FTR #593 Record­ed April 8, 2007
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NB: This stream con­tains both FTR #s 592 and 593 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broad­cast.

FTR #594 Record­ed April 22, 2007
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NB: This stream con­tains both FTR #s 594 and 595 in sequence. Each is a 30 minute broad­cast.

Intro­duc­tion: Hypo­thet­i­cal in nature, this pair of broad­casts explores a mys­te­ri­ous East­ern Euro­pean com­pa­ny that may be part of the com­plex of firms belong­ing to SICO, the Euro­pean hold­ing com­pa­ny for the pow­er­ful Bin Laden family’s com­mer­cial inter­ests. Named “Falkon,” the com­pa­ny is assum­ing the mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar debt owed to the Czech Repub­lic by Rus­sia. [The debt is from the Sovi­et era.] Numer­ous com­pa­nies asso­ci­at­ed with SICO also bear the Falkon name, with vari­a­tions in spelling. Short­ly after the announce­ment of Falkon’s assump­tion of the Russ­ian debt to the Czech Repub­lic, a Russ­ian inves­tiga­tive jour­nal claimed that the com­pa­ny was part of the Bin Laden indus­tri­al con­glom­er­ate. Amid heat­ed denials by the Russ­ian and Czech gov­ern­ments, as well as from peo­ple from Falkon, the deal went for­ward. Although the bin Laden link has yet to be con­firmed, a num­ber of things are clear: Falkon share­hold­er Pata Mamal­adze main­tains links to Islamists, as well as to an appar­ent front for bio­log­i­cal weapons research. It is also clear that Falkon and the peo­ple involved with it are up to no good. The firm and asso­ci­at­ed ele­ments have gone to great length to pre­vent their activ­i­ties from read­i­ly com­ing to light. Lis­ten­ers inter­est­ed in pur­su­ing this line of inves­ti­ga­tion should eval­u­ate the mate­r­i­al in these two broad­casts against the back­ground of FTR#’s 570, 574 and the links between Mohamed Atta, the 9/11 hijack­ers, Huff­man Avi­a­tion and the East­ern Euro­pean crim­i­nal milieu of Wolf­gang Bohringer and Vik­tor Kozeny. This mate­r­i­al should also be viewed against the back­ground of FTR#’s 498, 499.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The Russ­ian government’s ban on dis­cus­sion of the Falkon deal by the Czech author­i­ties; the mys­te­ri­ous nature of the Falkon-con­nect­ed firms in Britain; the ambigu­ous nature of Falkon and the front com­pa­nies asso­ci­at­ed with it; the overt mur­ders and “acci­den­tal” deaths of peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with Falkon over the years; an arti­cle from the main­stream press about Wolf­gang Bohringer, one of 9/11 hijack­er Mohamed Atta’s Ger­man asso­ciates in South Flori­da.

1. The pro­gram begins with an arti­cle about Wolf­gang Bohringer, the Ger­man asso­ciate of 9/11 hijack­er Mohamed Atta. Cov­ered exclu­sive­ly by Daniel Hop­sick­er up until now, the Bohringer sto­ry was recent­ly picked up by the Inter­na­tion­al Her­ald Tri­bune. (For more about Bohringer, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 570, 574. For more about the Ger­man con­nec­tions to the South Flori­da flight schools through which the hijack­ers infil­trat­ed, see—among oth­er programs—FTR#’s 336, 456, 477.) “ . . . U.S. author­i­ties have raised an alarm over a plan by a Ger­man cit­i­zen — linked to the Sept. 11 ter­ror attacks — to build a fly­ing school in a remote South Pacif­ic island nation, a news report said Wednes­day. Wolf­gang Bohringer has been linked to Mohamed Atta, the lead hijack­er in the attacks on New York and Wash­ing­ton in 2001. The Ger­man arrived by yacht in Kiri­bati a year ago with plans to build a fly­ing school, but has since left the far-flung arch­i­pel­ago, Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Corp. radio report­ed. The island where the school was planned was among the coun­try’s clos­est to the U.S. island state of Hawaii, the report said. Kiri­b­ati’s Pres­i­dent Anote Tong said the U.S. Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion had warned him that it was sus­pi­cious of Bohringer, the ABC said. . . .”
(“Report: FBI Rais­es Ter­ror Alarm about South Pacif­ic Fly­ing School” [AP]; Inter­na­tion­al Her­ald Tri­bune; 11/15/2006.)

