jean ziegler: un nuremberg pour les speculateurs

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http://www.michelcollon.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2765:l-les-enfants-du-tiers-monde-meurent-a-cause-des-gangsters-de-la-bourse-r&catid=6:articles&Itemid=11

25 Mai 2010

«Des enfants meurent à cause des gangsters de la Bourse »

Jean Ziegler

Dans ses livres qui ont marqué l’opinion, Jean Ziegler n’a cessé de dénoncer le caractère absurde et criminel des politiques du capitalisme envers les peuples du tiers monde. Il a été le rapporteur spécial pour le droit à l'alimentation du Conseil des droits de l’homme aux Nations unies de 2000 à 2008. Michel Collon l'a interrogé à Genève sur la crise, la Bourse, la faim, Obama, Israël…

La crise t’a surpris ?

Dans sa violence, oui. Je ne pensais pas que les truands de la finance allaient ruiner l’économie mondiale à une telle vitesse : 1.800 milliards de valeurs patrimoniales ont été détruites. Pour les pays du tiers-monde, c’est une catastrophe totale. Mais aussi pour les pays industrialisés.

Ce sont encore les pauvres qui paient ?

Oui. Le 22 octobre 2008, les quinze pays de l’euro se sont réunis à Paris. Sur le perron de l’Elysée, Merkel et Sarkozy ont dit : « Nous avons libéré 1.500 milliards d’euro pour le crédit et pour augmenter le plafond d’autofinancement de 3 à 5% ». La même année, les mêmes pays européens ont réduit leurs subventions pour le programme alimentaire mondial (qui ne vit que de ces subventions) de 40 %. De six milliards de dollars à moins de quatre milliards.
Ce qui fait qu’au Bangladesh, on a supprimé les repas scolaires. Un million d’enfants sont gravement et en permanence sous-alimentés. Ces enfants meurent donc à cause des gangsters de la Bourse. Il y a là des morts véridiques. Les spéculateurs, aujourd’hui, devraient être jugés au tribunal de Nuremberg.

Quelle leçon les puissants ont-ils tiré de la crise ?

Aucune. Prenons l’exemple de la Suisse. Le contribuable suisse y a payé 61 milliards de dollars pour le sauvetage de la plus grande banque : UBS. L’an dernier, en 2009, les dirigeants d’UBS, toujours proche de la faillite, se sont distribués entre eux des bonus pour quatre milliards de francs suisses ! Le pillage est total et l’impuissance des gouvernements qui se comportent comme des mercenaires est totale aussi. En tous les cas, en Suisse, en France, en Allemagne où j’ai quelques renseignements. C’est un scandale permanent.
Le masque néolibéral est tombé évidemment, avec sa prétendue légitimité. Mais le cynisme et l’arrogance des banquiers triomphent totalement.

Et du côté du public, sens-tu une évolution ?

Non, si tu regardes les chiffres, ils sont catastrophiques. Toutes les cinq secondes, un enfant meurt de faim. 47.000 personnes meurent de faim tous les jours. Un milliards de personnes (c’est-à-dire un homme sur six) sont gravement et en permanence sous-alimentés. Alors que l’agriculture mondiale dans l’état actuel de son développement pourrait nourrir sans problème douze milliards d’êtres humains avec 2.700 calories par individu par jour ! Donc, au début de ce siècle, il n’y a plus aucune fatalité. Un enfant qui meurt de faim, au moment où nous parlons, est assassiné. C’est catastrophique.
L’ordre mondial du capital financier globalisé est meurtrier - épidémie, décès par la pollution de l'eau , etc… - et en même temps absurde : il tue sans nécessité. C’est l’ordre des oligarchies et du capital financier mondialisé. Sur le plan de la lutte contre la faim, l’échec est total.

Tu as été, de 2000 à 2008, le rapporteur des Nations-Unies sur le problème de la faim dans le monde. Quel bilan tires-tu ? As-tu servi à quelque chose ?

Oui. La conscience a augmenté. Plus personne aujourd’hui, ne considère ce massacre quotidien comme un fait de la nature. On va en Europe, je crois, et en tout cas dans les pays de la périphérie vers une insurrection des consciences. Il faut une rupture radicale avec ce monde cannibale.

Alors que le problème de la faim n’est pas résolu, on dépense de plus en plus pour faire la guerre.

En 2005, pour la première fois, les dépenses mondiales d’armement (pas les budgets militaires, juste les dépenses d’armement) ont dépassé mille milliards de dollar par an. Nous vivons dans un monde d’une absurdité totale.

Obama avait pourtant fait de belles promesses…

Il est vrai qu’Obama suit totalement la surdétermination de l’Empire. Je ne l’ai jamais rencontré, c’est sûrement quelqu’un de bien, mais la réalité qu’il affronte est effrayante. Les Etats-Unis restent la plus grande puissance industrielle au monde : 25 % des marchandises industrielles sont produites par eux, avec pour matière première le pétrole : 20 millions de baril par jour dont 61% sont importés. On peut l’importer de régions comme le Moyen-Orient ou l’Asie centrale, ce qui les force à maintenir une force armée totalement hypertrophiée, et le budget fédéral est donc complètement parasité par les crédits militaires… Mais telle est la logique de l’Empire.

Quel est ton sentiment sur ce qui se passe maintenant en Israël et comment cela peut-il évoluer ?

Je pense que Tel-Aviv dicte la politique étrangère des Etats-Unis avec le lobby de l’AIPAC, comme puissance déterminante.

Avant les politiciens, ce sont quand même d’abord les multinationales pétrolières qui décident d’armer Israël.

Oui, la logique fondamentale est que pour les intérêts pétroliers, il faut un porte-avion stable. Et l’Etat d’Israël mène - ce n’est pas moi qui le dit, c’est un rapporteur spécial des territoires occupés - une politique permanente de terrorisme d’Etat. Tant que ce terrorisme continue, il n’y aura pas de paix au Moyen-Orient, il n’y aura pas de fin au conflit Iran - Irak, ni rien du tout. Tout est sans issue sauf si enfin l’Union européenne se réveillait, tu comprends ?

Que pouvons-nous faire, nous Européens, pour la réveiller ?

Depuis juin 2002, existe un accord de libre échange entre Israël et les 27 pays de l’Union européenne qui absorbent 62% des exportations israéliennes. Dans cet accord, l’article 2 (c’est le même dans tous les traités de libre échange) dit : le respect des droits de l’homme par les partis contractantes est la condition pour la validité de l’accord. Mais les violences faites aux Palestiniens - vol de la terre, torture permanente, éliminations extrajudiciaires, assassinats, organisation de la sous-alimentation comme punition collective – tout cela, ce sont des violations permanentes des droits de l’homme les plus élémentaires. Si la Commission européenne suspendait pendant 15 jours l’accord de libre-échange, les généraux israéliens reviendraient à la raison immédiatement. Or, l’Europe des 27, ce sont des démocraties, c’est à nous de jouer, nous opinions publiques.

Comment ?

Il faut forcer nos gouvernements. Nous ne sommes pas impuissants. En Belgique, il y a beaucoup de problèmes, en Suisse et en France aussi. Mais une chose est certaine : les libertés publiques existent. Il faut se saisir de ces libertés publiques pour imposer à nos gouvernements un changement radical de politique, c’est tout. S’ils ne le font pas, alors il ne faut plus voter pour eux, tu comprends, c’est aussi simple que ça !

Mais tous ces gouvernements sont d’accord de soutenir Israël. En France, par exemple, que ce soit l’UMP ou le PS, ils soutiennent Israël.

Soutenir la sécurité et la permanence d’Israël, c’est une chose. Mais cette complicité avec le terrorisme d’Etat et la politique de colonisation, ce n’est pas possible. C’est la négation de nos valeurs, c’est « du fascisme extérieur » : c’est-à-dire que nos valeurs sont démocratiques à l’intérieur de nos frontières et à l’extérieur, nous pratiquons le fascisme par alliance.

Et enfin, le rôle des médias dans tout ça ?

Ils sont complètement soumis. Notamment en période de crise, les journalistes ont peur pour leur emploi. L’agressivité du lobby israélien est terrible. Moi, j’ai subi la diffamation la plus effroyable, et ça continue aux Nations-Unies d’ailleurs, c’est grâce à Kofi Annan que j’ai survécu. Israël est un danger pour la paix du monde, Israël cause d’effroyables souffrances. Et dans ce pays, les opposants comme Warschawski sont complètement marginalisés. Mais si l’opposition israélienne anticoloniale et anti-impérialiste n’a pas la parole, n’a pas d’influence, eh bien, nous allons vers la catastrophe. Il faut soutenir les opposants.

Et le rôle des médias à propos de la crise ?

La crise est présentée comme une fatalité, une catastrophe naturelle. Alors que les responsables sont identifiés !

Source: michelcollon.info

soros & co back wikileaks / kosher mob & oval office

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updated april 1 2010

by courtesy of Wayne Madsen

CIA, Mossad and Soros behind Wikileaks

related text: pentagon adds wikileaks to list of enemies

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20100325_3

March 25-26, 2010

Suspicions abound that Wikileaks is part of U.S. cyber-warfare operations

WMR has learned from Asian intelligence sources that there is a strong belief in some Asian countries, particularly China and Thailand, that the website Wikileaks, which purports to publish classified and sensitive documents while guaranteeing anonymity to the providers, is linked to U.S. cyber-warfare and computer espionage operations, as well as to Mossad's own cyber-warfare activities.

