>>16569269 Gencore/Billiton Bun | Gill Marcus Bun

>>16696664

>The ghosts of Andersen may still be with us.

“Glencore: Will the previous board be held to account?” – Gill Marcus to be held responsible, KPMG, PIC

https://www.iol.co.za/business-report/companies/glencore-will-the-previous-board-be-held-to-account-eb77c7a2-9613-46ba-a036-34289c60969b

June 1, 2022

CORPORATE pundits are calling for the board of disgraced commodities trader Glencore, including former Reserve Bank Governor Gill Marcus, a non-executive chair, to be held responsible for the group’s unethical behaviour, which recently saw it admit to fines of $1.5 billion (R23.6bn) in three territories.

Between 2007 and 2018, Glencore and its subsidiaries paid more than $52 million to intermediaries to bribe Nigerian officials in return for profits of $124m, US court filings show, and from $27m to an agent to bribe officials in Cameroon, Ivory Coast and Equatorial Guinea.

However, the US Department of Justice has confirmed that there are parallel investigations by other foreign jurisdictions.

“At the core of Glencore’s unlawful conduct is that Glencore not only entered into corrupt relationships to secure oil contracts but shockingly paid bribes to avoid government audits,” it was reported.

Tony Hayward was chairperson from 2013, while Kalidas Madhavpeddi was appointed chairperson in 2021.

As a non-executive board member, Marcus, who was on the board from 2018, is the chair of the audit committee and a member of the board’s ethics committee.

“Ms Marcus was appointed as non-executive director of Glencore on 7 December 2017, which appointment was effective from 1 January 2018. She had a fiduciary duty to ensure Glencore’s legal and ethical compliance, which duty she had to comply with during the period which was investigated by the US Department of Justice,” said a source, who declined to be named.

It was pointed out that Glencore not only benefited from its operations and presence in the country, but had been funded by the Public Investment Corporation (PIC), with the body being a substantial shareholder in the group.

“The PIC’s investments and shareholding in Glencore (Glencore’s main listing is on the London Stock Exchange with a secondary listing on the JSE) will, therefore, directly or indirectly be subject to the total of the billion dollar fines which Glencore will pay as part of its guilty plea in terms resulting from the US Department of Justice’s investigation,” the source said.

Questions have also been raised over the complicity of audit firm KPMG, which previously had the contract to oversee Glencore’s audits, until Deloitte and Touche were reappointed as external auditors early this year, subject to shareholder approval.

The African Energy Chamber this week called for African countries to open their own investigations against the global diversified miner after two subsidiaries last week pleaded guilty to multiple charges of market manipulation and bribery, including corruption related to the company’s oil operations in Africa and South America.

Former Eskom chief executives Matshela Koko and Brian Molefe have alluded to the corrupt relationship, with Koko saying he was consulting lawyers about igniting fresh investigations into President Cyril Ramaphosa-linked Glencore and its dirty deals at the power utility.

They both testified before the Commission of Inquiry into State Capture chaired by Justice Raymond Zondo that there had been an adversarial relationship between the power utility and Glencore.

Glencore picked Ramaphosa’s Shanduka as its BEE partner on a coal export project in 2005. They teamed up again as investors in the Optimum project to supply coal to the state power authority. However, the government blocked permits for the mine, forcing Glencore to sell it to the Gupta family, business allies of former president Jacob Zuma.

>>16706154

>Equatorial Guinea

“EQUATORIAL GUINEA 2020 HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT”

https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/EQUATORIAL-GUINEA-2020-HUMAN-RIGHTS-REPORT.pdf

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Equatorial Guinea is nominally a multiparty constitutional republic. Since a military coup in 1979, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has dominated all branches of government in collaboration with his clan and political party, the Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea, which he founded in 1991. In 2016 President Obiang claimed to receive 93.7 percent of the vote in a presidential election that many considered neither free nor fair. In 2017 the country held legislative and municipal elections that lacked independent domestic or international monitoring and verification of the voter census, registration, and the tabulation of ballots. The ruling party and its 14 coalition parties won 92 percent of the vote, taking all 75 Senate seats, 99 of 100 seats in the lower chamber, and all except one seat in municipal councils.

The vice president (eldest son of President Obiang) has overall control of the security forces. Police generally are responsible for maintaining law and order in the cities, while gendarmes are responsible for security outside cities and for special events. Police report to the minister of national security, while gendarmes report to the Ministry of National Defense. Military personnel, who report to the minister of national defense, also fulfill police functions in border areas, sensitive sites, and high-traffic areas. Both ministers report to the vice president directly. Additional police elements are in the Ministries of Interior (border and traffic police), Finance (customs police), and Justice (investigative/prosecuting police). Presidential security officials also exercise police functions at or near presidential facilities. Civilian authorities did not maintain effective control over the security forces. Members of the security forces committed numerous abuses.

Significant human rights issues included: unlawful or arbitrary killings, including extrajudicial killings by the government; forced disappearances by the government; torture and cases of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by the government; arbitrary detention; harsh and life-threatening prison conditions; political prisoners or detainees; serious problems with independence of the judiciary; arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy; serious restrictions on free expression, press, and the internet, including violence, threats of violence, or unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, censorship, site blocking, and the existence of criminal libel laws; substantial interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and freedom of association, such as overly restrictive laws on nongovernmental organizations; serious restrictions on freedom of movement; the inability of citizens to change their government peacefully through free and fair elections; restrictions on political participation; serious acts of corruption; lack of action and accountability for violence against women, although the government in one high-profile case investigated rapes of minors; trafficking in persons, although the government investigated two cases during the year; and crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or intersex persons.