2. As dis­cussed in FTR#’s 570, 574, Bohringer and oth­er mem­bers of the 9/11 milieu main­tain exten­sive con­nec­tions to East­ern Euro­pean and Russ­ian orga­nized crime ele­ments. This pro­gram explores the pos­si­bil­i­ty that a mys­te­ri­ous East­ern Euro­pean com­pa­ny called “Falkon” may be a sub­sidiary of SICO, the Euro­pean hold­ing com­pa­ny for the busi­ness enter­pris­es of the pow­er­ful bin Laden fam­i­ly. It is Mr. Emory’s view that SICO is a key ele­ment of the inves­ti­ga­tion into 9/11. (For more about SICO, see the com­bined descrip­tion for FTR#’s 498, 499.) These pro­grams begin by tak­ing a look at the milieu of Falkon, one of whose own­ers asso­ciates both with an appar­ent Soviet/Russian bio­log­i­cal war­fare front and with Islamist Beghet Pacol­li. “To pro­tect Amer­i­ca from ter­ror­ist attack, the Unit­ed States must inves­ti­gate illic­it trade in bio­log­i­cal weapons and trace the move­ment of ter­ror­ist mon­ey. A good start­ing point is a con­tro­ver­sial Swiss bank that may have facil­i­tat­ed the sale of haz­ardous bio­log­i­cal mate­ri­als to Islam­ic mil­i­tants. The bank, Ban­ca del Got­tar­do in Lugano, appears to have han­dled one or more sales from a known Russ­ian bio­log­i­cal weapons pro­duc­er to a Swiss com­pa­ny with links to sev­er­al rad­i­cal Islam­ic groups. The bank denies involve­ment, and no doc­u­ment has appeared which might con­firm an illic­it bioweapons trade. Nev­er­the­less, an exam­i­na­tion of doc­u­ments here, inter­views and oth­er sources raise enough red flags to sug­gest that those trac­ing ter­ror mon­ey might look close­ly at such deals. A Decem­ber 1993 list of con­tracts with the Inter­plas­ti­ca com­pa­ny obtained by this reporter lists a $20 mil­lion pur­chase of ‘injecta­bles’ by Bio­preparat, the Russ­ian state devel­op­er of bio­log­i­cal weapons. Accord­ing to two for­mer Sovi­et Bio­preparat insid­ers, bioweapons pro­duc­tion at the plant was hid­den under the cov­er of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal work. . . . A Sep­tem­ber 1994 fax to the bank indi­cates that the Ban­ca del Got­tar­do han­dled what appears to be anoth­er Inter­plas­ti­ca deal with Bio­preparat. The memo notes that ‘for our friends of Toro­la, ‘Bio­preparat’ deposit­ed through ‘Inter­plas­ti­ca‚’ two cont. of 20 kg of mate­r­i­al in the secu­ri­ty box of the bank. P. Mamal­adze advised — ready for trans­ac­tion [of] ‘bonds.’’ Toro­la is a shell com­pa­ny reg­is­tered in Lugano and run by sev­er­al indi­vid­u­als of Geor­gian and Yugosla­vian ori­gin. One of them, Paa­ta Guramovich Mamal­adze, was iden­ti­fied by a source famil­iar with the con­tracts as a Geor­gian arms traf­fick­er. . . .”
(“Swiss Bank Denies Link to Bioweapons, Islam­ic Mil­i­tants” by Lucy Komis­ar: Pacif­ic News Ser­vice; 11/14/2001.)