Wikileaks claims to have decrypted video footage of a U.S. Predator air strike on civilians in Afghanistan and that covert U.S. State Department agents followed Wikileaks's editor from Iceland to Norway in a surveillance operation conducted jointly by the United States and Iceland. Iceland's financially-strapped government recently announced a policy of becoming a haven for websites that fear political oppression and censorship in their home countries. However, in the case of Wikileaks, countries like China and Thailand are suspicious of the websites' actual "ownership."

Wikileaks says it intends to show its video at an April 5 press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC but that its presenters may be detained or arrested before that time. WMR's sources believe the Wikileaks "militancy" in the face of supposed surveillance appears fake.

Our Asian intelligence sources report the following: "Wikileaks is running a disinformation campaign, crying persecution by U.S. intelligence- when it is U.S. intelligence itself. Its [Wikileaks'] activities in Iceland are totally suspect." Wikileaks claims it is the victim of a new COINTELPRO [Counter Intelligence Program] operation directed by the Pentagon and various U.S. intelligence agencies. WMR's sources believe that it is Wikileaks that is part and parcel of a cyber-COINTELPRO campaign, such as that proposed by President Obama's "information czar," Dr. Cass Sunstein.

In January 2007, John Young, who runs cryptome.org, a site that publishes a wealth of sensitive and classified information, left Wikileaks, claiming the operation was a CIA front. Young also published some 150 email messages sent by Wikileaks activists on cryptome. They include a disparaging comment about this editor by Wikileaks co-founder Dr. Julian Assange of Australia. Assange lists as one of his professions "hacker." His German co-founder of Wikileaks uses a pseudonym, "Daniel Schmitt."

Wikileaks claims it is "a multi-jurisdictional organization to protect internal dissidents, whistleblowers, journalists and bloggers who face legal or other threats related to publishing" [whose] primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we are of assistance to people of all nations who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact. We have received over 1.2 million documents so far from dissident communities and anonymous sources."

In China, Wikileaks is suspected of having Mossad connections. It is pointed out that its first "leak" was from an Al Shabbab "insider" in Somalia. Al Shabbab is the Muslim insurgent group that the neocons have linked to "Al Qaeda."

Asian intelligence sources also point out that Assange's "PhD" is from Moffett University, an on-line diploma mill and that while he is said to hail from Nairobi, Kenya, he actually in from Australia where his exploits have included computer hacking and software piracy.

WMR has confirmed Young's contention that Wikileaks is a CIA front operation. Wikileaks is intimately involved in a $20 million CIA operation that U.S.-based Chinese dissidents that hack into computers in China. Some of the Chinese hackers route special hacking program through Chinese computers that then target U.S. government and military computer systems. After this hacking is accomplished, the U.S. government announces through friendly media outlets that U.S. computers have been subjected to a Chinese cyber-attack. The "threat" increases an already-bloated cyber-defense and offense budget and plays into the fears of the American public and businesses that heavily rely on information technology.

It is also pointed out that on Wikileaks advisory board is Ben Laurie, a one-time programmer and Internet security expert for Google, which recently signed a cooperative agreement with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) and has been charged by China with being part of a U.S. cyber-espionage campaign against China. Other Wikileaks advisory members are leading Chinese dissidents, including Wan Dan, who won the 1998 National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Democracy Award; Wang Youcai, founder of the Chinese Democracy Party; Xiao Qiang, the director of the China Internet Project at the University of California at Berkeley, member of the advisory board of the International Campaign for Tibet, and commentator on the George Soros-affiliated Radio Free Asia; and Tibetan exile and activist Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang.

Our sources in Asia believe that Wikileaks ran afoul of their CIA paymasters after it was discovered that some of Wikileaks's "take" was being diverted to Mossad instead of to their benefactors at Langley. After a CIA cur-off in funding, "Daniel Schmitt" took over and moved the Wikileaks operation to Belgium and Sweden with hopes of making a more secure base in Iceland.

There are strong suspicions that Wikileaks is yet another Soros-funded "false flag" operation on the left side of the political spectrum. WMR has learned that after former Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) decided to oppose Soros's choice of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's deputy Mark Malloch Brown as President of the World Bank, succedding the disgraced Paul Wolfowitz, Soros put the Wikileaks operation into high gear. "Daniel Schmitt" hacked into Coleman's supporters list, stealing credit card info, addresses, and publishing the "take" on Wikileaks. Democrat Al Franken, who was strongly backed by Soros, defeated Coleman in a legally-contested and very close election.

It is also believed by informed sources that Soros is behind the operation to move Wikileaks to Iceland. By becoming a power in Iceland, Soros can prevent Icelanders from paying back the British and Dutch investors in Icelandic online Ponzi scheme banking and continue his all-out war against British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who has, in turn, targeted Soros for betting against pound sterling.

Iceland is classic prey for Soros. The Icelandic krona has been decimated as a currency and has no where to go but up in value, especially if the British pound and the euro depreciate. Soros is currently talking down the euro, planning its fall and shorting it, just like he did versus the pound in London in the 1980s. After the UK's and Europe's currencies are devalued, Soros will buy every euro note in sight, thus making trillions.

Soros and his Wikileaks friends have in Iceland a practically unregulated banking system desperate for an influx of capital -- money that will come from the exiled Russian tycoons in Israel, London and the United States. Israeli investors like Bank Leumi, and awash in siphoned-off Bernard Madoff cash, will do their bit for this smash-and-grab operation by Soros's Quantum-linked hedge funds.

With Wikileaks firmly ensconced in Iceland, the "brave" and much-heralded information leakers will run an international blackmail operation against Soros's foes and launch computer break-ins against Soros's business rivals and non-Quantum banks. Wikileaks will be used as the info-hitmen against President Obama's and Rahm Emanuel's enemies in the 2012 re-election campaign.

From Iceland, Soros will be well-positioned to gain control over the massive mineral resources under the melting ice sheet of Greenland. Under the ice are the only major rare-earth deposits outside of China and with such minerals at his disposal, Soros can control the world's electronics industries. This past week's volcanic activity in Iceland could, however, disrupt or destroy Soros's plans to establish and control a North American-European gateway in Iceland.

The following are some of the emails Young revealed in his exposure of Wikileaks's CIA connections (as well as to the Russian "phishing" Mafia, an operation run by Russian-Israeli Jews using Israel as a base) [Note: in the second email, "JYA" is a reference to John Young Associates]:

To: John Young
From: Wikileaks
Subject: martha stuart pgp
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2007 12:20:25 -0500

-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----
Version: None

J. We are going to fuck them all. Chinese mostly, but not entirely a feint. Invention
abounds. Lies, twists and distorts everywhere needed for protection. Hackers monitor
chinese and other intel as they burrow into their targets, when they pull, so do we.
Inxhaustible supply of material. Near 100,000 documents/emails a day. We're going to crack the world open and let it flower into something new. If fleecing the CIA will assist us, then fleece we will. We have pullbacks from NED, CFR, Freedomhouse and other CIA teats. We have all of pre 2005 afghanistan. Almost all of india fed. Half
a dozen foreign ministries. Dozens of political parties and consulates, worldbank,
apec, UN sections, trade groups, tibet and fulan dafa associations and... russian
phishing mafia who pull data everywhere. We're drowing. We don't even know a tenth
of what we have or who it belongs to. We stopped storing it at 1Tb.
-------------------------------------------
From: Julian Assange
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2007 13:40:14 +0000
To: funtimesahead[a t]lists.riseup.net
Subject: [WL] cryptome disclosure

[This is a restricted internal development mailinglist for w-i-k-i-l-e-a-k-s-.-o-r-g.
Please do not mention that word directly in these discussions; refer instead to 'WL'.
This list is housed at riseup.net, an activist collective in Seattle with an established lawyer
and plenty of backbone.]

No idea what JYA was saying!

It's clear to me however, that he was not trying to protect people's
identities with his xxxxx'ing, but rather trying to increase the
sexiness of the document. Perhaps he feels WL is a threat to the
central status mechanism in his life? I think he just likes the
controversy.

He may have done us a great favor. There's a lot of movement in that
document. It's a little anarchist, but I think it generally reads
well and sounds like people doing something they care about.

Btw, I suggest we be careful with Wayne Madsen too. He seems to be
another case of someone who was fantastic a few years ago, but
recently has started to see conspiracies everywhere. Both cases
possibly age related.

I am not spending any more thought on it. Next week is going to be
busy. The weeks earlier stories will be already done and that'll set
the agenda for the rest of the week, not jya's attention seeker.

I'm willing to handle calls for .au, although my background may make
S a better bet.
--------------------------

One of WMR's sources had the following thoughts about Assange's comments about this editor:
Careful: Madsen is up to no good concerning secrets concerning WikiLeaks.
Another Case of Someone: The writer has spent time in psychiatric institution.
Was Fantastic: Formerly On Our Side, Now becoming an Enemy.
Conspiracies Everywhere: the George Soros conspiracy in which WikiLeaks is a cog.
Both Cases: Here it is again, he's been in an institution.
Age Related: In 2007, the editor was 52 years old but with possible early senility setting in.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20100326

March 26-28, 2010

Wikileaks and Iceland media law are stalking horses for Soros

Following up on WMR's March 25, 2010 report on Wikileaks's ties to U.S. intelligence, Mossad, and George Soros, WMR has received additional information that points to the Icelandic media law that would turn the economically-battered country into an information safe haven for websites like Wikileaks as being a contrivance of George Soros's Open Society Institute (OSI).

WMR has learned that OSI's Mark Thompson spoke at the May 2009 First Council of Europe Conference of Ministers responsible for Media and New Communications Services. Present at the conference was Katrin Jakobsdóttir, Iceland's Minister of Culture, Education, and Science and members of the Icelandic parliament, the Althing. It was after this conference that the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative was introduced with much fanfare from Wikileaks and its co-founder Julian Assange. Thompson has a background that includes propagandizing for the western incursion into the Balkans, including directing the Media Analysis Unit for the UN mission in Yugoslavia, UNPROFOR; the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and Soros's OSI.