The government took some steps to prosecute or punish officials who committed abuses, including certain cases prompted by criticism from the press and public, whether in the security forces or elsewhere in the government, but impunity was a serious problem.

>>16731550

>In 2003, Dr Motsepe led ARMgold into a merger with Avmin and Harmony. Following the merger, Avmin changed its name to African Rainbow Minerals (ARM) and he became the founder and executive chairman of ARM.

“ARM considers restarting options at Nkomati Nickel following 42% price surge” – “ARM owns Nkomati Nickel on a 50/50 basis with Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel), the Russian platinum group”

https://www.miningmx.com/news/base-metals/49003-arm-considers-restarting-options-at-nkomati-nickel-following-42-price-surge/

March 7, 2022

AFRICAN Rainbow Minerals (ARM) may restart production at Nkomait Nickel operations in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province following an improvement in the price of the metal.

Mike Schmidt, CEO of ARM, said last week at the group’s interim results presentation the company was also considering options regarding underground mining at Nkomati.

“We’ve always said we put the mine on care and maintenance and wait for better prices,” said Schmidt. “The questions raised is ‘you’ve got the good prices, what now?'”.

“So, we are busy with study options with our partner and we are considering a number of options in terms of the way forward,” said Schmidt.

“The recent rally in nickel may not be entirely market driven; there may be other fundamental changes. We do need to understand the market fundmanetals and [if] prices are sustainable,” he added.,

Schmidt said the otion of going underground – which he described as “a very large resource that can last for 20 years” – was currently “under study”.

ARM owns Nkomati Nickel on a 50/50 basis with Norilsk Nickel (Nornickel), the Russian platinum group metals producer which has seen its share price dive nearly 90% in the last month following the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

ARM and Nornickel decided to put Nkomati in mothballs in 2019 after it reported losses. ARM wrote up a R890m impairment against the asset in that year.

Nickel is considered a critical metal in the manufacture of electric vehicle batteries. Demand growth totalled 16% last year and was expected to grow again, by about 8%, in the current year to 2.89 million tons, according to a report by Morgan Stanley.

“Looking specifically at nickel electric vehicle demand, we forecast this to grow by 70,000 tons (about 55% year-on-year) this year, and see it expanding with a 40% compound average growth rate through the 2020s, reaching a demand-share of 25% by 2030,” the bank said in its report.

At $26,489/t, the price of nickel is 27% higher year to date and 42% higher year-on-year. It is the second only to aluminium in best performing base metals over the last year.

Last week, ARM reported a 27% year-on-year decline in interim headline share earnings to R18,87/share. It declared an interim dividend of R12/share.

>>16737403

African Rainbow Mineral did not consult with Russian partner, Nornickel, over Nkomati Mine

“African Rainbow Minerals and Nornickel at odds over Nkomati Mine”

https://www.africaintelligence.com/southern-africa-and-islands/2022/04/20/african-rainbow-minerals-and-nornickel-at-odds-over-nkomati-mine,109779153-art

April 20, 2022

The chief executive of South Africa’s African Rainbow Minerals (ARM), Mike Schmidt, last month hinted the mining group might resume operations at the Nkomati nickel mine. While his statement was met with enthusiasm, it appears that the announcement was mas not made in consultation with ARM’s Russian partner, Nornickel.

Nornickel History

https://www.nornickel.com/company/history/

• 1935

The USSR Council of People’s Commissars resolved to build Norilsk Plant.

• 1942

The first batch of converter matte was produced, with Norilsk Plant opening a Nickel Electrolysis Shop in 1943.

• 1953

Norilsk was granted the status of a town, with Norilsk Plant producing 35% of nickel, 12% of copper, 30% of cobalt and 90% of PGM from the Soviet Union’s total metal output.

• 1960

The Talnakhskoye Field, the world’s largest deposit of copper-nickel ores, was discovered giving a new lease of life to Norilsk Plant. Works started to build mines and the town of Talnakh on the Taimyr Peninsula.

• 1965

The Oktyabrskoye Field, a deposit of copper-nickel ores, was discovered.

• 1981

Nadezhda Metallurgical Plant and the first stage of Talnakh Concentrator were put on stream.

• 1993

A decree of the President of the Russian Federation transformed the Norilsk Nickel State Concern for the Production of Precious and Non-Ferrous Metals into Russian Joint Stock Company (RJSC) Norilsk Nickel for the Production of Precious and Non-Ferrous Metals.

• 1994

RJSC Norilsk Nickel's assets were privatised.

• 2001

The Company was restructured, with shareholders of RJSC Norilsk Nickel exchanging 96.6% of their stock to the shares of MMC Norilsk Nickel. The Company’s shares were listed on the RTS and MICEX stock exchanges, while, in June, the Company started issuing Level-1 ADRs with MMC Norilsk Nickel shares as the underlying asset.

• 2006

Nornickel obtained a follow-up exploration licence for the Maslovskoye Field and in four years from then entered its reserves into the government books as follows: 728 kt of nickel, over 1.1 mt of copper, 12.5 m oz of platinum and 1.3 m oz of gold.

• 2009

The Company created its own icebreaker fleet of reinforced ice class vessels having the distinction of being the first Arctic shipping vehicles to be awarded the highest ARC 7 ice class.

• 2013

Vladimir Potanin’s team changed the management structure of Nornickel. The Board of Directors adopted a new development strategy. The Company decided to focus on the Tier-1 assets of Polar Division and Kola MMC.

• 2014

Disposal of overseas and non-core assets: the Company sold its Western Australian gold mining assets (North Eastern Goldfields Operations (NEGO)), nickel assets (Lake Johnston, Cawse, Avalon, Black Swan and Silver Swan), and stakes in energy companies.

