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Subject: Blackstone / Red Shield -- Bush, Skull & Bones, Rothschilds, and Russian Mafia

 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone_Group> http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Blackstone_ Group

'Black-stone' is a wordplay on the founders' names, Schwarz-man and Peter-son.  In Yiddish, Schwarz means black and in Greek, Peter (petros) means stone.

http://www.nydailyn <http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/04/25/2007-04-25_a_million_reaso...>  ews.com/news/ 2007/04/25/ 2007-04-25_ a_million_ reasons_why_ the_prez_ loves_ny. html

"$1.2 million fund-raiser for Republican National Committee hosted by Blackstone billionaire Steve Schwarzman, Bush's dorm mate at Yale, where they were both members of the Skull & Bones secret society"

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 <http://www.nysun.com/article/70831> http://www.nysun. com/article/ 70831

The New Yorker article by James Stewart places Schwarzman in the context of "a [new] era of rapacious capitalists and heedless self-indulgence, " noting how Schwarzman made a point of snapping up mansions once owned by the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts, [precursor plutocrats].

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THE MAKING OF A WISE MAN

New York Times, November 28, 2004
By Landon Thomas Jr.
 <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/business/yourmoney/28rich.html?page...> http://www.nytimes. com/2004/ 11/28/business/ yourmoney/ 28rich.html? pagewanted= print&position=

... For Mr. Schwarzman, the evening represented a high-water mark of what appears to be a campaign to rise above his status as just another fabulously rich deal maker and to achieve renown on the larger, more alluring public stage of Washington politics.

Since the early 1970's, he has moved with ferocity and guile in the jungles of Wall Street, staying largely unknown to the wider world. He rose to the top of his class at Lehman Brothers before breaking off, in 1985, to be a co-founder of the Blackstone Group, a hugely successful boutique investment house.

His net worth approaches $1 billion, and he has accumulated the totems that such wealth bestows: a $30 million Manhattan co-op; an estate in East Hampton; a mansion in Palm Beach; a hideaway in the south of France; and the use of a corporate jet and a Sikorsky S-76 helicopter.

He has also become a patron of the arts, but unlike many bankers who are happy with having a few charity boards to enhance their public profiles, Mr. Schwarzman has kept striving for more.

An avid supporter of President Bush (they lived in the same dormitory at Yale), he has distinguished himself from others on Wall Street by giving thousands of dollars to the Republican Party at the state level, in swing states like Wisconsin, Ohio and Minnesota.  Such double-barreled munificence has led to speculation in some quarters that he may even be a candidate for Treasury secretary -- a job he is said to covet.

He cites as role models two former Yale graduates, often called the Wise Men, who mixed successful business careers with government service: Cyrus R. Vance, a corporate lawyer before serving as secretary of state, and W. Averell Harriman, who left Wall Street to become a trusted adviser to presidents.

 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Averell_Harriman> http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ W._Averell_ Harriman

Using money from his father, in 1922 [Harriman] established W.A. Harriman & Co, a banking business. In 1927 his brother E. Roland Harriman joined the business and the name was changed to Harriman Brothers & Company. In 1931 they merged with Brown Bros. & Co. to create the highly successful Brown Brothers Harriman & Co..

Notable employees included George Herbert Walker, and his son-in-law Prescott Bush (father of U.S. president George H. W. Bush).

Harriman's main properties included: Brown Brothers & Harriman & Co; Union Pacific Railroad; Merchant Shipping Corporation; and various venture capital investments including the Polaroid Corporation. Harriman's associated properties included: the Southern Pacific Railroad (including the Central Pacific Railroad), Illinois Central Railroad; Wells Fargo & Co.; the Pacific Mail Steamship Co.; American Shipping & Commerce (HAPAG), the American Hawaiian Steamship Co., United American Lines Co.; the Guarantee Trust Company and the Union Banking Corporation.

WAR SEIZURES CONTROVERSY
While Averell Harriman served as Senior Partner of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co., Harriman Bank was the main Wall Street connection for German companies and the varied U.S. financial interests of Fritz Thyssen, who had been an early financial backer of the Nazi party until 1938. Business transactions for profit with Nazi Germany were not illegal when Hitler declared war on the US, but after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Trading With the Enemy Act after it was made public that U.S. companies were doing business with the declared enemy of the United States. On October 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City.

The Harriman business interests seized under the Trading With the Enemy Act in October and November 1942 included: Union Banking Corporation (UBC) (for Thyssen and Brown Brothers Harriman); Holland-American Trading Corporation (with Harriman); the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation (with Harriman); Silesian-American Corporation (partially owned by a German entity, during the war the Germans tried to take the full control of Silesian-American, so the U.S. government seized German owned shares in the company, leaving the U.S. partners to carry on the business.)  These assets were held by the government for the duration of the war, then returned afterward.  UBC was dissolved in 1951.

"I just want to give something back," Mr. Schwarzman said. "To the extent that I can add value and make my country a better place, that's a good thing to do."

That Steve Schwarzman, who is 57, wants to be a Wise Man -- and could even end up becoming one -- should not be surprising.

Wall Street has a long history of titans forgoing the blunt power of their capital for the prospect of a purer form of influence in and around the White House. And the legend that Robert E. Rubin created for himself by abandoning a Goldman Sachs partnership to counsel President Bill Clinton on economic matters has made the lure of Washington all the more intoxicating.

But this ripening desire also reveals the extent to which the rigid class strictures that once applied to Wall Street and New York society have softened. Much has changed since men like Mr. Harriman and Mr. Vance left for Washington. Then, to be tapped by a president for a high-level post was the final reward for a life spent going to the right schools and belonging to the right clubs -- a modern form of the old honors curriculum in Rome, where rising officials were obligated to hold a series of offices before finally reaching the highest professional rung.

"The old honors curriculum used to consist of a frightful boarding school, an Ivy League education, time spent at war and success at a major investment bank or law firm," said [Rockefeller in-law] Nelson W. Aldrich Jr., the author of "Old Money." "Only then would you be tapped. Now what matters is that you make a pile and start giving a lot of it away. In many ways, this new curriculum has replaced the old class system."

A product of the meritocratic boom that hit Wall Street in the 1960's, Mr. Schwarzman skipped many stages of the curriculum. He got into Yale on his intelligence alone and used the Ivy League degree and a stopover at Harvard Business School to start a career on Wall Street.

With success came wealth, and with wealth came patronage and the gradual efflorescence of his public image -- a purposeful metamorphosis that in some respects could happen only in New York City.

"There is no real class structure in New York anymore, just relative degrees of publicity," said Michael M. Thomas, a former partner at Lehman Brothers. "Some people find that a more acceptable form of class system because it is easier to manipulate."

Mr. Schwarzman dates his interest in public service to a three-hour lunch he had with the 78-year-old Mr. Harriman, also a Yale graduate, in 1969 at Mr. Harriman's town house opposite the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "I wrote him a letter and told him I was interested in the public world," Mr. Schwarzman recalled. "He asked me to lunch, so I went out and bought my first suit and we had lunch on trays in his living room."

Mr. Schwarzman, then a Yale student, still remembers the small details: the man in the white coat opening the door, the bust of Robert F. Kennedy on the mantle, the calls from Mr. Vance updating Mr. Harriman on the peace talks with North Vietnam, and not least of all the Impressionist paintings on the wall. "I thought - 'jeez, this is remarkable,' " he said. "And, 'wouldn't it be wonderful if I could have some elements of this in my life when I grow up?' "

So he went off to seek his own fortune -- the vast bulk of which has come to him since he has served as president of Blackstone. People on Wall Street familiar with Blackstone's business guess that Mr. Schwarzman will take home $75 million to $100 million this year. It is an extraordinary figure, even by Wall Street's bloated standards, and it could well surpass the compensation packages of the chief executives of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch combined.

When investment bankers and top executives speak of Blackstone and Mr. Schwarzman, they do so with a hush of respect, if not a small degree of awe. That is partly because Blackstone, with its $27 billion worth of private equity funds and its propensity to cash in its stakes quickly, can sprinkle more than $700 million in fees across Wall Street in a year.

But for executives whose wealth is largely tied up in the stock of their companies, there is also a sense of wonder at the efficiency of the Blackstone money-making machine. Not only do the top partners at the firm divvy up hundreds of millions of management fees each year, they also take personal stakes in the wide variety of companies that the firm buys. When the stakes are sold - as a few were this year - Mr. Schwarzman and his partners often take home additional chunks of cash.

Despite his growing public obligations, Mr. Schwarzman has kept a steely grip on activities at Blackstone, signing off on all the major deals. Like many other deal makers, he can be impatient and blunt when talking to those around him, no matter if they are colleagues or kitchen staff.

For a banker of Mr. Schwarzman's stature and means, becoming a patron of the arts has been fairly straightforward. The role models are many; among the most prominent have been Sanford I. Weill, the chairman of Citigroup and an energetic benefactor of institutions like Carnegie Hall, and Henry Kravis of the buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (which competes with Blackstone), who has achieved his own éclat through his good works at the New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Mr. Schwarzman approaches his socializing with the same determined vigor and attention to detail that has characterized his style as a banker and investor over the last 30 years. In some ways, it has the feel of a political campaign.

With his wife, Christine, Mr. Schwarzman has appeared at events small and large: from a book party he gave this spring for Princess Michael of Kent, to a benefit in October for the charity Casita Maria -- his wife and Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia were two of the leaders of the dinner -- and, earlier this month, the Library Lions ball for the New York Public Library.

