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Russian spy may have been poisoned by nerve agent smeared on car’s door handle

March 14, 2018 by Joseph Fitsanakis 3 Comments

The nerve agent that poisoned a Russian double spy in England last week may have been smeared on his car’s door handle, according to sources. Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, are in critical condition after being poisoned on March 4 by unknown assailants in the English town of Salisbury. Skripal, a Russian former military intelligence officer, has been living there since 2010, when he was released from a Russian prison after serving half of a 13-year sentence for spying for Britain. The British government said on Monday that it believes Skripal and his daughter were poisoned by a military-grade nerve agent, thought to have been built in the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Britain’s counterterrorism experts continue to compile evidence on the case. Moscow denies any involvement.

On Tuesday, Neil Basu, spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Service, which houses Britain’s counterterrorism force, said that the investigation into the Skripals’ poisoning was complex and painstaking. Speaking to reporters in London, Basu said that hundreds of witnesses had been contacted and nearly 400 items had been collected from various crime scenes that related to the March 4 attack on the two Russians. He added that investigators were still looking into the whereabouts of the Skripals during a 40-minute period when they were driving in Mr. Skripal’s car. According to British newspaper The Daily Mail, Mr. Skripal’s dark red BMW is now “at the center of the investigation” into his poisoning. There are claims, said the paper, that the former spy and his daughter came in physical contact with the nerve agent by touching the door handles of the BMW as they entered the car on the evening of March 4. Some investigators appear to believe that the nerve agent may have been smeared on the car’s door handles.

The Metropolitan Police are now appealing for witnesses who may have seen the Skripals driving around downtown Salisbury in the red BMW, or arriving at the car park of Sainsbury’s, part of a British nationwide supermarket chain, on the early afternoon of March 4. Basu said that it was not known whether the pair met anyone during those 40 minutes. The police spokesman said that the Skripals were still fighting for their lives at a local hospital. He added that the inquiry into their poisoning would “take many weeks”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 14 March 2018 | Permalink

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with assassinations, covert action, Russia, Sergei Skripal, UK

UK blames Russia, says it will not invoke NATO Article 5 in attack on ex-spy

March 13, 2018 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment

The British prime minister said on Monday that it was “highly likely” the nerve agent used to attack a Russian defector in England last week was developed by Russia. But sources in London told the BBC that the British government would not invoke Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which states that an attack on one member of the alliance is an attack on all. Theresa May was referring to an assassination attempt carried out on March 4 by unknown assailants against former KGB Colonel Sergei Skripal. The 66-year-old former spy and his daughter were found in a catatonic state in the town of Salisbury. It was later determined that they were attacked with a nerve agent.

Speaking in the British House of Commons, Mrs. May said that “world-leading experts” in chemical weapons had concluded Mr. Skripal had been attacked with a “military-grade nerve agent”. It was, she added, part of a group of nerve agents developed by the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s, known collectively as novichok (newcomers). The existence of these nerve agents took place in secret, but was later revealed by Russian government agents who defected to the West. British officials also disclosed yesterday that the British Foreign Office summoned the Russian Ambassador to London, Alexander Yakovenko, to seek an explanation about the attack. Additionally, London has called on Moscow to provide a “full and complete disclosure” of its novichok nerve agent program to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an intergovernmental agency based in the Netherlands, which oversees the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention.

Meanwhile NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Monday that the alliance viewed the use of a military-grade nerve agent on British soil as “horrendous and completely unacceptable” and that it was in contact with British officials about the matter. But British government officials told the BBC that London had no intention of invoking Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which requires all member-states to rally to the defense of a member under attack. The only time that Article 5 has been invoked by a member was by the United States, in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks. In Washington, White House Press Secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders said on Monday that the United States was “monitoring the incident closely” and took it “very seriously”. Mrs. Sanders described the attack on Mr. Skripal as “reckless, indiscriminative and irresponsible”, and extended the American government’s “support […] to our closest ally”, the United Kingdom. But she refused to respond to questions about whether the Russian government was behind the attack, saying that British experts were “still working through […] some of the details” of the case.

On Monday, during an official visit to the southern region of Krasnodar, Russian President Vladimir Putin was asked by a BBC reporter to comment on the attack on Skripal. He responded to the British reporter saying that the government in London would first have to “sort this out for yourselves first, then come talk to us”. He then walked away. Commenting from Moscow on Mrs. May’s allegations, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that her statement in the British Parliament had been “a circus show”.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 13 May 2018 | Permalink

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with assassinations, covert action, NATO, Russia, Sergei Skripal, UK

British intelligence to tighten security protection for Russian defectors

March 12, 2018 by Joseph Fitsanakis 3 Comments

MI6 The British secret services have begun tightening the physical security of dozens of Russian defectors living in Britain, a week after the attempted murder of former KGB Colonel Sergei Skripal in southern England. The 66-year-old double spy and his daughter, Yulia, were found in a catatonic state in the town of Salisbury on March 4. It was later determined that they had been attacked with a nerve agent. Russian officials have vehemently denied that the Kremlin had any involvement with the brazen attempt to kill Skripal. But, according to The Times, the British intelligence community has concluded that Skripal and his daughter were attacked on Moscow’s orders —most likely the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency, where Skripal worked until his arrest for spying for Britain in 2004.