• 2015

The Company piloted Stage 1 of Talnakh Concentrator in Norilsk.

Norilsk Nickel celebrated its 80th anniversary marking the 80 years of exploring the Russian Arctic. Russian President Vladimir Putin commended MMC Norilsk Nickel’s team for their valuable contribution to the development of the Russian metals industry and excellent operating performance.

• 2016

The Nickel Plant shutdown project was completed, which helped cut sulphur dioxide emissions in Norilsk and thereby mitigate the environmental impact.

The Company completed rebranding: the new Nornickel logo symbolises the ongoing changes, while Aspirations and Reliability were chosen as the Company’s key attributes.

• 2017

Giving a start to Russia’s Year of Environment, Nornickel opened a visitor centre at the Pasvik Reserve.

And there is more…

>>16554835 James Rothschild – Investments; Rusal, Glencore, Ukraine, etc

>>16569271 Glencore & Xstrata Bun Part One

>>16569275 Glencore & Xstrata Bun Part Two

“Russian Tycoon Potanin to Start Nornickel-Rusal Merger Talks”

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/russian-tycoon-potanin-to-start-nornickel-rusal-merger-talks-1.1787750

July 5, 2022

(Bloomberg) – Billionaire Vladimir Potanin, the biggest investor in MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC, said he’s ready to discuss merging the mining giant with United Co Rusal International PJSC as sanctions against Russia weigh on both companies.

Potanin has headed Nornickel since striking a 2012 shareholder accord with aluminum producer Rusal, the company’s second-largest investor. A merger would create a “national champion,” the tycoon said in an interview with Russia’s RBC TV channel.

“We received the proposal from the management of Rusal to discuss the merger with Norilsk Nickel as an alternative to extending the shareholder agreement,” Potanin said. “I sent a letter in which I confirmed our agreement to start the process of discussing a merger with Rusal.”

Potanin, Russia’s richest man, controls about 35% of Nornickel, a key producer of nickel and copper and the world’s biggest miner of palladium. Apart from some Canadian restrictions in April, the tycoon largely avoided western sanctions targeting other members of the Russian elite until the UK imposed penalties on June 29.

Potanin said that Nornickel is not under sanctions despite the penalties imposed against him by the UK. The billionaire also indicated that he is not going to step down as Nornickel chief executive officer.

Rusal’s press service declined to comment.

About 20% of the world’s nickel comes from Russia, with nearly all of that from Potanin’s Nornickel. The company also produces about 40% of the world’s palladium, used in anti-pollution devices in gasoline cars.

That original shareholder agreement defined Nornickel’s dividend payouts and ended feuding between Potanin and Rusal’s founder Oleg Deripaska.

(Updates with comments from Potanin starting in second paragraph)

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

“Putin's hockey pal and Russia's richest man Vladimir Potanin has been 'snapping up banks for cheap' amid an exodus of Western owners”

https://www.businessinsider.com/vladimir-potanin-snap-up-banks-for-cheap-russia-ukraine-putin-2022-5?op=1&r=US&IR=T

May 14, 2022

Russia's richest man has been snapping up domestic banks at a discount rate, after their Western owners ditched the country, reports say.

The Russian economy has been in freefall since the invasion of Ukraine, after Western powers issued sanctions against a number of President Vladimir Putin's closest allies, seizing and freezing their assets, and a host of leading businesses – from McDonald's to Goldman Sachs – shut down operations in the country altogether.

Metals tycoon Vladimir Potanin, a long-time Putin ally, has largely avoided Western sanctions, despite his close personal ties to the regime. Experts say Potanin, who has played ice hockey with Putin in the past, has largely remained off the West's radar due to his personal importance to global metals markets.

On Thursday, the Financial Times reported Potanin, who is said to be worth $30 billion, had been tapping into his estimated $30 billion fortune to obtain stakes in major Russian banks, which have seen their value dwindle after Western stakeholders abandoned the country.

The billionaire's Interros group is said to have acquired Rosbank after Société Générale (SocGen), a French bank that bought the business from Potanin in 2008, opted for a quick exit from Russia. Insider previously reported banks still operating in Russia were preparing to lose huge amounts of money for exiting.

Potanin reportedly obtained Oleg Tinkov's stake in TCS Group Holding, for which Tinkov, who said was forced to sell his stakes after he criticized the war, complained that Potanin paid only 3% of the actual stakes' worth, per the newspaper. Insider reached out to TCS and SocGen but did not immediately get a response.

Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of political analysis firm R.Politik told the FT: "The Kremlin had a geopolitically problematic asset [in Tinkoff] and Potanin had a solution."

Potanin's recent acquisitions make him a key individual in the banking sector. In February, Rosbank and Tinkoff, TCS's main assets, combined assets of almost $45 billion (RBS3 trillion).

Someone involved in the negotiations for SocGen told the FT: "We wanted to find a way to exit in the most orderly way while preserving our 12,000 staff."

They added: "Potanin… says he wants to preserve the bank and its culture," that's why they decided to accept his offer that was quick and he knows the bank, per the report.

Potanin founded Interros – a conglomerate with stakes in industries including mining, energy, and real estate – in 1990, and is the richest man in Russia, per Forbes. But he is mostly known for mastering the "loans-for-shares" programs, which many other oligarchs, including Roman Abramovich, have made their fortune through the programs.

Under the "loans-for-shares" programs, wealthy entrepreneurs and banks loaned money to the Russian government in the 1990s in exchange for equity in the country's natural resource companies. The government often could not repay these loans, leaving many of the natural resource companies in the hands of wealthy individuals.