One evening this fall, before the tribute in Washington, he had a cocktail reception at his apartment, which once belonged to John D. Rockefeller Jr. and more recently to Saul Steinberg, the 1980's corporate raider.    Lavishly appointed and with 13 bathrooms, it even bears some of the touches that widened the eyes of the young Mr. Schwarzman when he sat in Mr. Harriman's living room back in 1969.

[But] instead of a Kennedy bust, a large silver-framed photograph -- bearing the presidential seal -- showing Mr. Schwarzman and President Bush arm in arm and grinning broadly, is displayed on an antique writing table in the living room.

Yes, he had finally arrived.  And his friends and peers agreed. "If you have all that money and all those pretty houses, I think you have made it socially," said Richard Jenrette, a founder of Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette, the investment bank where Mr. Schwarzman started his Wall Street career.

Even [Mayor Bloomberg], a former partner at Salomon Brothers who in many ways perfected the model of using Wall Street money to get a leg up in New York society, is impressed. "This guy has spent a lot of time in business making money, and he leads the good life, too," Mr. Bloomberg said.

Making it in New York is one thing; in Washington, however, it can take an extra bit of work. That is why Mr. Schwarzman has sought the wisdom of a local insider there, Kenneth M. Duberstein, a former chief of staff for Ronald Reagan who now runs a well-connected lobbying firm.

It was Mr. Duberstein, then the acting chairman of the Kennedy Center, who recommended that the search committee break a deadlock by considering Mr. Schwarzman for the chairmanship, then strongly advised him to take the position.  The job is considered a plum for those seeking to assume a more forceful presence in Washington. Past chairmen have included James D. Wolfensohn, a former investment banker based in New York who leapt from the Kennedy Center to his current position as president of the World Bank, and James A. Johnson, the preceding chairman, who many felt would have been Treasury secretary had Senator John Kerry won the presidential election.

And don't forget: the job also requires the approval of the president.

"I thought this would be a good stage for him," Mr. Duberstein said. "It gives him New York and D.C. at a high level of involvement in not only the arts but the politics of an administration and Capitol Hill."

To celebrate his appointment, Mr. Schwarzman and his wife were given a private lunch with Laura Bush this year in the upstairs residence of the White House."

When asked if he has any interest in a high-level job in the administration, Mr. Schwarzman said he has "a great life."  Still, that does not mean that it could not become greater -- within Republican fund-raising circles and on Wall Street, Mr. Schwarzman's desire for the Treasury post has become well known.

As for his credentials, his supporters point to his experience as an international financier. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, along with a multitude of other bankers who fancy themselves as globetrotting statesmen.

All the same, unlike Peter G. Peterson, his co-founder at Blackstone and a former commerce secretary who has written book after book cautioning against out-of-control deficits, Mr. Schwarzman has written no articles or books on public policy.

Others on Wall Street wonder whether he could extricate himself from Blackstone, a small firm that has succeeded largely on the basis of his energy and contacts, and question how he would fare in a large bureaucracy like the Treasury Department.

Now, as he casts his eye toward Washington, even some of his friends are still unsure of his stand on issues or even what party he belongs to.  But what Mr. Schwarzman does have going for him is a relationship with a president known to put the highest stock in personal ties.

"It's a personal connection," Mr. Schwarzman said of President Bush. "I was fascinated about how that transition occurs with someone who was not achievement- oriented. He could have ended up [a wastrel] like most guys from a privileged background."

All the same, Mr. Schwarzman is cagey about the depth of the bond - the cardinal rule for prospective appointees.

But he cannot resist the odd, if not somewhat revealing, joke:

When asked about any contact he has had with the White House since the election, he said "I'm being announced tomorrow."  

"Oh come on, you have to have a sense of humor," he added quickly, when no laughs were forthcoming. "I'm just kidding."

Or is he?

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Is China's investment in Blackstone a Bush payback to Schwarzman?

May 20th 2007 4:40PM
by Peter Cohan
 <http://www.bloggingstocks.com/2007/05/20/is-chinas-investment-in-blac...> http://www.blogging stocks.com/ 2007/05/20/ is-chinas- investment- in-blackstone- a-bush-payback- to-schwarzman/

Blackstone Group will sell 10% of itself [WSJ subscription required] to China's new investment arm prior to Blackstone's initial public offering (IPO). If there was ever an example of how capital is reducing the importance of national boundaries, this is it.

This Blackstone investment -- for a non-controlling stake -- is clearly a bargaining chip in the economically tense relationship between China and the U.S. We need China, since it's financing a big chunk of the $8.8 trillion U.S. federal debt -- it owns $350 billion worth of U.S. Treasury securities.

But China also accounts for a share of the politically sensitive U.S. trade deficit. And due to what Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson considers China's artificially low currency, this trade deficit is not going away.

Somehow China, which is coming to the U.S. for trade talks, thinks that having its State Investment Company buy $3 billion worth of Blackstone Group at 95.5% of the IPO price will mollify its critics.

One thing for sure -- China's stake will help Blackstone avoid the problems that <the Bush family's> Carlyle Group encountered in its efforts to buy companies in China.

I guess China would be better off if Blackstone owned the U.S. government.

Then again, given that Steve Schwarzman raised $1.2 million last month for Republicans during a New York fund-raiser at his 34 room apartment featuring his Yale dorm mate -- George W. Bush -- maybe China's investment in Blackstone is Bush's payback for Schwarzman's fund-raising.

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 <http://ir.blackstone.com/committees.cfm> http://ir.blackston e.com/committees .cfm

Stephen A. Schwarzman is Chairman, CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone and the Chairman of the board of directors of its general partner, Blackstone Group Management L.L.C. He has been involved in all phases of the firm's development since its founding in 1985.

Mr. Schwarzman began his career at Lehman Brothers, where he was elected Managing Director in 1978 at the age of 31. He was engaged principally in the firm's mergers and acquisitions business from 1977 to 1984, and served as Chairman of the firm's Mergers & Acquisitions Committee in 1983 and 1984.

Mr. Schwarzman is a member of The Council on Foreign Relations and serves on The JP Morgan Chase National Advisory Board.

Mr. Schwarzman holds a BA from Yale University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He has served as an adjunct professor at the Yale School of Management and on the Visiting Committee of Harvard Business School.

 Lord Nathaniel Charles Jacob Rothschild <http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/BX/0x0x140311/C2CB3BCC-FAFF-44...>  Lord Nathaniel Charles Jacob Rothschild is a member of the board of directors of our general partner <Blackstone Group Management L.L.C.>  Lord Rothschild founded RIT Capital Partners plc in 1988 and is currently the firm's Executive Chairman and Director. He also co-founded Spencer House Capital Management LLP in 2006 and currently serves as Chairman.

Lord Rothschild previously co-founded companies in the fields of money management, insurance and investment, for example Global Asset Management Limited, St James's Place Group plc and J Rothschild Assurance plc. In addition to RIT Capital Partners plc, Lord Rothschild is also the Deputy Chairman of British Sky Broadcasting Group plc and a director of RHJ International SA. Lord Rothschild is a trustee of the Courtauld Institute, the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and the Qatar Museum Authority. In addition, Lord Rothschild was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery from 1985 through 1991.

http://www.pehi. eu/organisations /introduction/ PEHI_Jacob_ <http://www.pehi.eu/organisations/introduction/PEHI_Jacob_de_Rothschil...>  de_Rothschild_ bio.htm

LORD JACOB ROTHSCHILD (AND HIS FATHER VICTOR)

His father was the controversial Lord Victor Rothschild (1910-1990), 3th Baron Rothschild. Victor started working for MI5 during WWII in roles including bomb disposal, disinformation, and espionage. In 1940 Rothschild suggested that Anthony Blunt should be invited to join the secret service. He also rented a house to his friend Guy Burgess. After the liberation of France Rothschild worked with Dick White, Kim Philby, and Malcolm Muggeridge at the MI6 offices established at the Rothschild family mansion in Paris. He was suspected of having been involved with the Cambridge Five, a British spy ring
that passed information to the Soviets during and after WWII. In 1951, two members of this ring, Burgess and Maclean - both under secret investigation - made international headlines by very publicly defecting to the Soviet Union. Anthony Blunt was another member of the ring. Victor worked as a scientist at the zoology department at Cambridge University from 1950 to 1970. He was a member of the Cambridge Apostles, a secret society at the University which included John Maynard Keynes (friend of CFR chair and J.P. Morgan partner Russell C. Leffingwell) , Anthony Blunt (gay; 'KGB' mole; adviser and distant relative to the Queen), Guy Burgess (gay; 'KGB' mole), Bertrand Russell (set up the Pugwash Conferences with Rockefeller protege Cyrus Eaton, Sr.), Michael Whitney Straight (Whitney family; another 'KGB' mole), Aldous Huxley (wrote 'Brave New World'), and others. Stories about the Apostles persisted that the membership was mainly homosexual and Marxist. Victor served as chairman of the Agricultural Research Council from 1948 to 1958 and as worldwide head of research at Royal Dutch/Shell from 1963 to 1970. Chairman of Edward Heath's Central Policy Review Staff from 1971 to 1974. Unofficial security adviser to Margaret Thatcher, who was brought to power with the help of Le Cercle in 1979. <Implicated in the recently publicized BAE Systems defense contractor scandal, involving kickbacks to cabinet-level government officials from quasi-illegal sales of weapons to the Saudis, harking back to the Al Yamamah "arms-for-oil" scandal a decade earlier (1985-89), notably involving Jonathan Aitken and the Thatcher family, in concert with the Carlyle Group (Carlucci) as well as VP George HW Bush's Iran-Contra go-betweens like Adnan Khashoggi.>  Died in 1990.