Citing an unnamed source from Whitehall, the administrative headquarters of the British government, The Times said that initial assessments of Skripal’s poisoning were damning for Britain’s intelligence community. They raised questions, said the source, about the ability of Britain’s two primary spy agencies, the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), to provide security to their assets. The source told The Times that it was “impossible to reduce […] to zero” the risk of serious physical harm against individuals like Skripal, and before him Alexander Litvinenko, a former KGB officer who was poisoned to death in London in 2006. But the attack on Skripal is being viewed as an intelligence failure, said the source, and part of the response to it involves a comprehensive review of risk to British-based Russian double spies and defectors from “unconventional threats”. The latter include attacks with chemical and radiological weapons, said The Times.

The report came as another British-based Russian defector, Boris Karpichkov, told The Daily Mirror newspaper that the Kremlin has tried to poison him three times since 2006. Karpichkov, 59, joined the KGB in 1984, but became a defector-in-place for Latvian intelligence in 1991, when the Soviet Union disintegrated. He claims to have also spied on Russia for French and American intelligence. In 1998, carrying two suitcases filled with top-secret Russian government documents, and using forged passports, he arrived in Britain with his family. In 2006, while living in the UK, Karpichkov says he was warned by MI5 to leave the country because his life may be in danger. He temporarily relocated to New Zealand, where he says he was attacked with an unidentified nerve agent. He told The Mirror that he lost nearly half his weight during the following weeks, but survived due to good medical care. However, he was attacked again, he said, four months later, while still living in New Zealand.

Karpichkov told The Mirror he had been warned that his name was on a shortlist of eight individuals that the Kremlin wanted to kill. He also claimed that he was told by a source to watch out for people carrying electronic cigarettes, because Russian intelligence had developed nerve-agent weapons that were disguised as e-cigarette devices.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 12 March 2018 | Permalink

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with assassinations, Boris Karpichkov, covert action, defectors, MI5, MI6, News, Russia, Sergei Skripal, UK

Australia continues to detain whistleblower who revealed espionage behind oil deal

March 9, 2018 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment

Bernard Collaery Australia continues to deny freedom of movement to a former intelligence officer who revealed that Canberra bugged government offices in the small island nation of Timor-Leste, in an effort to secure a lucrative oil deal. The former intelligence officer, known only as “Witness K.”, is believed to be a former director of technical operations in the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS), Australia’s foreign-intelligence agency. In 2013, he publicly objected to an intelligence-collection operation that targeted the impoverished Pacific island nation of Timor-Leste, known also as East Timor.

According to Witness K., a group of ASIS officers disguised themselves as members of a renovation crew and planted numerous electronic surveillance devices in an East Timorese government complex. The inside information collected from those devices allegedly allowed the Australian government to gain the upper hand in a series of complex negotiations that led to the 2004 Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea (CMATS) treaty. The treaty awards Australia a share from profits from oil exploration in the Greater Sunrise oil and gas field, which is claimed by both Australia and East Timor. But in 2013, the East Timorese government took Australia to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, claiming that the CMATS treaty should be scrapped. The East Timorese claimed that during the sensitive negotiations that preceded the CMATS treaty, the Australian government was in possession of intelligence acquired through ASIS bugging.

The claim of the East Timorese government was supported by Witness K., who argued that ASIS’ espionage operation was both “immoral and wrong” because it was designed to benefit the interests of large energy conglomerates and had nothing to do with Australian national security. But as soon as the East Timorese told the Permanent Court of Arbitration that they would be questioning a witness from ASIS, officers from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the country’s domestic intelligence agency, raided the Canberra law offices of Bernard Collaery, East Timor’s lawyer in the case. The raiders took away documents that disclosed the identity of Witness K., and then proceeded to detain him for questioning. They also confiscated his passport, which prevented him from traveling to the Netherlands to testify in the case. Read more of this post

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with ASIO, ASIS, Australia, Bernard Collaery, Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea treaty, East Timor, economic espionage, energy resources, News

Analysis: All evidence points to professionals behind Skripal poisoning

March 8, 2018 by Joseph Fitsanakis 4 Comments

Skripal Salisbury Most state-sponsored assassinations tend to be covert operations, which means that the sponsoring party cannot be conclusively identified, even if it is suspected. Because of their covert nature, assassinations tend to be extremely complex intelligence-led operations, which are designed to provide plausible deniability to their sponsors. Consequently, the planning and implementation of these operations usually involves a large number of people, each with a narrow set of unique skills. But —and herein lies an interesting contradiction— their execution is invariably simple, both in style and method. The attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal last Sunday in England fits the profile of a state-sponsored covert operation in almost every way.