Vladimir Potanin Background

https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/moscow/potanin.html

October, 2003

Vladimir Potanin, 42, was born in 1961 into a high-ranking Communist family. He attended the Moscow Institute for International Relations, an elite school that groomed students for the KGB and offices of the Kremlin. He then went to work for the Soviet Department of Trade, where his father had also worked. In 1991, he created Interros, a foreign trade association that traded nonferrous metals, including aluminum, copper and lead. With the capital he accumulated from Interros, he started two banks, the Oneximbank and the MFK, to which many state enterprises transferred their accounts. Later, Potanin became one of the principal authors of the Loans for Shares program, in which the Russian government traded ownership in state industries for loans. The controversial program was administered through auctions, but only select bidders were invited to attend, usually at the discretion of President Boris Yeltsin's daughter. Potanin was among the invited bidders. During Russia's transition to a market economy, he acquired control of more than 20 formerly state-owned enterprises. Potanin's business empire was considerably dented by Russia's 1998 economic crisis, but he managed to set up numerous companies to shelter his personal assets. He also diverted considerable sums to his accounts outside of Russia and threw a party at the height of the crash for more than 100 of his closest friends in a nightclub at the French ski resort Courchevel.

Current Position:

President, Interros Holding Company

Major Holdings:

Norilsk Nickel, the world's largest producer of platinum and palladium

Other Interests:

RUSIA Petroleum; Rosebank; agricultural industrial company Agros; power generation equipment company Power Machines; Soglasie Insurance Company; newsdailies Izvestia and Komsomolskaia Pravda; The Russian Telegraph Newspaper; the magazine Expert; radio stations Autoradio, PM-radio, Novosti on-line, and several regional television and radio companies

Political Connections:

Potanin's father was a senior official in Russia's Ministry of Foreign Trade. One of the Big Seven oligarchs who helped reelect President Boris Yeltsin, Potanin was then appointed by Yeltsin in 1996 to hold Russia's number-twoposition, first deputy prime minister.

Notoriety:

Potanin was the principal author of the Loans for Shares program, which put state assets in private hands and was harshly criticized by many academics. Potanin also has a poor track record with Western investors: George Soros, who in 1997 invested $980 million in Potanin's telecom enterprise Svyazinvest, said it was the worst investment he ever made. Other losers in Potanin's empire include BP/Amoco, which the same year invested $571 million in his oil company Sidanko, only to find the company forced into bankruptcy.

“Metal world agonizes over war in Ukraine but keeps buying from Russia”

https://theprint.in/world/metal-world-agonizes-over-war-in-ukraine-but-keeps-buying-from-russia/902969/

5 April 2022

Russian metal is largely still flowing around the world. Many traders and fabricators who buy from them are tied in to pre-existing purchase deals that can extend over years.

United Kingdom: Last month, 13 copper-industry representatives at the London Metal Exchange were asked whether Russian metal should be blocked from its warehouses. Ten of them said “yes.” But when advisory groups for nickel and aluminum discussed the same question, the general consensus was “no.”

The LME, which is the ultimate decision-maker, says it won’t take action that goes beyond government sanctions — which, so far, have left most of the metals industry untouched.

But the behind-closed-doors discussions reflect a wider angst over whether to keep buying from Russia, as the industry weighs the stigma from the war against its own commercial interests — and the fact that vital metals like aluminum and copper were in short supply even before the invasion of Ukraine.

For now, Russian metal is largely still flowing to the world’s factories and building sites. Many traders and fabricators who buy from Russian companies are tied in to pre-existing purchase deals that can extend over years. And commodities merchants have a well-earned reputation as buyers and financiers of last resort when others have long backed away.

The question of what happens to Russia’s metal exports is of vast consequence to global markets — it’s a key supplier of palladium, nickel, aluminum, steel and copper. Prices for all of those metals set new all-time highs in March, although steel is the only one to be the direct target of sanctions so far.

Aurubis, Europe’s largest copper smelter, is “trying to get out” of its contracts for Russian supplies, and is in favor of sanctions against metals, Harings said in an interview last week. “I believe in the end whatever money we pay will end up in the wrong pockets,” he said.

Norwegian aluminum company Norsk Hydro ASA said it was taking the minimum possible under its contracts with Russian companies and was aiming to reduce that further.

There are still buyers for now — even in Europe. Russian metals producers like MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC and United Co. Rusal International PJSC tend to sell on annual or multi-annual deals to big industrial groups, and for the most part these contracts are still being fulfilled, according to people familiar with the matter.

Traders like Glencore Plc, which has a deal to buy aluminum from Rusal until at least 2024, and Trafigura Group, which has a long-standing relationship with Nornickel, are also fulfilling contracts in Russia.

And few new deals are happening. Glencore, which has been one of the largest traders of Russian commodities since the days when founder Marc Rich struck agreements with the Soviet Union, announced last week it would do no new business in Russia.

Already, Trafigura has been delivering Russian copper to LME warehouses in Asia in recent days after failing to sell it in China, Bloomberg reported.

“EXCLUSIVE | The mystery jet, the former Russian first lady and a blonde VIP” – Part 1

https://samigration.com/blog/exclusive-the-mystery-jet-the-former-russian-first-lady-and-a-blonde-vip/

News 24 - July 11, 2022

Mystery surrounds a two-day trip in Cape Town by a business jet registered in the name of Svetlana Medvedeva, the wife of former prime minister and president of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev.

News24 can reveal the Bombardier Global 5000 private jet had to divert its return flight from Cape Town International Airport on Wednesday to Lanseria International Airport outside of Johannesburg because its operators were denied fuel by suppliers in Cape Town.

