Thread by @DawsonSField

1) How bad has it become for the people involved in the global corruption networks being exposed by the DOJ & other investigators?

While many think nothing is happening, someone has started assassinating the assassins!

Read on to see what is happening!
#ButNothingsHappening

2) While many focus on some of the minor crimes that took place to try & derail the investigations, the crimes that #Spygate & the coup were supposed to hide are far bigger & more important. Wars, coups, sanctions & bribes to impoverish nations & continents to enrich oligarchs.

3) Oligarchs in Russia, Europe, China, the U.S. & around the world at the expense of the people of Africa, Latin America, Asia & other places where global energy & mining companies could make a buck or a few billion. The investigations began decades ago but are finally concluding

4) Today's adventure will take us to the Democratic Republic of Congo, it will involve many of the usual suspects. Big oil, big mining, 'commodities traders', shell companies & banks looking the other way to make a cut moving all the money around.

5) It will also lead us into some even darker places, where assassins start assassinating assassins who may be cooperating with the investigations. Not run of the mill assassins, but a NATO nation intelligence service assassin who was also a famous author. #ButNothingsHappening

6) Last week a retired French intelligence officer Daniel Forestier was assassinated in professional style with 5 shots to the heart & head in a parking lot near his home in the French Alps. He served at least 15 years with DGSE, French equivalent to MI6.
euronews.com/2019/03/27/fre…

7) Forestier had used his experience to write several spy novels but apparently also stayed active in the business. How active? He & another retired French spy were charged for an attempt to assassinate an opposition figure from Congo in exile in France.

bbc.com/news/world-eur…

Sorry I made an error when I typed this it is the Republic of the Congo not the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Typos even after coffee today!

8) Sorry I made an error when I typed post #4 above it is the Republic of the Congo not the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Two neighboring states & I was digging about both & typed the wrong one. They both have similar corruption stories!

9) So why would 2 former French DSGE spies/assassins attempt to kill an old General from the Republic of Congo in a Paris suburb? Why would he confess then recant then be released to be assassinated before trial? All interesting stories... #ButNothingsHappening!

10) General Ferdinand Mbaou, the target of the plot says he is "not surprised" that retired French spies tried to kill him. In fact, someone shot him in 2015 in a similar plot that he survived but he still carries the bullet near his heart, literally.
news24.com/Africa/News/mu…

11) Gen. Mbaou has been a senior figure in the Congo opposition. He has spent significant time documenting the expensive homes the corrupt officials of Congo have in France thanks to money laundering connected to corrupt energy & mining deals!

12) How many banks, extraction companies & politicians would like to be identified as getting rich off of keeping an African nation (many of them in fact) in poverty to keep their billions flowing?
One of many #ButNothingsHappening cases is investigating this money laundering!

13) So who is connected to decades of corruption in Congo? Lots of those people who like the world order how it is now, where the little crooks go to jail & the big crooks go to Davos.... Would you believe a company that makes passports? Yeah, that's odd!

14) But that is who ended up as the middle man in a corrupt deal for Congo's oil! But of course it also involved a former exec for French oil giant Total (I mentioned in a thread the other day) Swedes, Russians, shell companies & a Swiss trading company. occrp.org/en/investigati…

15) Of course it is also linked to one of Putin's oligarchs, Gennady Timchenko. The oil deal violated Congo's law but if you pay the right people, that doesn't matter much! Especially if you just deny the allegations & prosecutors don't bother to come after you!

16) Gunvor has been linked to a similar shady deal with Ivory Coast where one of the subsidiaries was shelling out 70% of the payments to public officials.

17) Now the Republic of Congo is in massive debt because it got cash payments up front which were stolen in kickback schemes & they have to pay back the energy traders involved in the schemes. Would you guess our friends Glencore & Trafigura are the 2 biggest debtors?

18) If you follow me you probably expected to see them pop up in the thread, but we also see French bank BNP Paribas in the deal too. They financed part of the deal as the money went round & round through shell companies in off-shore havens.

19) You might also expect that the IMF & World Bank have established rules that call these debts in commodities as prepayment deals & don't count them as debt for the nations involved. Making them bankrupt without showing it on the country's balance sheet.

20) Fortunately, my followers know that something is happening! Including a case that might have triggered this assassination attempt that resulted in the assassin getting assassinated. (Easier to type than say!)

21) This case gets interesting because Lordy, there are tapes! Tapes of officials discussing how Master Vladimir would have to approve a deal that lead to Russia investing a $1B into a pipeline in Congo!

I wonder if they had more flexibility after an election?

22) The Swiss put them under investigation for money laundering in 2012 with one of their former Belgian executives flipping & pleading guilty in August of 2018, shortly before the assassination plot charges.

23) The President of Congo's daughter & son-in-law were arrested for money laundering by France in June of 2017. Another one of those #ButNothingsHappening cases that I keep finding under every stone I turn over. occrp.org/en/27-ccwatch/…

That case started in 2010 time frame & the case didn't move forward for years. Then suddenly in early 2017 things began to move toward criminal charges. Of course the President of Congo expected the French authorities to dismiss the charges 'through legal procedures'.

25) Suddenly in 2017, those legal procedures used to dismiss giant corruption cases around the world seemed to hit a snag. Almost like someone changed the rules to the game! Changed them enough that they are now assassinating the assassins! #ButNothingsHappening!

@threadreaderapp unroll please!