the trail,” Kieber said.

In 1996, the year the Lowy’s began setting up their Luperla Foundation with LGT, tye Westfield empire was expanding rapidly. After the wrong turn into Channel 10 at the end of the 1980s, Frank Lowy had gone back to the source of his wealth. The sole focus was the shopping mall. Westfield was buying more, developing more, and managing more. And the more malls the group managed, the greater was the value of Westfield’s holdings and the family’s fortune.

In 1996, Lowy’s wealth, as estimated by BRW, soared past one billion dollars for the first time. The outline of the Lowy story is well known. After a childhood in Nazi-occupied Europe he went to Israel and, aged 21, flew into Sydney on Australia Day in 1951.

Within two years he had teamed up with long-term partner John Saunders, opened the legendary Blacktown delicatessen, and moved into property development. The first Westfield was opened in 1959 and the next year he stepped into public view when Westfield Development Corporation floated.

Others were developing shopping centres at the time, but Lowy was different.

The long-time head of Westfield’s operations in the United States, Richard Green, summed up the Lowy approach for biographer, Jill Margo.

“He is constantly creating situations people think are not achievable,” Green said. “But he pushes them to the line and beyond it and gets things done, not in a forceful way but in a direct way. He listens, seeks the best advice, minimises the risk, then homes in and makes a decision. Once a decision is made, he locks into it and compresses the time for achieving it to the smallest possible base.”

At the same time, Lowy is the consummate negotiator. In the 1980s he dealt himself into the Coles take-over of Myer. Twenty years later he dealt the tough British tycoons David and Simon Reuben out of the sites that will become the Westfield flagship in London.

Equally important is the Lowy vision. With a dynastic eye he looked beyond simply developing the malls to the value of holding, managing and re-building again.

Of course that requires capital. Last year Lowy again showed his keen appreciation of capital markets when Westfield raised three billion dollars before the credit crisis.

And it needs an understanding of politics, a long-term interest that has taken Lowy to the Reserve Bank of Australia Board and control of Australia’s soccer.

In retrospect of the opportunities of the mid-90s set the group up for a generation. Interest rates were falling and the money was starting to flow into the real estate investment trust.

At the same time huge port folios of shopping centres were being sold in the US at what now looks like bargain prices.

In 1998, the Lowy family sold down a $460 million interest in Westfield Holdings to broaden the family wealth.

Most was invested in the Lowy Family Group, which, according to David Lowy, has delivered a profit of $1 billion since 2000. In 2004, Lowy merged his three listed vehicles, Westfield Holdings, the Westfield Trust, and the Westfield America Trust to create the world’s largest listed mall operation. At last count, Westfield Group managed 118 malls with 22,000 retail outlets in four countries. That’s a port folio worth more than $60 billion.

Westfield Group chairman Frank Lowy asked Liechtenstein-based bank LGT Group to create a secret trust account to be filled with $US100 million and kept hidden from tax authorities as a means of providing “insurance” for his family, according to a US Senate report.

Internal bank documents attached as exhibits to the Senate Report, which found that LGT Group and global bank UBS (Union Bank of Switzerland) had facilitated tax evasion, are in contrast to his statement that funds were distributed to an Israeli charity. The documents state that in 2001, on Mr Lowy’s instructions, the foundation’s assets were sent to Bank Jacob Safra in Switzerland.

A spokesman for Mr Lowy, Australia’s second riches man, refused on Friday to provide details of the Israeli charity or explain where the money went after it entered the Swiss bank.

Mr Lowy said on Thursday that the Senate committee had not given him a meaningful opportunity to respond and had drawn inferences from documents and stated them as facts without verifying their contents.

Internal LGT documents also state that long-time Lowy family friend and Westfield director David Gonski attended a meeting in Sydney in 1996 at which Mr Lowy and his son David discussed setting up a foundation and filling it with assets to be invested long term to serve as an “insurance” for the Lowy family.

“I don’t feel that I should comment on somebody else’s situation”, Mr Gonski said on Friday. Mr Lowy, who is estimated to have a net worth $6.3 billion, has become a victim of name and shame campaign led by US Senator Carl Levine, who has driven a campaign against tax havens.

A US Senate Permanent Subcommittee report concludes that Mr Lowy was one of LGT’s largest client and, by exploiting Liechtenstein’s secrecy laws, hid $US 68 million from Australian tax authorities by parking it a foundation.

A memo prepared by LGT staff for a meeting in 1998 notes that the foundation’s beneficial owner was Mr Lowy and his family.

“The substance of this meeting is that the client cannot officially bring these funds back into his Australian assets. The foundation assets shall come to the amount of approximately $US100 million and originate from a relatively complex transaction, with the goal of bringing shares listed in the stock market back into the family’s possession, which was successfully completed,” the memo notes.

In a statement issued on Thursday, Mr Lowy rejected the reports assertion that he hid assets from Australian tax authorities and said that no tax was avoided.

He has admitted to being audited by the tax authorities in Australia. The report notes that he is also being investigated by the US Internal Revenue Service.

Appearing at the US Senate hearing accompanying the report on Thursday, UBS’s chielf financial officer of Global Wealth Management, Mark Branson, said his bank would cease providing off shore banking services directly to US citizens, in a bid to extract itself from a furore over its practices that has already led one of its bankers facing jail.

The decision follows controversy over the practice of UBS. One employer testified in court that the bank had about $US 20 billion ($20.6 billion) of assets under management in “undeclared” accounts for US taxpayers.

Mr Lowy’s Los Angeles son, Peter, was also due to appear to give evidence at the Senate hearings in Washington, DC on Thursday but did not appear, citing previous business engagements. He has now agreed to give evidence next Friday.

_______________

A.I: When Peter Lowy appeared before the sub committee he refused to answer questions, using the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution – citing his constitutional right against self-incrimination.