Medvedeva is a Russian economist, but it is not known who was on board the flight operated by Russian air charter company RusJet. The purpose of the flight that arrived in Cape Town on Monday last week and departed again on Wednesday remains a secret.

The route of the Bombardier Global 5000 private jet. (Screen grab via Flightradar24)

According to Airports Company of South Africa (Acsa) operations manager Terence Delomaney, “we do not have any scheduled Russian aircraft flying into our airports at the moment. Lanseria is not an Acsa airport. All aircraft will need to ensure arrangements are made in advance for fuelling. There are various suppliers available – some may apply sanctions and others not”.

As a commercial airport, Lanseria buys its own fuel and then sells it forward to all aircraft operators using the airport.

International oil and fuel companies might apply the same sanctions in their countries of origin instituted against Russia, which have affected flights from Russia internationally. The same applies to the European and US airspace, which is closed for Russian air traffic.

According to the website www.airport-data.com, the private jet is registered in Svetlana Medvedeva’s name.

RusJet is a Russian VIP charter company based in Moscow. According to eyewitnesses at Lanseria, it was obvious there was a very important person or people on board, judged by the contingent of bodyguards and the entourage accompanying a stately older woman with blonde hair.

They said there were 14 passengers who disembarked at Lanseria: the older woman; what seemed to be a private assistant; another two women who looked after her needs; and four security guards, while the rest were men in business suits who entered the aircraft just behind the older woman when they got back into the plane.

The entourage was rushed into the VIP lounge, with the security guards posted outside while the jet was refuelled.

It was obviously just a fuel stop before the jet departed late Wednesday afternoon again. According to Flightradar24, the jet arrived in Cape Town on Monday via Cairo in Egypt. It followed the same route back, re-routing through Botswana.

The route of the Bombardier Global 5000 private jet. (Screen grab via Flightradar24)

According to Africa Intelligence, up to March, the aircraft had been registered in the state of San Marino and is part of Skyline Aviation’s fleet.

“EXCLUSIVE | The mystery jet, the former Russian first lady and a blonde VIP” – Part 2

https://samigration.com/blog/exclusive-the-mystery-jet-the-former-russian-first-lady-and-a-blonde-vip/

July 11, 2022

According to an investigation by the Italian daily Corriere della Sera, “Skyline is a charter company based in the small Alpine republic, with strong ties to the Russian elite and currently in liquidation. Its aircraft – including the one seen in South Africa – regularly flew former Russian prime minister and president Dmitry Medvedev’s wife, Svetlana Medvedeva.

“Skyline has been under US sanctions since 2 June due to its links with Russia,” the publication reported.

It’s unclear if the passenger(s) were in South Africa for government or private business.

International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor was in Indonesia attending a two-day G20 meeting of foreign ministers.

Vincent Magwenya, spokesperson for the presidency, referred enquiries to Pandor’s department, which did not respond.

The Russian embassy in Pretoria said it had no information regarding the flight.

The Moscow Times in 2019 reported that “Medvedeva secretly owns a $50 million Bombardier small business jet that she uses to fly to Europe and Russian cities”. The claims were made by Alexei Navalny, opposition leader who survived a poisoning attempt in 2020 and has been imprisoned since January 2021.

Navalny claimed Medvedeva undertook 11 trips to various destinations from 2015 to 2019 with the jet which was paid for by the Russian government. She was described as a socialite who appeared on various best-dressed lists prior to becoming Russia’s first lady in 2008. She completed her studies as an economist but gave up her career when she married her husband.

Medvedev made headlines last week when he invoked the possibility of nuclear war if the International Criminal Court moves to punish Moscow for alleged crimes in Ukraine.

Medvedev was President Vladimir Putin’s stand-in president between 2008 and 2012 and now serves as deputy head of the Security Council of Russia.

Russian former president Dmitry Medvedev (L) and first wife Svetlana Medvedeva arrive at the Phipps Conservatory for the G-20 Summit on September 24, 2009 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

The question remains of what urgent business the aircraft’s passengers were in Cape Town for, for them to undertake a long and tedious flight to avoid the European skies Russian aircraft are currently banned from.

Sources in the oil industry told News24 the most logical explanation would be that it involved Russia’s attempts to find buyers for its crude oil, which it currently has in abundance, but can’t sell due to international sanctions.

In recent weeks various news reports speculated that South Africa has massive crude storage tanks at its facility in Saldanha which Russia might eye as a possible storing space for its crude. At least two oil tanker ships from Russia were recently suspected to call at Saldanha, but when their presence came under the spotlight, the ships both headed around South Africa towards the United Arab Emirates.

Another source says there are also discussions underway to source Russian fuel via China or India. With South Africa part of the BRICS government, it can freely trade with both Russia, China and India, especially with the fuel crunch the country is currently facing.

>>16763881

“Big Psychiatry Weaponized for Deep State's Crazy NOW”

https://youtu.be/1uT1jiamAoM

Weaponized psychiatry is one of the key tools being used by the Deep State to usher in its diabolical New World Order, explains The New American magazine's Alex Newman in this episode of Behind The Deep State. For generations, psychiatry has been at the forefront of the movement for tyranny, even being used against dissidents to keep them locked up in horrific conditions in communist nations. Now, the UN World Health Organization is in the process of developing and imposing a global "mental health" regime that is extremely dangerous. Meanwhile, Alex explains that psychiatry is not like other medical fields: there are no objective tests, and psychiatrists themselves vote on what to classify as a "disorder."

>>16767958

>>16763881

>1:10:24 – “I go to Amazon and I open the page and I stop and I look and I can’t believe what I am seeing. At that point, six months after DSM 5 was published, the highest selling book in the whole of the United States was DSM 5… So who was buying this book?… she said from my experience in the New York state area where I work in primary care, what’s happening is the pharmaceutical industry is buying DSM in bulk and then distributing it for free to clinicians up and down the country and that is why the sales are so high.”