Jacob was born in 1936 and is 5 years younger than his cousin Evelyn. Educated at Eton College and then at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took a First in History. Married Serena Mary Dunn, the granddaughter of Canadian financier Sir James Dunn, in 1961 and has one son and heir Nathaniel and three daughters, Hannah, Beth, and Emily. Director of N.M. Rothschild & Sons in London.

Set up the Rothschild Investment Trust in 1970 and increased its assets from $14 to $240 million in 10 years.  Evelyn was a director of the Rothschild Investment Trust, but resigned in September 1980, supposedly because he was of the opinion that Jacob's tactics were "too agressive."  <<That 'walkout' from N.M. Rothchild followed massive family losses connected with assets held in Switzerland when Banco Ambrosiano folded, 'God's Banker' Roberto Calvi was found murdered in London, and the involvement of the Gladio-linked P2 Masonic Lodge (notable members: Henry Kissinger, Alexander Haig, Michael Ledeen and other Neocons) in money laundering, Mafia crimes for profit, and CIA/NATO-sponsored false-flag "leftist terrorism" was publicly exposed>> [Evelyn] withdrew the large investment of N.M. Rothschild & Sons in the Rothschild Investment Trust and ruled that Jacob couldn't use the family name anymore for his company. In the end Jacob decided to rename the Rothschild Investment Trust to RIT Ltd., but put management of its assets into the newly created J. Rothschild & Co. (stake in The Economist newspaper, among other things), meaning he continued to display the family label.

RIT Capital Partners's 10 largest investments in 2005 were RHJ International; Deutsche Boerse; Getty Images; Robin Hood Holdings; Atticus International Ltd.; SIG; lunits Canada; Venture Production; Paypoint; and Phelps Dodge. In 2002 they were: Royal Dutch Petroleum; Wellington Global Research; Shinsei Bank; Atticus International; Tinicum Partners; Power Measurement; Getty Images; The Economist Newspaper; Venture Production; Lukoil <Russia>. Also holds a stake in Rothschild Continuation. President of J. Rothschild Holdings.

Bought Spencer House, a handsome neoclassical palace in St. James, from the Spencer family (of Diana) in 1985, and lavishly restored it, at a cost of £16 million, to its original 18th century glory, using lots of gilt and marble. The "Economist" Intelligence Unit had been located there since 1963.  

In 1988 he inherited from his aunt, Dorothy de Rothschild, the Waddesdon and Eythrope estates in Buckinghamshire, and began a close association with Waddesdon Manor. This country estate has been a regular venue for visiting heads of state including President Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. A 1990 meeting between Margaret Thatcher and French president François Mitterrand was organized at the estate during a conference.

Member of the Other Club since 1986, together with the Duke of Devonshire (Cavendish), the 7th Marquess of Salisbury (Le Cercle), Lord Carrington (Pilgrims Society president), Lord Richardson of Duntisbourne (major Pilgrims Society member), Lord Julian Amery (former head Le Cercle), Lord Rees-Mogg, Prince Charles, Paul Channon (Le Cercle), Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Sir Edward Heath, Sir Denis Thatcher, Winston S. Churchill (grandson of), and several dozen others. Member of the Roxburghe Club, together with the Dukes of Norfolk, the Dukes of Devonshire, the Marquesses of Salisbury, the Earls of Perth, Lord Rees-Mogg, Harry Oppenheimer, and Paul Mellon.

Began a joint venture with James Wolfensohn as J. Rothschild Wolfensohn & Co. in 1992. Paul Volcker, a Rockefeller protege and Pilgrims Society member, was its chairman until 1995, the year that Wolfensohn became head of the World Bank. Founded St. James's Place Capital Group in 1991 with Sir Mark and Mike Wilson.

President of the Institute for Jewish Affairs 1992-2002 and presided over its name change in 1996 to Institute for Jewish Policy Research.

Tried to gain control of Coats Viyella in 1999, together with Sir David Alliance and Edouard Stern.  Stern was a son-in-law and the probable heir to David-Michael Weill, the controlling shareholder of Lazard. Due to Stern's extremely antisocial behaviour he was kicked out of the company 2 years earlier. In March 2005, he was found in his Geneva apartment, strapped in a latex suit and shot to death.

Hosted the European Economic Round Table conference in 2002 at Waddesdon Manor, attended by such figures as James Wolfensohn, Nicky Oppenheimer, Warren Buffet, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

 Article image <http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article_image.php?id=59760>

Jacob is a trustee of the Open Russia Foundation, a UK based entity founded in 2001 as the charitable arm of the Yukos oil company. In October 2003 he received the Yukos shares of Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky just before the latter was arrested in Russia by president Putin. Has visited president Putin in Russia with Henry Kissinger in the aftermath of the Yukos Affair and organized at least one dinner for Putin and Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 or 2004.

April 19, 2006, the Courier Mail, 'Russian back to the USSR': "These obscenely wealthy people are known as oligarchs in some circles, but a documentary series starting next Tuesday cuts to the chase with its title, 'Russian Godfathers'. .. In episode one, we see Berezovsky funding the Orange Revolution that put Viktor Yushchenko in power... There's much more, but not all that the show promised... A briefing note accompanying the preview tapes proclaimed the documentary would explore the role played by Jacob Rothschild and other London financiers in helping the Russian godfathers amass their fortunes.  Curiously, Lord Rothschild is nowhere to be seen, for which he is no doubt grateful."

Honorary Fellow of the City of Jerusalem.  According to EIR, Lord Jacob Rothschild is a long time financier of Dr. Leen Ritmeyer who says he has located the Ark of the Covenent within the Dome of the Rock.

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LIKE FATHER--

http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Nathaniel_ Rothschild, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Rothschild,_4th_Baron_Rothschild>  _4th_Baron_ Rothschild

NATHANIEL CHARLES JACOB ROTHSCHILD, 4th Baron Rothschild, OM, GBE, FBA (born 29 April 1936) is a British investment banker, philanthropist and a member of the prominent Rothschild family of bankers.  He is the eldest son of Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild by his first wife Barbara Judith Rothschild née Hutchinson. Rothschild was educated at Eton College and then at Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a First in history, tutored by Hugh Trevor-Roper. [1]

In 1961, Rothschild married Serena Mary Dunn, a granddaughter of Canadian financier Sir James Dunn, and they have four children:

Hannah Mary (b. 1962)
Beth Matilda (b. 1964)
Emily "Emmy" Magda (b. 1967)
Nathaniel Philip Victor James (b. 1971)

From 1963 Rothschild worked for the family bank NM Rothschild and Sons in London, before resigning in 1980 due to a family dispute. The chairmanship of the bank had passed from his father, who had chosen to follow a scientific career and had lost control of the majority voting shares, to his cousin Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, and Jacob felt that his aspirations would be thwarted. He sold his minority stake in the bank, but took independent control of Rothschild Investment Trust (now RIT Capital Partners plc), an investment trust listed on the London Stock Exchange.[2]

In the Sunday Times Rich List 2007 ranking of the wealthiest people in the UK he was placed 46th (combined with his son) with an estimated fortune of £1,300 million. <about US$2.5 billion>[3]

BUSINESS AND CONNECTIONS
He is a shareholder in Rothschild Continuation Holdings, the Swiss-based holding company for the Rothschild interests which has positions in many of the family businesses, including the bank N M Rothschild & Sons. After resigning from the bank, Jacob Rothschild went on to found J. Rothschild Assurance Group (now St James's Place Capital) with Sir Mark Weinberg in 1991.[4] In 1989, he joined forces with Sir James Goldsmith and Kerry Packer, in an unsuccessful bid for British American
Tobacco. His main business interests now are RIT Capital Partners plc, an investment management company with a portfolio of £700m, of which he is Chairman,[5] Spencer House Capital Management LLP founded with Richard Horlick (formerly CIO of Schroders), and Spencer House Partners, a "mini merchant bank" headed by Rothschild and Ronald Cohen of Apax Partners.[6]  He also retains many other venture capital and property interests.

On 17 November 2003, he took up his post as deputy chairman of BSkyB.[7]

Rothschild to act as [Rupert Murdoch's] BSkyB buffer

Owen Gibson
November 3 2003
 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/nov/03/citynews.rupertmurdoch> http://www.guardian .co.uk/media/ 2003/nov/ 03/citynews. rupertmurdoch

BSkyB has moved to head off criticism of the appointment of <Rupert Murdoch's son> James Murdoch as chief executive by naming Lord Rothschild deputy chairman to act as a buffer.

Rupert Murdoch, who controls 35.4% of BSkyB, said it was a coup to attract someone of the calibre of Lord Rothschild, the 67-year-old merchant banker who founded Global Asset Management.

The four-strong BSkyB nominations committee, headed by Lord St John of Fawsley, was keen to stress after today's three-hour marathon board meeting that Rupert Murdoch's 30-year-old son was considered the best man for the job after what they described as a "rigorous search and nomination process".

In tonight's announcement BSkyB said those directors affiliated to News Corporation had not voted on the appointment of the new chief executive.

But Rupert Murdoch, who has backed his son for the job from the start, was this evening unapologetic about the selection procedure. "The board and I are pleased that the nomination committee has completed its task and it is unanimous in its conviction that James is the right man for this job," he said.

In a further effort to placate angry investors, James Murdoch will immediately resign from the boards of News Corp and NDS, the satellite encryption company that is also part of his father's global empire.