3. The milieu of Interplastica/Pacolli and Mamal­adze con­nects through Mamal­adze to the mys­te­ri­ous, enig­mat­ic Falkon com­pa­ny. The fol­low­ing pas­sage con­nects Begh­jet Pacol­li with rad­i­cal Islamists. oper­at­ing on behalf of the KLA in Koso­vo. Recall that Pacol­li is also very close to Inter­plas­ti­ca and to the finan­cial lumi­nar­ies of Ban­ca del Got­tar­do. “ . . . The Ban­ca del Got­tar­do has already been the object of legal inquiries in a Russ­ian cor­rup­tion and mon­ey-laun­der­ing case. A Swiss inves­tiga­tive mag­is­trate accused Pavel Borodin, who man­aged Russ­ian state prop­er­ty, of skim­ming $30 mil­lion from Russ­ian gov­ern­ment con­struc­tion con­tracts. The Swiss dossier details how Begh­jet Pacol­li, a native of Koso­vo and head of the Mabe­tex con­struc­tion com­pa­ny, fun­neled pay­offs to Borodin and oth­er Russ­ian offi­cials, includ­ing Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Boris Yeltsin and his daugh­ters. The Ban­ca del Got­tar­do held accounts for Borodin and oth­er alleged cul­prits and moved mon­ey through its branch in the off­shore secre­cy haven of the Bahamas. Pacol­li ran Inter­plas­ti­ca, and Pacol­li is linked to rad­i­cal Islam­ic groups. Pacol­li finances the rad­i­cal­ly anti-Serb news­pa­per ‘Bota Sot,’ based in Zurich, which has been con­demned for sow­ing ‘hate, intol­er­ance and strife’ by the head of the Koso­vo mis­sion of the Orga­ni­za­tion for Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion in Europe. Through the Fund for Recon­struc­tion of Koso­vo (FORK), in Lugano, he finances the Koso­vo Lib­er­a­tion Army, or UCK, (known in the West as KLA) described by Robert Gel­bard, America’s for­mer spe­cial envoy to Bosnia, as ‘Islam­ic ter­ror­ists.’ Europol (the Euro­pean Police Orga­ni­za­tion) says the UCK is involved in drug and weapons traf­fick­ing, pros­ti­tu­tion and ille­gal immi­gra­tion. . . .” (Idem.)

4. Pacolli’s asso­ciate Pata Mamal­adze is one of the own­ers of Falkon Cap­i­tal. “ . . . Curi­ous­ly, Mamal­adze, with sev­er­al Geor­gians, Rus­sians and Swiss, is also an own­er of Falkon Cap­i­tal. Russ­ian Prime Min­is­ter Mikhail Kasyanov — referred to by some Russ­ian news­pa­pers as ‘Misha two per­cent,’ for his alleged col­lec­tion of ille­gal ‘com­mis­sions’ — arranged a deal, approved in Octo­ber, under which Falkon was giv­en the right to buy Russia’s $2.5 bil­lion debt to the gov­ern­ment of Czecho­slo­va­kia for only 23 per­cent of its val­ue. . . .”
(“Swiss Bank Han­dled Sale from Russ­ian Bioweapons Com­pa­ny” by Lucy Komis­ar; Earth Times News Ser­vice; 11/12/2001)

5. Short­ly after the Falkon assump­tion of the Russ­ian debt to the Czech Repub­lic, a Russ­ian inves­tiga­tive report alleged that Falkon was part of the Sau­di Bin Laden Group. “ . . . In his sto­ry, Nova­ja Gaze­ta reporter Oleg Lur­je claimed that Falkon is a daugh­ter com­pa­ny of the Sau­di Bin­Laden Group, the multi­bil­lion-dol­lar con­struc­tion com­pa­ny oper­at­ed by bin Laden’s fam­i­ly. Although the fam­i­ly says it has dis­owned the ter­ror­ist mas­ter­mind — and denied him any stake in the com­pa­ny — Lur­je assert­ed pro­ceeds from the Falkon deal ‘will flow smooth­ly in the direc­tion of Osama bin Laden.’ The report said Falkon would receive $1.35 bil­lion from the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, includ­ing $580 mil­lion in cash. Most of the cash was to be trans­ferred direct­ly to the Czech gov­ern­ment. The non-cash pay­ment to Falkon was in the form of about $770 mil­lion worth of cred­it toward future sales of Russ­ian-pro­duced elec­tric­i­ty, stretched over sev­er­al years. The report called the Rus­sia-Falkon deal ‘extreme­ly tan­gled’ and ‘dif­fi­cult’ for any gov­ern­ment agency try­ing to mon­i­tor the cash flow. But essen­tial­ly Falkon — and alleged­ly by exten­sion, Osama bin Laden — was to make $770 mil­lion from the deal. Gaze­ta’s alle­ga­tion of an Osama bin Laden con­nec­tion to Falkon was empha­sized with a schemat­ic dia­gram of Sau­di Bin Laden Enter­pris­es that the reporter said came from an Amer­i­can source. . . .”
(“Bin Laden Charge Trig­gers Prague Denials”;  UPI; 1/14/2002.)