Matthew Drummond, in AFR, July 26-27, 2008, states:

“Ken Aldred, a former Liberal Party back-bencher, was rebuked by then opposition leader John Howard when in a speech in parliament in 1995 he called Mr Lowy’s appointment to the Australian Reserve Bank and the Australian Taxation Office $25 million settlement a “disgrace”. On Friday he said he now felt vindicated and more transparency was needed around how the ATO settles disputes with taxpayers, a process that is confidential and subject to little oversight. “It’s still a concern that the issue has not been satisfactorily resolved,” he said.

On Friday a Lowy family spokesman re-iterated that the Liechtenstein funds were legally held and distributed for charitable purposes in Israel without the family claiming any deductions.

In a gracious villa overlooking the Moscow River in 1994, some of Russia’s smartest comrades held a secret meeting. Communism had collapsed three years earlier and President Boris Yeltsin-state-owned industries. This was Russia’s great leap to capitalism. The agenda of the meeting (as reported in David Hoffman’s book: The Oligarchs) was to decide how to carve up the spoils. They did just that, sometimes using organised crime, assassinations, car bombs, invariably using high-level corruption.

They were helped by the high priests of US capitalism, who – either through benevolence, religion or colonialist aspirations – wanted a rapid obliteration of communism.

These, then, are the Russian oligarchs (members of a small, unelected ruling group). Many had been successful communist party apparatchiks; now they flourished in a new system. One of them, Boris Berezovsky, boasted that he and five of the other oligarchs controlled half of Russia’s wealth. By manipulating export payments, they pushed much of these riches off-shore – to the delight of American capitalism – at an average of more than $15 billion a year. The black gold for the oligarchs was oil.

In the process, Russia was becoming what Swedish novelist Vilhelm Moberg called a ‘democtoship’. Behind the glamorous high-rise apartments of Moscow, the IKEA mega stores and the flash boutiques with their Levi Strauss jeans, Addidas shoes and Bosch electronics, the Russian people have been bleading.

So when President Vladimir Putin, a hard-nosed former secret police chief, came to power in 2000, he started upsetting the cosy arrangements the robber barons had with the Yeltsin regime. And now President Putin – pointed to the Enron and Worldcom face of capitalism in the US – may have his biggest scalp with the arrest of oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky on six charges on fraud and tax evasions.

But a crack-down on capitalist excesses is only one reading of this arrest. Another is that Mr Khodorkovsky is a victim of a power struggle within the government as President Putin cleans out the remnants of the Yeltsin era. Mr Khodorkovsky may be in breach of an alleged pack with President Putin that the oligarchs would not interfere with politics. By another reading, President Putin is tackling an international Jewish conspiracy of power. Or, the arrest could be seen as payback for the industry lobbying that killed a parliamentary bill in June, seeking higher taxes on oil. In any case, it’s now in the hands of the prosecutors. But as you’d expect from the labyrinth of Russia –

A huge country and still a world power, if only through its UN veto, its nuclear arsenal and its oil reserve – there is no simple answer. But the case has already revealed to the world the fabulous wealth at stake among the comrades who became capitalists.

The three engine jetliner, a tidy Tupolev 154, rolled towards the terminal at Novosibirsk’s Tolmachevo airport. It was a routine fuel stop at the cross roads of central Russia. The jet’s owner, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a Russian oil tycoon and the world’s 26^th richest man, ignored the snow outside as he worked on the speech he intended to deliver later that day in Irkutsk. The speech was titled, ‘Government, Business and Society’.

The gathering Siberian snow outside meant Mr Khodorkovsky had little notice of the shadowy men, masked in balaclavas, surrounding the jet as it came to rest. Their machine pistols said they weren’t refillers. They were government security agents, there to remind the pauper who had become a billionaire of a Russian saying ‘No man is immune from poverty or prison.

Before the day was done, Mr Khodorkovsky’s personal worth, $11.2 billion – would be dining on porridge and fish soup in Moscow’s Sailors Silence prison.

His arrest, on fraud and tax evasion charges sent a shock through the west, through those who had thought Mr Khodorkovsky, one of the cleanest of Russia’s new robber barons, and those who assumed this was a political imprisonment. The boxer-built plutocrat Mikhail Khodorkovsky is indeed a political figure. But it is as a businessman he is best known. The ambitious, Jewish, Moscow-born dynamo started as a loyal communist youth leader and graduate from the Mendeleev Institute of Chemical technology in 1986. As a hint of his future, he set up a youth science club (which was, of course, a front for a private business).

While still in his 20s he founded what would become the Menatep Bank. The principal was that the government didn’t have a treasury so it used private banks such as this to distribute money for official purposes – paying teachers and the like.

And if the teachers got a paid a little late, or perhaps never? A few bribes to the bureaucrats would ensure the profits kept flowing. Menatep was Mr Khodorkovsky vehicle for building a small empire in the rush of privatisations after the Soviet collapse in 1991. He admits he was one of the ‘robber barons’ of the area. Mr Khodorkovsky’s big prize came in 1995, when the near-broke government of Boris Yeltsin let Menatep Bank organise the sale of the Yukos state oil company.

Meanwhile, another Khodorkovsky company bid for Yukos. So – while Mr Yeltsin bought himself a presidential re-election – Mr Khodorkovsky bought himself an oil company for a paltry $40 million. Now capitalised at $43 billion it is the world’s fourth largest oil company.

It recently swallowed rival Sibneft from another oligarch, Roman Abramovich. Helped by Jewish-American financial interests, it also became a leader in Russia for accountability and transparency.

Mr Khodorkovsky bought personal respectability by supporting social and cultural causes. He funded a university, a youth movement and the liberal Moscow School of Political Studies. He has been photographed with George W Bush. He also has been falling out with Russian Vladimir Putin, whose reforms he had appeared to favour earlier on.

Mr Khodorkovsky, whose empire included a loud-mouthed anti-Putin newspaper, supported opposition parties and even hinted at running for presidency. But he might not have had the political savvy to read President Putin correctly, or the shifting politics of Russia.