Wikileaks claims it is the first website dedicated to revealing sensitive and classified information. This is false. In fact, Cryptome, founded by New York City architect John Young, was the first and Wikileaks is a mere poor facsimile. John Young once proudly proclaimed to this editor that he would likely become America's "first political prisoner" from the Internet. Young's Cryptome has gone far beyond Wikileaks by publishing a list of British MI-6 agents, Microsoft's manual on how it conducts surveillance for U.S. law enforcement, photos of Guantanamo and a list of the detainees imprisoned there, and even overhead photos of Dick Cheney's home in McLean, Virginia while it was under construction.

And Wikileaks appears to have climbed on to the previous work of others. In 2008, Wikileaks claimed to have obtained, through "hacking," the credit card records of the Norm Coleman Senate campaign in Minnesota. In fact, WMR has been informed that the credit card files, along with the campaign's backup material, was stored by the webmaster in an unprotected folder. It was this file that was downloaded. The "hack" was heralded by MinnesotaIndependent.com, a Soros-funded operation. The illegal operation was never acted upon by law enforcement. In addition, the website PoliticsInMinnesota.com reported on the leak of the files several weeks before the Coleman data appeared on Wikileaks.

It is Young's Cryptome that has been harassed by the U.S. government and Internet Service Providers. Meanwhile, Wikileaks has come up with a fanciful tale of its activists being tailed in Iceland by shadowy Icelandic and American gumshoes and fears that they will be "taken out" before they can air a video at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on April 5 showing a U.S. missile attack on Afghan civilians. There is also a specious claim that the military's encryption codes were somehow broken to obtain the video. If that is true, the real story is that the United States suffered a major compromise of its cryptographic keys, something that has only rarely occurred in the past.

When John Young pulled out of the Wikileaks operation in 2007, suspecting it was a CIA front, there were also early allegations that Wikileaks was funded by Soros. Soros fronts for the CIA by running the operations of Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and Radio Free Asia. In fact, one of Wikileaks's advisory board members, Chinese dissident Xiao Qiang, is a commentator for Radio Free Asia.

Soros has been heavily involved in Iceland since 1998 and it is Soros who helped found the small Democracy Movement. The website Reykjavik Grapevine took the Democracy Movement to task last October 22 when it wrote, "A speculative column appearing on Vísir.is points out that billionaire George Soros has enough money to buy Iceland . . . Foreign investment - or foreign exploitation - of Iceland has been on the minds of a lot of Icelanders lately, especially as more companies from abroad express an interest in Iceland's natural resources . . . And look at this, Obama's OMB director Peter Orszag (the name is Jewish from Hungarian-Romanian Transylvania like fellow vampire Soros) and his connection to Iceland: "In 1998, after serving in the Clinton administration, Orszag co-founded an economic consulting group company with his brother and Joseph Stiglitz called Sebago Associates, where he served as president through 2007. The firm's clients have included the World Bank, the Nordic Council of Ministers, and most notably, the Central Bank of Iceland. The once prosperous economy of Iceland has been devastated by the current economic crisis, which its citizens say was carried out by a gang of financial criminals who followed disastrous policies and advice - provided by Peter Orszag and Company."

Soros appears to have been partly behind the collapse of the Icelandic economy and now his minions in Reykjavik and his contrivance, Wikileaks, wants to transform Iceland into an information technology safe harbor from he and his NGO network can engage in massive propaganda campaigns and destabilization efforts around the world without the fear of legal ramifications.

WMR's sources report that the Soros Private Equity group (since renamed TowerBrook Capital Partners) invested $10 million in TradeDoubler, a Swedish online provider and platform, in cooperation with the Icelandic venture firm Arctic Ventures. TradeDoubler handles online financial payments and transactions but mainly online advertising, and is big in online betting throughout Europe. The downfall of Iceland's banks was enabled by online banking and investment. Ragnar Thorisson, an Icelander, worked at VBS Securities before founding Arctic Ventures (where he invested in E-Trade Nordic). He then invested in Argnor, a wireless service provider. Ordinary members of the TradeDoubler Board of Directors include Niclas Gabrán and Ramez Sousou of Soros Private Equity group, now TowerBrook Capital Partners. Thorisson reportedly sold his shares in TradeDoubler.

It is also noteworthy that TowerBrook is heavily invested in healthcare services and pharmaceuticals and stands to reap huge profits from President Obama's health care program.

Although Soros claims he is for freedom of information, going as far as promoting Iceland as a freedom of information paradise, criticism of Soros's operations don't appear to be covered by the former Hungarian Nazi collaborator's largess as seen in the following RT program when this editor criticized Soros's operations. Iceland's Soros-prompted media reform bill also contains a provision for an Icelandic Freedom of Expression Award, a typical Soros construct. Soros's NGO network provides for a number of awards that are used to pad the resumes of a number of dubious bad actors.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20100328_1

March 29, 2010

Soros's game plan for Iceland and its "freedom of information" zone was hatched years ago

More details have emerged from WMR's sources about the Wikileaks claim that it is subject to intense surveillance by U.S. and Icelandic authorities.

Wikileaks, a website that claims to publish explosive sensitive documents from government agencies around the world, claims to have been the subject of surveillance because it plans to release a video of a missile attack by American forces of Afghan villagers. The site also claims to have broken top secret U.S. military encryption codes to obtain the video, which it plans to release at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on April 5.

Wikileaks has been party to a proposed media bill in the Icelandic legislature that would establish a "freedom of information" zone in Iceland benefiting journalists, human rights campaigners, and whistleblowers.

WMR's sources claim the entire Wikileaks episode in Iceland and its claims are a fraud inspired by George Soros, a frontman for the CIA and the Rothschild banking family in Britain.

Iceland appears to be getting wise to the Wikileaks caper. According to IceNews, Iceland's Ministry of Justice has distanced itself from Wikileaks's alleagtions of Icelandic surveillance and Fridrik Smari Bjorgvinsson, chief of the Reykjavik police, said the only link to the Wikileaks charges was the arrest of 17 year-old in Kopavogur on March 22 for breaking into a business. Wikileaks claims the individual was questioned about how the U.S. military video was obtained. However, according to the Icelandic government, Wikileaks is creating a fantasy issue over the arrest of a young person for breaking and entering in a country where such crimes are rare.

John Young, who runs the bona fide sensitive document exposure website, Cryptome.org, left the Wikileaks board in 2007, charging that it was a CIA front. In a leaked January 8, 2007, e-mail, Wikileaks's co-editor wrote that WMR's editor "see[s] conspiracies everywhere" and that the condition was "possibly age related." This editor was 52 years old as of the date of the e-mail.

WMR has learned from knowledgeable sources that Wikileaks's claims that it protects the identity of whistleblowers and leakers are rife with problems. Wikileaks uses the program "TOR" for file downloads. WMR has been informed by one source that TOR, the German word for "gate," "gives away email accounts, user names, and passwords on a user's computer, meaning the CIA can trace any whistleblower dumb enough to believe Wikileaks's hype and everyone who is downloading." From an unrestricted information zone in Iceland, Wikileaks would be free to collect such sensitive user information to pass on to Langley and Soros's operatives -- working under non-governmental organization (NGO) cover, around the world.

Last year, Wikileaks leaked its own confidential donor list on its website. Wikileaks released a statement that the list was leaked "possibly to test the project's principles of complete impartiality when dealing with whistleblowers." One was a convicted hacker who had broken into Worldcom's intranet and obtained Social Security Numbers, bank account information, and direct deposit details for over 80,000 WorldCom employees.

Soros has long preyed on Iceland's economy. WMR's sources reveal that during the winter of 2007-2008, Soros hedge funds were shorting the Icelandic krona. There are reports that the U.S. Justice Department is now investigating Soros's SAC Capital for shorting the euro and the British pound.

The collapse of the Icelandic economy, aided and abetted by Soros and Rorthschild financial interests in Britain and the Netherlands, set the stage for Soros to make the approach to financially-broke Iceland to become a global information "safe harbor."

Wikileaks critics also point out that the website has produced information that had previously been available elsewhere, including such "exposés" as U.S. detainee abuse, use of chemical weapons in Iraq and Afghanistan, and U.S. military propaganda operations. The recent revelation of a 2008 U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center report citing Wikileaks as a threat to national security is a red herring. The document proposes to identify those who leak to Wikileaks to "damage and potentially destroy" the Wikileaks "center of gravity." According to WMR's sources, Wikileaks's use of TOR has already exposed the leakers. At the least, the U.S. Army's fears about the Wikileaks site is an extreme over-reaction. At the most, the Army was attempting to boost the website's bona fides as part of a cyber-psychological warfare campaign.

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20100401

April 1-4, 2010

How Wikileaks and Soros conspired to bring down Swiss bank

WMR's financial intelligence sources report that the unauthorized disclosure of a compact disk to Wikileaks that contained financial details of the clients of the secretive and usually highly-secure Zurich-based independent money management Julius Baer Group was designed to destroy the firm's standing with its customers and make it ripe for a hostile takeover by interests associated with multi-billionaire vulture capitalist George Soros, including Goldman Sachs. Julius Baer was founded in the 19th century.