Some have expressed surprise that Skripal, a Russian intelligence officer who was jailed in 2004 for selling Moscow’s secrets to British spies, would have been targeted by the Russian state. Before being allowed to resettle in the British countryside in 2010, Skripal was officially pardoned by the Kremlin. He was then released from prison along with four other Russian double agents, in exchange for 10 Russian deep-cover spies who had been caught in the United States earlier that year. According to this argument, “a swap has been a guarantee of peaceful retirement” in the past. Thus killing a pardoned spy who has been swapped with some of your own violates the tacit rules of espionage, which exist even between bitter rivals like Russia and the United States.

This assumption, however, is baseless. There are no rules in espionage, and swapped spies are no safer than defectors, especially if they are judged to have caused significant damage to their employers. It is also generally assumed that pardoned spies who are allowed to resettle abroad will fade into retirement, not continue to work for their foreign handlers, as was the case with Skripal, who continued to provide his services to British intelligence as a consultant while living in the idyllic surroundings of Wiltshire. Like the late Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko, who died in London of radioactive poisoning in 2006, Skripal entrusted his personal safety to the British state. But in a country that today hosts nearly half a million Russians of all backgrounds and political persuasions, such a decision is exceedingly risky.

On Wednesday, the Metropolitan Police Service announced that Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, had been “targeted specifically” by a nerve agent. The official announcement stopped short of specifying the nerve agent used, but experts point to sarin gas or VX. Both substances are highly toxic and compatible with the clinical symptoms reportedly displayed by the Skripals when they were found in a catatonic state by an ambulance crew and police officers last Sunday. At least one responder, reportedly a police officer, appears to have also been affected by the nerve agent. All three patients are reported to be in a coma. They are lucky to have survived at all, given that nerve agents inhaled through the respiratory system work by debilitating the body’s respiratory muscles, effectively causing the infected organism to die from suffocation.

In the past 24 hours, at least one British newspaper stated that the two Russians were “poisoned by a very rare nerve agent, which only a few laboratories in the world could have produced”. That is not quite true. It would be more accurate to say that few laboratories in the world would dare to produce sarin or VX, which is classified as a weapon of mass destruction. But no advanced mastering of chemistry or highly specialist laboratories are needed to manufacture these agents. Indeed, those with knowledge of military history will know that they were produced in massive quantities prior to and during World War II. Additionally —unlike polonium, which was used to kill Litvinenko in 2006— nerve gas could be produced in situ and would not need to be imported from abroad. It is, in other words, a simple weapon that can be dispensed using a simple method, with little risk to the assailant(s). It fits the profile of a state-sponsored covert killing: carefully planned and designed, yet simply executed, thus ensuring a high probability of success.

By Wednesday, the British security services were reportedly using “hundreds of detectives, forensic specialists, analysts and intelligence officers working around the clock” to find “a network of highly-trained assassins” who are “either present or past state-sponsored actors”. Such actors were almost certainly behind the targeted attack on the Skripals. They must have dispensed the lethal agent in liquid, aerosol or a gas form, either by coming into direct physical contact with their victims, or by using a timed device. Regardless, the method used would have been designed to give the assailants the necessary time to escape unharmed. Still, there are per capita more CCTV cameras in Britain than in any other country in the world, which gives police investigators hope that they may be able to detect the movements of the attackers. It is highly unlikely that the latter remain on British soil. But if they are, and are identified or caught, it is almost certain that they will be found to have direct links with a foreign government.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 08 March 2018 | Permalink

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Analysis, assassinations, covert action, Joseph Fitsanakis, Newstex, Russia, Sergei Skripal, UK

British intelligence already sees Kremlin behind ex-spy’s poisoning, say sources

March 6, 2018 by Joseph Fitsanakis 5 Comments

Britain’s counterintelligence service is nearing the conclusion that a foreign government, most likely Russia, tried to kill a Russian double spy and his daughter, who are now fighting for their lives in a British hospital. Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia Skripal, 33, are said to remain in critical condition, after falling violently ill on Sunday afternoon while walking in downtown Salisbury, a picturesque cathedral city in south-central England. Skripal arrived in England in 2010 as part of a large-scale spy-swap between the United States, Britain and Russia. He was among four Russian citizens that Moscow released from prison and allowed to resettle in the West, in exchange for 10 Russian deep-cover intelligence officers, who had been arrested earlier that year by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States.