In one memorable meeting of businessmen in February, Mr Khodorkovsky complained about some murky deals involving a state-owned company. Mr Putin fixed him with a cold stare and said: “Yukos has excess reserves. And how did it get them?”

Mr Khodorkovsky should have read the message in the arrests of some other, lesser robber barons. He should have noticed that these arrests gave President Putin a 73 per cent approval rating in opinion polls. And he might have analysed last month’s call for a parliamentary committee for a criminal investigation into the sale of the state oil company, Sibneft, in 1995.

“All are equal under the law,” said the deputy chairman of that parliamentary committee, Vladimir Judin, hinting a net was closing in. Mr Khodorkovsky may this week be finding out about that equality as he shares a remand cell with four other alleged economic criminals. If the charges stick, Russia’s wealthiest man, a classic case of comrade to capitalist, faces up to ten years in jail.

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Russia’s big league of Robber Barons

1. Vladimir Gusinsky, 53, wealth: $600 million. The former theatre director became rich developing buildings in Moscow and built up media most, a banking and media empire, including satellite TV. He was briefly jailed in 2000 and stripped of the assets he had not channelled off-shore. The former president of the Russian Jewish Congress now lives in exile in Israel and the US.

2. Oleg Deripaska, 35, wealth: $2.1 billion. Aluminium tycoon who also controls Gaz, Russia’s second largest car maker, several bus plants and 25 per cent of Aeroflot. Close to the Yeltsin family. A major beneficiary of Roman Abramovich sale of his Russian assets.

3. Mikhail Fridman, 39, wealth: $6 billion. A powerful vice president of the Russian Jewish Congress, this co-founder of the Alpha Group owns banks and part of oil giant TNK (now a joint venture with British Petroleum).

4. Boris Berezovski, 57, wealth: $4.2 billion. A Soviet-era mathematician who graduated to a car dealership and media empire with interests in Aeroflot, oil and aluminium. Mr Berezovski, was granted asylum in Britain in September and now deals in London property. Forbes called the one-time Russian Jewish Congress Vice-President ‘the godfather of the Kremlin’.

5. Roman Abramovich, 37, wealth: $8 billion. An orphan and college drop-out who accumulated wealth via the inside deals in the oil industry. Got in on the privatisation in Russia and allegedly used state funds to buy a state oil company, Sibneft, later sold to fellow oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Also a media mogul who had a stake in Russian-aluminium, the world’s second-largest producer, was governor of the Arctic region of Chukotka (home to 79,000 Eskimos). He streamed his profits off-shore and this year sought political asylum in Britain. He bought the Chelsea Football Club for $313 million.

6. Vladimir Potanin, 42, wealth: $2.4 billion. Former deputy prime minister who, from the privatisation scramble, ended up controlling Inerros Group – a media, banking and heavy metals group. It’s Norilsk Nickel subsidiary controls the world’s largest nickel and palladium deposits. He is the only one of the major oligarchs who is not Jewish.

David Brockschmidt comments: After Boris Yeltsin handed over the presidency to Vladimir Putin the whole Yeltsin clan flew in a privately chartered Air Russia passenger plane to Tel Aviv, Israel. What were they doing there?

I don’t believe in chance. I think all of us are born with potentials that wait for the right moment to reveal themselves (at least if we’re willing to let them).

I’m often asked how the boy I was, born in a very good family (my father, a doctor, was also the local mayor and a departmental councillor), brought up in a peaceful village in Calvados (Normandy) far from all the world’s troubles, could become what he is today. Then I tell the following anecdote:

Once when I was still quite young (I must have been nine or ten), my parents took me to Paris for Christmas; on December 24^th we went to see the animated displays at one of the big stores (the Nouvelles Galeries, I think). There I was with my sister, a year older, gazing in wonderment at the mechanical figures moving in their magical setting. The street was crowded with people carrying bags full of presents, food, etc. It was all celebration… At one point, I turned round and saw, sitting on the pavement, a poor old lady in a grey coat and a kerchief. In front of her lay a bit of cardboard with a few small coins. I knew then the meaning of the expression “heart rending”, for my heart was rent.

The child I was couldn’t understand how a society that offered everything to some – amongst whom me – could leave others languishing in blackest misery. Afterwards, at my aunt’s house, Christmas Eve was spoilt for me by the image of that poor old woman, an image that’s stayed with me ever since. Why did I have this thought in my head when it would have been far easier to tell myself: “You’re lucky: make the most of it and never mind that old woman.”? Doubtless because Providence wanted to make me choose a certain path… For I became a socialist – even though I didn’t know the word – from that moment. And although I was to evolve, this socialism has always stayed anchored within me. I dreamed of a society where there would no longer be people like that little old lady… Later on, at about fourteen, I had the occasion to contemplate photos of 3^rd Reich Germany. I quickly understood that true socialism, the one I wished for, had been realised by Adolf Hitler. To me the fact appeared self-evident. When I came out with these thoughts of mine in conversation with adults, they answered by bringing up the “Nazi atrocities”. For a long time I believed in them. But I nonetheless admired Hitler for his social achievements and I used to say: “We’ll have to make a new National Socialist state, without the camps.” I was told it was impossible, for National Socialism led naturally to the death camps. In my mind, however, I couldn’t grasp how such a regime, so good for its people, had been able to lead to such atrocities. The clear-cut dichotomy troubled me, and sometimes even set me doubting. But everyone told me… So then I stayed alone, and a bit ashamed, with my “National-Socialism-without-the-camps.” What’s more, the adolescent I was believed all the “Nazis and collaborators” had been killed in 1945 and that today, everyone thought like those around me. Thus I believed myself to be alone in the world, alone in having understood that a new National Socialism could be made without the camps, alone with the little swastikas I used to draw on sheets of paper. I got no sense of pride from it all but rather an abysmal anxiety. Would I have to spend my whole life without anyone to share my views with?