From his headquarters in St James's Place in London, Jacob Rothschild has cultivated an influential set of clients, business associates and friends who have extended his interests far beyond the normal scope of a banker. He  maintains strong personal and business links with Henry Kissinger.[8]

 <http://www.pehi.eu/introduction.htm>
 <http://www.tentmaker.org/Quotes/conspiracy_%20nuts_theories.htm> Henry Kissinger & Lord Jacob Rothschild

 <http://www.inteldaily.com/?c=169&a=1283> http://www.inteldai ly.com/?c= 169&a=1283  [Wayne Madsen, ex-NSA]

Israel has been a major, albeit covert, player in Southeast Asia since Israeli multi-billionaire tycoon Shaul Eisenberg began supplying weapons to Cambodia's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime in the 1970s. Eisenberg, a close business partner of China's military, was also an early arms supplier to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. Eisenberg was active with Asia's Jewish community during World War II, not as an compatriot of the Allies but as a close intelligence and business  partner of Japan's Imperial government, which was allied with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the Axis Alliance. Escaping Nazi-controlled Europe, Eisenberg settled in the Far East, making his primary bases of operation Japanese-occupied Shanghai and Japan itself.

In Shanghai, Eisenberg, along with Imperial Japanese military intelligence units, formed units of future Jewish terrorist groups -- the Irgun and the Shanghai Betar (Betar was founded in the 1930s by the Polish Zionist Yakob Jabotinsky, a supporter of Italian Fascist leader Benito Mussolini, to battle the British for control of Palestine, and the ideological godfather of later neoconservative oracle Leo Strauss). The Japanese taught the Jewish paramilitary forces in Shanghai, including some who escaped from Joseph Stalin's Jewish Autonomous Region creation in the Soviet Far East on the Chinese border, how to disrupt colonial occupiers' logistics and command and control elements, strategies that had been successful against the British, Dutch, French, and American colonial authorities in Asia.

The Irgun and Betar gangs would eventually use the knowledge gained from the Japanese in their terror campaign against British and Arab forces in Palestine following World War II. Eventually, Irgun and Betar veterans would form the present-day Likud Party, now headed by Binyamin Netanyahu, a noted extreme right-winger.

After the war, Eisenberg began selling war surplus material, including iron and steel scrap. Married to a Japanese woman, Eisenberg established the Israel Corporation, a huge holding company , which, during the 1970s, began to secretly export Israeli military equipment and weapons to China. Under a Panama-based company called United Development, Inc., Eisenberg also began exporting weapons to Central America's most insidious dictatorships, including that of Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua. Eisenberg's vast holdings eventually included Israel Aircraft Industries and Zim Israel Navigation Company.

As the United States faced imminent defeat in the Indochina War at the hands of the Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodian communist-nationali st forces, Eisenberg wasted no time in cashing in on America's defeat and the new power alignments in Southeast Asia. He began selling weapons from his new business partner - China - to the Cambodian forces of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.

After the defeat of the U.S.-backed military government of General Lon Nol, installed after Richard Nixon's National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, a close friend of Eisenberg, ordered the CIA to overthrow Cambodian head of state Prince Norodom Sihanouk, Cambodia fell victim to a bloody civil war between Vietnamese troops backing Pol Pot's one-time ally Hun Sen and the Chinese-backed "Democratic Kampuchea" government of Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot.

It was no mistake that the Gerald Ford administration and Secretary of State Kissinger backed the Khmer Rouge. Kissinger and Ford's long-time Michigan financial backer, industrialist Max Fisher were both financially and ideologically linked to Eisenberg. Ford's supposed "grand moment" -- the repatriation in 1975 of the crew of the U.S. "merchant" (spy) ship, the SS Mayaguez, from Khmer Rouge forces was a Kissinger- and Eisenberg-designed ruse designed to build up Ford's support in the face of the American military defeat in Southeast Asia. That ruse came at the cost of 41 Marines and countless Cambodian military forces and civilians.

Kissinger authorized Eisenberg to begin a discreet program to modernize China's armed forces with $10 billion in Israeli and U.S.-designed weapons, re-exported through Israel. The reason -- neoconservative to its roots -- was to have China counteract Soviet military power in Asia and beyond.

As a result of Eisenberg's Israel-China military alliance, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge forces were amply supplied by Israel and China. Logistics were no problem since Eisenberg's Israel Corporation owned a 49 percent share in Zim Shipping, the world's third largest shipping company. Although Eisenberg died from a sudden heart attack in Beijing in 1997, the weapons smuggling activities of his friends in Mossad and Zim Shipping continue to plague Southeast and South Asia.

His country estate has been a regular venue for visiting heads of state including Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Margaret Thatcher received French President François Mitterrand there at a summit in 1990. He hosted the European Economic Round Table conference in 2002, attended by such figures as James Wolfensohn, former president of the World Bank, Nicky Oppenheimer, Warren Buffett and Arnold Schwarzenegger. [9]

PHILANTHROPY
Lord Rothschild has also followed the Rothschild family's charitable interests in Israel and is the chairman of Yad Hanadiv, the family foundation which gave the Knesset and the Supreme Court buildings to Israel. He is also Honorary President of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research.[12]

 <http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Jacob_Rothschild> http://www.sourcewa tch.org/index. php?title= Jacob_Rothschild

Lord Jacob Rothschild, OM GBE was born Nathaniel Charles Jacob Rothschild, the fourth Baron Rothschild. He is head of the English branch of the Rothschild family and chairman of RIT Capital Partners plc."

Rothschild is a member of the board of trustees of the "Open Russia" Foundation.[1]

http://www.sourcewa tch.org/index. php?title= Open_Russia_ <http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Open_Russia_Foundation>  Foundation

The Open Russia Foundation, founded in 2001 by YUKOS Oil Company, is an "international, independent, charitable organization, operating as a private endowment. The Foundation supports both academic institutions and not-for-profit organizations ... The Foundation is the first Russian international corporate philanthropic foundation. It not only supports a broad range of educational projects, but also provides funding for their implementation. "[1]

"The first launch of the Open Russia Foundation took place in December 2001 at Somerset House in London, United Kingdom.  The Open Russia Foundation had its United States launch on September 18, 2002 in Washington, DC. At the launch, U.S. Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, was presented with the first Open Russia Foundation Leadership Award for his 'outstanding contribution to educational, cultural and leadership programs'."[ 2]

"The motivation for the establishment of the Open Russia Foundation is the wish to foster enhanced openness, understanding and integration between the people of Russia and the rest of the world. The Open Russia Foundation was established with legally charitable educational objectives and undertakes a range of activities and programs supported by grants awarded to institutions and not-for-profit organizations. "[3]

Board of Trustees

Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky  <see further details at end of thispost>
The Honorable Henry Kissinger
The Honorable Arthur Hartman
Dr. Mikhail Piotrovsky
Lord Jacob Rothschild, OM GBE

He is also President of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, an organization dedicated to research, analysis and policy planning on issues affecting Jewish life worldwide."[3]

"Lord Rothschild has been honored by the Weizmann Institute of Science on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the State of Israel.

--LIKE SON

http://en.wikipedia <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Philip_Rothschild>  .org/wiki/ Nathaniel_ Philip_Rothschil d

NATHANIEL PHILIP VICTOR JAMES ROTHSCHILD, born July 12, 1971, is a British financier who is Co-Chairman of Atticus Capital LLC, a 2004 Young Global Leader, and a member of the prominent Rothschild banking family of England.

He is the only son of Jacob Rothschild, 4th Baron Rothschild and Serena Mary Dunn, whose grandfather was the Canadian financier and industrialist, Sir James Dunn. He was educated at Eton and Wadham College, Oxford. He was a member of the Bullingdon Club as an under-graduate.

Rothschild began his career in 1994 at Lazard Brothers Asset Management in London, before joining Gleacher Partners, the New York-based mergers and acquisitions (M&A) advisory firm founded by Eric Gleacher, former head of M&A at Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.

Rothschild is the co-chairman of Atticus Capital LLC, an international investment management firm established in 1995, that has offices in New York and London. He is also a director of RIT Capital Partners plc, and a director of The Rothschild Foundation. In 2006, he was appointed chairman of Trigranit, a Hungarian developer of which he is a major shareholder.

Rothschild is a member of the Belfer Center's International Council at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government and the International Advisory Council of the Brookings Institution. He is also a member of the International Advisory Board of the Barrick Gold Corporation. He was nominated as a "Young Global Leader" by the World Economic Forum in 2005

The Man Who May Become the Richest Rothschild

By LANDON THOMAS Jr.
New York Times, March 9, 2007
 <http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/business/09rothschild.html?_r=1&ore...> http://www.nytimes. com/2007/ 03/09/business/ 09rothschild. html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=all

Happy or unhappy, each family generation often resembles another, and that is especially true when it comes to the Rothschilds.

  <http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2007/03/09/business/09rothschild....>
Nathaniel Rothschild

More than 200 years after Mayer Amschel Rothschild founded the family dynasty that offered discreet counsel and investment wisdom to kings, queens, emperors and industrial titans, his 35-year-old direct descendant, Nathaniel [Philip Victor James Rothschild], has emerged as a kingmaker in his own right and an investor who some say may become the richest Rothschild of them all.

In five short years, the man in line to be the fifth Baron Rothschild is close to becoming a billionaire through a web of private equity investments in Ukraine, Eastern Europe and most significant, his partnership stake in Atticus Capital, the fast-growing $14 billion hedge fund.