Since Skripal’s poisoning made headlines on Monday morning, the basic details of his story have been reported extensively. He is believed to have served in Soviet and Russian military intelligence for several decades, rising to the rank of colonel. But in 2004 he was arrested and eventually convicted by Russian authorities for spying on behalf of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). He had served nearly 7 years of a 13-year sentence in 2010, when he was pardoned by then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and allowed to resettle in England with his immediate family. He did so in Salisbury, where he was found in a near-fatal state last Sunday, slumped on a street bench next to his equally catatonic daughter. Inevitably, the story brought back memories of the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko, a former officer in the Soviet and Russian intelligence services, who defected to Britain but was poisoned to death with a radioactive substance in 2006. His murder prompted London to expel four Russian diplomats from Britain, a move that was countered by Moscow, which also expelled four British diplomats from the country.

Despite the close parallels between Litvinenko and Skripal, the British government has not publicly blamed Russia for Sunday’s attempted killing. But according to The Times newspaper, officials at the Security Service (MI5), Britain’s counterintelligence agency, are already pointing to Russia as the culprit of the attempt on Skripal’s life. The London-based paper cited anonymous sources in Whitehall, the administrative headquarters of the British government, who said that MI5 experts were already briefing government officials about the details of the assassination attempt by Russian government agents.

Actions taken by the British government in the past 24 hours also point to Whitehall viewing the attempt on Skripal’s life as an operation sponsored by a state, most likely by Russia. The investigation of the incident is now being led by the counterterrorism branch of the Metropolitan Police Service in London. Additionally, samples of the victims’ tissue, as well as blood and other bodily fluids, have been sent for examination by toxicologists at the Ministry of Defence’s top-secret Science and Technology Laboratory in Porton Down. It also emerged last night that British Home Secretary Amber Rudd has called an emergency meeting of the British government’s Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (COBR, also known as Cobra) group, which she chairs. The group consists of cabinet ministers, senior civil servants, and the leadership of the Metropolitan Police and the intelligence services, who meet to respond to developing emergencies of a national scale.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 06 March 2018 | Permalink

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with assassinations, covert action, imprisoned spy swaps, News, Russia, Sergei Skripal, UK

US spy agency to help human rights groups monitor North Korea

March 5, 2018 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment

NGA The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), one of America’s most secretive spy organizations, will work with a number of human-rights groups to monitor human rights in North Korea, according to a senior NGA official. Formed in 1996 as the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the NGA operates under the supervision of the US Department of Defense. It is tasked with supporting US national security by collecting, analyzing and distributing geospatial intelligence. It also performs a combat-support mission for the Pentagon. The agency collects most of its data from satellites, surveillance aircraft and unmanned surveillance drones. Headquartered in a vast 2.3 million square foot building in Washington, the NGA is known for its secretive nature and rarely makes headlines.

Recently, however, NGA data expert Chris Rasmussen told Foreign Policy that the agency is finalizing an innovative agreement to work with human rights groups on North Korea. Rasmussen, a longtime military analyst, said that the NGA would provide the groups with access to raw imagery collected through airborne reconnaissance, and would share with them analyses by its experts. The groups would also be able to use a digital imagery application developed by NGA for use by its analysts. The human rights groups specialize on human rights in North Korea and have in the past used commercial satellite imagery data to help locate mass execution sites and mass graves in the secretive Asian country. They have also been able to locate concentration camps and have evaluated the impact of natural disasters in North Korea. Now the NGA will share its intelligence collection arsenal with these groups, in an attempt to shed further light on the state of human rights in North Korea.

Rasmussen said he could not yet reveal the names of the human rights groups that the NGA is preparing to work with, nor give details about the precise topics that the collaboration would focus on, because the official agreements are still being formalized. However, he said that no US intelligence agency had ever worked so closely with human rights organizations. “This kind of collaboration has never been done before with an intelligence agency”, said Rasmussen. He added that the NGA is hoping to use this collaboration as an incubator to “expand to other areas” with human rights groups and think tanks.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 05 March 2018 | Permalink

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Chris Rasmussen, human rights, News, North Korea, satellite reconnaissance, US National Geospatial Intelligence Agency

Argentina’s spy chief allegedly implicated in Brazil money-laundering scandal

March 2, 2018 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

Gustavo Arribas The director of Argentina’s spy agency has been accused by security officials in Brazil of being implicated in a multi-million dollar money-laundering scandal that involves dozens of senior officials across Latin America. The allegations were made in the context of the so-called “operation car wash”, known in Portuguese as Operação Lava Jato. The term refers to a money-laundering probe that began in 2014, following allegations of illegal financial practices by a number of private import-export companies in Brazil. Soon, however, Lava Jato led to the exposure of large-scale corruption, nepotism and bribing practices at the core of Brazil’s state-owned oil company Petrobras. Today, four years later, the constantly expanding investigation has implicated nearly 200 people —many of them well-known politicians— in numerous Latin American countries, including Mexico, Peru and Venezuela.