The reader will understand why the discovery of revisionism and the certainty that it told the truth were a liberation for me. What I hadn’t dared envisage turned out to be correct. The “clear-cut dichotomy” was actually just a symptom of the prevailing lie. I was finally relieved of my misgivings. Then I made my discovery of Maurice Bardèche, which enabled me to develop the concept of deductive analogy.

I of course owe everything to the revisionists who have gone before me but I remain certain today that without the sight of that old woman on Christmas Eve in 1978 or ’79, the Catholic, National Socialist and revisionist Vincent Reynouard would not exist.

Source: Vincent Reynouard, “En passant par Fleury-Mérogis”, in Sans Concession no. 30-31-32, April-May-June 2008 – excerpt from pages 186-188.

On the eve of a Lords ruling over US demands for his extradition, a British computer hacker claims that American prosecutors threatened to haul him before a military tribunal

When he wakes up this morning, Gary McKinnon will be 72 hours from learning whether he is on the fast track to a 60-year prison sentence, thanks to his obsession with aliens.

McKinnon, 42, from Enfield in north London, is accused by American prosecutors of illegally accessing top-secret computer systems in what they claimed in one legal document was 'the biggest military computer hack of all time'.

The self-taught IT expert insists he was simply looking for information the US government had on UFOs and is adamant that he never damaged any of its computer systems. This argument, however, cuts little ice with the Americans, who are trying to extradite him. Five years after being told by British police that he would probably get a six-month community service order for his exploits, McKinnon finds himself still wanted by the US authorities. A 2006 High Court ruling granted the extradition request, and on Wednesday the House of Lords will decide on McKinnon's appeal against that ruling.

That it should come to this is little short of outrageous, say his supporters. Soon after he was arrested in 2002, US prosecutors appeared to offer McKinnon a deal: if he agreed to extradition and admitted his guilt, he would get a sentence of three to four years, most of which could be served in the UK. When McKinnon rejected the offer - made in confidential meetings at the US embassy - his lawyers were told 'all bets were off'. They claim the US prosecutors upped the stakes, suggesting he would be 'treated like a terrorist' if he did not agree to face trial and plead guilty in the US.

McKinnon claims that at one stage there were suggestions that he would face a military tribunal, possibly at Guantánamo Bay. 'They said they wanted to see me fry,' he said.

McKinnon's lawyers claim that attempts to force him to accept a plea bargain constituted 'an unlawful abuse of the court process'.

A Lords ruling in favour of McKinnon, who has become a cause célèbre for UFO enthusiasts, computer users and civil liberties groups, would force US prosecutors to restart their extradition process in the magistrates' courts, a major setback that could have ramifications for other Britons resisting removal to the US. A ruling against him would mean an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights and leave him in legal limbo, banned from travelling abroad, forced to report to police every Friday, and barred from accessing the internet.

In a further twist, it has emerged that a crucial file containing details of the early meetings with the US prosecutors, at which the offers were apparently made, has gone missing from the office of McKinnon's solicitor. A laptop holding details of the same meetings was stolen from the car of one of his barristers.

The revelations have prompted febrile speculation among McKinnon's supporters, who fear that events have taken a sinister turn. McKinnon believes his phone has been bugged and claims to have been followed. As a result of his exploits, no IT company will now offer McKinnon a job. 'I think it's bloody ridiculous,' he said. 'They should employ me to bust paedophile rings or credit card frauds rather than stick me in jail for the rest of my life.'

These days he earns a living driving a fork-lift truck. It seems a mundane job for a man who between 1999 and 2002 broke into the most secure computer systems in the world from his north London flat. Using a computer language called Perl and a cheap PC, McKinnon linked a number of computer systems to search for US databases that were not protected by a password. 'I could scan 65,000 machines in less than nine minutes,' McKinnon said.

McKinnon unearthed unprotected computer systems operated by the US army, the navy, the Pentagon and Nasa. On every system he hacked, he left messages. 'It was frightening because they had little or no security,' he said. 'I was always leaving messages on the desktop saying, "your security is really crap".'

One message has come back to haunt him. 'I said US foreign policy was akin to government-sponsored terrorism and I believed 9/11 was an inside job. It was a political diatribe,' he admitted.

In the end, the ease with which he could hack the systems became his undoing. 'I got sloppy. I went to places directly rather than jump through systems. Nasa tracked back my IP address.'

McKinnon's interest in aliens was started by an internet-based group of UFO enthusiasts called The Disclosure Project. The group had collected more than 200 testimonies - some from people who have served in the US military - that 'confirm' that extra-terrestrials exist. Not only that but, according to McKinnon, some of the testimonies offered proof that 'certain parts of Western intelligence had acquired and reverse-engineered their technology, mainly weaponry and free energy'.

Intrigued, McKinnon used the testimonies to help him search top-secret US databases for information about free energy. 'I felt if it existed it should be publicly available,' he said. He says he came across many other hackers in the supposedly secure systems, many with Chinese and Russian internet addresses. Since his exploits were exposed, consecutive government reports have confirmed that the US military's computer systems remain poorly protected.

McKinnon was caught before he could find any confidential information on 'free energy', but he saw enough to believe the US authorities are suppressing what they know about aliens. He says he came across a document written by a Nasa official who claimed the agency has to airbrush UFOs out of satellite photos because 'there are so many of them'.

With only a 56k modem, he found that downloading the huge volume of documents was too time-consuming. But McKinnon claims that he managed to capture almost two-thirds of an image of what he believes was either a UFO or a top-secret US craft operating in space.

The picture was confiscated, along with all the other material McKinnon downloaded. The material included an Excel spreadsheet entitled 'non-terrestrial officers' and a list of names. 'It was a really weird phrase,' McKinnon said. 'Maybe it was the secret development of a space force. Space is the next frontier and it's already being weaponised.'