>1:40:54 – “I quickly learned was that there’s a huge disjunct between the people who sat on these committees thought about the process and how this process was represented by the private corporation, the American Phsychiatric Association (APA), which incidentally… funds a lot of its operational costs from publication of DSM. DSM makes the APA about $6 million a year in publication revenue. The APA had vested interest in representing this as a piece of science whereas the people on the committees were quite clear that it was a hugely problematic endeavor and important endeavor as they believed. An endeavor that would improve the state of psychiatric diagnosis, improve its reliability, etc. and so forth. But not to the extent that it was being represented by the APA. So I think what I encountered was what the APA had sort of covered over and led people to believe didn’t exist. Could I give you another example of how the APA does this? I wanted to speak to the people who wrote DSM 5. So I contacted the APA and said could I do so. I want to understand the processes that went on behind the scenes as I did with DSM 3 and DSM 4 and it turns out that I wasn’t allowed to speak to anyone involved in DSM 5 because all of them were asked to sign confidentiality agreements prohibiting them from speaking to anybody, any academic, any journalists, about what went on behind the scenes in the construction of DSM 5. So I said, well can I just consult the archives then. Yeah? I mean I’m a researcher and they said we can’t do that either and I said, why not? Because they’ve all been embargoed for 20 years post-publication. So we cannot work out what went on behind the scenes. And so the APA has a vested interest in keeping this hidden.”

“Plot Against Guns is Not About Safety, but Tyranny”

https://youtu.be/W5BD9dfIuzI

The Deep State war on the gun rights of Americans, supposedly a response to a number of recent mass shootings, has nothing to do with public safety, and everything to do with disarming victims so they can be more effectively oppressed, warns The New American magazine’s Alex Newman in this episode of Behind The Deep State. In fact, data and common sense both show that disarming law-abiding citizens worsens public safety, allowing criminals free rein. In this episode, Alex also talks about how and why state and local authorities MUST resist this Deep State attack on the Second Amendment-protected right to Keep and Bear Arms.

1:57 – “The last thing in the universe that the big pharmaceutical companies need is more taxpayer money but this is the trap. Right? This is what the deep state always does. They create a problem or they manufacture a problem or they exploit a problem and then they give you 2 options and it’s always the same thing. Heads they win, tails you lose. So that’s where we are now either heads we give more money to the big pharmaceutical companies, put more people on crazy drugs, lock more people up in insane asylums and take away more freedom under the guise of mental health or we take away your guns and remove your right to defend yourself or some combination of the two if we’re going to do a compromise.”

“Food Crisis Being Engineered by the Deep State”

https://youtu.be/4UHWRctEBrE

May 23, 2022

Catastrophic food shortages and even famine are being engineered by the Deep State in a bid to centralize control over the food supply and ultimately the population of the planet, warns The New American magazine's Alex Newman in this episode of Behind The Deep State. Key globalist Deep State operatives such as Henry "New World Order" Kissinger have flirted with the idea of food shortages as a population-control weapon for generations. The goals are clear. And now, thanks to deliberate policy decisions taken by Deep State-controlled governments and organizations, a true food crisis of global proportions is emerging. Newman also provides ideas on how to deal with the coming threat–before it's too late. You will want to share this one with your friends and family!

>>16768430

>https://youtu.be/4UHWRctEBrE

Embedded

“Global War on Farmers by Deep State Threatens EVERYTHING”

https://youtu.be/i8Aw7S10uLU

The war on farmers and ranchers is not just happening in Holland or the United Statesit is global, ranging from Brazil and South Africa to Chinawarns The New American magazine's Alex Newman in this episode of Behind The Deep State. The goal is to totally restructure the food supply so that all production is in the hands of Deep State-controlled mega-corporations and governments. In the Netherlands, under the guise of stopping "nitrogen," the Dutch government is seeking to destroy huge swaths of that nation's agricultural sector. In Brazil, the pretext was giving land to Indians. In South Africa, the war on farmers has been especially brutal, and is being carried out under the guise of wealth redistribution. In China, it's happening under the guise of "efficiency." In the United States, it's happening to supposedly protect the environment, lands, "endangered" animals, the "climate," and much more. Ultimately, the devastation will help the Deep State exert far more control over humanity by having total control over all food and lands. The war on energy is happening in tandem.

“Dark Times Before The Dawn: Daniel Natal Interview” – Great Interview

https://youtu.be/xdDYaPlPEb0

Explains why a republic decays into a democracy (mob rule) which is socialism (promising free stuff). He also discusses the difference between a dictatorship and a totalitarian state as well as Big Tech’s technology came from the military, synthetic famines.

10:32 – “Aristotle, when he described democracy, it’s very clear he was saying what we described as socialism today. The term socialism was only coined in the 1830s by French philosopher. Aristotle, when he described a democracy, he said that in a time of democracy demagogues would rise up and these demagogues would manipulate the people. They would bribe their way into power by offering free food, free housing, free health care. He actually says this in politics.”

>>16697445

“The Psychology of Totalitarianism”

https://youtu.be/v2NftKNm1hU

What is the difference between a dictatorship and a totalitarian state? Answer: A dictator only controls one institution (namely, government). In a totalitarian state, by contrast, the ruler lays claim to ALL the society's institutions: government, economics, religion, media, art, marriage, etc. They are all amassed into a single integrated system. In other words, there is no separation of church and state, or a separation of business from government, or a separation of any of the institutions from the centralized power structure. As this system emerges, a new populace has to be cultivated: One used to powerlessness, passivity, dogmatism. Watch as we explore the psychology of such subjects in a totalitarian state.

