Soros’ double-dealing in the Caucasus oil market

Special Reports

Soros’ double-dealing in the Caucasus oil market

By Wayne Madsen

Online Journal Contributing Writer

Aug 13, 2008 , 00:18



(WMR) -- WMR has learned details of so-called “progressive” cause donor George Soros in the underlying turmoil between Russia and Georgia in the Caucasus .



In 1994, Soros set up shop in Tbilisi , the Georgian capital, to engineer what would become known as the “Rose Revolution,” carried out ten years later. Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI) jointly pumped tons of money into programs designed to propel Georgia ’s neocon president, Mikheil Saakashvili, to power in a November 2003 coup that toppled Georgia ’s President Eduard Shevardnadze, the last Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union , from power. The OSI money was mostly spent on training neocon political operatives loyal to Saakashvili and his party and influencing the Georgian media. Media manipulation is a favorite tactic of Soros, one that he has used effectively to curb the power of the American progressive liberal movement.



After the Rose Revolution, Soros and United Nations Development Program (UNDP) director Mark Malloch Brown launched the Georgia Development and Reform Fund that was designed to curb corruption in Georgia . However, the fund was actually used to pay increased salaries for employees of the Georgian President’s office and the National Police. The $40 million pumped into the fund was matched dollar-for-dollar between OSI and the UNDP. The salaries for Georgia government apparatchiks and police bought loyalty for Saakashvili and Soros in the country.



The Tbilisi daily newspaper, 24 Saati (“24 Hours”), discovered the source of the fund was a Cyprus-registered “charity” called “Golden Fleece.” The Development and Reform fund was managed by an old Saakashvili crony, former Deputy Justice Minister Konstantine Kublashvili, who served under then-Justice Minister Saakashvili during the Shevardnadze presidency. Kublashvili told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s Georgia Service that there was no “dirty money” involved in the Golden Fleece charity. However, WMR has learned that was not what was discovered by the “ Georgia shop” at the National Security Agency’s (NSA) Medina Regional Security Operations Center (MRSOC) in San Antonio , Texas . A special and highly secure unit at the MRSOC that monitored financial flows to the region discovered the links between Golden Fleece in Cyprus -- Cyprus is a center for Russian-Israeli mob activities -- and Russian-Israeli oligarchs who were trying to oust Russian President Vladimir Putin from power.



After leaving the UN, Malloch Brown became vice chairman of Soros’ Quantum Fund, Soros’ flagship hedge fund, as well as vice president of Soros’ OSI.



In 2004, Soros, using his “Democracy Alliance,” which represented nothing more than a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party by globalist forces represented by Soros and his friends, pooled and bundled campaign contributions for a number of Democratic candidates, earning him the same loyalty that similar bribes bought him in Georgia . Soros reportedly convinced organizations and web sites he funded, including MoveOn.org, DailyKos, Democratic Underground, and others to launch an anti-Halliburton campaign. Halliburton was engaged in the construction of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline that pumped oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to the Turkish deep water port at Ceyhan on the Mediterranean coast.



The campaign by Soros against Halliburton worked. The firm began divesting itself of its Kellogg, Brown & Root subsidiary in early 2006. As the result of the Soros effort against Halliburton, the company’s stock plummeted from $40 a share to $26 a share. Soros, a longtime hedge fund and currency speculator who profits from crises and financial collapses, bought 2 million shares of Halliburton at its low share price of $26 per share. He then, according to WMR’s financial industry sources, ordered his “progressive” recipients of funding to ease off on their criticism of Halliburton. The result was that Halliburton shares increased to $50 a share. Soros earned a cool $40 million from his manipulation of the politics and finances surrounding Vice President Dick Cheney’s old firm.



Soros’ manipulation of the progressive media is highlighted in an article by Michael Barker, a doctoral student at Griffith University in Australia , titled “The Soros Media ‘Empire.’” Soros’ role in “democracy manipulation” is cited in the article: “The Soros Foundations’ most recent annual report shows that Soros still remains a force to be reckoned with among democracy manipulators, as the entire Soros Foundations Network distributed over $400 million worth of grants in 2006.”



Saakashvili’s own ties with “progressive journalists” linked to Soros are highlighted by his friendship with Scott Horton, a journalist with Harper’s. Horton hired Saakashvili in 1994 to work for him at the New York law firm of Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler after the Georgian graduated from Columbia Law School . Other Patterson, Belknap et al. alumni include former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and current Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Saakashvili referred to Horton as his “colleague” at a July 2006 seminar at the neocon citadel, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) in Washington , DC .



In January of this year, Saakashvili won the presidential election amid opposition charges of fraud. Opposition Labor Party officials charged that Saakashvili supporters voted more than once at multiple polling places. The verdict from Florida Democratic Representative Alcee Hastings, an impeached former federal judge, was that he saw no evidence of election fraud. Hastings was heading an election observer delegation from the Organization for Security and Cooperation on Europe (OSCE), an organization that his been co-opted by Soros.



In 2006, when Saakashvili’s police arrested opposition leaders, Konstantin Zatulin, an exiled former Georgian security chief and leader of the opposition Justice Party, told Moscow ’s Ekho Moskvy radio station that one of those arrested in Georgia was the head of the “Anti-Soros Movement.”



Russia is taking intense heat from not only the neocon media in its reprisal against Georgian aggression against South Ossetia , but also from the usual Soros-funded “progressive” media outlets, print, broadcast, and web-based.



WMR has taken quite a beating over the years from parties funded by Soros. However, we are working on a major initiative that will throw a significant monkey wrench into the manipulation of the media by Soros and his partners-in-crime.



Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.



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