His hacking career came to an abrupt end one morning in March 2002. The National High Tech Crime Unit searched his flat and arrested McKinnon and his then girlfriend. 'They said "you'll probably get six months' community service",' McKinnon claimed.

In the end the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute, but two years later, after crime unit officials visited Washington, apparently taking McKinnon's hard drive, the US government began extradition proceedings. 'Now I'm facing 60 years in prison,' McKinnon said. 'I believe my case is being treated so seriously because they're scared of what I've seen. I'm living in a surreal, nutter's film.'

The greatest hackers

Jonathan James At 16 he was the first juvenile to be jailed (for six months) for hacking in 2000. He targeted high-profile organisations including Nasa, stealing more than $1.7m worth of software.

Adrian Lamo Broke into organisations such as the New York Times and Microsoft between 2002-2003 using internet connections at coffee shops and libraries. He had to pay $65,000, serve six months of home confinement and two years' probation.

Kevin Mitnick The Department of Justice called him 'the most wanted computer criminal in United States history' for his hacking activities between 1982 and 1992. He served five years, eight months in solitary confinement.

Kevin Poulsen Known as Dark Dante, he hacked into LA radio's KIIS-FM phone lines, earning himself a Porsche. Called 'Hannibal Lecter of computer crime' for his hacking activities between 1985 and 1991, he served five years in prison.

Source: itsecurity.com

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jul/27/internationalcrime.hacking/

Radovan Karadzic

Photo illustration by Charles George/Daily News

Radovan Karadzic. It's unimaginable.

For 13 long years, we thought he was hiding out in the mountains, surrounded by bodyguards. We looked for him in underground hideouts, tracked him down in the region's most obscure corners.

All in vain - Radovan Karadzic, the former Yugoslavia's most infamous, most notorious fugitive, was actually a public figure. People ran into him on the street, in restaurants or at the movies; some people watched him on TV, talking about alternative health options, and no one discovered his real identity.

In fact, examining pictures of him published by the press, with his fluffy white beard and glasses, I wouldn't have been able to unmask him myself.

And yet I had met him. If I ran into him on the street, I'd remember his face, I thought.

It was in late 1992. I had come to do research on the situation in Bosnia and Serbia. Disturbing, even revolting reports were trickling back to us. Newspapers, radio and TV stations were broadcasting horrendous images: cities bombarded, corpses lying in mass graves, massacred children, mutilated men, raped women.

Reports of odious deeds were circulating: Tuzla, Srebrenica entered the annals of crimes against humanity. The words "Auschwitz in Bosnia" were solemnly pronounced.

Faced with various governments' nearly official indifference, I responded to Yugoslavian President Dobrica Cosic's invitation and, with members of Ted Koppel's "Nightline" team, headed to Belgrade, Sarajevo and Banja Luka. We met with all the leaders in the region except the leader of Croatia. Its president, Franco Tudjman, was a Holocaust denier, and I refused to shake his hand.

But I did talk with Slobodan Milosevic. And with Karadzic, in whose palace - a real fortress - the meeting took place. His gaze was icy, haunted, unearthly. He was the all-powerful master. Why so many executions, so many murders? Was it because of some violent mysticism, a cult of death? No. For him, it was something else: a fascination with holding absolute power over his enemies as well as his allies.

I asked him why he had had the famous Sarajevo National Library burned down. Given that he himself wanted to be known as a psychiatrist and a poet, was he afraid of books and their human and humanist truth?

Red-faced with anger, pounding the table, he claimed it was the Muslims themselves who had burned down the building from the inside.

I objected. I had seen the library in ruins: the damaged walls, the artillery scars. The building had been attacked from the outside.

No point in arguing - the pigheaded Karadzic denied it all.

The idea of creating an international tribunal was mine. One day, when I was in the office of Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger, we talked about the tragic situation in Bosnia. What were the options? Political, humanitarian, military?

That was when I suggested creating an international tribunal. My argument was that only indicting the killers for war crimes and crimes against humanity would frighten them. There would be no statute of limitations, and they would have to be extradited. Eagleburger thought it was a good idea and proposed it in his negotiations with the allies in the U.S. and Europe.

And yes, I think major criminals should be brought to trial before international courts in order to have a historical and also a pedagogical impact on future generations.

People might ask: How can you ever adequately punish a man who is guilty of ordering the assassination of 8,000 human beings? Good question. It seems that, by its sheer scope, the crime outweighs the punishment. And yet, these trials help our collective memory. For that reason alone, they are justified.

The shocking fact remains: Karadzic succeeded in walking free. For 13 long years. He lived without bodyguards, in Bosnian cities and villages, while local and international police and NATO agents were trying to track him down.

Whose fault was it? Who was responsible? Who were the accomplices?

Was his disguise that good, that successful? Perhaps, may God help us, beneath the killer's mask, there was a failed actor?

Wiesel, Andrew Mellon Professor of the Humanities at Boston University, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. A Holocaust survivor, he was one of the leading voices to call the world's attention to atrocities in the former Yugoslavia. This article, written exclusively for the Daily News, was translated from the French by Sharon Bowman.

Discuss this Article

Wally Wall Street Jul 26, 2008 9:21:27 PM

Holocaust fabulist and creative historian Wiesel is a fraud and a bore; the act has been profitable for him, but it's getting old for the rest of us.

poopschmere Jul 27, 2008 7:06:03 AM

Ah good! Wally WW is back to entertain us with the Palestinian propaganda again. Turning everything into Anti Semitism. The piece was totally about present day Serbia and Karadzic. One sentence mentioned the Holocaust, and that was only to explain why one of the prince able characters wasn't interviewed. You are surely earning all the money the Arafat Foundation pays you. It would be better spent on an Aids cure.

poopschmere Jul 27, 2008 7:20:08 AM

As an afterthought, All this Holocaust denying is such indisputable nonsense. The newsreel pictures, (before Photoshop) the uncountable eye witnesses, including Ike, Bradley, and many Germans. It clearly happened. Your denials in the face of the obvious only serve to show you, yourselves realize how terrible it was. If you had a brain, you'd get off the subject , and try to make your way through the 21st century without getting yourself worse off they you already are.

robif Jul 27, 2008 11:31:36 AM

Wow, David Duke is posting comments on the Daily News web site under a pseudonym!! Oh, Wally, there's this book called a "dictionary" that you can use to look up the word "pseudonym". And while you're doing that, look up the word "moron" and you'll see your photo!!

