Rakesh
Saxena and the Spiderweb of Crooks, Arms Dealers,
Mercenaries, Politicians
Gaborone/Botswana/Africa,
April 14, 2006
Dr. Alexander von Paleske
Ex-Barrister-at-Law,
High Court Frankfurt (M)
Rakesh Saxena is fighting his extradition
from Canada to Thailand for ten years now. Let's have
a look at the spiderweb, of which he is part of.
First to mention is a veteran of arms and shady deals,
a close friend of the bin Laden family for decades,
an uncle of the late Dodi Fayed, the last partner
of Diana Princess of Wales and brother-in-law of the
owner of Harrod's Supermarket in London, Al Fayed,
his name: Adnan Khashoggi, once called the richest
man on earth.
His origin is Saudi Arabia, his favorite place to
live is Marbella in Spain and his favorite business
are arms deals and the stock market, especially in
Vancouver/Canada.
At present, however, he likes more the sand of the
beaches of the United Arab Emirates, a better, because
safer place to be, when arrest warrants and extradition
requests are piling up.
He was involved in the Iran Contra-Affair in the
80s, in which the Pentagon sold weapons to Iran and
the profits were used to buy weapons for a CIA sponsored
group in Nicaragua, the Contra Rebels. Everything
illegal of course, but an army man by the name of
Oliver North was day and night putting documents into
the shredder, when the scandal was about to be made
public. It is good to have such trustworthy people
in your house.
Khashoggi was also involved in the Bank of Credit
and Commerce International (BCCI), a massive washing
machine for illegal money from the Medellin drug cartel,
Manuel Noriega, and other druglords.
The bank was forcibly closed in 1992 after investigations
by a committee of the US senate, in which Senator
John Kerry featured prominently.
However Khashoggi, likeable as he is, had and has
friends all over the world, so lets forget about the
BCCI-Affair and move on to Thailand, to the Bangkok
Bank of Commerce.
The CEO of that bank was in the 90s Krirkkiat Jalichandra.
A promsing young man of Indian origin, by the name
of Rakesh Saxena was introduced to him.
Saxena was wanted in India for culpable homicide,
who cares, was a communist before, while studying
in India, who cares and according to the slogan, who
is not a communist at age 20 hasn't got a heart, and
who is still a communist age 40 hasn't got a brain,
and Saxena had brains, he forgot Marx and Engels and
concentrated on fraud and corruption the big way and
advised his "brother in fraud" Jalichandra
accordingly both together a "duo infernale",
so to speak.
Money was pumped into a labyrinth of fake companies
and "small gifts" in cash and kind were
handed out to politicians and friends, a non repayable
loan was given to Saxenas friend Adnan Khashoggi,
amounting to only 134 million US Dollars, peanuts,
so to speak.
However such big fraud, that triggered eventually
the Asian Banking Crisis in 1997 cannot go on forever
one time the bubble has to burst and in 1996 the scheme
collapsed, however Saxena, clever as he was, left
in time the sinking ship and fled to a much cooler
place, Canada.
Not forgetting, allegedly to take some pocket money
with him, only the laughable sum of 88 million US
Dollars laughable, because the damage he and Jalichandra
allegedly caused amounted to more than three billion
US Dollars.
Jalichandra was not so lucky, he got arrested and
has been sentenced to 30 years in prison one year
ago.
Thailand wanted Saxena extradited, but Saxena did
not want, had money enough to hire the best of the
best of lawyers and he convinced the Government of
Canada, a banker is a banker, that it would be cheaper
to put him in self paid house arrest, than into a
prison.
So he is still in Canada but not resting, to the
contrary. He is as busy as ever.
First came Tim Spicer, the mercenary, Ex-Lieutenant
Colonel, OBE, hated by the Irish because soldiers
of his unit, when he was stationed in Northern Ireland,
killed an innocent Irishman by the name of McBride.
These soldiers were later convicted for murder.
However Spicer campaigned and lied for them, so that
they were early released and then reinstated in the
British Army, they are now on patrol in Iraq, where
killing of innocent civilians is rather a day to day
event.
Spicer needed money, Saxena had money for his adventure
in Sierra Leone.
Tony Buckinghams company Sandline, of which Spicer
was the chief executive until 2000, offered their
service, in exchange for diamond mining rights, to
ousted President Kabbah with old apartheid soldiers
of the infamous Buffalo Battalion, and Koevoet, well
known killer units, their motto: shoot to kill, and
their battleground in those days were the newly independent
state of Angola with the refugee camps of SWAPO and
the illegally occupied Namibia.
