Analysis: An Economic Security Role for European Spy Agencies?

Economic espionage

Economic spying

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Last February, Spain’s intelligence service began investigating alleged suspicious efforts by foreign financial speculators to destabilize the Spanish economy. According to newspaper El País, the Spanish government asked the country’s Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI) to probe links between speculative moves in world financial markets and a series of damaging editorials “in the Anglo-Saxon media”. There are indications that the National Intelligence Service of Greece (EYP) is following in the CNI’s footsteps. In February, when Athens and Brussels began to realize the magnitude of the financial crisis threatening the European common currency, several news outlets suggested that the EYP was cooperating with Spanish, Irish and Portuguese intelligence services in investigating a series of coordinated speculative attacks on money markets, most of which allegedly originated from London and Washington. Read more of this post

Unprecedented German tax scandal has intelligence connection

Heinrich Kieber

Heinrich Kieber

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
Klaus Zumwinkel was until recently the CEO of Deutsche Post, Germany’s now-privatized postal company, which is said to be the world’s largest logistics corporation. Early yesterday morning, Zumwinkel was given a two-year suspended sentence and fined €1 million for systematically evading taxes “with criminal energy”, as the presiding judge put it. The disgraced former CEO is thus far the highest-profile offender in what has become the largest financial crime scandal in German history. The affair involves nearly 1,000 names of wealthy investors, celebrities, and business executives, linked to illegal fund deposits at LLB and LGT Group, two “no-questions-asked” banks owned by the Royal family of the tiny alpine tax haven of Liechtenstein. What is perhaps less known is that the investigation, which now incorporates thousands of individuals in at least a dozen countries, began through a tip received by Germany’s foreign intelligence service. Read more of this post

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