Wally Wall Street Jul 27, 2008 1:08:33 PM

You two need to read (or have read to you) a book called "The Holcaust Industry" and think over Finkelstein's view on Wiesel, and the career he has made as an expert on real and imagined genocide

Wally Wall Street Jul 27, 2008 2:42:31 PM

Sorry, I guess I was wrong. So those stories about "lampshades" and "soap" were really true, even though they have been subsequently admitted as myth? And the 4 million killed at Aushwitz (a figure now changed on the plaque at the camp to 1 million). The 4 million figure is right and the plaque should be changed? And all the "death camps" in Germany that are now admitted were not? And the gas chambers at Aushwitz that are now admitted to be "post war reconstructions".? All this stuff is "indisputable'? How about Elie Wiesel reporting a witness seeing "geysers of blood" coming from the ground at one of the camps? Am I supposed to believe that howler? The Nazis committed horrible crimes against Jews and others, but why is this the only event in history that cannot be questioned without subjecting the questioner to hatred, and, in much of Europe, to prison?

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2008/07/26/20080726_nobel_laureate_elie_wiesel_remembers_rad.html

Dear Fredrick: I feel the chaos of our time is due to the lack of prayers respecting Christ so I would like to submit one little prayer to your newsletter:

Prayer to St Jude: Our Holy St Jude, Apostle and Martyr, great in virtue and rich in miracles, near kinsman of Jesus Christ, faithful intercessor of all who invoke you. Special patron in time of need. To you I have recourse from the depth of my heart and humbly beg you, to whom God has given such great power, to come to my assistance, help me in my present and urgent need and grant my earnest petition. In return I promise to make your name known and cause you to be invoked. St Jude pray for all who honour and invoke your aid. Say three Our Fathers, Hail Mary’s and Glorias.

Colleen Kearney, 10 July 2008, PO Box 417, Home Hill, Queensland 4806, Australia

*******

From: Amy Aremia AAREMIA@nc.rr.com Sent: Monday, 28 July 2008 9:15 PM

To: Adelaide Institute Subject: Re: Latest legal update for 5 August 2008 Truth is supposed to will out, let us hope it does on the 5th of August. This is to let you know that there be many thoughts and prayers for you...Amelia. *******

From: Dagobert Ducker dadu8888@yahoo.com Sent: Tuesday, 29 July 2008 11:59 AM To: mail@thesydneyinstitute.com.au Subject: There is no Truth in the OLD ORDER

Your Dr. Gerard Henderson, in his "Speech to the Holocaust Shoah Remembrance Day" on http://www.adelaideinstitute.org/newsletters/n404.htm of 15th April 2007 stated, that Dr. Töben is in no sense a scholar. Here Dr. Gerard Henderson you are exposing yourself & your ilk as pure liars, because you are not holding the truth for there is no truth in you. When you lie, you speak your father’s native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Dr. Töben’s credentials are the ones of the holder of two BAs and a Doctor of philosophy. He has also a certificate in Education. You are liars and as such exposed, also Holo-Hoaxers. What your mother in the photos of Bergen-Belsen saw were the bodies of dead people who died of natural causes in Bergen Belsen, as the camp had a TB-epidemic in the end, which was also the result of Allied Terror-bombing which stopped the food-supply to the camps. The false treatment of the Belsen-inmates by the British, after liberation, left even more dead. Not much said about this! It was your ilk who lied and is still lying that gassing happened in Bergen Belsen. The Jews in Germany admitted in the 60s already that in the camps on German Territory no gassing took place and US-War-Department-Attorney Stephen F. Pinter admitted this fact on the 14th June, 1959, in the Sunday Visitor.

As the Soviets did not allow Mr. Pinter any inspections on their sites, the Jews came up with the gassing of 6 million Jews in Auschwitz, another lie. You and your ilk living this lie which in reality is protecting the OLD ORDER of international financial interest, whose very existence as parasites is at stake again. Everything that is now taking place about the globe is causally linked to the OLD ORDER and this kind of world this OLD ORDER has given us constitutes an appalling indictment with an increasingly sick and dysfunctional society.

And instead of fighting Jesus and Hitler, we can fight now with them and for a NEW ORDER in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator and in standing guard against the Jew we defending the handiwork of the Lord.

On 11 July 2008 I, Fredrick Töben, of 23 Caloroga Street, Wattle Park, in the State of South Australia, director of Adelaide Institute, say on oath:

1. I am the above Respondent in these proceedings and make reference to the Notice of Motion of 17 January 2007, the Notice of Motion of 2 January 2008, the Amended Notice of Motion of 19 February 2008 and to all submitted Affidavits.

2. The Apology on 27 November 2007 was given by me in good faith, something that was abused by Applicant and his associates. As stated in Affidavit, 30 April 2008, I have no problem in deleting alleged offensive material.

3. I reject that I have been in contempt of court since the Orders were handed down on 17 September 2002 and will contest each of the allegations made against me, including those already deleted as per consent orders.

4. On 15 June 2008 I sent this email to the following:

===================================

From: Adelaide Institute info@adelaideinstitute.org

Sent: Sunday, 15 June 2008 6:34 PM

Subject: Jones v Toben - for consideration as a cost-minimizing matter

Dear Associate to Justice Lander

I would be pleased if you could forward the contents of this email to His Honour. A copy has also been sent to Solicitor Lewis and SC Margo. As I am acting on my own behalf I cannot see anything wrong in expressing myself in this way to the other parties involved in this matter, especially because I seek to do everything in my power to minimize costs.

