原油価格操作と統一教会とスイス・オランダ投機筋とそのバック

何故か日本では会社名が報道されてない件。（ｗ

原油高は投機が主因…スイスの取引会社が一時シェア10％超える大型投機　米CFTCの調査で明らかに

スイスの大手商品取引会社が７月、ニューヨーク・マーカンタイル取引所の原油先物市場で一時、市場シェアで１０％を超える投機的な取引をしていたことが米商品先物取引委員会（ＣＦＴＣ）の調査で分かった。米メディアが２１日までに伝えた。

米政府は、原油高騰は新興国の経済成長による需給関係の悪化が原因としていたが、今回の調査結果は投機主因説を後押ししそうだ。

米当局はこれまで、この商品取引会社を取引規制が課される「投機筋」ではなく、石油会社や航空会社などと同じ「実需筋」に区分していた。 米証券大手など大手金融機関の一部も実需筋に区分され取引量の上限がなく、投機マネーの実態は不透明なままだ。

米議会は「原油先物市場の投機マネーは、これまで考えていたより大きな影響力がある」（民主党下院議員）とし、規制強化策を盛り込んだ法案の成立を目指す方針だ。

http://www.chunichi.co.jp/s/article/2008082290105035.html

このスイスの取引会社とはVitol Group。
たしかトレーディングのＨＱはオランダだったような・・・（ｗ

日本では何故かあまり報道されなかったようですが、Ｖｉｔｏｌは以前、イラクに対する国連の人道支援事業「石油と食糧の交換計画」（国連のoil-for-food programme）をめぐる不正疑惑時にサダム・フセインにキックバックを支払った事が判明し、有罪判決が2007年に確定してるんですね。（ｗ

最近は中国で温室効果ガスの排出削減権をめぐり活躍されてるようで・・・（ｗ

で、以前こんな事があったわけですよ・・・（ｗ

ＦＢＩが韓国人ロビイストに逮捕状　人道支援不正疑惑

2005年04月15日11時23分

　イラクに対する国連の人道支援事業「石油と食糧の交換計画」をめぐる不正疑惑で、ニューヨーク連邦地検と連邦捜査局（ＦＢＩ）は１４日、イラク政府に委託されてこの計画の実現を国連に働きかけた韓国人ロビイストに対する逮捕状をとったことを明らかにした。また、この計画で石油を購入していたテキサス州の石油業者らが、石油価格を操作して旧フセイン政権に数百万ドルのリベートを支払ったなどとして業者を逮捕、起訴したと発表した。

　発表によると、韓国人ロビイストは、７０年代に当時の韓国中央情報部（ＫＣＩＡ）などが絡んだ米政界工作の「コリアゲート事件」で有名になり、日本の政界ともつながりのある朴東宣氏。韓国にいるとされる。届け出をしないで米国でイラク政府の代理人を務めたというのが、直接の容疑だ。

　朴氏は９２年ごろ、イラク系の米国人と共謀して、国連制裁で石油禁輸状態にあったイラクが石油と引き換えに食糧を得られるよう国連に働きかけることを計画。国連高官に、マンハッタンの自宅で会ったり、スイスでイラク政府高官との会合を仲立ちしたりした。交換計画の具体的な中身についても働きかけたとされる。交換計画は９５年に安保理が決定、翌年開始された。

　朴氏はイラク政府から少なくとも２００万ドルを受け取ったが、一部は国連高官の「世話をする」ための現金だったという。交換計画の実施後の不正は国連の内部調査でも明らかになっているが、計画の立案段階から、国連高官が働きかけを受けていた疑いが浮上した。検察はこの高官の名前は明らかにしていない。