9:48 – “Towards the end he reminded me of Mark Penn’s book “Microtrends Squared”. In it there is a chapter called “The Impressionable Elites” whereby he documents studies that demonstrate that an inverse relationship exist between critical thinking facilities and the amount of time someone spends in a university. That is to say that people who went to trade schools have better developed critical thinking facilities than someone who earned a degree in a university. It gets even worse as the degrees get higher. The more times spent inside an institution of higher learning, the less one can think rationally and rather relies on appeals to authority for authority. As Noam Chomsky said, universities are not selection mechanisms for intelligence but for conformity.”

“Credit Crash” – “Feminism Was Created To Destabilize Society, Tax Women”, break up family; “Global Economic Collapse, Recession, Food Shortages”

https://youtu.be/1_F3HUPwbiU

July 5, 2022

According to Stephen Roach's book 'Unbalanced,' America and China are addicted to 'the political economy of false prosperity'. In America's case, they undertook a policy of increasing shareholder profits by cutting wages for workers. The problem? The global system was predicated on America being the planet's consumer market and China being the planet's production hub. If America stops buying, China (and the whole global economic system) will come unhinged. And Americans are getting poorer due to persistently decreased wages. The stopgap measure was promoting credit card usage and debt. By this method, they could keep up consumption rates. This worked to cover the gaps until the 2008 financial collapse. Afterward, the problem wasn't fixed, but was merely kicked down the road. By 2020, the credit markets were melting down due to these unaddressed problems–meaning it will be harder to get car loans, or house loans, or student loans. 74% of US GDP is based on real estate and personal consumption. If the credit is cut off, then these sectors will hemorrhage. More importantly still, China's economic position will buckle and collapse. Are we on the precipice of something really big?

2:16 – “We the Rockefellers funded that. We funded women’s lib. We’re the ones who got all the newspapers and television, the Rockefeller Foundation. He says, and you want to know why? He said there were two primary reasons… One reason was, we couldn’t tax half the population before women’s lib and the second reason was, now we get the kids in school at an early age. We can indoctrinate the kids how to think which breaks up the family. The kids look at the state as the family. As a school as the officials as their family not as the parents teaching them… When I saw their intentions behind it, where they are coming from when they created it… I saw the evil behind what I thought was a noble adventure.”

Video Sources:

“Aaron Russo: Feminism Was Created To Destabilize Society, Tax Women & Set-Up NWO” - https://rumble.com/v16l6m9-aaron-russo-feminism-was-created-to-destabilize-society-tax-women-and-set-u.html

“Edward Dowd - Global Economic Collapse, Recession, Food Shortages, Lockdowns, Monkeypox, & Preparing” - https://rumble.com/v18ed9z-edward-dowd-global-economic-collapse-recession-food-shortages-lockdowns-mon.html

>>17069188

“How Armand Hammer Went From Communist to Multi-Millionaire!” – Lenin; “We do not need doctors, we need businessmen… communism is not working and we must change to a New Economic Policy”

https://thefinancefriday.com/2021/05/14/armand-hammer-millionaire/

May 14, 2021

In 1875, Jewish immigrants Julius Hammer and his wife, Rose Lipschitz, left Odessa, in Ukraine (then a part of the Russian Empire) for the United States, in the hopes of starting a new life in New York.

Despite his business successes, Julius and his wife were devout communists. Using his money, Julius would help found the Socialist Labor Party of America (the precursor to the Communist Party USA), with the help of several other communists and trade unionists in The Bronx.

It was into this household that Armand Hammer was born on May 21 1898.

Although initially intending to remain in the USSR for a few months at most, Armand would stay in the Soviet Union until late 1930, with him actually seeing his business career begin in the communist country.

Upon traveling to the USSR, Armand would take $60,000 worth of medical equipment with him earmarked for the Soviets, who were experiencing a typhus epidemic. Armand’s medical equipment would save millions of Soviet lives.

This act caught the attention of Soviet leader, Vladimir Lenin, who invited the young American to meet with him. Here, the pair would strike a deal for Soviet fur and caviar to be exported via Hammer to the United States.

According to Armand Hammer, it was here where Lenin said: ”We do not need doctors, we need businessmen… communism is not working and we must change to a New Economic Policy.”

Despite his advanced age, Armand remained active in Occidental’s management until the day he died. In turn, this has inspired many other successful businessmen: Phil Town; Warren Buffett [and mentored his son ->>17352519] and Charlie Munger (to name a few) to do the same!

“How Armand Hammer Went From Communist to Multi-Millionaire!” – Occidental Petroleum

https://thefinancefriday.com/2021/05/14/armand-hammer-millionaire/

May 14, 2021

Occidental Petroleum

By 1957, Armand Hammer was a self-made multimillionaire, and was married to a woman who was also independently wealthy. Selling off his cattle farming and whiskey distillery businesses, the couple would merge their money to buy a defunct oil company.

This company was Occidental Petroleum.

Using this knowledge and his money, Armand Hammer would finance the exploration of new oil and natural gas deposits, with the company discovering the huge Lathrop Gas Field in California in 1961.

From here, Hammer’s international business and political connections would allow him to expand Occidental Petroleum into Peru, Venezuela, Trinidad, Bolivia and the UK (even though the latter refused to grant him entry into the country’s due to his chumminess with the Soviets).

After oil was discovered in Libya in 1959, Hammer was one of the first oil magnates to go to the country, establishing several oil fields in Libya, which would be nationalized by Muammar Gaddafi after the 1969 revolution.