1. I thank Justice Lander and SC Margo for the numerous times during the 11 June 2008 hearing at Adelaide for expressing their concern about the matter of my being afforded all necessary assistance in preparation for the August 2008 hearing. I can therefore rest assured that I will “get justice in this court”.

1.2 With respect, all this rings hollow, especially because this assurance came when an oral order had been made not to permit Justice Alan Goldberg to appear as a hostile witness on my behalf, so that I am now unable at the August hearing to present the in-depth political ramifications of the current action before Justice Lander.

1.3 Further, I was propelled back 24 years when a school principal had publicly stated he wished to help me because I had “massive teaching problems”. My response was to inform the principal that my problems were no different to any other teacher working within the Victorian Education Department, except that his hypocritical stance against my person, my values and my German birth was common knowledge within the school and wider farming community.

1.4 This ‘personality clash’ escalated and ultimately caused a great injustice to me because it effectively terminated my teaching career in Victoria and it destroyed my marriage on account of an almost decade-long legal litigation process – from 1984 to 1993. Fortunately, a Victorian judge declared invalid my dismissal from the teaching system.

2. Of interest is a comment made by my former Barrister, Paul Charman, who summed up my current problem thus: “You lost the war”. To that I responded that the South Australian Premier, Mr Mike Rann, declared in State Parliament some time ago that the Second World War was over.

3. After the 11 June 2008 hearing, I left Adelaide to seek out legal counsels interstate. During my brief visit to Canberra and Brisbane I met with individuals who initially expressed interest in taking on the case. Unfortunately, owing to my being on a disability pension, I cannot afford to pay for their advice. This problem is compounded by a general weariness amongst supporters to offer financial donations to the legal battle. In other words I cannot afford engaging a legal counsel who is prepared to represent my interests on 5 August 2008. That this is the sorry state of affairs since 1996 before the HREOC and subsequent FCA hearings speaks for itself – a legal railroading that will empower Jewish Holocaust-Shoah interests.

3.1 By early July 2008 I shall know whether another tentative counsel is prepared to take on the case. Should this also prove unsuccessful, then I would have to rely on His Honour to assist in securing for me legal counsel, and as I stated elsewhere I would not mind having a Jewish barrister who is fearless about touching the Holocaust-Shoah subject matter for the sake of free expression.

4. That this matter of court costs is creating injustice for those involved in attempting to correct the media’s continuing World War Two propaganda onslaught is highlighted in the article below: “Accused ‘Nazi’ denied legal aid ‘.

5. Alternatively, I see no reason why all parties cannot negotiate a successful settlement of this matter. Our battle-of-the-wills is nothing out of the ordinary, and even the legaI fraternity is not immune from such battles – see article below: “Magistrate urged to sue over ‘delusional’ blast”.

5.1 I was willing to go along with that Apology but then relied upon Counsel for advice because my receiving the written Apology at around 7pm and then signing it around 9am the next day, on 27 November 2007, did not give me any time to reflect on what was contained in that Apology, which was written without my bot having any input into its contents.

5.2 I was quite prepared to delete offending material, as I already have, because doing this is nothing new for me. However, if the Applicant wishes to have his ‘pound of flesh’ – that proverbial life-or-death battle – then, of course, my willingness to compromise will be regarded by the Applicant as a sign of weakness.

5.3 The fact that we are now even further from weighing up ‘matters of fact’ and are right into only considering ‘matters of law’ leaves me with little hope that a legal cost-reducing solution can be arrived at. If that is the case, then the situation will fuel the public impression that an injustice will occur and that truth-telling will be legally punishable.

6. I am somewhat puzzled by Applicant’s counsel’s tone when expressing dismay at my publishing all material submitted to the NSW FCA Registry on our website. From my limited legal knowledge I understand that British Common Law provides a Court of Record, and is not like the German courts where this safeguard of a public written record does not operate.

6.1 Further, all matters aired in open court are privileged, which again is something that does not occur in a German court where, for example, a barrister cannot defend his client for fear of making himself liable if the argument is too forcefully presented, especially if it too closely reflects the mindset of the accused. At one instance in a Holocaust-Shoah case the barrister was physically carried from the court because she objected to the judge wilfully preventing her from vigorously defending her client. This is thought-crime legislation in action – and we do not need this in Australia.

6.2 We have as yet not reached such a situation within the Common Law system, though in Sydney there are instances where open court defiance has been noted and acted upon as contempt of court incidents. My understanding is that all Affidavit material I submit as evidence via the Court Registry is available to anyone who seeks it out, as for example, the media does on a daily basis – of course, for example, being duly alerted by an insider that a judge will hand down something significant.

7. Attached is a copy of my January 2007 Notice of Motion, and my 19 February 2008 Amended Notice of Motion, the latter if which His Honour could not locate on the court record. The URL at which these and other matters can be found on Adelaide Institute’s website is the following: http://www.adelaideinstitite.org/Legal/contents.htm

Submitted for your consideration. Dr Fredrick Töben

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From: Adelaide Institute info@adelaideinstitute.org Sent: Sunday, 15 June 2008 10:12 AM To: Adelaide Institute Subject: Australian DPP is hostile to German interests . Fredrick Töben comments: Obsessive hate-monger and blood-hound Zuroff closer to victory?

I, too, was refused Legal Aid when in 1996 the action Jeremy Jones v Fredrick Töben began in the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission began in 1996 – and since then have had to rely on supporters funding a limited legal response. The Australian Director of Public Prosecutor’s office is under Jewish influence and the “fear of the Jews” is great – So, what’s new?

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Accused 'Nazi' denied legal aid

Paige Taylor, The Weekend Australian, June 14, 2008

ACCUSED Nazi-era war criminal Charles Zentai has been refused legal aid for a historic extradition hearing and is closer than ever to losing his home over mounting legal costs.