6. As dis­cussed in FTR#’s 498, 499, SICO’s avi­a­tion sub­sidiary sent pilots for train­ing at Huff­man Avi­a­tion, where “Pirate of Prague” Vik­tor Kozeny’s pilot Bohringer asso­ci­at­ed with some of the 9/11 hijack­ers. Anoth­er point of infor­ma­tion cov­ered in FTR#’s 498, 499 is the fact that SICO board mem­ber Beau­doin Dunand set up a maze of off­shore cor­po­rate fronts to assist with the fund­ing of the Afghan Muja­hadin dur­ing the first Afghan war. Some of these same cor­po­rate fronts also chan­neled sup­port to Al Qae­da. In late 2000 and ear­ly 2001, Dunand was liq­ui­dat­ing cor­po­rate fronts asso­ci­at­ed with the Iran-Con­tra sacan­dal. Note that the SICO cor­po­rate com­plex encom­pass­es no few­er than five dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies named “Falkon”—many with dif­fer­ent spellings. “The estab­lish­ment of SICO is strange also–its off­shore struc­tures put in place by SBG in the Cay­man Islands, Netherland’s Antilles and the British Isles. There were cre­at­ed by the cab­i­net in Gene­va. They are SICO Cura­cao (Antilles), whose Pres­i­dent is Yeslam Bin Laden and its admin­is­tra­tors are Saleh Bin Laden, Beat­rice Dufour and Charles Tick­le; Falken Ltd. (Cay­man Islands) [Empha­sis added.]; Tropville Corp NV (Antilles); Islay Hold­ings (Islay Island). Charles Tick­le is the CEO of the Amer­i­can real estate com­pa­ny Daniel Corp. . . .”
(“Nam­ing Names: The Bin Laden Galaxy” by Jean Charles Bris­ard; Indy­media UK; 8/15/2005.)

7. Detail about “Falkon” num­ber 2! “ . . . These inter­me­di­ate struc­tures have been pro­gres­sive­ly sub­sti­tut­ed by the invest­ment com­pa­ny Rus­sell Wood Hold­ings Ltd., an affil­i­ate of Tropville Corp and of Falkan Ltd. It is locat­ed at 30, Great Guild­ford Street in Lon­don. [Empha­sis added.] It was cre­at­ed on Feb­ru­ary 17, 1987. Hanofi Tiliouine (also on the Board of Direc­tors of SICO in Gene­va) and Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawal­la (born April 9, 1949 in Tan­za­nia) are two admin­is­tra­tors. . . .” (Idem.)