In December 2007, the former chief of Baer's Cayman Islands unit, Rudolf Elmer, leaked information about surveillance of him and his family to Wikileaks. In June 2005, the Swiss newspaper "Cash" and the Wall Street Journal reported on the receipt of a CD containing clients’ transactions, including every deposit made, from Baer's Cayman unit that dealt with anonymous trusts. The CD data covered the time frame 1997 to 2002. Elmer had been suspected of the leak and was fired by Baer in 2003. In January 2008, Wikileaks began publishing details of Baer's clients -- who were accused of tax evasion and money laundering. The clients resided in the United States, Hong Kong, Germany, Switzerland, Greece, Spain, and Peru. Elmer was jailed briefly in 2005 by Swiss authorities for violation of Swiss financial privacy laws. Elmer eventually turned over Baer documents to Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, the US Internal Revenue Service, and the Senate Senate subcommittee on investigations headed by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI).

For Europeans and others who had no financial or other connections to the United States, the fact that they were placed under an investigation by the United States represented a huge jurisdictional leap by the United States in applying U.S. laws where they had no force. In April 2007, some Baer documents were also leaked to the German tax authorities.

For example, the Hong Kong resident on the leaked Baer documents is Lord Kadoorie, who died in 1993. The Kadoorie family, originally Iraqi Jews from Baghdad, migrated to Hogn Kong via Mumbai. The Kadoories, however, were not involved in tax evasion' since using offshore accounts is completely legal in Hong Kong.

Elmer worked for Baer for 16 years, first bas a senior auditor and then from 1994 to 2003 as the chief of the bank's unit in the Cayman Islands. Elmer is represented by former Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigator Jack Blum, now with the Lobel Novins Lamont law firm in Washington, DC. After being fired by Baer in 2003, Elmer went to work for Noble Investments of Zurich, a hedge fund consultancy. Elmer began leaking information about Noble, as well, including its use of a Bermuda shell corporation to avoid Swiss taxes.

Blum helped investigate bribery violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act in the 1970s by Lockheed Corporation. The Lockheed bribery scandal helped bring down Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who was later convicted and imprisoned in Japan for accepting bribes from Lockheed. However, WMR has learned that Blum and the Senate committee was very selective in who they investigated for laundering money from foreign bribes. While Tanaka was singled out, Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew and assassinated democratically-elected Chilean President Salvador Allende with the help of Henry Kissinger and the CIA, was allowed to launder his ill-gotten gains through Riggs Bank in Washington, DC. WMR has learned that Tanaka despised both Richard Nixon and Kissinger and he was thus targeted selectively by the Nixon Justice and Treasury Departments.

On December 4, 2008, Alex Widmer, 52, the CEO of Julius Baer and a widower with three children, was found dead from an apparent suicide. Widmer had expanded Baer's presence in Moscow and Indonesia and he previously served as the chief of private banking for Credit Suisse. WMR has learned that Widmer was assassinated after he discovered the links between the bank's leaks of client information to the media and Wikileaks and Israeli intelligence and the Soros network. Only the New York Times reported that Widmer's death was from suicide and an autopsy report was never released but bank employees were told that Widmer died from an "unexpected illness."

After Julius Baer Group was rocked by the leaks by Elmer through Wikileaks, Baer became the target of a takeover bid by Goldman Sachs. As hedge funds began withdrawing from Baer, the firm's share values dropped by 60 percent making it vulnerable to a hostile takeover. The hedge fund withdrawals lasted for ten months during which time Goldman Sachs was behind the attack on Lehman Brothers and Soros was shorting the Icelandic krona.

There is also another interesting wrinkle to the Baer story. The leaks of Baer's client data began in 2002. Wikileaks was not founded until 2006. In the interim, there were other operatives involved in leaking the firm's data to the media. The suspicions are that they worked for Soros's Quantum, which is a front for Rothschild interests, as well as for Goldman Sachs. WMR has learned that suspicions about the pre-Wikileaks leakers is focused on Mossad agents. The Julius Baer operations in the Cayman Islands would have involved the financial holdings of Latin Americans involved in drug money laundering. The involvement of Mossad in exposing the Cayman accounts likely had repercussions for Israelis who were also involved in cocaine smuggling in Latin America. It is pointed out that in March 2007, as Baer information was continuing to leak, Tsuriel Raphael, Israel's ambassador to El Salvador, was found in the garden of his home drunk, naked, and tied up with a rubber ball in his mouth and a sex toy inserted in his anus. Raphael was recalled to Israel. A few months earlier, in January, the body of David Dahan, the chief of Israel's Defense Ministry Mission to Europe, was found floating in the Seine near Rouen, France. Police ruled out foul play and said the death was a suicide.

Post-9/11 anti-terrorist financing legislation permitted Goldman Sachs's and Soros's operatives within the Treasury Department to target any bank where it was even suggested that people associated with Osama bin Laden may have had accounts. However, for Soros, Goldman Sachs, and the Mossad, the attack on Julius Baer represented some "score settling" over Swiss financial holdings from victims of the Holocaust.

To summarize succinctly what occurred with Baer and Wikileaks, WMR received the following real-world explanation: "The Bush administration investigators find few accounts actually linked to terrorism, but a lot of accounts of rich Arabs, who get pissed at being misidentified and who then complain to Bush. So then, the neocons go after middle-tier billionaires and millionaires for 'tax evasion' and 'corruption' - which are NOT part of the USA Patriot Act, but are still a good source of easy money, since the victims don't have room to complain. When the robbed do complain, they are threatened with exposure to the media, and when the media hesitates to publish, there's a standoff. The banks have to protect their clients since the "prosecution" targets, in some cases, are intelligence agents. The Soros hedge funds and Goldman dump shares in the Euro banks, but to no avail. They hire stooges like Rudolf Elmer, a disgruntled manager fired from the Caribbean division of Julius Baer. All he's got is tax evasion, not even proof of drug money, because he's not stupid enough to cross the cartel. Elmer then moves to Mauritius. So without any handles on Baer and other Swiss banks, the U.S. government leaks customer lists (confiscated from scared employees by the Treasury and CIA agents) to Wikileaks, conveniently created by the Soros-Goldman Sachs-Mossad construct for blackmail purposes."

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Israel-US

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20100323

March 23, 2010

Israel's secret network into the Obama Oval Office.

As Israel's hard right-wing Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visits the Oval Office today, there is speculation that he and President Barack Obama will square off over Israeli settlements in east Jerusalem after weeks of acrimony between the two countries after Israel announced plans to build an additional 1600 Jewish units in Arab neighborhoods in the disputed city.

Apparently, Netanyahu is still flexing his political muscles by requiring Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to meet him on March 22 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington (the same hotel that served as the tryst rendezvous for former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer who was "honeytrapped" by an escort agency run by a suspected Mossad-linked owner) rather than at her office at the State Department. Netanyahu's impolitic moves follows his handing Vice President Joe Biden a broken plaque, with shards of glass flying, at a recent event in Jerusalem. Netanyahu's brother-in-law, Hargai Ben-Artzi, recently used the typical and well-worn canard of "anti-Semitic" to describe Obama.

WMR has learned from a source close to Netanyahu that the Israeli Prime Minister's chief adviser, Ron Dermer, serves as his personal conduit to the Oval Office, particularly to Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. Dermer is a leading Israeli hawk who also co-authored "The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror" with Israeli expansionist and former Soviet refusenik Natan Sharansky.

Dermer is a classic dual U.S.-Israeli citizen. Although he claims to have given up his U.S. passport when he agreed to work for Netanyahu in Jerusalem, Ron Dermer's brother is the former three-term mayor of Miami Beach, David Dermer. Ron Dermer has enough clout in Washington to get put right through the the president's chief aides, including Emanuel and David Axelrod.

The father of the Dermer brothers, Jay Dermer, also served as a two-term mayor of Miami Beach. Jay Dermer died in 1984 at the age of 54, one year following the death in Miami Beach of Meyer Lansky. Jay Dermer fought to protect Florida's paramutuel gambling interests against the introduction of casinos into the state. Lansky tried to flee to Israel in 1970 to avoid prosecution in the United States. Although Israel ruled that Lansky was a threat to "public safety," he was given Israeli travel documents. After Switzerland, Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru and Panama rejected Lansky's offer of $1 million for asylum, he was arrested in 1972 in Miami. Most of the criminal charges against Lansky were dropped by the Nixon administration and Lansky was judged too ill to stand trial for other charges. Lansky remained in Miami Beach until his death.

The Miami Beach connection to the Oval Office is noteworthy since the city has continued to serve as a major base in the United States for the Jewish Mafia, which started with Lansky and continues with the number of Russian-Israeli Jewish gangsters in the city, many of them wanted by Russia.

Although Chicago native Lee "Rosy" Rosenberg, seen as a close friend of Obama and who served on the finance committee for the Obama presidential campaign, has taken over as the new president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Israeli media has reported that he is adept at bringing in big money for Israeli causes from individuals not normally known for their public support for Israel. Rosenberg's music and real estate industry businesses, in addition to his close links to Emanuel and Axelrod, have some observers wondering whether the individuals not for their public support for Israel may be those connected to dodgy business enterprises, particularly those in Las Vegas.

As the media writes about the "gulf" between Obama and Netanyahu, the presence of Israeli insiders in the Oval Office puts into doubt any suggestion that Israel and the United States are drifting apart on any policies.

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Cuba

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20100324_2

March 24-25, 2010

Castro's secret archives: US Special Ops prepares to snatch five decades of damaging material

WMR has learned from knowledgeable sources in the Pentagon that the U.S. Special Operations Command has recently been tasked to come up with a covert operation designed to snatch the secret archives complied over five decades by former Cuban President Fidel Castro.

Our sources report that among Castro's archives are documents proving the collaboration of top U.S. Mafia figures, including Mafia financial boss Meyer Lansky, with the CIA in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. Castro apparently kept track of many of those involved in the assassination of Kennedy because they were also actively involved in anti-Castro plots associated with right-wing Cuban exiles that were organized out of Miami, New Orleans, Houston, and Dallas, cities where the Mafia was extremely active.