Mr Zentai's lawyers learned yesterday that the pensioner must pay for his own lawyer at the three-day hearing in the Perth Magistrates Court from August 18-20. Commonwealth prosecutors will argue at that hearing on behalf of Hungary that Mr Zentai should be sent to Budapest to face trial for the 1944 murder of Jewish teenager Peter Balazs, who was caught living in the city on false papers. Mr Zentai's only asset is a modest home unit, and in April costs estimated to be more than $200,000 were awarded against him by the High Court. The retired mental health nurse cannot afford to pay those costs.

He has less than $40,000 after spending more than $100,000 on lawyers for the action, which was a technical challenge to the authority of magistrates to preside over his extradition hearing. He lost, and could become the first accused war criminal to be extradited from Australia.

If the 86-year-old is ordered to be extradited, he also intends to appeal that decision and will lobby Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus, who has the power to cancel any extradition on grounds including ill health and advanced age.

Mr Zentai admits taking part in patrols as a 23-year-old warrant officer in the Hitler-aligned Hungarian army in 1944, but denies he was the one who plucked 18-year-old Balazs from a tram and took him to the Arena Utca barracks. He also denies taking part in the fatal beating of Balazs, after which the body of the young resistance-movement member was covered with hay and taken by horse and cart to the Danube River, where it was weighted and thrown in.

After the war, Mr Zentai's fellow soldiers Bela Mader and Lajor Nagy were convicted in the Budapest People's Court for their part in the murder. He was implicated by six witnesses at Nagy's 1947 trial but had already left Hungary for Germany, where he worked as a driver and farmhand. An extradition request sent to US officials in Germany in 1948 came to nothing and in 1950 Mr Zentai, his young bride Rose and their baby Tomas sailed to Australia as refugees.

Efraim Zuroff, of the Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, said it was understandable that people would develop sympathy for an elderly man who had led a good life in Australia for almost 60 years. "But ... it's essential to remember the victim was a teenager who had his whole life ahead of him," Dr Zuroff said.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23861127-5006789,00.html

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Magistrate urged to sue over ‘delusional’ blast. Jamie Walker, The Weekend Australian, 14-15 June 2008

South Australia’s magistrates closed ranks around their deputy chief, Andrew Cannon, as civil libertarians and lawgroups hit back at the state Attorney-General for calling him “delusional”. Colleagues of Dr Cannon yesterday vented their anger at the vehemence of Michael Atkinson’s attack on him, precipitated by Dr Cannon’s call for prison over crowding to be taken into consideration by judges and magistrates when sentencing. The deputy chief magistrate was being urged to take defamation action against Mr Aktinson, who as Attorney-General is the state’s first law officer.

A fellow magistrate, declined to be named, told The Weekend Australian Mr Atkinson’s language was totally inappropriate. “I would say Andrew … is crazy if he does not go to see a solicitor about defamation,” the magistrate said. “I would, without blinking.” Mr Atkinson blasted Dr Cannon on Thursday, accusing him of being “daft,” “delusional” and misunderstanding his place in the legal hierarchy after he wrote sentencing principles that were uploaded to website accessed by other magistrates and judges.

Mr Atkinson has been point man for Premier Mike Rann’s hard line law-and-order approach. Both have played to public opinion by attacking lawyers for supposedly putting the interests of criminals ahead of those of victims. The ferocity of Mr Atkinson’s criticism of Dr Cannon, a respected figure in Adelaide’s legal community who holds a PhD and has been published widely on criminal justice issues, has surprised senior lawyers used to being in the government’s bad books.

South Australian Law Society president, Grant Feiry, said Mr Atkinson “immoderate” language would not help the debate on sentencing principles. Rick Sarre, professor of law and criminal justice at the University of South Australia, said it was “another nail in the coffin” of the traditional role of the attorney general to defend the judiciary.

Australian Council for Civil Liberties president, Terry O’Gorman, said prison-overcrowding had long been recognized as an ameliorating factor in sentencing. “The one out of step is not this magistrate, but the Attorney-General with his rather bizarre,” Mr O’Gorman said.

A spokesman for the state’s Courts Administration Authority said yesterday Dr Cannon would not respond to Mr Atkinson’s criticism. Chief Magistrate Elizabeth Bolton and South Australian Chief Justice, John Doyle, also declined to comment. Mr Atkinson refused to say on Thursday whether Dr Cannon retained his confidence, and has referred the veteran magistrate position paper on the implications of prison overcrowding for sentencing and Australia’s international treaty obligations to Justice Doyle and Ms Bolton for investigation. Dr Cannon was at his desk yesterday in central Adelaide’s court complex, and is said to have told colleagues he intends to remain there.

======================

5. That I attended an interfaith conference in Melbourne where the Applicant, Mr Jeremy Jones, addressed a session. Among other things, Mr Jones stated in all earnestness that there are two types of people: the sane and the insane. Such a statement went counter to the conference’s theme that DIALOGUE is necessary if conflict is to be avoided. I refer to Annexure “A” as being a copy of the August 2008 No 400 Newsletter.

6. That in August 2007 the Federal Government suspended the Racial Discrimination Act so that it could intervene in a number of Northern Territory Aboriginal communities – to improve the living conditions prevailing there.

7. That Professor Alan Dershowitz is the world’s leading Jewish Holocaust-Shoah propagandist who engages in hate speech against Germans and anyone who refuses to believe in the Jewish Holocaust-Shoah narrative.

I refer to Annexure “B” as being a DVD of his latest diatribe.

8. That for the record I am again submitting the latest newsletters to the court with the express request that the court advise what material offends against the 17 September 2002 Court Order. My dialectic dilemma is: Do I tell the truth or do I obey the law.

I refer to Annexure “C” as being copies of Newsletters No. 395, 396, 397, 398, 399, 4001 and 4002.