　一方、逮捕、起訴されたのは同計画でイラクから石油を買っていたテキサス州に本拠を置く石油精製会社ベイオイルの経営者デビッド・チャルマーズ被告。０１年ごろ、数百万ドルのリベートを旧フセイン政権の求めに応じて支払った疑い。このリベート代と利益のため、虚偽の情報を流すなどして石油の買い取り価格を不正に操作した疑いももたれている。検察はチャルマーズ被告との共犯として、ブルガリア人を起訴、英国人の身柄引き渡しを、英国に求めるとしている。

http://www.asahi.com/international/update/0415/007.html?t

これが、下記の案件を調査してる米国CFTCサイドの方々の中に韓国金融当局関係者の某教授がいらっしゃる理由かもね。（ｗ

オランダのOptiver Holdingが原油価格操作の疑い
http://antikimchi.seesaa.net/article/103670316.html

で、コリアゲート事件とか朴東宣とかKCIAと言えば勿論統一協会でして、やっぱ文鮮明のヘリ墜落事故とかプリンセスガーデンとか外務省とか全て繋がっちゃうわけですね。（爆ｗ

因みに・・・

毎日新聞だけが国連の人道支援事業「石油と食糧の交換計画」をめぐる国際的スキャンダルについて報道してた件。（爆ｗ


後は下記の記事参照。

朴東宣のことを淡々とブログするよ
http://finalvent.cocolog-nifty.com/fareastblog/2005/04/post_64b4.html

ダメリカよりロシアが先に終了しちゃいそうな件（ｗ
http://antikimchi.seesaa.net/article/105045918.html

・

November 21, 2007 - 12:26 PM
Swiss firm fined over oil-for-food kickbacks
Final oil-for-food report published Swiss-based oil trader Vitol has been fined $17.5 million (SFr19.3 million) after pleading guilty in New York to paying kickbacks to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
Authorities in Switzerland are pursuing numerous Swiss companies in relation to corrupt payments under the United Nations (UN) oil-for-food programme.
At the beginning of this year, legal proceedings were underway against 33 Swiss firms, but the Swiss Prosecutor's Office did not wish to comment on the status of these cases on Wednesday. The charges include breaches of the Iraq embargo, money laundering and bribery of foreign officials.
Vitol, which had revenues of $114 billion in 2006, avoided sanctions against individual executives in the case before New York State's Supreme Court.
The oil-trading firm is one of 37 Swiss or Swiss-based companies named in a UN-backed report for allegedly making illicit payments to Iraq in the oil-for-food programme. The company categorically denied the allegations when the report was published.
An Independent Inquiry Committee (IIC) was set up by the UN to investigate the oil scheme and it published its fifth and final report in 2005.
The IIC said in its final report that the firms named would not necessarily have known about the bribes and surcharges. It also said that corruption would not have been so pervasive had there been better discipline by UN management.
Sanctions
The $60 billion oil programme was set up by the UN to ease the effect of six years of international sanctions on Iraq following the invasion in Kuwait. It allowed the government of Iraq to sell oil in exchange for food, medical supplies and other humanitarian needs.
New York prosecutors alleged that Vitol, through an associated entity or third parties, paid $13 million in kickbacks to Iraqi officials in connection with oil purchases from June 2001 to September 2002, but allowed false representations to be made to the UN that no kickbacks were paid.
Vitol's case is one of several before the US courts recently that are the result of a wide-ranging criminal probe into the oil-for-food programme.
Another Swiss firm, Lucerne-based Trafigura, pleaded guilty before a Texas court in May 2006 to making kickback payments and agreed to pay a fine of $20 million.
Before the IIC was established, Swiss authorities fined a Geneva-based oil trading firm SFr50,000 for making an illegal payment to Iraq.
Companies based in Switzerland played a prominent role in the oil trade with Iraq in the embargo years. Swiss-based oil-trading companies bought $3.5 billion worth of oil direct from Iraq.
According to IIC figures, roughly half of oil-trading as part of the oil-for-food programme was financed through banks based in Switzerland.
A Swiss Federal Banking Commission investigation into the role played by Swiss-based banks in the programme found that the banks did not breach their due diligence obligations when conducting this business.
http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/front/Swiss_firm_fined_over_oil_for_food_kickbacks.html?siteSect=105&sid=8448484&cKey=1195656892000&ty=st