WMR has learned that Castro's extensive archives have been secured in a well-protected facility on the Isle of Youth (formerly the Isle of Pines) off the southwest coast of Cuba.

In addition to documents that point to the mob's and CIA's involvement in the Kennedy assassination, including the roles played by the Canadian Bronfman family and their wealthy attorney, the CIA-connected Louis Bloomfield of Montreal, the Castro archives reportedly contain a wealth of information about Cuban support for Angola's government and liberation movements in Africa and Latin America. The archives also have details about the role of the CIA in the Angolan civil war and the coups that toppled Chilean President Salvador Allende and other leaders, as well as Henry Kissinger's infamous Operation Condor that "disappeared" thousands of leftist, student, and labor leaders in Latin America.

The plans by the U.S. Special Operations Command to surreptitiously land on the Isle of Youth and secure the Castro archives may have something to do with the recent arrest of a U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contractor as he was boarding a plane in Havana. Alan Phillip Gross of Potomac, Maryland was arrested on December 5 last year and charged with espionage. Gross entered Cuba on a tourist visa but began working on projects designed to provide Internet technology services for Cuban Jewish communities. Gross worked for Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI) of Bethesda, Maryland, a State Department contractor that specializes in bringing high-technology services to "civil society organizations." Gross is reportedly a satellite technology expert.

Gross reportedly made a number of trips to Cuba before his arrest. Throwing doubt on claims that Gross was in Cuba to help provide Internet access to the Cuban Jewish community, several prominent members of Cuba's Jewish community said they never met Gross. In addition, Cuba's small Jewish community was already receiving computer and Internet assistance from ORT, a non-governmental organization.

Gross's mission in Cuba has been clouded in mystery. Cuba said Gross was illegally distributing satellite communications equipment, which would be important for in-country support in a mission to secretly insert a U.S. military team in Cuba to spirit away Castro's archives.

Due to Gross's visibility with Jewish groups in the United States, his arrest has affected on-going talks between Washington and Havana designed to improve relations between the two nations.

DAI's website states the company started operations in 1970 and by 1980 was active in Sudan, the then-Zaire, Tanzania, and Indonesia. In a move that mirrors that of Barack Obama and his mother Ann Dunham, DAI extended its development operations from Indonesia to Pakistan and by 1982 the firm was fully active in that nation at a time the U.S. was using Pakistan as a base to support the Afghan mujaheddin against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. DAI is also active in Jordan, Palestine, Mexico, and South Africa.

The arrest of Gross in December came as former President Fidel Castro began to reassert control over the government, particularly through the appointment as Vice President of the Council of State of Ramiro Valdes Menendez, a Castro loyalist and former Interior Minister who understands the need to protect the Island of Youth archives from being snatched by the United States or other non-state players.

In April 2003, a Cuban man hijacked an Antonov-24 from the Isle of Youth and, after a brief landing at Havana's Jose Marti International Airport where some women and children passengers were released, was allowed to fly to Key West. The hijacker, who threatened to blow up the plane with two hand grenades, was eventually granted asylum in the United States after the ritualistic debriefing by FBI and CIA personnel.

Wayne Madsen

Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. His columns have appeared in a wide number of newspapers and journals. Madsen is a regular contributor on Russia Today. He has written The Handbook of Personal Data Protection (London: Macmillan, 1992); Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa 1993-1999 (Edwin Mellen Press, 1999); Jaded Tasks: Big Oil, Black Ops & Brass Plates and Overthrow a Fascist Regime on $15 a Day and co-authored America’s Nightmare: The Presidency of George Bush II (Dandelion, 2003).

pentagon adds wikileaks to list of enemies

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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/18/us/18wiki.html?ref=us

Pentagon Sees a Threat From Online Muckrakers

STEPHANIE STROM
March 17, 2010

To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.

The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked “unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions.” It concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.

WikiLeaks, true to its mission to publish materials that expose secrets of all kinds, published the 2008 Pentagon report about itself on Monday.

Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, an Army spokesman, confirmed that the report was real. Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, said the concerns the report raised were hypothetical.

“It did not point to anything that has actually happened as a result of the release,” Mr. Assange said. “It contains the analyst’s best guesses as to how the information could be used to harm the Army but no concrete examples of any real harm being done.”

WikiLeaks, a nonprofit organization, has rankled governments and companies around the world with its publication of materials intended to be kept secret. For instance, the Army’s report says that in 2008, access to the Web site in the United States was cut off by court order after Bank Julius Baer, a Swiss financial institution, sued it for publishing documents implicating Baer in money laundering, grand larceny and tax evasion. Access was restored after two weeks, when the bank dropped its case.

Governments, including those of North Korea and Thailand, also have tried to prevent access to the site and complained about its release of materials critical of their governments and policies.

The Army’s interest in WikiLeaks appears to have been spurred by, among other things, its publication and analysis of classified and unclassified Army documents containing information about military equipment, units, operations and “nearly the entire order of battle” for American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan in April 2007.

WikiLeaks also published an outdated, unclassified copy of the “standard operating procedures” at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. WikiLeaks said the document revealed methods by which the military prevented prisoners from meeting with the International Red Cross and the use of “extreme psychological stress” as a means of torture.

The Army’s report on WikiLeaks does not say whether WikiLeaks’ analysis of that document was accurate. It does charge that some of WikiLeaks’s other interpretation of information is flawed but does not say specifically in what way.

The report also airs the Pentagon’s concern over some 2,000 pages of documents WikiLeaks released on equipment used by coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon concluded that such information could be used by foreign intelligence services, terrorist groups and others to identify vulnerabilities, plan attacks and build new devices.

WikiLeaks, which won Amnesty International’s new media award in 2009, almost closed this year because it was broke and still operates at less than its full capacity. It relies on donations from humans rights groups, journalists, technology buffs and individuals, and Mr. Assange said it had raised just two-thirds of the $600,000 needed for its budget this year and thus was not publishing everything it had.

Perhaps the most amusing aspect of the Army’s report, to Mr. Assange, was its speculation that WikiLeaks is supported by the Central Intelligence Agency. “I only wish they would step forward with a check if that’s the case,” he said.

european football: murders and bribes

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,666905,00.html

The Hunt for The 'Doner Killer'

Mystery Murders May be Linked to Betting Scandal

14 december 2009

The investigation into match-fixing and illegal gambling in Europe has provided a lead in one of Germany's most mysterious series of murders in which nine men -- eight Turks and one Greek -- have been shot dead in cities across Germany since 2000. They may have run up gambling debts.

Police say they may have a lead in one of the most mysterious series of murders in German criminal history -- the execution-style killings of nine shop owners since 2000, eight of them Turks and one Greek.

They were shot dead in cities across Germany between 2000 and 2006. Police couldn't find a motive, and the only link they found between the murders was the weapon used -- a Czech-made Ceska 83 pistol with a 7.65 millimeter caliber.
The press dubbed the murders the "Doner Killings" because the victims were all small businessmen and included a kebab shop owner, a grocer, a tailor, a flower seller and a key cutter.

Police now believe the killings may be linked to the European soccer match-fixing and betting scandal uncovered by public prosecutors in Germany last month.

In October, police had monitored several telephone conversations about a murder in Turkey in which a 42-year-old Turk suspected of belonging to an illegal gambling syndicate was named as having hired the hitman.

Police say there's a link between the murder in Turkey and the nine killings. "The 42-year-old plays a role in this case," Thomas Koch, the spokesman for the Nuremberg district court, told SPIEGEL. He declined to give details.

Gambling Bosses Used Violence to Collect Debts

The link with the gambling world could finally provide a motive for murders which have puzzled police forces around Germany for years. Had the murdered men run up gambling debts?

The Bochum investigators have found that the people being probed for fixing matches and engaging in illegal gambling also behaved violently towards people who got behind in repaying gambling debts.

Police have no doubt that the "Doner Killings" were committed by a professional assassin. The attacker or attackers walked up to the victims in broad daylight, shot them in the head and walked away. There were never any eyewitnesses, and the relatives always insisted the victim had no enemies, debts or gambling addiction.

But perhaps they did. There's no paper trail in the world of gambling now being investigated by prosecutors based in the western city of Bochum. The gamblers know how much they owe and when they have to pay up. They can defer payments, but get charged interest of 10 percent per month. And anyone who can't pay is in bad trouble.

Police investigating the betting scandal came across debtors who reported having been locked in a cellar and beaten up because they couldn't pay.

The lawyer of the 42-year-old Turkish suspect told SPIEGEL that his client had nothing to do with the murders and that the accusations were based on slander that had long since been disproved.

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20 november 2009

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,662479,00.html

Football Betting Scandal

Prosecutors Say up to 200 Matches Were Fixed

Prosecutors in Germany have revealed the scope of the match-fixing scandal that has shocked European football. Around 200 games are suspected of having been fixed, with more than 30 of those played in Germany.

European football is reeling from news of a fresh match-fixing scandal involving nine countries and up to 200 games.

German prosecutors investigating the manipulation revealed on Friday that 15 people have been arrested in Germany and two in Switzerland. A series of around 50 raids were carried out on Thursday, during which documents, around €1 million in cash and valuables were seized.

At a news conference the prosecutors said that about 200 games were thought to be affected, including three Champions League games and 12 Europa League games. The investigation, carried out with the European football association UEFA, has been ongoing since the beginning of 2009.

The betting scandal involves huge sums of money placed with Asian bookmakers on matches in Europe and players, coaches, referees and officials are included among the suspects. In all around 100 people could be involved in the match-fixing conspiracy.

Fix On in Germany as Well?

Games in at least nine European leagues are being probed, including matches played in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Hungary, Slovenia, Switzerland and Turkey.