8. The fol­low­ing pas­sage high­lights “Falkon” num­bers 3, 4 and 5. Again, what relationship(if any) do these “SICO” Falkons have with the out­fit that is assum­ing the Russian/Czech debt? What rela­tion­ship (if any) do they have with Islamists? “ . . . Rus­sell Wood Ltd. suc­ceed­ed to cre­ate a net­work of invest­ment affil­i­ates begin­ning in 1987: Globe Admin­is­tra­tion Ltd., cre­at­ed on Octo­ber 29, 1987 in Lon­don, an affil­i­ate of Islay Hold­ings whose direc­tor is Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawal­la; Fal­con Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment Ltd [Empha­sis added.], cre­at­ed on May 9, 1988 in Lon­don (same address as Rus­sell Wood), and direct­ed by Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawal­la; Fal­con Cap­i­tal Nom­i­nees Ltd. cre­at­ed on May 9, 1988 and whose direc­tor is Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawal­la [Empha­sis added.]; Fal­con Prop­er­ties Ltd. in the Bahamas [Empha­sis added.]; Turkey Rock UK Ltd. (aka Tyrolese 350 Lim­it­ed) cre­at­ed on Feb­ru­ary 20, 1996 in Lon­don, with one of the admin­is­tra­tors being Leonard Cowk­ing (rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Sau­di Bin­ladin Group in Europe); and Safron Advi­sors UK Ltd. (aka Tyrolese 359 Lim­it­ed) cre­at­ed on May 17, 1996 in Lon­don, direct­ed by Akber­ali Mohammed Ali Moawal­la and Basil Meh­di Al Rahim (born on June 14, 1953, Amer­i­can). . . .” (Idem.)

9. Con­tin­u­ing the analy­sis of the mys­te­ri­ous “Falkon” (or “Fal­cons”), the pro­gram notes that peo­ple asso­ci­at­ed with the com­pa­ny have met with foul play and that the com­pa­ny behaves mysteriously—changing address­es and con­tact infor­ma­tion fre­quent­ly. Clear­ly, Falkon is an out­fit that is up to no good. Equal­ly clear is the fact that the peo­ple who con­trol the com­pa­ny do not want peo­ple to be able to fig­ure out its activ­i­ties. “. . . Falkon Cap­i­tal was estab­lished by two Geor­gians and an Armen­ian in 1996. No one knows for sure to what extent these three peo­ple are still involved in the com­pa­ny. One of them, Paa­pa Mamal­adze, is said to still be ‘involved’ in the com­pa­ny, accord­ing to the legal rep­re­sen­ta­tive of Falkon, Josef Cimb­o­ra, list­ed in the Czech busi­ness reg­istry. Cimb­o­ra was direc­tor of the Slo­vak oil com­pa­ny Slov­naft under the com­mu­nists and stud­ied in Rus­sia. He was also a mem­ber of the board of the Slo­vak com­pa­ny OIL-SL until 1999. Anoth­er mem­ber of the board of OIL-SL Miroslav Kovarik was blown up with his BMW in Zlin in 1996. Two Falkon busi­ness part­ners were slain in 1996 in Prague and Vien­na, but inves­ti­ga­tions led nowhere. Mean­while, Falkon keeps chang­ing address­es and tele­phone num­bers, which no one notices until the com­pa­ny makes news (like recent­ly). The com­pa­ny does­n’t have a web site, and it does­n’t use e‑mail. Its busi­ness activ­i­ties are unknown, with the excep­tion of its unsuc­cess­ful bid for Libyan debt in 1998. The offi­cial own­er of the com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly list­ed as a Swiss by the name of Hans Peter Moser (his tele­phone num­ber is unlist­ed), but its stock is reg­is­tered as bear­er shares, so at this moment they could be owned by any­one. . . .”
(“Polit­i­cal Econ­o­my Falkon Debt Deal Smells Like A Rat, But Gov­ern­ment Likes Rats” by Jan Machacek; Prague Busi­ness Jour­nal; 10/15/2001.)