Despite this set back, Hammer had still been paid for what the Libyan government had taken from Occidental, with the company using it to acquire New York-based chemical manufacturing company, Hooker Chemical Company.

Through Hooker Chemical, Hammer was able to invest heavily in R&D, which resulting in the discovery of oil shale in 1972, which made the company billions of dollars (and continues to do so today!)

Thanks to this money, Hammer would strike a deal with Venezuelan state-owned company Ecopetrol, to explore for oil in the country, resulting in the discovery of the Caño Limón oil field, which has netted both companies even more money.

1988 would be both a good and a bad year for Hammer. In April, Occidental acquired Cain Chemical in a deal valued at $2 billion, whilst July saw the inferno at the company’s Piper Alpha platform in Scotland, which remains the world’s deadliest offshore oil rig disaster yet!

“How Armand Hammer Went From Communist to Multi-Millionaire!” – Political Involvement, Powerful Friends – “go-between for seven presidents (Kennedy through Bush Sr.)”

https://thefinancefriday.com/2021/05/14/armand-hammer-millionaire/

May 14, 2021

Political Involvement

Although initially a communist like his father, Armand’s early business successes would soon see him break away from the rest of the communist party. Yet, this move would not end Armand’s involvement in politics…

Instead, Armand Hammer simply joined another party.

Whilst never officially a member of the party, Armand would be a sizeable donor to the party, donating $54,000 to Richard Nixon’s political campaign, even going as far to break campaign finance laws to ensure Nixon became president.

Thanks to his prior medical training and connections to the Republican Party, Republican President Ronald Reagan was able to appoint Armand to serve on the President’s Cancer Panel in 1981, before eventually serving as the panel’s chairman from 1984 until 1989.

Yet, it wasn’t just the Republicans that Armand liked. For years, Armand would also maintain a strong personal and financial friendship with the Democrats too, even becoming a registered member of the party too!

Among Hammer’s closest friends was actually Democrat Al Gore Sr. (the father of the future vice-president), with the pair meeting whilst Gore was still representing Tennessee in the US Senate.

Following Gore’s failed re-election in 1970, Armand Hammer would soon employ Gore as Occidental’s legal counsel. Following this, Hammer would make Gore the vice-president of Island Creek Coal co., an Occidental subsidiary in Kentucky.

Hammer would also be quite fond of Gore’s son, Al Gore Jr. (the future vice-president), with Hammer encouraging Gore Jr., that if he wanted to, Hammer would help him become president (although Hammer’s death in 1990 effectively put an end to this!)

Rather ironic, given the fact that Gore Jr. is well-known for his environmentalist and anti-non-renewable energy stances today…

Owing to his strong connections to both countries, Armand would serve as an unofficial envoy between both nations, being the go-between for seven presidents (Kennedy through Bush Sr.) and five Soviet premiers (Khrushchev through Gorbachev).

Make Powerful Friends

Despite many people at the time believing that Hammer was a Soviet spy (whether knowingly or unknowingly), Armand had made so many friendships with so many powerful people, that he was essentially untouchable.

According to Armand Hammer, he’d known every president from Hoover until Bush Sr., serving as a citizen diplomat for Kennedy until Bush, maintaining apartments in both Moscow and Los Angeles, with no one objecting to either.

Over the course of his business career, Hammer would come to form a special kind of friendship with the most unlikely people. Often, Hammer’s closest friends were people who’d usually be antagonistic towards American, and American entrepreneurs even more so.

It was through these friendships, that Armand Hammer was able to cool tensions between East and West during some of the most turbulent times in the Cold War, whilst also striking multibillion dollar business contracts in the process!

“"Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer," by Edward Jay Epstein. Random House. 432 pages.”

http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20Files/E%20Disk/Epstein%20Edward%20Jay%201995/Item%2023.pdf

September 8, 1996

Few have understood the transforming power of public relations as well as Armand Hammer.

When Hammer published an autobiography in 1987 — his third — there wasn't room on the back cover for all the endorsements: Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, George Bush, Menachem Begin (Jewish Terrorist), Linus Pauling, Walter Cronkite.

They had bought the image Hammer's press releases had shaped over six decades: openhearted humanitarian, savvy art collector, brilliant capitalist.

They did not know the facts unearthed by Edward Jay Epstein In this impeccably researched expose. They blurbed the book of a man who laundered money for Soviet spies, swindled art customers with fake Faberges, feigned illness to escape prison during Watergate and treated Occidental Petroleum as his piggy bank.

In a lucid, understated style, Epstein describes a con-man operating on an epic scale. Parts of the story are not new. But drawing on Soviet archives, FBI files and even secret tapes Hammer made of himself arranging bribes, Epstein nails Hammer.

In business: "Dossier" details how Hammer siphoned millions from Occidental to a secret Swiss bank account, from which he withdrew cash for illegal payoffs, art purchases and even charitable donations. The Soviet megaprojects he pressured Occidental's board into approving were revealed after his death in 1990 to haveamassed losses of $2.5 billion.

In his personal life: In the late 1980s, when his third wife, Frances, became jealous of a comely young woman Hammer had hired as his "art advisor," he had the woman, Martha Kaufman, change her name legally to Hilary Gibson and wear glasses and a wig. Then he told his wife he'd fired Kaufman, who remained on the payroll as his mistress.

Epstein found proof in Soviet archives that Armand Hammer, along with his Communist father Julius, used their business at the direction of Soviet intelligence to funnel money to operatives abroad. The Russian art Hammer peddled in the West In the 1930s was not, as he claimed, his own. It had been looted from estates and churches by the Bolshevik regime, which sold it through Hammer to generate hard currency.