On Thursday, the car wash probe appeared to implicate for the first time a senior state official in Argentina. The figure at the center of the allegations is Gustavo Arribas (pictured), the Director General of the country’s Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI). A former sports tycoon, who made his fortune as a footballers’ representative, he surprised many in December 2015 when he was appointed spy director by Argentina’s President, Mauricio Macri. Arribas has financial dealings with Brazil, where he owns real estate. But these properties may become liabilities after Arribas was accused by Victor Ferreira, a federal police official and Lava Jato investigator, of having received nearly $1 million in a money-laundering scheme involving fraudulent invoices submitted for financial compensation to the Brazilian government by bogus companies. The money was allegedly sent to Arribas via a wire transfer that was routed to him through a bank in Hong King. The transfer had not been approved by the Central Bank of Brazil, which is supposed to supervise all overseas money transfers involving government contracts.

Brazilian prosecutors served several suspects across Brazil with search warrants on Thursday, in an attempt to uncover more information about the alleged illegal money transfer. Arribas, however, issued a statement later on the same day, in which he denied any connection with Lava Jato and said that allegations against him were motivated by malice. In 2016, Arribas was accused in Argentina of having received nearly $600,000 from corrupt officials of Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, which is implicated in operation car wash. However, he was cleared by a federal judge, who threw the case out of court. In his statement issued on Thursday, Arribas stressed that he had not been officially charged with any crime in Argentina or Brazil.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 02 March 2018 | Permalink

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with AFI (Argentina), Argentina, Brazil, corruption, Gustavo Arribas, News, Operation Carwash, Victor Ferreira

North Korean leaders used fraudulent Brazilian passports to travel abroad

March 1, 2018 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment

Josef Pwag The late Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, and his son and current Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, used forged Brazilian passports to secure visas for overseas trips and to travel abroad undetected, according to reports. The Reuters news agency cited five anonymous “senior Western European security sources” in claiming that the two North Korean leaders’ images appear on Brazilian passports issued in the 1990s. The news agency posted images of the passports, which appear to display photographs of Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un. It said that the two leaders’ faces had been verified through the use of facial recognition software.

The passports were issued in the name of Josef Pwag and Ijong Tchoi. Both bear fake dates of birth and list Sao Paulo, Brazil, as the passport holders’ birthplace. Both passports bear the issuance stamp of the “Embassy of Brazil in Prague”, Czech Republic, and are dated February 26, 1996. Reuters cited an anonymous source from Brazil, who said that the fake passports were not forged from scratch. They were in fact genuine travel documents that had been sent out in blank form for use by the Brazilian embassy’s passport issuance office. The Reuters report quotes an unnamed Western security official who said that the forged passports were mostly likely used by their holders to secure travel visas from foreign embassies in Southeast Asia, mostly in Japan and Hong Kong. They could also have been used as back-ups, in case the two Kims needed to be evacuated from North Korea in an emergency —for instance an adversarial military coup or a foreign military invasion. At the very least, the passports indicate a desire to secure and safeguard the Kims’ ability to travel internationally.

North Korea’s intelligence services are known for making extensive use of fraudulent passports. Readers of this blog will recall that the two female North Korean agents who killed Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-un’s half-brother, in February of 2017, had been supplied with forged passports. The two women, who are now in prison in Malaysia, were using Indonesian and Vietnamese passports.

Reuters said it contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil, which said it was still investigating the whether the two passports were indeed issued to members of North Korea’s ruling family, and how they came to be issued. The news agency also contacted the embassy of North Korea in Brazil, but officials there declined to comment.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 01 March 2018 | Permalink

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Brazil, Brazilian embassy in the Czech Republic, Czech Republic, forgery, Ijong Tchoi, Josef Pwag, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, North Korea, travel documentation

Philippines summons US ambassador to protest negative intelligence report

February 28, 2018 by Ian Allen 1 Comment

Sung Kim The United States ambassador to the Philippines has been summoned by Manila in response to the publication of an American intelligence report that described President Rodrigo Duterte as a threat to democracy. The report, published on February 13, represents a joint assessment of worldwide challenges to the interests of the United States. It is compiled annually by all 16 member agencies that make up the US Intelligence Community. This year’s report focused on the administration of President Duterte, who has led a self-styled “war on drugs, corruption and crime” in the Philippines since he assumed office in June 2016.