Texan Is Indicted in Iraq Oil Sales by Hussein Aides
By JULIA PRESTON and JUDITH MILLER
Published: April 15, 2005
An American oil trader and a Korean lobbyist with a scandalous past were charged yesterday in connection with illegal gains and kickbacks involving the United Nations oil-for-food program during Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.
In an indictment, federal authorities in New York said David Bay Chalmers Jr., a Houston oil businessman, and his company, Bayoil U.S.A., made millions of dollars in illegal kickbacks to the Iraqi government while trading oil under the $65 billion aid program.
Separate charges were brought against Tongsun Park, a millionaire South Korean businessman, for acting as an unregistered lobbyist for Iraq in behind-the-scenes negotiations in the United States to set up and shape the United Nations program. The criminal complaint said Mr. Park received at least $2 million in secret payments from Mr. Hussein's government for serving as a liaison between Iraqi and United Nations officials.
Mr. Park was at the center of a lobbying scandal in the 1970's, when he was accused of paying bribes to lawmakers in Washington to secure support for loans to South Korea.
Bayoil U.S.A. Inc., was the first American company to be indicted in the widening criminal investigations of the oil-for-food program, which was established by the United Nations in 1995 to sell Iraqi oil and use the proceeds to buy food and medicine and other goods for the Iraqi people.
The authorities not only charged that Bayoil made illegal payments to secure Iraqi oil, but also that it conspired to artificially lower the price Iraq received, depriving the Iraqi people of resources for sorely needed items. The charges also disclosed new information about an alleged plan to pay senior United Nations officials to influence the course of the program.
Catherine M. Recker, a lawyer for Mr. Chalmers, said the Bayoil defendants and the company would plead not guilty and "vigorously dispute" the criminal charges.
According to federal authorities and the complaint against Mr. Park, he was a partner in the lobbying effort with Samir Vincent, an Iraqi-American businessman who pleaded guilty in January to illegal lobbying for Iraq.
Mr. Vincent, who is cooperating with federal investigators, said Iraqi officials signed agreements in 1996 to pay him and Mr. Park $15 million for their lobbying, the complaint says.
One of their tasks was "to take care of" a high-ranking United Nations official, which Mr. Vincent understood to mean to pay bribes, the complaint says. The authorities did not identify or bring charges against the United Nations official.
Mr. Park and Mr. Vincent met at least three times in 1993 with Iraqi officials and the United Nations official - twice in Manhattan and once in Geneva. They later received cash payments from Iraq for at least $2.2 million, delivered from Baghdad in diplomatic pouches. Mr. Vincent also received grants to sell at least 9 million barrels of Iraqi oil, the complaint said.
David N. Kelley, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, in Manhattan, said the complaint alleges that Mr. Park intended to bribe the official, but does not show that the official received any bribe.
The complaint also charges that Mr. Park met with a second unnamed senior United Nations official, once in a restaurant in Manhattan. After that, Mr. Park said he invested $1 million he was paid by Iraq in a Canadian company belonging to the son of the second United Nations official, the complaint says.
Mr. Kelley declined to say whether the officials were still actively serving at the world organization. He said, however, that the investigation is "broad and large" and that his office would "wring the towel dry" in pursuing United Nations officials.
From 1993 through 1995, as negotiations were under way to create the program, Mr. Vincent also met or spoke frequently with a former United States official who was trying to "garner support" for the oil-for-food program from administration officials in Washington, according to the complaint.
It does not name the official.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/15/international/middleeast/15food.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5094&en=f49764710bf89903&hp&ex=1113537600&partner=homepage
Former President Jimmy Carter and Jack Kemp, a former housing secretary and congressman, have both said they met with Mr. Vincent, but their meetings came after the program was established. Both said they made no attempt to influence the program.
Also named in the indictment against Bayoil were two associates of the company: John Irving, a British oil broker based in London, and Ludmil Dionissiev, a Bulgarian oil trader living in Houston.
Mr. Chalmers and Bayoil were accused of making deals to trade Iraqi oil between 2000 and 2003, knowing that Mr. Hussein's government had imposed an illegal secret surcharge on all oil purchases after 2000.