On Thursday Harald Stenger, spokesman for the German Football Federation (DFB), said: "The UEFA and DFB early warning system for the overseeing of the betting markets had not given any indications of match-fixing in Germany."

However, on Friday the prosecutors said that 32 games in Germany alone are suspected of having been fixed. There are indications that four games in the second league, three from the third league and 18 from regional leagues are tainted, as well as matches in the youth leagues and international competitions.

Thursday's arrests included two Croatian brothers, Ante and Milan Sapina, who were at the center of a previous match-fixing scandal in Germany in 2004. That case saw referee Robert Hoyzer sentenced to two years and five months in prison after he admitted to accepting bribes to manipulate games.

smd

New German Betting Scandal Suspected: Football Bodies to Investigate Match-Fixing Claims (09/01/2008)

Interview with Match-Fixing Investigator Declan Hill: 'I Am Sure the Game Was Manipulated' (09/01/2008)

Soccer Scandals: UEFA Probes Match-Fixing by Betting Syndicates (12/03/2007)

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,662828,00.html

23 november 2009

The World from Berlin

Match-Fixing Scandal 'Struck at the Heart of Soccer'

The European match-fixing scandal is tragic for soccer fans whose faith in fair play risks being shattered, write German commentators. But corruption can infect any business, and the undercover police operation that exposed it is a positive sign, they add.

Last Friday's revelation of the latest European soccer match-fixing scandal predictably caused a public outcry that was fanned by investigators' claims that the figure of 200 manipulated matches may be only the tip of the iceberg.

Police carried out around 50 raids on Thursday in Germany, Britain, Switzerland and Austria. Authorities arrested 15 people in Germany and two in Switzerland and seized over €1 million ($1.5 million) in cash and property.

The case centers on a Berlin-based betting shop, Café King, which featured in a similar scandal five years ago that led to the conviction of German referee Robert Hoyzer.

The suspected games in Germany were played in the second division or lower. Other countries involved are Belgium, Switzerland, Croatia, Slovenia, Turkey, Hungary, Bosnia and Austria. Croatian-born Ante Sapina was among five people arrested in Berlin. He was convicted of fraud in 2005 and sentenced to 35 months in prison for fixing or attempting to fix 23 games by paying Hoyzer to rig matches.

SPIEGEL has learned that a German referee registered with the DFB German Football Association also appears to have been bribed, in a lower-division match played in May. The DFB was kept in the dark about the investigation into the alleged match fixing.

Meanwhile on Monday Italian police arrested nine people on suspicion of manipulating matches in the country's third division and betting illegally.

Writing in the Monday's editions of German newspapers, several media commentators said the case highlights the successful undercover investigation conducted by the public prosecutor's office in the western city of Bochum in cooperation with police forces in other countries over the last eight months. They were helped by members of the UEFA, the Union of European Football Associations, which founded an anti-corruption unit this year.

Commentators say the DFB's "early warning" system, which was introduced after the first scandal five years ago and which aims to detect corruption by analyzing conspicuous changes in betting odds, appears to have failed.

The left-wing Berliner Zeitung writes:

"There's no question that corruption poses an existential threat to football that is comparable to the destructive impact doping has had on endurance sports. The audience must not lose its faith that the outcome of the match is uncertain. It must remain convinced that skill and fortune alone are the determining factors, and not some shady backroom dealmakers.

"What the task force of UEFA and the prosecutors in Bochum who specialize in economic crime have presented is not a diagnosis. Instead, it's the promising result of a global attempt to solve the problem which seems to make more sense than the early warning system introduced in this country following the match-fixing scandal surrounding referee Robert Hoyzer. The effectiveness of that system must now be called into question.

"It seems that plots conducted in secret must be countered by secret means. Football, a billion-euro business with absurd growth rates, is an almost uncontrollable area due to the impenetrable links between sports officials, politicians, sponsors and the media.

"Following the American example, more cops must be deployed to infiltrate the dark network of fraudsters. And if the network of agents doesn't work, one should maybe one day think about a general ban on sports betting."

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"At the news conference on Friday in Bochum, a police officer used the much-quoted image of the tip of the iceberg. But police officers aren't the Oracle of Delphi and a degree of caution is warranted in cases like this one. It's not such a big surprise that matches can be fixed in the second Belgian division or in the Balkans. The less a player earns, the greater the danger that he will do dodgy things for dirty money. It's rather more remarkable that the first German Bundesliga (editor's note: the top German soccer league) hasn't appeared on the list. Do high incomes, legally paid, protect players from infection?

"The Bochum investigators deserve praise. They haven't shied away in their investigations from probing the leagues in Belgium or Slovenia. If they're serious about their probe, they shouldn't be left alone in this never-ending task."

Franz Josef Wagner, a columnist for the mass-circulation daily Bild, writes:

"The match-fixing supposedly happened in the lower divisions. Players with mega-salaries in the first division can't be bought. So the cheating happened where the heart of soccer beats. The cheated fans are the ones who stand shivering on the sidelines in the wind, the cold and the rain. The ones who turn up every Sunday and yell things like 'go on, shoot!,' 'pass the ball,' 'what are you waiting for?' or 'my granny could have saved that one!'

"I feel sorry for those fans. It wasn't a lack of fighting spirit that kept your player from hurling himself at the opponent. It was a few euros. From today on, I'm taking a break from football. I don't want to be screwed anymore."

-- David Crossland

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,664332,00.html

1 december 2009

European Sports Scandal

Case Files Reveal Unscrupulous Methods of Match-Fixers

By Sven Röbel, Jörg Schmitt and Michael Wulzinger

Ante Sapina and his gambling associates, under investigation for alleged match-fixing, were also aware of an attempt to manipulate a World Cup qualifying match. The case files reveal the unscrupulous methods used by the defendants and indicate that a Malaysian gambling kingpin named Lim was also involved.

The match between FK Slavija Sarajevo and the Slovak club MFK Kosice on July 30 was nothing out of the ordinary in the match schedule of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). It was just the third qualifying round for the Europa League, and only 1,400 fans watched the game.

But one man who was particularly interested in the match was not in the stadium: Ante Sapina, 33, the leader of a gambling ring operating out of Berlin's Café King. Sapina has a criminal record and was arrested last month on charges of being one of the ringleaders of an alleged gambling syndicate believed to have fixed at least 200 soccer matches across Europe. He is suspected of having fixed this match in Bosnia, too.

It was a perfidious plan that police in the western German city of Bochum uncovered in a covert investigation. With the help of a 22-year-old Swiss national and a 34-year-old Croat, Sapina is believed to have contacted a doctor working for FK Slavija Sarajevo before the match. The doctor was told to pay a €3,000 ($4,470) bribe to a cook at the hotel where the guest team, MFK Kosice, was staying. The cook's job was to stir drugs into the lunch of the Kosice players, drugs designed to reduce their performance, because Sapina was betting on a Sarajevo win.

The investigators are convinced that the cook accepted the bribe. However, they are unable to prove without a doubt, based on wiretapped telephone conversations, that the drugging actually took place. And even if it did, Sapina's bet wouldn't have paid off: MFK Kosice won the match 2-0.

'Manipulating the Game'

But the plan alone offers "insights into the structure of the perpetrators," who "unscrupulously ignored the dangers to completely non-involved professional football players." Sapina and his associates, the investigators noted, were "even pleased and amused by this new approach to manipulating the game."

A screenwriter working on a film about gambling syndicates couldn't have been more effective at conjuring up this episode from the shady world of European professional football, which is identified as Case File 10.10 in the investigative report. It shows how much criminal energy was behind the efforts by Sapina and his associates to fix football matches. Some of the defendants come from a background in which extortion, theft and assault appear to be part of everyday business -- men like Deniz C., a 30-year-old Turk who owns several nudist and sauna clubs in Germany's Ruhr region and is now behind bars.

The sheer scope of the alleged cases documents the obsession with which these gamblers pursued their fraudulent betting activities. The day after 15 suspects had been arrested in a nationwide series of raids, police said that about 200 matches in nine European countries were suspected of having been fixed. The number of countries involved has now increased to 17.

First Player Ready to Testify

Meanwhile, the first of the accused professional players is now willing to come clean. A former second division player and his attorney are scheduled to meet with prosecutors in Bochum in the next few days. The player is expected to report how members of the gambling syndicates made him dependent on them by granting him a six-figure loan. In return, his creditors are believed to have forced him to help them fix matches.

The case is growing by the day. Contrary to the claims of sports officials seeking to downplay the situation, the match-fixing activities of Sapina and his cohorts have not just affected matches in lower leagues, such as the Upper League South of the Northeast German Football Association or the Third Turkish League. Investigators have also set their sights on top-level events, where any evidence of match-fixing would be potentially devastating to this highly profitable entertainment industry. There is probably nothing more detrimental to business than the suspicion that matches could have been fixed.

According to investigators, one of the matches being looked at is the World Cup qualifying match between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Turkey on Sept. 9. They believe that an attempt was made to bribe the Bosnian coach with €500,000, so as to enable the Turks to achieve a "guaranteed victory." Sapina is believed to have known about the attempt to fix the match, but the coach apparently turned down the offer.

Investigators also believe that two matches in the second qualification round for the Champions League may have been fixed: both the first leg between FC Copenhagen and FK Mogren Budva on July 15 and the return match in Montenegro a week later. In both cases, the Danes won 6-0, and in both cases Marjia C., a Croat living in the southern German city of Nuremberg and one of the key defendants in the criminal investigation proceedings, is believed to have tried to bribe players and officials.

By the end of last week, prosecutors had not provided the attorneys with photocopies of the roughly 300-page investigative report -- apparently "for reasons relating to investigation tactics."