The unit, named Executive Outcomes, was founded and
headed by Eeben Barlow, former member of the Buffalo
Battalion and then of the Civil Cooperation Buraeu
(CCB) the latter an South African apartheid death
squad, which can take credit for countless extrajudicial
killings inside and outside South Africa including
hundreds of SWAPO freedom fighters allegedly killed
with poison delivered by a Dr. Wouter Basson and the
bodies thrown out of a plane over the Atlantic Ocean.
Saxena offered 10 million US Dollar, he had mining
interests there as well, bought with money from the
Bangkok Bank of Commerce, and with Saxenas/Bangkok
Bank of Commerce money Spicer bought tons of weapons
in Bulgaria and elsewhere.
This was the start, of what was later called the
Arms to Africa Affair. Active in this scheme there
were also Simon Mann and Nick du Toit, both in prison
now, one in Zimbabwe, the other one in Equatorial
Guinea after the failed coup attempt last year.
This military intervention was in flagrant violation
of an UN arms embargo, who cares, and with the approval
of the resident British High Commissioner, Penfold.
When the things came out, it nearly brought down the
Blair Government.
Already before their Sierra Leone job , Spicer, Mann
and Buckingham had gone global in 1997, this time
to the other end of the globe, Papua New Guinea for
a lump sum of 36 million US Dollars to be paid by
one of the poorest states on earth.
The Government there fought unsuccessfully against
a rebel group on the Island of Bougainville
to get hold of a copper mine, owned by the British
company Rio Tinto. The fight erupted because of the
environmental disaster, caused by the mine, that threatened
to destroy the livelihood of the people there.
Buckingham, Spicer and Simon Mann offered "help",
the mercenary way via Sandline and Sandline subcontracting
the dreck of the Ex Out mercenaries. Also with them
Lafras Luitingh, another former member of the Apartheid-CCB,
who can take credit for having been involved in the
murder of ANC activist Dr. David Webster on 1st May
1989 in Johannesburg and SWAPO Advocate Anton Lubowski
in Windhoek on 12 October 1989.
This time round, however, things did not work out,
the army under General Singorok rebelled, the Prime
Minister Sir Julius Chan had to resign and Spicer
was arrested and later left the country only with
the help of the discrete diplomatic pressure by the
British government.
Still they made their fortune, as a lot of money
had been prepaid .
Meanwhile mercenary godfather and mining baron Tony
Buckingham was also active in many African countries,
apart from Sierra Leone and Angola, namely Congo Brazzaville,
DR Congo, Uganda, Kenya Namibia to name a few.
He was specifically welcomed in Namibia, where the
government made him a director of the state owned
Offshore Development Company (ODC) and he used his
contacts to introduce Ranger Oil Canada to the Government,
successfully, Ranger got huge exploration rights.
Ranger and Buckingham were close business partners
for quite some time.
As a Thank You Buckingham made government officials
shareholders in his company Oceanica Fisheries, and
the government granted him mining rights in a Tourmaline
mine near Karibib, Indigo Sky Gem and Camelthorn Mining,
and allowed him to dislodge 1000 small scale miners
there and to throw them onto the roadside.
Who greases well, drives well.
And South Africa's Mine Minister Mrs. Mlambo-Ngcuka
gave a prospecting license with much fanfare in 2001
to Ranger Oil, despite the well known connection to
Buckingham and his mercenaries
In Kenya he appointed Sanjivan Ruprah, a well known
arms dealer, head of his mining company Branch Energy.
Sanjivan Ruprah became also a close confidant of
Charles Taylor in Liberia and of Victor Bout, with
whom he worked closely together. Sanjivan Ruprah helped
arming the child soldiers in Sierra Leone on behalf
of Charles Taylor, those, who committed horrific mayhem
amongst the civilian population, including mass killings,
hacking of limbs, rape, torture.
Victor Bout, called "Africa's Merchant of Death"
is a Russian, who runs a fleet of 50 russian made
transport planes. He delivered weapons to the Taleban
and Al Qaeda before 2001 and organized chartered flights
to Afghanistan, , certainly not for tourists. Bout
was fuelling virtually each and every armed conflict
in Africa for the last 15 years with his weapons transport
and Diamonds as payment, especially in Liberia, Sierra
Leone Angola, DR Congo.
After the invasion of Iraq he was hired by American
companies. Money talks and a plane is a plane. He
was also busy transporting goods to Afghanistan after
2002, who cares.
Ruprah knows Khashoggi, because they shared an office
address in London. Kashoggi is a friend of Saxena,
Saxena is a friend of Spicer and so forth.