The ascent of Mr. Rothschild is a vivid illustration of how the still glittering, if somewhat faded, prestige and wealth of Europe’s most storied banking family has been reinvigorated from bold bets in this era’s new-money investment vehicles.

Like his forebears, he prefers that his influence remain unseen.

Mr. Rothschild is a principal adviser to Oleg Deripaska, one of the richest oligarchs in Russia and the owner of the aluminum giant Rusal, which recently merged with two other companies to create the world’s largest aluminum company. Mr. Rothschild received no public credit despite having played a crucial role in getting the deal done.

And like a true Rothschild he has a taste for the good life: as an avid skier, his principal residence is in Klosters, Switzerland, and he uses his Gulfstream jet to shuttle among his other homes in Paris, Moscow, London, New York and Greece.

But he is also a man of contradictions: he dates supermodels and actresses, sits on an advisory board of the Brookings Institution, a research organization in Washington, and serves his guests the best wines from the Rothschild vineyards, which he himself will not drink.

He professes to have a penchant for privacy and would not be interviewed for this article, yet he allowed his lushly renovated town house in Greenwich Village to be featured in Men’s Vogue magazine. Despite his reputation as the most gregarious of men and the increasingly public nature of his life and career, he comes across as a pinched, reticent man in the few public photographs of him — as if he was shying away from his renown.

The burden of being a Rothschild can be a heavy one. In 1996, one of Mr. Rothschild’s cousins, Amschel, having been asked to fill a leadership position in the family bank in London, hanged himself in a hotel bathroom at the age of 41.

Four years later Raphael de Rothschild, also a cousin, died on a sidewalk in Manhattan at the age of 23 from a heroin overdose.

In the early 1990s, some thought that Mr. Rothschild might also buckle under the weight of the family name. He appeared to be an aimless society playboy with a taste for the slack, unchallenged lifestyle so often embraced by the sons and daughters of Europe’s rich families.

“This is the story of Prince Hal turning into Henry V,† said Charles G. Phillips, who supervised Mr. Rothschild during his time at the investment firm Gleacher & Company. “He is one of the few sons of great men who has enhanced the family stature and created his own wealth.â€

The family legacy was daunting at first for Mr. Rothschild, whose ancestor Nathan Mayer Rothschild helped finance Britain’s victory at Waterloo and whose father, Jacob, split from the family bank in 1980 to begin his own successful career as an investor.

So much so that until he started work as a 25-year-old investment analyst at Gleacher in 1995, Mr. Rothschild avoided it altogether.

He was the life of parties in New York, Paris and London, and in 1995 he eloped to the Dominican Republic with Annabelle Neilson, a free-spirited London socialite with a reputation for dancing on dinner tables in her high heels.

In 1995, when Mr. Rothschild showed up for work at Gleacher, he was still trying to find his way. He was a recent graduate of Oxford, where he had been a member of the exclusive Bullingdon Club, a notorious drinking society known for its rite of wrecking the restaurant furnishings after raucous dinner parties.

With his shabby dress, limited financial experience and energetic social life, he did not make much of a first impression, according to Eric Gleacher, chairman and founder of the bank who is a close friend of Jacob Rothschild, known as Lord Rothschild.

“He was kind of floundering,† Mr. Gleacher said. “I figured he had some big boots to fill.â€

While he undertook the drudgery of trainee investment banking work, Mr. Rothschild kept his eyes open for an opportunity more in tune with his growing ambition. In the spring of 1995 he found just that when he left the Gleacher offices in Midtown Manhattan to smoke a quick cigarette a few floors above.

Puffing away in an anteroom, he ran into Timothy R. Barakett, then a 29-year-old investor who was doing the rounds trying to raise funds for Atticus, his new hedge fund. Learning that Mr. Barakett was starting up a fund, he asked for a job. Mr. Barakett turned him down.

But the two men stayed in touch, and in the fall of 1996, Mr. Barakett took Mr. Rothschild on as a minority partner in the nascent fund, then $90 million in assets, and gave him the title of director of business development with a mandate to tap his considerable connections and family connections for new capital.

Mr. Rothschild took to the new opportunity with renewed vigor. He stopped drinking, reached a divorce agreement and devoted his energies to promoting the investment talents of Mr. Barakett.

The fund’s extraordinary performance — since inception it is has grown on average 30% a year — made Mr. Rothschild’s job an easy one. Still, some early investors like Peter Munk, the founder and chairman of Barrick Gold <one of whose directors is Brian Mulroney of BLACKSTONE>, were skeptical at first.

In 2001, he agreed to meet with Mr. Rothschild at the request of Mr. Rothschild’s father, a longtime friend.

“He did not carry the halo of being the future of the family,† Mr. Munk recalled of their brief meeting in the lobby of Claridge’s, the hotel in London. “I wanted to get rid of the boy.† 

When Mr. Rothschild said he was a partner in a hedge fund, Mr. Munk had his doubts, assuming that the fund was just a family hedge fund.

“He was indignant,† Mr. Munk recalled. “ ‘My family did not put in one cent,’ he said.â€

Mr. Munk would become an investor and a happy one at that. Now, Mr. Rothschild sits on Barrick’s advisory board and is an investor along with Mr. Munk in the TriGranit Development Corporation, a real estate company that invests in Hungary and Eastern Europe and which may go public this year, representing another big payoff.

“This kid is special,† he said. “It’s back to when they were ruling the world.â€

With his mix of Old World politesse, a racy appreciation for fast times and the brute force of his accumulating wealth, Mr. Rothschild has become friend and adviser to many — including Russian billionaires, Indian steel magnates and a long list of people who have helped him out during his ascent.

“I will literally get a BlackBerry from him in Siberia asking me how I am doing,† said Glenn Dubin of Highbridge Capital, who was an early investor in Atticus.

To a large extent, the source of Mr. Rothschild’s renewed wealth and influence is tied to the explosive growth of Atticus, where over the last three years assets have surged to $14 billion from $2 billion. (Last year, the fund was up 50 percent before fees, an astonishing return given its considerable size.) In 2005, Mr. Rothschild was paid $80 million in compensation and made more than that last year, according to people with knowledge of his pay arrangement at Atticus.

Now co-chairman, he spends less time raising money for the fund, which is for the most part closed to new investors. But his influence in opening doors for Mr. Barakett, especially in Europe, has been considerable. His Oxford connections came in handy when he pried David Slager, also an Oxford alumnus, away from Goldman Sachs’s risk arbitrage desk in London. Mr. Slager is now Mr. Barakett’s top investing deputy and a vice chairman at the fund.

Mr. Barakett and Mr. Rothschild remain close and speak every day.

“He has had an incredible evolution, and he has done it on his own,† Mr. Barakett said. “It’s not about family connections.  He has a knack for identifying talented people and interesting investments.â€

By all accounts his relationship with his father is a complicated one. He sits on the board of RIT Capital Partners, Lord Rothschild’s investment trust, and he has never been shy about using the family name to open doors. Still, people who know him say that he is consumed by a furious ambition to live up to, if not surpass, the reputation and doings of his father.

“Being Jacob’s son was difficult for him,† Mr. Dubin said. “But he has matured and is comfortable with himself.â€

But, while his rapidly won riches may give him pleasure, it will take more than a billion dollars to live up to the wider social and charitable responsibilities that fall upon a Rothschild baron.

“The family is accomplished in so many different ways,† said Jeffrey T. Leeds, a private equity investor who knows the Rothschilds well. “Nat knows that he would not be fulfilling his responsibilities if he were simply someone who amassed great wealth.â€

Now his investments are done through his personal merchant bank called JNR, an entity that is controlled solely by him, in spite of the initials, which stand for Jacob and Nathaniel Rothschild.

It is through JNR, based in London and run by a small crew of investment bankers, that Mr. Rothschild has made his latest investments, prospecting for oil in Ukraine and buying a stake in Diligence, a corporate intelligence firm.

“There is a lot of power behind him, and like all the Rothschilds they use their power with discretion,† said Guy Wyser-Pratte, who has invested with Mr. Rothschild. “I expect him to uphold the family tradition.â€

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http://www.salon. <http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/2001/01/09/nptues/>  com/people/ col/reit/ 2001/01/09/ nptues/

Princess Bush?

  <http://osdir.com/ml/culture.discuss.conspiracy/2006-02/jpgCM5SH5T1xi.jpg>

Move over, Britney. The London tabloids are reporting that Prince William has a new e-mail penpal: Lauren Bush, president-elect Bush's 16-year-old model niece.

The flirty virtual friendship allegedly began after Lauren, daughter of Neil Bush, left her photo and a note for Prince William on a yacht she knew he was due to cruise on.  After he sent her a reply, "they became very close pals, and it was clear they had a serious crush on each other," a "royal source" told London's News of the World. "He and Lauren felt they could be very open with each other."

Although a spokesman for Prince Charles refused to comment about "private correspondence, " the tabloid quotes a Texas friend of Lauren's as saying, "The e-mails were very flirty and quite sexy and the letters quite intimate. It would be fair to say they got a bit carried away with the fun of it all."

Well now, that sounds very Texan and not at all British, doesn't it?

- - - - - - - - - - - -

http://www.smh. <http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/07/1036308423213.html>  com.au/articles/ 2002/11/07/ 1036308423213. html

Will she wear a veil?

Good to see at least one member of the Bush clan attempting to cross the cultural divide. Dubya's fashion model niece, Lauren Bush, is dating Palestinian- American Tammer Qaddumi, the New York Daily News reports.

"She's a wonderful girl," says Tammer's father, Maher Qaddumi, an architectural engineer who grew up in the West Bank and is active in Houston's Arab community. "We love her. She and Tammer are birds of a feather. They're both very motivated."