Mr. Chalmers is charged with devising a plan with Iraqi officials to artificially deflate the official price of Iraqi oil, which was determined by United Nations monitors, so traders could pay the illegal surcharge to the government and still reap profits on the sales.
The authorities did not charge any United Nations officials with participating in the price-fixing scheme.
Bayoil is also accused of transferring millions of dollars in illegal commissions through a foreign company, which was not named, to a company in the United Arab Emirates, Al Wasel and Babel General Trading L.L.C. The authorities charged that Al Wasel was a front set up to channel at least $2 million to pay the hidden commissions to officials in Iraq.
"Motivated by greed, they flouted the law, made a mockery of the stated aims of the oil-for-food program and willingly conspired with a foreign government with whom our country was on the brink of war," John Klochan, the acting assistant director of the F.B.I. in New York. He said the defendants had turned the United Nations program into a "cash cow masquerading as a humanitarian venture."
Mr. Chalmers and Mr. Dionissiev were arrested yesterday morning at their homes in Houston and will be arraigned Monday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Mr. Kelley said. An arrest warrant and extradition request have been filed for Mr. Irving.
If convicted, Mr. Chalmers and the other two Bayoil defendants each face a maximum of 62 years in prison and fines of up to $1 million, and the Bayoil companies face fines of $2 million.
A warrant has been issued for Mr. Park, who is believed to be in South Korea. He faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000.
An official at the South Korean Foreign Ministry said the ministry had not received any request from United States prosecutors for the extradition of Mr. Park. He said he had not known that Mr. Park was in South Korea and learned of the case from news reports.
The United Nations had no comment on the charges yesterday. But Secretary General Kofi Annan, addressing a seminar about coverage of the United Nations in the media, noted that more illicit profits were made for Iraqi oil deals outside the oil-for-food program than under it, and said the United States and Britain were partly responsible for not cracking down on the corruption.
"The bulk of the money Saddam made came after smuggling outside the oil-for-food program," Mr. Annan said. "It was on the American and British watch."
A spokesman for Paul A. Volcker, who is leading an independent inquiry into the troubled program, said his committee was "well aware" of the activities in the charges. The committee will release information when it has definitive findings, the spokesman, Michael Holtzman, said.
Michel Tellings, one of the three oil overseers who monitored Iraq's oil sales for the United Nations, downplayed the significance of the government's charge that Mr. Chalmers and Bayoil conspired to deflate the sales price that the United Nations' overseers set for Iraqi oil.
"Most oil companies and brokers said the price could be lower," he said in a telephone interview from London. "All the oil companies wanted that, and Bayoil was no exception. I don't think if you say to the oil overseers that oil should be cheaper, that it is a crime."
Mr. Tellings, who served as an overseer from September 2000 until the program's end, acknowledged that "some were a bit more aggressive" than others in pushing for lower prices. But he declined to say whether Mr. Chalmers or Bayoil were among those who pushed most actively for lower prices.
"I don't want to discuss individual cases," he said, noting that he had not yet read the complaint filed in New York.
Charles A. Duelfer, the special investigator for the Central Intelligence Agency looking for illegal weapons in Iraq, said in his report last October that from September 2000 through the end of the oil-for-food program, it was commonly known among oil companies and dealers that a surcharge had to be kicked back to the regime before they could take out any of the oil they were allocated. Many refused.
In addition, Mr. Hussein's government demanded other kickbacks in exchange for issuing vouchers for oil. Mr. Duelfer reported that Mr. Hussein got about $2 billion from the surcharges and kickbacks under the program.
Mr. Duelfer also reported that Benon Sevan, who ran the program, got secret vouchers to market 7.3 million barrels of oil.
Senator Norm Coleman, Republican of Minnesota who heads a committee investigating the program, called the indictment "a significant step forward in exposing the abuses and criminal misconduct" in the program, which had levied "a terrible cost to the Iraqi people, our allied forces, and the integrity of the U.N."
Representative Henry Hyde, the Illinois Republican and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, which is also investigating the program, said the indictment showed "the degree to which the oil-for-food program was so pervasively corrupted."
Choe Sang-Hun of The International Herald Tribune contributed reporting from Seoul, South Korea, for this article.