As a result, a defense attorney who was trying to determine what exactly the charges against his client were, was forced to travel to Bochum, to an office on the 11th floor of a building that houses the local judicial authorities. Andreas Bachmann, the public prosecutor conducting the investigation in the case, opened a secured glass door to allow his visitor to enter the office, but only after the visitor had entered the correct four-digit code at the entrance, and then led him to a small room furnished with a chair, two tables and a plain wooden shelf with 45 binders on it.

Malaysian Connection

Those binders contain the key documents in the case: an investigative report filed under reference number 35 Js 40/09, the case files on the individual defendants and telephone surveillance reports. The attorneys are prohibited from photocopying anything, although note pads and dictaphones are permitted.

The information in the documents is potentially explosive. For instance, one of Sapina's backers is believed to have been William Bee Wah Lim, a Malaysian who was supposed to "implement gambling interests among Asian gambling syndicates."

Lim is a colorful figure in the betting world. On June 1, 2007, a Frankfurt court convicted Lim of attempted match-fixing and sentenced him to two years and five months in prison. After proceedings that lasted more than a year, the betting kingpin confessed that he attempted to manipulate six matches in the German Second League and in regional leagues, as well as two matches in Austria's top league.

When they searched his confiscated computers, investigators with the Hesse State Office of Criminal Investigation found plenty of incriminating evidence that Lim had wagered millions of euros in the Asian betting market on matches in German professional football, matches that he had most likely manipulated. The most noticeable was a match between Hannover 96 and 1. FC Kaiserslautern on Nov. 26, 2005. Lim had bet €2.8 million ($4.2 million) on a Hannover victory.

How to Win €2.2 Million on a Match

The match, which Hannover won 5-1, made Lim €2.2 million. The match had hardly ended before Lim wrote the word "Beer" in an instant message via Skype to his agent in Asia, who had placed the bets for him. The agent replied: "Congrats!!!! Hehehe. Dance."

The 200 pages of records of Lim's Skype communications were not admitted as evidence in court because the public prosecutor's office felt that they were not sufficiently conclusive. Lim, a former cook who used multiple names, apparently had both a Chinese and a British passport and used various dates of birth in his documents, was released on bail of €40,000 before the end of his sentence. He fled Germany shortly after his release, and a warrant for his arrest was issued at the beginning of 2008. Lim's former defense attorney was on vacation last week and could not be reached for comment.

Now Lim has resurfaced. He is believed to have been in close contact with the Croat national Marjio C. from Nuremberg, who apparently ran the gambling ring together with Sapina. The defendant C., according to the files, described Lim as "his good friend." Investigators have not been able to pinpoint the fugitive Lim's whereabouts in Europe or Asia, and they have only managed to locate one of his accounts -- with a bank in the Swiss capital, Bern.

According to the documents, Sapina usually placed his bets on the Asian betting market through a brokerage firm in West London, where he was in touch with two employees, one of whom called himself Joseph Chang and the other Eric Ho. Both were part of the "China connection," which investigators believe includes Sapina's contacts in the Netherlands and Malaysia.

Accounts Around the Globe

Sapina's betting millions circle the globe, but they left no traces in German accounts. The betting mastermind from Café King had learned his lesson from the Hoyzer scandal. Sapina apparently had a man in Malaysia named Marc launder the illegal proceeds he is believed to have earned from fixed football matches. Investigators have discovered that this Marc withdrew the money from Sapina's betting accounts with two Asian betting operations, deposited it into accounts with the Bank of China in Hong Kong and Malaysia, and then transferred it back to England. Other defendants are believed to have circumvented the German tax authorities by having their illegal betting earnings transferred to accounts in Austria, Scotland, the Netherlands and Malta.

Ivan P., a German of Croatian origin who investigators believe acted as a "bookkeeper" of sorts for Sapina, was apparently one of the middlemen who allegedly transferred the betting proceeds abroad. They also accuse Ivan P., who is now under arrest, of having passed bribes to football players in five cases. Commenting on the charges, P.'s defense attorney Michael Tsambikakis told SPIEGEL: "Based on the information at my disposal to date, I cannot see that my client played a manipulative role in relation to a football match." Last Monday, Tsambikakis filed an appeal against the warrant for his client's arrest.

Meanwhile, criminal investigation specialists are trying to disentangle the international web of dubious monetary transactions. The investigators noted: "Based on the results of telecommunications surveillance, there is evidence of cash flows in the millions."

For a period lasting several weeks and ending in January 2009, investigators tracked down balances totaling about €3.5 million in five "Sapina accounts" in Asia. This spring, €721,500 was apparently deposited into another of Sapina's betting accounts over a period of six weeks to cover 17 bets. Contrary to his gambling nature, he invested his betting proceeds in foreign real estate, as investigators have discovered.

Football was apparently not the only sport Sapina and his associates bet on when "structuring matches according to their needs." According to the last few pages of the investigative report, investigators suspect that the gambling syndicate also manipulated a women's doubles match at a professional tennis tournament in Fes, Morocco. They also believe that Sapina tried to fix a game in the playoffs in Germany's national basketball league.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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German National Team Keeper Commits Suicide

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,660579,00.html

11/11/2009

Robert Enke is dead. The 32-year-old national team player took his own life on Tuesday evening at a train crossing near Hanover, as his friend and advisor Jörg Neblung confirmed late Tuesday.

"I can confirm that it was a case of suicide. Robert killed himself just before 6 p.m.," Neblung said in a short statement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Enke

(...)
Enke returned to his homeland joining Bundesliga side Hannover 96 in July 2004 on a free transfer in an initial two year deal. His career enjoyed its greatest success and stability, as he became firmly established as the club's first choice and was voted the best goalkeeper in the league by his fellow professionals in Kicker magazine.
(...)

Senior career*

2004–2009 Hannover 96

(...)

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,575586,00.html

09/01/2008

Interview with Match-Fixing Investigator Declan Hill

'I Am Sure the Game Was Manipulated'

Canadian journalist Declan Hill spoke to SPIEGEL about his investigation into betting syndicates in Asia. He claims to have uncovered evidence that the result of the last-16 football match between Ghana and Brazil during the 2006 World Cup may have been fixed.

SPIEGEL: You have spent three years investigating the international betting mafia. Have you lost all pleasure in football?

Declan Hill: I love football the way one loves a woman, but by now I ask myself quite early on in a match, whether there is anything suspicious going on. There are no precise statistics about betting manipulation in football, of course, but it is shocking how often people in the world of betting talk about matches that have been manipulated – not just in Asia or Eastern Europe, but also in the major football leagues, such as in Germany, and even during world championships.

SPIEGEL: Is that something you would have expected?

Hill: Absolutely not, and that’s why I took plenty of time in the book to allow the reader to follow my own process of realisation. I still vividly remember standing at the edge of a dusty track after meeting an informer in Ghana, with the wind blowing down from the Sahara, thinking: This is just incredible.

SPIEGEL: In your book you say you think that the match between Brazil and Ghana in the round before the quarterfinals at the 2006 World Cup was fixed. The starting point for your investigation is an infamous Asian fixer. How did you meet him?

Hill: That was a drawn-out process that took months. In the Asian gambling world, every insider knows his name. He’s said to have been manipulating games for 15 years, his name turns up in the case files of match fixing in Asia. He organizes the bets and their manipulation. In my book I called him Lee Chin. In November 2005 he invited me to a golf club on the outskirts of Bangkok. The conversation that ensued over the next two and a quarter hours was one of the strangest I have ever had.

SPIEGEL: In what way?

Hill: He claimed he was a leading member of a syndicate that manipulated football matches. He said he had 16 runners, that is middle men who approach the players, coaches or referees. And all the time we were talking to each other, one of his two phones would keep ringing. One call came from the Philippines, where the Southeast Asian Games were taking place at the time. After the phone call he said he had made sure that Laos would only lose 0:1 to Singapore. Fine, manipulated games at Asian sporting events, that isn’t all that surprising, but then he claimed to manipulate games at other major sporting events.

SPIEGEL: Did he give examples?

Hill: He said he had been at the Olympic Games in Atlanta in 1996 and had seen to it that Tunisia lost the opening match against Portugal. He claimed that he approached a couple of the Tunisian players. They refused to take money from him, for religious reasons, so instead he alleges he sent them beautiful Mexican prostitutes. Tunisia lost 0:2. Lee Chin said: “I won a great deal of money and everyone was contented.”

SPIEGEL: Did you believe him?

Hill: That evening I was torn to and fro all the time. Just before the interview Thailand’s Prime Minister Thaksin publicly voiced the suspicion that many events at the Southeast Asian Games had been manipulated. As regards the 1996 Olympic Games, Chin’s assertions can hardly be verified any more. What is interesting is that finally, just before 10:30, one of Chin’s telephones rang once again. He spoke in some language which I did not understand. After the call he said the Bundesliga game between Hannover 96 and 1. FC Kaiserslautern, which was just about to begin a few thousand kilometers away, had been fixed. Naturally I had heard of the Hoyzer scandal in German football, but it nevertheless seemed incredible to me that this sort of thing should be possible in a major league in which the professionals earn so much money. He did not tell me who was purportedly on the take but the match ended with the result that he predicted and 10 days later is was publicly revealed that some matches in the South-East Asian Games had been fixed, and a number of players were imprisoned.

SPIEGEL: But why did Chin agree to meet you in the first place and tell you this kind of thing?

Hill: I asked myself the same question for a long time. Maybe because he wanted to prove to the world how good he is, and a book like this may have sounded tempting to him. Maybe he felt flattered by the fact that someone from such an alien world -- a journalist and academic from Oxford University -- took him seriously and treated him respectfully. Perhaps it also has to do with the fact that, thanks to my research into match-fixing, I spoke his language.