But Tammer may have some competition for Bush's affections:

David de Rothschild, London-based son of Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, is rumoured to be trying to catch Lauren's eye.

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http://nymag. com/daily/ intel/2007/ 10/lady_lynn_ forester_ <http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2007/10/lady_lynn_forester_de_rothschi.html>  de_rothschi. html

You knew that Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild was a mega communications mogul.  You knew she was married to British banking scion Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and buds with Henry Kissinger and Vernon Jordan.  But did you know she was practically, like, a philosopher?

Lloyd Grove interviews the Lady for Portfolio's semi-irregular "The World According To" column, and it turns out the Lady has much to say about India, Rupert Murdoch, and how to acquire buttloads of cash.

On why she's investing in India: "You know, there are more billionaires in India than anyplace else. Let me put it this way: Every day in India, the entire nation of Great Britain is on the train, one way or another. So the numbers are pretty colossal. Seventy million people in India can afford anything they want. It's a small percent, but that's a reasonable number. Two hundred fifty million are middle-class, so you might not go for the Chanel glasses, but you sure could go for an Estée Lauder lipstick or a Starbucks coffee."

On why she's voting for Hillary: "I think if history is our guide, we've had stronger economies, more wealth creation, under Democratic presidents than we have under Republican presidents."

On Conrad Black's looming jail sentence: "It must be awful. It must be awful. But we do live in a world of consequences, and you do not do things where jail could be an option. It's pretty obvious."

On the Dark Lord Murdoch: "I have SO much respect for Rupert Murdoch ... I don't, of course, agree with his politics all the time, but I think that he is a visionary.  I think he is gutsy.  Everyone I've ever known who's done a deal with Rupert cannot say a bad word about him.  He's honorable.."

 <http://www.portfolio.com/views/columns/the-world-according-to/2007/10...> http://www.portfoli o.com/views/ columns/the- world-according- to/2007/10/ 05/An-interview- with-Lady- de-Rothschild

Lynn Forester de Rothschild
Oct 5 2007

When 67-year-old Sir Evelyn Rothschild first set eyes on 44-year-old Lynn Forester at the 1998 Bilderberg conference —the matchmaker was none other than Henry Kissinger— she was already a woman of major means.  A corporate lawyer and telecommunications entrepreneur, the sparkly blond ex-wife of former New York politician Andrew Stein had made more than $100 million from the sale of cleverly acquired wireless broadband licenses. She was also sexy, charming, and dazzlingly well connected.

Two years later, after the smitten Sir Evelyn divorced his second wife, Victoria Schott, the mother of his three children, Forester became the third Lady Rothschild.

After marrying in November 2000 at a London synagogue, they honeymooned at the White House, guests of Lynn's good friends Bill and Hillary Clinton.  Today the New Jersey-born Lady de Rothschild -—the flashiest hostess in London—- is mates with Tony and Cherie Blair.  

She's also the chief executive of E.L. Rothschild, the holding company that she owns with her third husband to manage investments in the Economist and various enterprises in India. In July, Sir Evelyn completed the sale of his stake in the centuries-old English branch of the Rothschild banking empire (for a reported $600 million) — which frees up a lot of capital for them to be major players in the Indian business world.

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COVERT OIL OPS:

ROTHSCHILD, the RUSSIAN-JEWISH "Mafia," and ISRAEL

vs

Nationalist Vladimir Putin

ROTHSCHILD TRIES TO BRIBE PUTIN?

16 February 2004, 8:24 p.m.
 <http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/archive.cgi?read=44582> http://www.rumormil lnews.com/ cgi-bin/archive. cgi?read= 44582

According to the Interfax news agency, Group Menatep Limited is willing to offer the Russian government Yukos shares under their control in exchange for the release of former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is under arrest in Russia. The statement was issued by Leonid Nevzlin from Israel.  

Khodorkovsky faces charges of massive fraud, corruption and tax evasion.  His colleague, Leonid Nevzlin, a major shareholder in the former state owned oil company, Yukos, fled to Israel in November 2003 and was granted immediate citizenship even though Nevzlin does not meet Israel's usual citizenship requirements.

Upon Khodorkovsky' s arrest last year, his shares were automatically transfered to Group Menatep, a banking group with offices in the Isle of Man (UK offshore tax haven).

British press and media reported at the time that this placed the shares in the control of Lord Jacob Rothschild, now an Israeli citizen.

Menatep, however, denied that Rothschild had any power within the group. Their statement declared that Rothschild has close links with Menatep through the Open Russia Foundation, whose trustee membership list includes Henry Kissinger.  Menatep failed to mention that the Open Russia Foundation was founded by Yukos.

British financial papers insisted that it was Rothschild who had worked out the automatic transfer of shares mechanism for certain Yukos shareholders.

Messages, such as "we will do anything to get our people back" from the Menatep group appeared today on British teletext services, suggesting a desperation to get Khodorkovsky out of Russian hands.

Many Russian state owned companies were auctioned off into private hands at rock bottom prices. There have been growing suspicions in Russia that these auctions were "rigged" during the post 1991 "revolution" Boris Yeltsin period.

Putin has been accused by certain media sources of returning Russia to the "KGB". Other commentators suggest he is out to uncover a web of deceit and corruption that led to a giveaway of Russian assets and mineral resources under Yeltsin's presidency.

Yukos may well be the tip of the iceberg and information from Khodorkovsky could lead investigators to other money trails and a major return of illegally acquired assets to Russian ownership.

As Presidents Putin and George W Bush are reported to be friends, it will be interesting to see how this drama plays out, as well as how many more "Russian" oligarchs flee to immediate citizenship in Israel in order to become immune from international arrest warrants issued through Interpol.

Houston, we have a Yukos problem

By Pepe Escobar
 <http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FH26Ag03.html> http://www.atimes. com/atimes/ Central_Asia/ FH26Ag03. html

BRUSSELS - The crucial consequence of Moscow's campaign to nail Yukos, the country's leading oil producer, is the end of any possible energy alliance between Russia and the US, according to European Union diplomats and officials.

Yukos' former golden boy, chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky, languishing in jail since October 2003, was President George W Bush's and Vice President Dick Cheney's man. But way beyond his personal fate, it is the symbol of the fall of Yukos -- no hope of cheap Russian oil for America and extra profits for ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips -- that is driving oil prices higher.

Soon after September 11, when the Bush administration seriously started looking for major oil sources other than the Saudis, a deal with Russian oligarchs might have seemed the ideal solution. In May 2002, at a summit in Moscow, Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin forged what looked like an alliance, further developed in an "energy summit" held in a Houston steel-and-glass tower in October of that year. The deal was straightforward: Washington/Houston injects tons of dollars into the Russian oil sector, and Russia up to 2010 becomes America's number one supplier.  The key Russian partner in this deal was to be Khodorkovsky - the son of a Moscow worker turned king of business and head of Yukos, producer of 1.7 million barrels of oil a day and the largest Russian oil company ahead of LUKoil.

Khodorkovsky could not but be a Western darling.  His hero was Standard Oil's founder John Rockefeller.  He installed five Americans on the Yukos board.  The company's public relations was handled by an American firm. He created a charity, Open Russia, which boasted Henry Kissinger and Lord Rothschild as chairmen. Wall Street loved him, because he guaranteed fortunes to Yukos' shareholders, especially himself (he owns 44% of the shares).

In April 2003, as the US was taking over Iraq, Yukos was about to take over one of its rivals, Sibneft. This would have created a US$35 billion company, the fourth-largest private company in the world and the first in Russia, with oil production similar to Kuwait's (2.3 million barrels a day).  

But just as Khodorkovsky was entertaining the idea of selling control of Yukos to ChevronTexaco, Putin struck. In October, Yukos was billed $3.4 billion for back taxes for 2000, its assets frozen and Khodorkovsky was in jail and on trial on separate charges of tax evasion and fraud.

RUSSIA'S SHOCK AND AWE
Last month, a surrealist spectacle took place during the short Siberian summer. In the midst of its battle with the Kremlin, Yukos inaugurated an electrical plant in the Tomsk region. American Steven Theede, 30-plus years in the oil business, appointed as Yukos director-general by the end of June to try to save the company, made the trip from Moscow on a chartered jet full of journalists, trying to put the best face on it all.

European Union (EU) diplomats in Brussels say that at the time Theede was explaining oil shipments to China were at risk because there was no money to pay the Russian railways, and the company would have to stop paying salaries by the first half of August. The time has now come.

Depending on the observer's angle in the political spectrum, the campaign to get Yukos is interpreted either as a hostile corporate takeover masterminded by Putin's FSB - former KGB - friends running the Kremlin, or a well-deserved punishment to the Russian oligarchs who profited from the wild privatization of the 1990s. The consensus in the EU is that Yukos is essentially being "de-privatized" and re-nationalized because of a huge amount of unpaid taxes, which the company could easily take care of if the Kremlin had not frozen all of its assets.

The most probable endgame of the Yukos saga, according to analysts in Moscow and around the EU, is the Kremlin forcing the company to sell its main assets - Yuganskneftegaz, Tomskneft and Samaraneftegas - to one or a few oil majors with close ties to the Kremlin, like Gazprom, Rosneft or Surgutneftegaz. Rosneft - the seventh-largest Russian oil company - seems to be very well positioned: Igor Sechin, a close Putin adviser, and considered to be one of the main figures behind the attack on Yukos, is now Rosneft's chief executive officer. This leaves many, behind closed doors in Brussels, London and Frankfurt, talking about what amounts to "Putification" of Russian oil: drive down the price of Yukos and then sell it to the Kremlin's friends.

THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN
Nefteiougansk, which rose from the ashes in the 1960s on the margins of the Ob river, is literally in the middle of nowhere. The most important building in the city of 100,000 is the headquarters of Yuganskneftegaz - the jewel of the Yukos crown. Yugansk pumps 60% of Yukos' oil, has reserves worth more than $50 billion and nowadays produces more oil than Iraq.  There's a plaque in the building - signed by Khodorkovsky - stating that the city is, indeed, "Yukos' capital".

But the shining light of Yuganskneftegaz itself is the immense Priobskoie oilfield in western Siberia - which brings tears to Yukos managers' eyes as it is said to be able to keep producing oil "for 50 years". This oilfield has been doubling its production for the past few years and is now responsible for at least half of Yukos' output of 1.7 million barrels a day.

Russian bailiffs are adamant: Yuganskneftegaz will be sold off for a fraction of its real value to compensate for Yukos' unpaid taxes. Yukos, in a statement, insists this would be the end of the company. "If Yuganskneftegaz is sold, the management of the company would be compelled to announce the bankruptcy of Russia's largest oil company."

Yukos insists Yuganskneftegaz is worth at least $30.4 billion, according to leading consulting firm DeGolyer and MacNaughton. Other independent analysts talk about $16 billion. But everybody seems to agree on one point: it could be sold for as little as $1.75 billion.

FOLLOW THE MONEY
Yukos has already sent 11 letters to the Kremlin, to Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov and to Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, pleading for some kind of settlement. Khodorkovsky has repeatedly offered to give up his 44% stake. But the Kremlin could not possibly take this offer: it would have to lift a freeze on the Menatep holding's majority stake in Yukos - a very risky move.

So the Kremlin's answer has been thunderous silence. It hasn't escaped anybody's attention that if the Kremlin made its position clear, Yukos would be able to borrow money on the global financial markets. But the justice minister even blocked a proposition for parts of Yukos being bought by a British consortium, including a collection of Dubai princes.

Yukos could go bankrupt at any moment. It needs $1.7 billion every single month just to maintain its operations - like paying fees to the state-owned Transneft pipeline network and a huge amount of taxes. There's not much it can do with its accounts frozen. Yukos has until August 30 to pay the hefty $3.4 billion bill for taxes and penalties unpaid in 2000. This could skyrocket to at least $10 billion if the Russian authorities decide to apply similar charges for 2001 through 2003.

So the war is now between the Kremlin and Yukos' majority shareholder, the Menatep Group, an offshore holding based in Gibraltar and so immune to the Kremlin's attacks. While Yukos is still active, Menatep is trying to get maximum liquidity: there will be maybe those $10 billion in back taxes to pay, plus some kind of satisfaction to minor shareholders -- most of them Americans -- who still control 25% of Yukos' capital (the major American shareholders bailed out two months ago).  Washington is obviously applying some pressure over the Kremlin to protect their interests - but to no avail.

Eric Kraus, chief equity strategist at Sovlink, tries to sum it all up: "It looks like Menatep is trying to bring down everything with it, while the government appears to be willing to inflict as much damage as need be. The only innocent victims are going to be international investors." Earlier this week, Yukos cut its output forecast for 2004. The company as we know it may no longer exist after August 30.

I WANT MY OWN PIPELINE
Pipelines in Russia are a state monopoly. They have belonged to the state company Transneft since Soviet times. Russia produces anything around 8.5 million barrels of oil a day - and up. The antiquated Transneft network allows for only 3.5 million export barrels a day, on three different pipelines: one to Eastern Europe; one to a new terminal in the Baltic which gets frozen in winter; and one to the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. Some of the daily non-export production is for the national market, a few hundred thousand barrels is exported by rail to minor ports, but the bulk is stocked up - to the despair of Russian oil majors whose profits could skyrocket even more with the barrel flirting with the $50 mark.

But Transneft does not care about profits. Its business - under direct control of the Kremlin - is strategic. This
situation ended up forcing the four Russian oil majors - Yukos, LUKoil, Sibneft and TNK - to open a new front in their private war against Transneft.

Enter Murmansk. The perfect spot: 200 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle, very close to the Norwegian border, hit by the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, the only Russian port allowing supertankers. And crucially it is only 9,300 kilometers from refineries in Texas, against 20,500 kilometers for tankers leaving from the Persian Gulf.

In November 2002, at an energy summit in Houston, the 4 Russian oil majors committed themselves to build an immense, $4 billion private pipeline from Western Siberia to a private terminal in the Barents sea - so as much oil as necessary could be exported to the US with no hassle.  Murmansk, halfway between Moscow and the North Pole, where the sun simply does not shine for two whole months in winter, was supposed to be the place where the US, in 2007, would quench its thirst for oil.

Or will it? As the chess game stands, it looks like Siberian oil will most likely go to China. Yukos itself, before the crisis, was betting heavily on China. Yukos' managers were dreaming of China's consumption of 160 million tons by 2010 - four times what it imports today. So it invested in a 2,400 kilometer pipeline from Angarsk, very close to Irkutsk , to Daqing in Manchuria, with oil coming from fields in Eastern Siberia, north of the Baikal lake. The only thing missing for the deal - after four long years of negotiations - was an imprimatur from the Kremlin. It came on April 2003 - before Putin made his move.

There is an alternative route: it favors Japan, and is proposed by the state-owned Transneft, meaning it has an attentive audience in the Kremlin. It's longer, and much more expensive, than the Chinese route, going all the way to the Pacific near Vladivostok. Russia is very much tempted to strike a strategic, energy alliance with Japan. But the Kremlin decided, also in April 2003: the priority is the Chinese pipeline.

The Angarsk-Vladivostok route makes no sense - industry experts argue. Better to sell Russian oil from the Sakhalin islands - where a congregation of oil majors is investing $20 billion in offshore projects. Yukos, for its part, still bets heavily on Murmansk - dreaming of selling Russian oil for the same price as Arab oil.

SPLENDID INDEPENDENCE
The Kremlin essentially is on the verge of making decisions that will influence its foreign policy for decades to come. An energy alliance with the US - via Murmansk? A pipeline to China? A pipeline to Japan? And what about the strategic alliance with the European Union?

After Putin's extremely friendly response to America's grief on September 11, the Russians were expecting at least more technological transfer on the oil front. It didn't happen. So Bush's unilateralism in fact was in part responsible for Putin's change -- from his 2001 pro-Americanism to the 2003 Paris-Berlin- Moscow axis prior to the invasion of Iraq.

Putin is in a splendid position of independence - of sorts. With high oil and gas prices, Russia has been growing at about 7% a year since 2001. But it needs a massive injection of foreign capital in its derelict oil and gas industry - so it may be able to export not 4.6 million barrels a day, but maybe 8 or 9 million. Russia needs the American and British oil majors: it's more cost-effective than depending on bank loans or the financial markets.

The key question being debated in the European Union -- and of course in Moscow and Washington -- is which alliance will prevail: with the US or with Western Europe?  With China, it's not really an alliance: it's a question of making money because, as any visit to the region reveals, Russia remains terribly afraid of Chinese demographic and economic pressure over the Siberian border.

So Russia may gain a lot by getting close to Japan. Japan -- like America -- also needs to get rid of its dependence on Saudi oil, and it is increasingly buying more and more Russian oil and gas.  EU diplomats are betting that Russia, although not neglecting the US, wants above all an economic partnership with Japan, a strategic partnership with India, and a strategic energy partnership with the EU.  It helps that Putin loves and understands German culture and speaks fluent German, and that French President Jacques Chirac loves Russian culture and speaks Russian. It's up to the EU to get its political act together.

The way Putin re-engineered the whole game suggests that the Russia-US energy alliance may not have resisted the Iraq disaster. The key lesson from the Yukos saga is that Russian oil will continue to flood world markets: but this will happen under Putin's state capitalism strategic rules. And one thing is certain: they are not exactly Dick Cheney's.

ROTHSCHILD IS THE NEW POWER BEHIND YUKOS

 <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-876718,00.html> http://www.timesonl ine.co.uk/ newspaper/ 0,,176-876718, 00.html

A senior member of the Rothschild banking family has emerged as the key figure in the battle for control of Yukos, the Russian oil giant.

The Sunday Times can identify Lord (Jacob) Rothschild as the secret holder of the large stake in Yukos that was previously controlled by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil company’s chairman. Khodorkovsky, reputed to be Russia’s richest man, was last week arrested by Russian prosecutors on charges of fraud and tax evasion. His imprisonment has triggered a trustee agreement he put in place with Rothschild a few months ago. Rothschild, 67, now controls the voting rights on a stake in Yukos worth almost £8 billion. This places him at the centre of a dispute with the Russian state. It is widely believed that the charges being brought against Khodorkovsky are a response to his political ambitions to succeed Vladimir Putin as Russia’s president. Russian prosecutors tried to freeze a 44% stake in Yukos on Thursday. Their move highlighted the
previously unknown arrangement that allowed voting rights to be transferred to an unnamed foreigner — Rothschild — should Khodorkovsky be unable to “act as a beneficiary† of the shares. It is thought that Khodorkovksy, 40, took this precaution when he realised he was facing arrest. The shares are held via the Gibraltar-based Menatep Group.