10. Still more about the elu­sive nature of the com­pa­ny: “We have reached the point where we must deal with the involve­ment of Falkon in the set­tle­ment of Libya’s debts: in 1997, Falkon rep­re­sen­ta­tives attempt­ed to buy Libya’s debt in the amount of sev­er­al mil­lion crowns from our gov­ern­ment. Ivan Pilip, then min­is­ter of finance, refused to enter the con­tract with them. ‘I had received infor­ma­tion by the [Secu­ri­ty and Infor­ma­tion Ser­vice] BIS accord­ing to which the com­pa­ny con­sti­tut­ed too much of a secu­ri­ty risk,’ recalls Pilip today. The issue was that both BIS and the Sec­tion for the detec­tion of orga­nized crime had tak­en inter­est in two of the Geor­gian own­ers of Falkon, Paa­ta Mamal­adze and Važa Kik­navelidze, because of their con­tacts to the Russ­ian mafia gang­land. The Geor­gians lat­er left their posts in Falkon’s statu­to­ry bod­ies. In April 1998, their posi­tion was assumed by two Swiss broth­ers (not spous­es, as we had stat­ed in a pre­ced­ing arti­cle): Hans Peter Moser and Beat Urs Moser. ‘The com­pa­ny was prop­er­ly sold. Today, nine­ty-five per­cent of the stock is in the hands of Swiss legal per­sons,’ says Jozef ?imb­o­ra, Falkon’s direc­tor. In his opin­ion, the com­pa­ny’s slate is now untar­nished owing to this cor­po­rate change. But Mr. ?imb­o­ra is not quite right. Nine­ty-five per­cent of Falkon are in the own­er­ship of ‘Magchim’, a Swiss com­pa­ny of the Moser broth­ers, the direc­tor of which is Mamal­adze. More­over, Mamal­adze runs anoth­er com­pa­ny in Switzer­land, Falkone, where two oth­er Geor­gians join him on the board — Ka?ka?išvili and Tej­mu­raz (the Swiss com­mer­cial reg­is­ter does not pro­vide their first names). Upon the ques­tion whether Falkone is anoth­er own­er of Magchim, Moser replies: ‘I am not major­i­ty share­hold­er.’ All debt medi­a­tors we have addressed, from Moser to ?imb­o­ra, refuse to answer any ques­tions relat­ed to the Russ­ian debt. There is a high sus­pi­cion that all these peo­ple are pup­pets. ‘We screened them and informed the gov­ern­ment that the com­pa­ny is not exact­ly sol­vent and that their inten­tion might be to laun­der mon­ey,’ says intel­li­gence chief Fran­tišek Bublan. ‘On the oth­er hand, the com­pa­ny had already set­tled stuff for the gov­ern­ment ear­li­er, and that must have been more impor­tant when they made up their mind,’ he adds. Among the things that had made the secret ser­vice sus­pi­cious were the inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty of the cor­po­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tives and their false address­es.’”
(“The Swiss Fal­con Shows the White Feath­er” by Jan Kovalík, Jaroslav; Spurný; Respekt.cz; 10/29/2001.)

11. In addi­tion to the appar­ent­ly frosty atti­tude of the company’s recep­tion­ist, it is obvi­ous that the peo­ple run­ning this firm are not inter­est­ed in hav­ing peo­ple learn more about it. “. . .For instance, accord­ing to the Com­mer­cial Reg­is­ter, Falkon Cap­i­tal has its seat in Husová Street in Prague. At the respec­tive address, how­ev­er, a Domini­can monastery and its church are sit­u­at­ed. ‘Falkon has nev­er had their seat here. We know the com­pa­ny because of the con­stant inquiries,’ says the gate­keep­er. The com­pa­ny’s office is locat­ed half a kilo­me­ter away from there. They are inac­ces­si­ble. Upon ring­ing the bell, one is being told by a female voice with hard Russ­ian accent that the com­pa­ny’s boss Jozef ?imb­o­ra is not and will not be present. Paa­ta Mamal­adze’s reg­is­tered domi­cile is a non-exist­ing address. It is a har­row­ing expe­ri­ence to vis­it the Swiss own­ers of the firm, whose alleged finan­cial strength is stressed by ?imb­o­ra. On the out­skirts of Neuhausen, a small town of 7,000 inhab­i­tants, a small indus­tri­al zone is stretched out which fea­tures unat­trac­tive office build­ings for dozens of firms. Magchim has a rent­ed office in one of the stan­dard­ized con­tain­er build­ings. The same office is shared by fur­ther com­pa­nies of the Moser broth­ers and Paa­ta Mamal­adze. The com­pa­ny does not even have a sec­re­tary. Behind the desk sits Beat Moser him­self. He is appar­ent­ly caught off-guard by the vis­it of Czech jour­nal­ists. He refus­es to talk about any­thing relat­ed to the debt. ‘Write down your ques­tions, I shall answer in writ­ing,’ he says appre­hen­sive­ly. After two days of reminders via phone, he says: ‘We have read about you in the news­pa­per, you sup­pos­ed­ly write anti-gov­ern­ment stuff. We are not going to com­mu­ni­cate with you. You must under­stand that any trans­ac­tion has con­fi­den­tial­i­ties.’ The Moser broth­ers and their com­pa­nies are unknown even to the local paper Schaffhauser Nachricht­en. ‘No, they cer­tain­ly aren’t among our major busi­ness­peo­ple, their names mean noth­ing to me,’ thinks edi­tor Karl Holz aloud. ‘Where are they sup­posed to have their premis­es? In the indus­tri­al zone of Neuhausen? But that is an area for small-scale entre­pre­neurs.’” (Idem.)