By the government’s own account, Duterte’s war has left more than 4,000 people dead in the past 18 months. But some human rights groups estimate the number of deaths at 11,000 or even higher. The US intelligence report notes that Duterte declared martial law in the Philippines’ southern region of Mindanao, which is expected to remain in place for most of 2018. It expresses concerns about rumors that the government may continue to impose martial law indefinitely and that it may extend it nationwide. It also expresses concern about Duterte’s prior statements that he intends to turn his government into a “revolutionary regime”.

At a press conference in Manila, President Duterte’s spokesman Harry Roque said that the US ambassador to the Philippines capital, Sung Kim, met with Salvador Medialdea on Tuesday. Medialdea is the president’s executive secretary, who is the highest-ranking official in Duterte’s office. According to Roque, Medialdea told the US ambassador that the Philippine embassy in Washington was prepared to “give US intelligence accurate information about the reality” of the political situation in the Philippines. He also informed Ambassador Kim that the Philippines president had respect for the rule of law. A statement issued by the US embassy in Manila said that Ambassador Kim informed Medialdea about “the nature of the […] report, which is based on widely available information”.

The meeting ended with the two officials reaffirming “the strength of the broad and deep bilateral relationship” between Washington and Manila. They also said that the US would continue to cooperate with the Philippines on political, economic and security issues. However, tensions between the two countries have been high all week. On Thursday, President Duterte accused the Central Intelligence Agency of funding Rappler.com, a very popular news and information website based in the Philippines and Indonesia, which he said was engaged in a systematic effort to undermine his administration.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 27 February 2018 | Permalink

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with DNI, Harry Roque, News, Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, Salvador Medialdea, Southeast Asia, Sung Kim, United States

Discovery of cocaine in Russian diplomatic luggage leads to numerous arrests

February 27, 2018 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment

FSB drug arrests A Russian former diplomatic employee and an Argentine police officer are among six people arrested following the discovery of nearly 1000 pounds of cocaine inside the Russian diplomatic compound in Buenos Aires. The arrests took place last Thursday and were announced in Argentina by the country’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich. She told reporters that the arrests came after a 14-month investigation in Argentina, Russia and Germany. She added that the investigation unveiled “one of the most complex and extravagant drug-dealing operations” in Argentina’s history.

The 14-month probe dates to December of 2016, when Victor Koronelli, Russia’s ambassador to Argentina, and thee members of Russia’s Federal Security Service, discreetly approached Argentinian authorities. They informed the Argentinians that they had discovered 16 pieces of luggage filled with drugs inside an annex of the Russian embassy in Buenos Aires. Argentinian authorities were given permission to secretly enter the embassy grounds and inspect the suitcases. They confirmed that they contained more than 850 pounds (390 kilos) of cocaine, with a street value of more than $60 million. The suitcases were intended for transfer to Russia via a diplomatic flight. Cargo transferred on diplomatic flights cannot be searched by international customs officials due to the privilege of diplomatic immunity.

According to Bullrich, diplomatic counter-narcotics officers secretly transferred the bags to a separate location, where they replaced the cocaine with flour and fitted the suitcases with GPS tracking devices, before returning them to the Russian embassy annex. The luggage was eventually transferred to Russia via airplane in December 2017, a year after it was bugged by the Argentinians. Several Argentinian customs officers traveled to Russia to monitor the transfer of the shipment, in coordination with Russian authorities. The latter arrested two Russian citizens who tried to collect the suitcases. Another Russian citizen, and former staff member of the Russian embassy in Argentina, Alia Abyanov, was arrested in Moscow. Officials said Abyanov helped plan the transfer of the suitcases to Russia.

Two Argentines with dual Russian citizenship were also arrested in Buenos Aires. One of them has been named as Iván Blizniouk, a police officer, who is believed to have mediated between the drug smugglers and corrupt Argentine customs officers. A seventh suspect, identified only as “Señor K.” by the Argentine authorities, remains at large. He is believed to be living in Germany and is currently wanted by Interpol pursuant to an international warrant that has been issued for his arrest.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 27 February 2018 | Permalink

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Alia Abyanov, Argentina, corruption, diplomatic immunity, FSB, Iván Blizniouk, narcotics trade, News, Patricia Bullrich, Russia, Russian embassy in Argentina

Latvia warns of ‘hybrid war’ as central bank corruption probe widens

February 26, 2018 by Joseph Fitsanakis 1 Comment

Ilmars Rimsevics Latvian defense officials have hinted that Russia is trying to destabilize Latvia’s economy, as a Western-backed anti-corruption probe at the highest levels of the Baltic country’s banking sector deepens. Developments have progressed at a high speed since Monday of last week, when Latvia’s Corruption Prevention and Combating Bureau arrested Ilmars Rimsevics, the longtime Governor of the Bank of Latvia —the country’s central bank. Bureau investigators said Rimsevics’ arrest related to charges that he received bribes in order to facilitate money laundering from Russia.