Khodorkovksy has known Rothschild for years through their mutual love of the arts and their support for Russian development via the Open Russia Foundation.  Rothschild is a multi-millionaire in his own right, with a fortune estimated at £400m. He has not been involved with NM Rothschild, the City investment bank, since walking out during a furious row 22 years ago.  Rothschild went on to build his own investment empire through firms such as RIT Capital Partners, St James’s Place Capital and J Rothshild Assurance. It is thought that Khodorkovsky could remain in prison until at least the end of the year. He is accused of illegally obtaining $1 billion through fraud and tax evasion. If convicted, he could face 10 years in jail.

The Yukos affair has provoked a crisis in Russia’s fledgling capitalist system. Russian shares fell heavily last week and the value of Yukos slumped by a third as foreign investors fled the market. Khodorkovsy broke an agreement that Putin’s government would not investigate the controversial circumstances in which the oligarchs made their money as long as they stayed out of politics. Instead, Khodorkovsky funded opposition parties.

THE ROUBLEMAKER

25/07/2004
 <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2004/07/25...> http://www.telegrap h.co.uk/opinion/ main.jhtml? xml=/opinion/ 2004/07/25/ do2510.xml

Profile: Mikhail Khodorkovsky

He is often described as "baby-faced" , but when the courtroom light glints off the surface of Mikhail Khodorkovsky' s wire-framed spectacles, he looks far older than his 41 years. Given that he has lived not one but several lives in his four decades, that's probably not surprising.

Now the richest of Russia's billionaires, its most notorious post-Soviet political prisoner and, increasingly, a symbolic victim of the growing authoritarianism of President Vladimir Putin's regime, Khodorkovsky did not exactly begin life as a dissident. On the contrary: in the early 1980s, while the dissident movement was spreading across central and eastern Europe, Khodorkovsky, who came from an ordinary Moscow family and grew up in a cramped two-room apartment, was busily climbing the ranks of the Komsomol, the Communist Youth League.

In 1986, when the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev launched his "glasnost" reform movement, Khodorkovsky saw not an opportunity for political change, but rather a chance for personal enrichment. Using his Komsomol connections, he set up first a student cafe, then a small trading firm. By some accounts, he sold Western computers to Russian companies. By other accounts, he sold Russian girls to Western men. Either way, by 1988, he was rich, by Moscow standards, and he used his cash -- probably no more than a few million dollars -- to set up a new enterprise: Bank Menatep.

It didn't take long for the profits to start rolling in. Thanks to Khodorkovsky' s connections, Bank Menatep was put in charge of handling an extraordinarily large amount of state money extraordinarily quickly, ranging from the funds allocated to the victims of Chernobyl, to the finances of the Moscow city government, to the Russian arms export monopoly, to the Ministry of Finance itself.

In 1995, a CIA report identified Bank Menatep's close links to organised crime.  In that same year, Bank Menatep was put in charge of privatising Yukos, one of Russia's largest oil concerns.

During a highly contested auction process, the bank disqualified the highest bidders, a consortium of three Russian banks, on technical grounds. Amazingly, Khodorkovsky' s bank instead handed the company over to ... Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He and his partners paid just $350 million for 78 per cent of the shares in the company, a price that was not merely low, but spectacularly so. By 2003, before Khodorkovsky' s
political troubles began, Yukos was valued at $17 billion. Khodorkovsky himself personally owned a quarter of the company's stock.

Following that not exactly squeaky-clean beginning, Yukos's early days as a private company were plagued by bad publicity -- and with good reason. As Khodorkovsky got richer and richer, he left a longer and longer trail of defrauded Western investors --and dead bodies-- in his wake.

Annoyed by the unflattering press coverage, he first tried suing journalists, and later tried bribing them. Hoping to win favour, in 2001 he invited a handful of prominent British journalists on what became an infamous, champagne-fuelled junket around Russia by private plane. The trip, organised by Prince Michael of Kent, became known among Moscow correspondents as "the plane of shame". It did produce quite a few
flattering articles but, in Khodorkovsky' s view, not nearly enough.

Once again, he changed his tactics. By this time, Khodorkovsky wanted to float Yukos on the New York Stock Exchange, and he also talked of having a major Western partner.  Realising that Western acceptance depended on a greater effort, he brought Western accountants and executives into Yukos, and began to bring genuine transparency to his company's financial operations, a first for a Russian oligarch.

He matched his newfound enthusiasm for financial transparency with an equally sudden interest in political transparency.  Telling friends that neither he nor his money would be safe in Russia until Russians accepted capitalism and free trade, he set up the Open Russia Foundation, dedicated to the promotion of Russian democracy and civil society. Some of the groups he funded -- advocates of civil liberties, Western economics, judicial reform -- were suspicious of his motives but they accepted his cash. Over time, many concluded that he had definitely come to believe his own rhetoric.

In the West, his cash encountered no suspicion at all. On the contrary, his philanthropy, including a rotating exhibition of superb Russian artworks at Somerset House, and funding for the American Library of Congress, won him friends and influence with astonishing speed.

In a very short time, Khodorkovsky named Lord (David) Owen as the international chairman of Yukos, put Dr Henry Kissinger and Sir Jacob Rothschild on the board of his foundation, and invited James Billington, the US Librarian of Congress, to preside over the foundation's American launch. Billington threw a grand party and asked James Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank, to make a speech introducing Khodorkovsky to the Washington A-list crowd.

A man who had been virtually a pariah a scant few years before was suddenly the darling of the American political elite, invited to conferences with Congressmen and to the summer meetings that American billionaires hold in mountain resorts.  Within a period of three years Khodorkovsky had completely transformed his international reputation -- almost.

Even now, as Khodorkovsky stands trial, there is still no agreement about whether his rapid transformation from robber-baron to international philanthropist was deeply cynical or genuinely sincere. Since his arrest on fraud charges, when masked policemen and criminal investigators stormed his private plane on a refuelling stop, Khodorkovsky has received the support of Russia's tiny (and shrinking) community of democracy activists and government critics.  They interpreted his poor treatment -- the denial of bail, the four-person prison cell, the slow dismantling of Yukos itself -- as punishment for Khodorkovsky' s increasingly open conflict with President Putin, his funding of opposition political parties, his increasingly vehement commitment to democratic causes, and his financial and political independence from the Kremlin.

But not everybody thinks Khodorkovsky is an innocent victim, and nobody is exactly describing the charges against him as "trumped up". It is perfectly plausible that Khodorkovsky really DOES owe many billions of dollars in back taxes or that his security guard, also in prison, really is guilty of murder as charged.

Yet the Khodorkovsky trial, which President Putin likes to compare to the Enron affair in America, is not taking place in a vacuum. Since coming to power, President Putin has succesfully undermined every one of his opponents, including those in the media. The decision to lock up Khodorkovsky is understood to be part of that pattern.

Yes, many argue, he probably violated the law and murdered a few people while making his fortune, but so did everybody else.  To arrest only Khodorkovsky sends a clear signal to the rest of Russia's billionaires: don't mess with the Kremlin.

ARRESTED OIL TYCOON PASSED SHARES TO BANKER

http://www.washtime <http://www.washtimes.com/world/20031102-111400-3720r.htm>  s.com/world/ 20031102- 111400-3720r. htm

LONDON (Agence France-Presse) -- Control of Mikhail Khodorkovsky' s shares in the Russian oil giant Yukos have passed to renowned banker [the Rt Hon Lord] Jacob Rothschild, under a deal they concluded prior to Mr. Khodorkovsky' s arrest, the Sunday Times reported.

               LEONID NEVZLIN

               NEWS IN BRIEF -- Leonid Nevzlin, biggest Yukos shareholder not yet in jail, has been granted Israeli citizenship, raising eyebrows even in Jerusalem over the haste in which it was done.  

          ... Nevzlin resigned from Yukos to head the Russian Jewish Congress.

Voting rights to the shares passed to Mr. Rothschild, 67, under a "previously unknown arrangement" designed to take effect in the event that Mr. Khodorkovsky could no longer "act as a beneficiary" of the shares, it said.

Mr. Khodorkovsky, 40, whom Russian authorities arrested at gunpoint and jailed pending further investigation last week, was said by the Sunday Times to have made the arrangement with Mr. Rothschild when he realized he was facing arrest.

Mr. Rothschild (left) now controls the voting rights on a stake in Yukos worth almost $13.5 billion, the newspaper said in a dispatch from Moscow.

Mr. Khodorkovsky owns 4 percent of Yukos directly and 22 percent through a trust of which he is the sole beneficiary, according to Russian analysts.

From the figures reported in the Sunday Times, it appeared Mr. Rothschild had received control of all Mr. Khodorkovsky' s shares.

The two have known each other for years "through their mutual love of the arts" and their positions as directors of the Open Russia Foundation, Yukos' philanthropic branch, it said.

Russian authorities Thursday froze billions of dollars of shares held by Mr. Khodorkovsky and his top lieutenants in Yukos -- throwing control of the country's largest oil company into limbo and causing frenzied selling on financial markets.

Russian prosecutors said owners of the shares are still entitled to dividends and retain voting rights, but can no longer sell their stakes.   They said the freeze was necessary as collateral for the $1 billion that Mr. Khodorkovsky and his associates are accused of misappropriating during the 1990s.

Mr. Rothschild is the British head of Europe's wealthy and influential Rothschild family, and runs his own investment empire.

The Guilty Parties:

Berezovsky

 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Berezovsky> http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/ Boris_Berezovsky

In recent years, Berezovsky has gone into business with  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Bush> Neil Bush, the younger brother of  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._President> U.S. President  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_W._Bush> George W. Bush. Berezovsky has been an investor in Bush's  <