SPIEGEL: He wanted you to recognize his art?

Hill: I think so.

SPIEGEL: He is a gambler, did he play with you too?

Hill: Perhaps.

SPIEGEL: Why do you safeguard his identity and refrain from using his real name in your book?

Hill: Because he would kill me.

SPIEGEL: Really?

Hill: I know I’m playing with fire, but there is a limit to my courage and heroism. I was often warned before interviews to leave the subject alone. Two journalists, Johnson Fernandez and Lazarus Rokk, who exposed match fixing in Malaysia some years ago, were sent a fake bullet bearing the sign “the next one is for real.”

SPIEGEL: Chin then offered to allow you to witness him fixing a match during the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany. That sounds like a cock-and-bull story.

Hill: Yes, but that’s what happened.

SPIEGEL: How exactly did he go about it?

Hill: After our first meeting in November 2005 I stayed in touch with him. He then reported about the preparations and the name of one country was mentioned very often: Ghana. He told me that people from his syndicate had already been in touch with a few of Ghana’s players during the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens and that he had succeeded at the time in getting Ghana to lose the final match against Japan. He claimed contacts existed now and that things would go ahead. Then, on 25 May 2006, he told me to come to a Kentucky Fried Chicken branch in a shopping center in the north of Bangkok. I was to witness the deal being negotiated. Why was I allowed to be present? No idea. I sometimes got the feeling that Chin viewed my skepticism as a personal affront.

SPIEGEL: What happened there?

Hill: When I entered, four men were sitting at a table: Chin, next to him two younger Chinese, and a black guy, a large, athletic man in a blue shirt and blue jeans. I sat down a few tables further along, I was rather nervous, my hidden camera wasn’t working, instead I tried to take a photograph with my mobile phone. The black man was supposed to be a runner, the middle man for the Ghanaian team. Chin said that the man claimed he had access to a number of players and officials from his country but that he needed an initial down payment in order to secure the team’s trust. The meeting lasted a little over an hour. Later Chin phoned me and was jubilant.

SPIEGEL: Did you know who the black man was?

Hill: Chin told me that in his office, two days after the meeting. He said he was a coach for Ghana’s under 17s team, someone who knew his way around Ghanaian football. Chin said the man had obtained the consent of eight of Ghana’s players. A few days earlier I had read in the newspaper that Ghana’s team would receive $20,000 for each victory at the Word Cup. I asked Chin whether that wouldn’t be more important to Ghana’s players. He replied: “But a victory is not 100 percent certain. And each player is guaranteed to receive $30,000 from me. Get it?” And at the end of our conversation he asked me whether I had taken a photograph in the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. “I was able to see you,” he said. “I know you tried to take a picture. I know. I know everything.”

SPIEGEL: Did he threaten you?

Hill: No, but I felt very uneasy, after all I was recording this conversation too. After that I realized I had to be more careful.

SPIEGEL: You then flew straight to the World Cup in Germany?

Hill: I watched Ghana’s first game against Italy in my flat in Oxford. Incidentally, Chin had predicted that Italy would win by at least two goals. Italy won 2:0, the performance of the Ghanaian team felt very strange, they seemed to play well but I thought there was something odd. Even before the final whistle I jotted down my opinion on a slip of paper: This game was manipulated. Now to this day, I do not know if that is true or not, but I flew to Germany where I booked into the Hotel Maritim, where the Ghana team was staying in Würzburg, to find out.

SPIEGEL: Was that easy to do?

Hill: Interestingly enough, it was. Anyone who wanted to could get up close to the Ghanaian players. During the six days I was there, I was in touch with almost all the players, coaches and officials. No problem. Of course I looked around for the Ghanaian runner, the man from the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Bangkok, but I never saw him. It was very sociable in the hotel, and superficially everything seemed to be in order, no sign of the runner, no Asians hanging around. Two days before the match against Brazil in the round of 16, Chin called and said that the deal with someone in the Ghana camp was on, 100 percent, he said. He was absolutely certain Ghana would lose by at least two goals.

SPIEGEL: June 27, 2006, the match ended 3:0 for Brazil.

Hill: The Ghanaians played as though they were putting their whole heart into it, but then there were a number of stupid mistakes: passes didn’t succeed, the defense was careless, the team collected three stupid goals. After the game I was in the stands in Dortmund with tears in my eyes because I was convinced, at least emotionally, that the match had been fixed. I phoned Chin from the stadium: “I didn’t believe you, but you are a genius.” He said: “How can I be a genius if I earn so little money with this?”

SPIEGEL: What did you do in order to find out whether your feelings weren’t misleading you?

Hill: After the World Cup I first of all had to finish writing my dissertation in Oxford but in the summer of 2007 I flew to Ghana to find the runner. A crazy plan really, but if there was anyone who could confirm Chin’s stories then it was that runner.

SPIEGEL: How did you find him?

Hill: By chance. While I was in Ghana, Ghana’s under-23 team played Iran. After the game there were reports that someone had tried to fix the game, one of the coaches was dismissed from the team. A newspaper printed a photograph of the coach: it was the man from the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant. His name is Abukari Damba.

SPIEGEL: And then you met him?

Hill: Yes, four times in all. The first time was in a bar called the Bus Stop, and after that in the Beverly Hills Hotel both places in Accra. Damba had been one of the goalkeepers in the great Ghanaian team surrounding Abédi Pelé in the 1990s. Later he played in Malaysia and met a Malaysian match fixer there. He had been the under-17s coach for Ghana and for a short time an assistant coach of the under-23 team. At a hearing by the Ghanaian association about the attempted fixed match against Iran, Damba confessed to having put players from the team in touch with the two Asians and an Iranian, and to have received money in return.

SPIEGEL: And what did Damba say about the World Cup match between Ghana and Brazil?

Hill: He had also been in Würzburg with the same match fixer from Malaysia, where they had stayed in a hotel opposite the Ghanaian team quarters, and Damba also admitted that he had gotten the Malaysian access to the team and that the match fixer also approached the team captain Steven Appiah.

SPIEGEL: And?

Hill: Damba says that he doesn’t know what happened after that.

SPIEGEL: Did you speak with Appiah about the accusations?

Hill: Not just with Appiah, but also with the goalkeeper Richard Kingson and other national players too. They all assured me that they were completely unaware of any possible manipulation of the team in Germany. However one of the players did admit that he had been approached by Asian betters in 2004 during the Olympic Games. And they all said that Appiah was the captain of the team and that I should to talk to him. I met with him in an industrial area in Accra. We talked in his car and he said that he had been approached a number of times in the course of his career and that he had taken money too. The first time was in 1997 during the under-17s World Cup in Malaysia and also in 2004 at the Olympic Games in Athens; however he had been given money in order to win games, not to lose them. He claimed that he then shared the bonus among all the players.

SPIEGEL: Ghana’s team captain, who was until recently signed up to Fenerbahce Istanbul, says that he accepted money from outside agents?

Hill: That’s exactly what he said. I wanted to confirm this, so I spoke to him again over the phone, and he repeated his account.

SPIEGEL: And during the 2006 World Cup in Germany?

Hill: He was approached there too, but he says that he refused. I also asked him whether the Malaysian had gone to other teams too. He replied: “Yes, I think he did the rounds.”

SPIEGEL: But you don’t know which of Ghana’s players might have been involved?

Hill: No, but I am nevertheless sure that the game was manipulated. Once again: there is an Asian betting manipulator, Lee Chin, who announces that he will fix a game during the World Cup. He allows me to witness a preparatory meeting at a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Bangkok. This meeting is attended by the former Ghanaian national player Abukari Damba and a match fixer from Malaysia. The two of them travel to Germany and approach players. And the match ends as predicted by Chin.

SPIEGEL: But does a player want to deliberately lose the round of 16 match at the Football World Cup, and into the bargain against the world champions from Brazil, which could make him famous?

Hill: In Ghana making it into the last 16 was already considered a huge success. After the victories against the Czech Republic and the United States, they were celebrated as heroes -- and after their defeat by Brazil too. Besides, there had been a huge argument within the Ghanaian delegation a week before the start of the World Cup. It was about the payment of the players, the functionaries wanted to use the money paid by FIFA mainly for advancing football. But the players suspected the officials of wanting to put it into their own pockets. They wanted to be paid well and were in quite a bad mood. However, I want to stress that not all the Ghana players were involved. Many were trying as hard as they could to win the match.

SPIEGEL: Ghanaian football is known for its corruption scandals, games in the Ghanaian premier league are fixed, last year the club of football hero Abédi Pele made it into the first league, they needed to win by a large margin and, somehow, the match ended 31:0. But how strong is the influence of Asian manipulators on games in Europe?

Hill: The Asians are only just discovering how excellently manipulation works here too. They still lack direct access in Europe. Europeans take care of that because they know the football players who are susceptible. They know who is corrupt and pass on their knowledge to the Asians.

SPIEGEL: Have you informed the world football association FIFA of your findings?

Hill: I visited Joseph Blatter in Zürich and told him that an Asian fixer had told me the outcomes of matches before they were played in the 2006 World Cup. He did not believe this to be true. If it had happened, he said, then it had not affected the overall outcome. But if it were true “then all the work done by FIFA during the past 30 years was in vain. In that case, we have failed.”

SPIEGEL: Could one say that the betting ring leader Ante Sapina, who bribed the referee Robert Hoyzer in the most well-known German case to date, is more a sort of pre-industrial gambler?

Hill: If he had joined forces with the Asians no one would ever have got onto him. Hoyzer and the Sapina brothers were really primitive in their methods.

Interview conducted by Christoph Biermann and Michael Wulzinger.