Rimsevics became deputy governor of the Bank of Latvia in 1992, just months after the country seceded from the Soviet Union. In 2001 he was promoted to governor, a post that he has held onto ever since. When the small Baltic country joined the European Union, in January 2014, Rimsevics automatically became a member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB), which directs the Eurozone’s monetary policy and monitors the performance of the euro. But last week the Latvian government rescinded Rimsevics’ security clearance and a scheduled meeting of the ECB in Frankfurt took place without him.

This dramatic development underscores the troubled state of Latvia’s banking sector, which is a notorious reputation as one of Europe’s most lucrative money-laundering hubs. Soon after it gained its independence, the small country of 2 million became an attractive conduit for Russia’s nouveau riche seeking to funnel their money westward. The country’s sizeable Russian-speaking minority allowed the local banking sector to offer highly sought-after services in the Russian language, which further-facilitated its contacts with wealthy Russian clients. This was further-enhanced by Latvia’s integration into the economic structure of the European Union in 2014. But Western countries began voicing concerns about close links between Latvia’s banking sector and Russian oligarchs in 1996. By 2011, the United States Department of the Treasury had identified numerous Latvian banks as serious violators of laws designed to prevent money laundering. In 2014, and again in 2017, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project identified Latvia as part of an extensive international money-laundering scheme dubbed “the Russian Laundromat”.

Notably, Rimsevics was arrested less than a week after Washington vowed to impose penalties on ABLV, Latvia’s third largest bank, for “institutionalizing money laundering” and violating a host of financial sanctions imposed by the United Nations, including sanctions against North Korea’s nuclear program. There is no question, therefore, that Rimsevics’ dramatic arrest was designed to combat what The Financial Times recently called “a banking scandal on the Baltic”. In the past few hours, reports from Riga indicate that ABLV may be on the brink of collapse, being unable to withstand the financial effects of the public scandal that emerged in recent days.

But things are never simple in the Baltic region. Soon after Rimsevics’ release on bail, reports in the Latvian media pointed to alleged efforts by Russia to defame him, in an effort to further-tarnish the already damaged reputation of Latvia’s banking sector. On Tuesday of last week, the Latvian Ministry of Defense said it had evidence that Rimsevics was targeted in a “disinformation operation” directed from abroad. It added that there was a “high probability that [a] massive information operation” had been launched for “foreign centers” aimed at destabilizing Latvia’s banks. No evidence or further information about the allegation was revealed. But the Defense Ministry’s allegations seemed to be supported by an analysis of the relevant news reporting by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensics Research Lab in Washington.

On February 23, Latvia’s Prime Minister, Maris Kucinskis, and President, Raimonds Vejonis, seemed to endorse the Defense Ministry’s allegations. Despite the fact that both politicians have urged Rimsevics to resign “for the sake of the financial system”, they also warned that Latvia was under attack in an information war. The two men did not make specific allegations, but said that the information attacks experienced by Latvia were “identical” to those seen in recent years in France, Germany, and the United States. Meanwhile, shortly after his release, Rimsevics held a press conference in Riga, where he denied all charges against him. He accused Latvia’s private banks of conspiring against him and said he was the victim of “death threats” to destabilize the country. On the same day Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russia had no comment on the situation in Latvia. “This is an internal political matter for our Latvian comrades [and] we wouldn’t want to get involved”, he said.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 26 February 2018 | Permalink

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with corruption, disinformation, Ilmars Rimsevics, Latvia, News, Newstex, psyops

US intelligence assessment describes Philippines leader as threat to democracy

February 22, 2018 by Ian Allen 2 Comments

Trump and Duterte A wide-ranging assessment by the United States Intelligence Community views the President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, as a major threat to democracy and human rights in Southeast Asia. The report, published on February 13, represents a joint assessment of worldwide challenges to the interests of the United States. It is compiled annually by all 16 member agencies that make up the US Intelligence Community. This year’s report warns that democratic governance and human rights would continue to be “fragile” in 2018, because of the autocratic governing style of several national administrations. Many Southeast Asian governments were also corrupt and displayed nepotistic tendencies, says the report. It singles out the government of Myanmar, which has been widely criticized for its inhuman treatment of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority. It also mentions the autocratic government of Thailand, which recently changed the country’s constitution, giving increased legislative powers to the country’s armed forces.