And Khashoggi and Saxena were not just watching,
what was happening in Africa, they had also had serious
business to do, Khashoggi in America and Saxena in
Canada, before both joint forces and went to Vienna
Austria.
In 2001 Khashoggi, via his company Ultimate Holdings,
based on the Bahamas with a complicated lending scam
allegedly pumped up the stock of a Nasdaq bubble company
by the name of Genesis Intermedia, in which Ultimate
Holdings was the majority shareholder.
The company was built around a book by a John Gray,
"Women are from Venus and Men are from Mars".He
forgot to add that arms dealers and mercenaries are
from hell.
Involved in that scam were Deutsche Bank in Toronto
and a slew of criminal stockbrokers and after the
scam collapsed in 2001, Khashoggi and his friend El
Batrawi were 130 million US Dollar richer, broker
houses filed for bankruptcy , the damage amounting
to more than 300 million US Dollars.
Deutsche Bank has now settled out of court and is
paying, still denying any responsibility, of course.
Meanwhile Saxena in Canada was busy as well. He appointed
the leading opposition MP in the Canadian Parliament,
John Reynolds as board member in a flimsy company
called WaveTech while fighting at the same time an
extradition request from Thailand in the courts of
Canada. A simple word for that is most likely corruption.
A friend, even when bought, in need is a friend indeed.
And he was involved in a scandal around a company
in South Africa in 2004 , called Platinum Asset Management.
PAM, that later on moved to Botswana and was exposed
in August 2005 here by me and the local Sunday Standard.
However shared success is doubled success, so he
went to good old Europe in 2000 with his friend Khashoggi.
Khashoggi in person, and him being under house arrest
via the phone. They linked up with a Filipino by the
name of Amador Pastrana.
Pastrana had already earned himself the reputation
as being a king of the boiler rooms earning him more
than a billion Dollar.
Boiler rooms are cramped small offices, from where
selling of shares to unsuspecting clients is organized.
They apply high pressure sales pitches on their victims.
Those clients have money but no banking experience,
they are neither banker nor broker
The shares they sell to pensioners, and medium income
earners are worthless, artificially pumped up Penny
stocks and the clients never see their money again.
The most effective and sophisticated fraud scheme
to date.
Saxena, Khashoggi and Pastrana bought together the
WMP Bank AG in Vienna, Austria renamed it General
Commerce Bank and turned it into a boiler room, the
fraud organized there amounts, according to press
reports, to roughly one billion US Dollar. With 6them
the convicted criminals Regis Possino, Raoul Berthaumieu
and Sherman Mazur.
In 2001 the Bank was closed.
1 billion in one year.
Meanwhile Spicer did not rest either. He opened a
new mercenary company after he left Sandline by the
name of Aegis and the Invasion of Iraq brought him
a fat contract by the Pentagon to the tune of 293
million US Dollar.
He is now overall in charge of all the mercenaries
in Iraq, totaling more than 20.000, quite a few former
Executive Outcome dreck.
And Tony Buckingham is busy in Iraq as well.
In 1995 he paid a courtesy call to Iraq, walking
in the Hotel lobby of the Al Rasheed Hotel over a
distorted picture of former US president Bush and
exploring with former Iraq's Oil minister possible
oil ventures.
After he Invasion he is back, go with the flow, having
good contacts with Iraqi Oil ministry officials and
getting a prospecting license in Kurdistan for his
company Heritage Oil.
And he quickly closed Sandline on 16th April 2004
after the failed coup in Equatorial Guinea.
The list would be incomplete, without mentioning
a group of dealers of weapons of mass destruction.
Gerhard Merz, German, alleged transport officer in
the failed coup in Equatorial Guinea, who was arrested
in Malabo and died a few days later amidst allegations
of torture, transported from 1992 to 1994 nerve gas
components for Mustard and Sarin and "know how"
for their production from China to Iran with an Israeli
international criminal by the name of Regenstreich
alias Regev and the support of the Israeli secret
service Shin Bet.
Parallel to this group another group headed by an
Israeli Nahum Manbar and a British Mi6 agent by the
name of Richard Tomlinson also transported nerve gas
components and KnowHow from China to Iran with the
active support of the Shin Bet and the Mi6.
At the same time the UN weapons inspectors were searching
for these weapons in neighboring Iraq
Simon Mann meanwhile is in Chikurubi Maximum Prison
in Harare, Buckingham and Spicer in Iraq, Sandline
closed down and Aegis opened, hiring mercenaries and
doing what they did in Sierra Leone, Angola and now
in Iraq: Killing innocent civilians with impunity.