Neck of the woods
“Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs Michael Froman and Attorney General Eric Holder will lead a high level delegation consisting of officials from the Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of State, and the National Security Staff to Doha, Qatar from September 11-13, for the inaugural Arab Forum on Asset Recovery. The United States is co-organizing the Forum with the government of the State of Qatar………. Corruption has been a core public grievance in the region, and the United States has worked closely with the new governments and citizens of Arab countries in transition as they fight corruption and seek justice by recovering stolen assets….…………..”
“The inaugural meeting of the Arab Forum on Asset Recovery will be hosted in Doha, Qatar on September 11 to 13, 2012. The meeting is co-organized by Qatar and the United States presidency of the G8, with technical support from the StAR initiative. The Forum will bring together the G8, Deauville Partners and Regional countries for a multi-faceted effort that raises awareness of effective measures for asset recovery, provides a forum for regional training and discussion of best practices on cases, and identifies country-specific capacity building needs………. The primary objective of the Forum is to start a process of collaboration on the issue of asset recovery in the region, through periodic meetings and other activities……….. provide regional training to practitioners engaged in tracing, freezing, and
recovering the proceeds of corruption.……………..”
Are they serious? Is the purpose to help recovery of stolen assets or is the purpose to teach the attending regimes and rulers how to better hide the assets they have stolen, are still stealing, from their peoples? They invite regimes from Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Russia, Lebanon and others to discuss recovery of assets stolen by other despots and oligarchs.
What about billions stolen by absolute tribal ruling clans and their retainers in the Gulf GCC countries? Por ejemplo, just one example, the (very) late Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud left a fortune reported (check my past postings for sources, and also here earlier) at around US $ 220-230 billion (BILLION), give or take a few billions. Forbes Magazine would call it “self-made”: as if he made that fortune from his piggy bank change or from flipping falafel in Riyadh? How about recovering the many other billions stashed by the princes, potentates, and shaikhs?
Are these people out of their collectivefuckingminds? Meeting with the biggest Arab thieves to discuss recovery of money stolen by the smaller Arab thieves of poorer places like Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and Libya? The international bureaucrats and Western governments (including the European Union, Canada, and the USA) can sit with straight faces with the grandest thieves of history in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian-American Gulf and discuss recovery of a few millions or maybe a billion stolen elsewhere. What about right there within a short distance from their forum where the potentates of the UAE and the shaikhs of Qatar and other states continue to usurp the people’s wealth? That, the robbery of the peoples of the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula by their rulers, is almost certainly the grandest robbery in history.
Yet these organizations and governments ignore the huge smelly gorillas sitting with them in the same room and search for the little chimpanzees and their peanut stash. In that they, the Western powers and the international financial organizations they control, are accomplices in the grandest of robberies.
Maybe it is true: it takes a (big) thief to catch a (smaller) thief.
Cheers
mhg
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