But much of the criticism in the report focuses on the administration of President Duterte, who has led a self-styled “war on drugs, corruption and crime” in the Philippines since he assumed office in June 2016. His critics in the Philippines and abroad have voiced strong objections to his aggressive tactics, which, by the government’s own account, have left more than 4,000 people dead in the past 18 months. Some human rights groups estimate the number of deaths at 11,000 or even higher. The US intelligence report notes that Duterte declared martial law in the Philippines’ southern region of Mindanao, which is expected to remain in place for most of 2018. It expresses concerns about rumors that the government may continue to impose martial law indefinitely and that it may extend it nationwide. It also expresses concern about Duterte’s prior statements that he intends to turn his government into a “revolutionary regime”.

On Tuesday, opposition lawmakers in the Philippines expressed concern about the US intelligence report and advised the Duterte administration to take its contents into consideration. But government representatives in Manila dismissed the US assessment as “myopic” and “speculative at best”. They insisted that the Philippines president “adheres to the rule of law” and would “remain loyal to the constitution” of the country. In November of last year, US President Donald Trump met Duterte during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Danang, Vietnam. Earlier in the year, the two men spoke on the phone. During that conversation, the American leader reportedly praised his Philippine counterpart for doing an “unbelievable job” in combating the drug trade in his country. Duterte is expected to visit the White House later this year.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 22 February 2018 | Permalink

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with DNI, News, Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, Southeast Asia, United States

Previously obscure N. Korean hacker group is now stronger than ever, say experts

February 21, 2018 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment

APT37 A little-known North Korean cyber espionage group has widened its scope and increased its sophistication in the past year, and now threatens targets worldwide, according to a new report by a leading cyber security firm. Since 2010, most cyber-attacks by North Korean hackers have been attributed to a group dubbed “Lazarus” by cyber security specialists. The Lazarus Group is thought to have perpetrated the infamous Sony Pictures attacks in 2014, and the worldwide wave or ransomware attacks dubbed WannaCry by experts in 2017. It is widely believed that the Lazarus Group operates on behalf of the government of North Korea. Most of its operations constitute destructive attacks —mostly cyber sabotage— and financial criminal activity.

For the past six years, a smaller hacker element within the Lazarus Group has engaged in intelligence collection and cyber espionage. Cyber security researchers have dubbed this sub-element “APT37”, “ScarCruft” or “Group123”. Historically, APT37 has focused on civilian and military targets with links to the South Korean government. The hacker group has also targeted human rights groups and individual North Korean defectors living in South Korea. However, a new report warns that APT37 has significantly expanded its activities in terms of both scope and sophistication in the past year. The report, published on Tuesday by the cyber security firm FireEye, suggests that APT37 has recently struck at targets in countries like Vietnam and Japan, and that its activities have disrupted telecommunications networks and commercial hubs in the Middle East.

According to the FireEye report, aerospace companies, financial institutions and telecom- munications service providers in at least three continents have been targeted by APT37 in recent months. What is even more worrying, says the report, is that the hacker group is now capable of exploiting so-called “zero-day” vulnerabilities. These are software bugs and glitches in commonly used software, which have not been detected by software providers and are therefore exploitable by malicious hackers. FireEye said in its report that the North Korean regime will be tempted to use APT37 increasingly often “in previously unfamiliar roles and regions”, as cyber security experts are catching up with some of Pyongyang’s more visible hacker groups, such as Lazarus.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 21 February 2018 | Permalink

Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with APT37, computer hacking, computer security, cyberespionage, FireEye Inc., Group123, News, North Korea, ScarCruft

News you may have missed #895: Africa edition

February 20, 2018 by Ian Allen Leave a comment

Hailemariam Desalegn ►►South African security contractor faces spy charges in South Sudan. William John Endley, a retired South African Army colonel, works as a security contractor for former South Sudanese Vice President Riek Machar, who is now the leader of a rebel faction fighting the government of President Salva Kiir. Endley, who has been working as Machar’s bodyguard, was arrested in August 2016 in Juba. He is now facing charges of espionage and conspiracy to overthrow the government of South Sudan.

►►Somalia appoints new police, intelligence chiefs. The Somali government announced Monday it has appointed new police and intelligence chiefs, nearly four months after their predecessors were sacked following the deadliest ever terror attack in the war-torn nation. Former deputy health minister Hussein Osman Hussein has been named head of Somalia’s intelligence service, while deputy head of police Bashir Abdi Mohamed has been promoted to police chief. Their predecessors were sacked on October 29, a day after an attack that left 27 people dead, and just two weeks after 512 people were murdered in a truck bombing in Mogadishu on October 14.

►►Ethiopia bans protests, media criticism, under state of emergency. The government of Ethiopia has declared a six-month state of emergency that includes a ban on protests and publications deemed to incite violence. The measure was announced on Friday, a day after Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn announced his surprise resignation in a televised speech. In his resignation address, Desalegn said he resigned to “smooth the path for political reform”. But critics say that the purpose of the state of emergency is “not to protect the constitutional order but to silence the voices calling for change”.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 20 February 2018 | Permalink