1/21 On 29 March 2012 Latvian investigative journalist Leonids Jakobsons was violently attacked in Riga while he was accompanied by his eight year old son.
2/21 He was shot in the face with a gas pistol and badly beaten. His son was terrified but unharmed. Reporters without Borders condemned the assault the following day, describing it as a murder attempt,
3/21 Latvian politics is still affected by the country's soviet occupation and the corrupting influence of its neighbour Russia. Two years before the attack, a Latvian journalist and politician, Grigorijs Nemcovs had been murdered in an apparent contract killing. No one has ever
4/21 been prosecuted either for the attack or the murder.
5/21 However, while there are no suspects in the case of Nemcovs, Jakobsons is certain who he holds responsible for the crime against him. 'I am certain that this assault was connected to my publications concerning Nil Ushakov.
6/21 I have run kompromat.lv for fifteen years and never been assaulted despite publishing articles that were no less challenging. The savagery of the assault, the cuts on the face sends a concrete message to journalists: “Do not dare to challenge the powerful.”'
7/21 Jakobsons had revealed that Nil Ushakov, who is a pro Russian Latvian politician and was the mayor of Riga, was a Russian asset a year before the assault. kompromat.lv, Jakobsons investigative journalism site,
8/21 had published email correspondence between Ushakov and a Russian agent Aleksandr Khapilov. Khapilov had allegedly tried to organise the assassination of Mikhail Saakashvili on 24 January 2004 when he was inaugurated as Georgia's president.
9/21 However, in a keystone cops meets the KGB moment, the car with the would-be assassins had crashed en route to the planned murder.
10/21 The email correspondence with Ushakov showed that Khapilov was offering financial support for Latvian politician's election campaigns. Ushakov was, in effect, seeking finance from Russian intelligence.
11/21 After the story appeared, Ushakov tried to crush Jakobsons through the courts but continued to act as the Kremlin's mouthpiece in Riga. He also opposed sanctions against Russia for invading Ukraine in 2014. He visited Moscow in September 2014 and met with senior Russian
12/21 politicians including Dmitri Medvedev to show his support. During the same month he also traveled to Washington to lobby the US on behalf of his Moscow masters.
13/21 Rather curiously The Guardian published a relatively flattering profile of him written by its Moscow based correspondent Shaun Walker on 15 June 2015 . The article inexplicably failed to address the links with Khapilov and put the best gloss possible on this problematic
14/21 figure.
15/21 Corruption in Latvian politics is endemic and Riga council was suspected of long standing scams involving kickbacks to politicians. Ushakov's pro Russian “Harmony” was also linked to Parex bank which collapsed in 2008 after being comprehensively looted. The bank was
16/21 connected both to Tambov mafia money laundering operations and the FSB.
17/21 Ushakov's shady affiliations would eventually catch up with him. In late 2018 a serious fraud involving transport procurements on behalf of Riga council was exposed. It transpired that as many as forty of Ushakov's associates had been hired on bogus consulting contracts.
18/21 Ushakov resigned but ran successfully for the EU parliament.
19/21 Jakobsons frustratedly observes that ex mayor is still pursuing him through the courts and that “Ushakov is suspected of corruption. With regard to him being an agent he previously denied the veracity of my articles but now during the court case against me claims that they
20/21 were all truthful. This is a paradox in the Latvian legal system; it has not held Ushakov to account while I have been persecuted through the courts for nine years because of my publications about him.. .”
21/21 Ushakov is effectively a Russian asset in the EU's legislative chamber and his career raises serious questions over both Latvia's and the EU's security policies and their ability to deal with agents of influence.
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1/21 On 29 March 2012 Latvian investigative journalist Leonids Jakobsons was violently attacked in Riga while he was accompanied by his eight year old son. He was shot in the face with a gas pistol and badly beaten. His son was terrified but unharmed. Reporters without Borders
2/21 condemned the assault the following day, describing it as a murder attempt, by Stephen Komarnyckyj for EU Today.
3/21 Latvian politics is still affected by the country's soviet occupation and the corrupting influence of its neighbour Russia. Two years before the attack, a Latvian journalist and politician, Grigorijs Nemcovs had been murdered in an apparent contract killing. No one has ever
You are right, Neo Rauch, the edges of our world
Blur into smoke, the sea will break against the cairn
Shadow’s dent the fisherman’s arm, and over the sleeper
The woman with lobster clawed hands will stand,
With the drumsticks forever cocked over the drum,
The man in the lime green jacket will kneel
Bearing on his back the wings of a dark angel
Children will levitate above yellowed diamonds,
And the earth will split the perfectly level grass
To reveal ochre strata, then darkness, then
Darkness… who is it with the green waistcoat
Working the bellows and whose arms sprout,
Into a sack and flute where is the landscape,
That slips in and out of perspective until
The viewer feels themselves breaking free
1/24 A thread on Citadele with material dating from 2018
2/24 On June 12 and 13 2008, 20 Russian citizens were arrested and bundled into vehicles across Spain as part of an operation against the mafia. The Latvian based Parex bank was closely connected to the enquiry: Mikhail Rebo, the alleged Tambov mafia money launderer, was
1/24 A thread on Citadele with material dating from 2018
1/32 #FBPE a refresher on the links between Firtash, the GOP and #Brexit and what they mean. #FollowBackFriday On 23 March 2011, Dmytro Firtash, wearing the ornate robe of a Cambridge University beneficiary, shook hands with Prince Philip. That moment marked the peak of his #FBPE
2/32 ascent in British society. The village boy who once loved pasturing cows had come a long way. Thanks to his PR team, he enjoyed the image of a businessman and patron of the arts in the UK. #FBPE
3/32 As bagman for mobster Semion Mogilevich, Firtash directly links the Russian mafiya to the British Establishment. He was once described by a Chicago attorney general as “upper-echelon associat[e] of Russian organised crime”. Eight years after his royal handshake, #FBPE
1/26 A thread on the Westminster Russia Forum and its infiltration of the Tories #FollowBack Friday #Brexit is ultimately a Russian project #FBPE
2/26 The Britain of July 2012 now seems as remote as the moon. #FBPE
3/26 I had watched the Olympic Flame carried through Barnsley and sensed a mood of national optimism, bubbly as freshly opened Champagne. But, what was also clear was that Britain had no vision for its future. Winston Churchill popped out of Big Ben during the Olympic Games #FBPE