12. The Falkon com­pa­ny in Britain and its relat­ed com­pa­nies (as named in the Novaya Gaze­ta piece) exist on paper, but they, too, appear to be front com­pa­nies, whose pre­cise nature is not easy to deter­mine. “Most British firms cit­ed in an arti­cle by Russ­ian jour­nal­ist Oleg Lurye in the Moscow week­ly Novaya Gaze­ta in con­nec­tion with the Russ­ian debt and Osama bin Laden are real­ly reg­is­tered in Britain, but their phone num­ber is not avail­able to the pub­lic and they can­not be con­tact­ed, CTK found today. None of them is on the British lists of orga­ni­za­tions con­nect­ed with al-Qae­da. The Home Office told CTK that the arti­cle relat­ed to the infor­ma­tion which were [sic] of intel­li­gence char­ac­ter and it would not com­ment on it. The firms cit­ed by Novaya Gaze­ta and also includ­ed in the British Com­pa­nies’ House are Fal­con Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment Lim­it­ed, Fal­con Cap­i­tal Nom­i­nees Lim­it­ed, Fal­con Prop­er­ties Ltd., Safron Advi­sors, Attock Oil Com­pa­ny Ltd., Globe Admin­is­tra­tion Ltd. All of them have Lon­don address­es of their head­quar­ters but none of them is in the Lon­don tele­phone direc­to­ry. Some of them have iden­ti­cal address­es. The firm Turkey Fock UK is not reg­is­tered in Britain. The same goes for Falkon Ltd. and Islay Hold­ing. Rus­sell Wood (Hold­ings) Ltd. and Rus­sell Wood Ltd. are the only ones from the Russ­ian list which exist and also have a phone num­ber, but have refused to answer ques­tions from jour­nal­ists and demand writ­ten con­tact. . . .”
(“British Firms From Russ­ian Report Exist, Unavail­able For Com­ment”; CTK [Czech News Agency]; 1/16/2002.)

13. In addi­tion to the reclu­sive nature of the com­pa­ny itself, the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment has made it even more dif­fi­cult to learn about the firm. The Czechs have been for­bid­den from pub­licly dis­cussing the deal. What lies behind the Falkon façade that is so sen­si­tive? “The Czech side can­not pub­lish the con­tents of the agree­ments under which it sold to the Falkon Cap­i­tal firm the Russ­ian debt for 20 bil­lion crowns with­out approval of Rus­sia, Deputy Pre­mier and Labour and Social Affairs Min­is­ter Vladimir Spid­la told CTK today. The dis­clo­sure of the agree­ments was demand­ed by the oppo­si­tion after spec­u­la­tions in Russ­ian press appeared that Falkon is con­nect­ed with inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism, name­ly Sau­di- born mul­ti- mil­lion­aire Osama bin Laden. . . .”
(“Falkon Deal May Not Be Pub­lished With­out Rus­si­a’s Con­sent”; CTK [Czech News Agency]; 1/15/2002.)

14. Two video pro­duc­tions are being gen­er­at­ed by a cou­ple of doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers. One is a DVD of a three-lec­ture series called “The First Refuge of a Scoundrel: The Rela­tion­ship Between Fas­cism and Reli­gion.” To learn more about this, vis­it The Anti-Fas­cist YouTube.com page. In addi­tion, there will soon be a doc­u­men­tary about Mr. Emory, titled “The Anti-Fas­cist.” For more about this project, vis­it theantifascist.com.