Thread by @nimkef

21 Feb 2021

A UK PI and security consultant whose company has just completed a four-year contract to protect the UK’s embassy in Tel Aviv is linked to a string of hacking complaints dating back more than 20 years, according to high court judgments.

theguardian.com/law/2021/feb/2…

A court judgment that touches on the career history of Stuart Page, 69, founder of the private security and intelligence firm Page Group – noted last May that the businessman “operates in a world of covert surveillance in which agents acquire confidential information unlawfully”.

The judgment explores how Page was linked to hacking allegations stretching back to 1998, where the businessman is said to have received stolen materials and passed them to clients. The judge concluded allegations didn't establish Page had ever carried out or authorised hacking

Page Group’s alleged role in passing illegally obtained materials to clients raises questions about the use of stolen personal information within UK civil court proceedings,

as well as the company being awarded a £1m Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) contract to protect one of the UK’s most sensitive embassies – a deal that concluded in December after almost four years.

Page's companies have also worked guarding EU diplomats and on intelligence engagements for Middle Eastern rulers

The hacking allegations were explored in a judgment last spring as part of a successful civil fraud claim brought by UAE sovereign wealth fund Ras Al Khaimah Investment Authority (RAKIA), which was awarded $4.2m in May against its former business partner Farhad Azima

Having been engaged as a PI by Sheikh Saud, Page was drawn into proceedings in January 2020 as a RAKIA witness, when Azima ran a defence that the legal case against him was partly based on “hacking … carried out by RAKIA” agents, which he alleged included Page Group.

While RAKIA won its fraud claim, the judgment stated there was “no dispute that RAKIA’s case against Mr Azima is based on evidence obtained as a result of the hacking of Mr Azima’s confidential emails”.

Page denies he had anything to do with the hack. He says he discovered the stolen materials posted on the internet. The deputy judge, concluded that Page’s explanation was “not true and the facts as to how RAKIA came to know about the hacked material have not been disclosed”.

Azima alleged 3 further hacking attempts that have been linked to Page, which Lenon concluded “highlight the fact that Mr Page operates in a world of covert surveillance in which agents acquire confidential information unlawfully and that Mr Page has dealings with such agents”.

The court judgment continued: “It would be a reasonable inference Mr Page has access to agents with the capacity to hack emails. However these other incidents do not establish Mr Page ever personally carried out or authorised the unlawful obtaining of confidential information”

There is a further hacking allegation linked to Page. It relates to a 2007 case in which one of Page’s businesses was said in a high court judgment to have passed on personal information obtained illegally.

The FCDO said: “This contract was awarded in 2017 following a rigorous assessment in line with government guidance. Their contract came to an end in December 2020.”

According to a BTA lawyer, Stuart Page presented docs taken by what he claimed were “Israeli computer hackers” from Aggarwal’s computer.

occrp.org/en/investigati…

They revealed, he said, that Aggarwal had worked for Ablyazov’s son-in-law, Ilyas, in building and running a network of offshore companies that funneled hundreds of millions of dollars between FBME accounts.

18 Jan 2022

In his new affidavit, Page said what really happened was that he passed the material to Gerrard after it had been supplied to him by Amit Forlit, an Israeli PI hired by Page. Page said Forlit used subcontractors who hacked to obtain info

news.yahoo.com/dechert-lawyer…

March 2013, Amit Forlit, an Israeli PI, commissioned Italian detective agency, Sira Investigazioni. The fee would be €5k & the task to locate a residence used by Ablyazov in the leafy Roman suburb of Casal Palocco

Non-paywall:
kiar.center/spies-lies-and…

ft.com/content/1411b1…

The detectives appear to have delivered the goods. Six weeks later, a Kazakh police bureau transmitted a message to its counterpart in Rome requesting that Italian officers raid an address there. On May 29, they did so.

https://twitter.com/nimkef/status/1413573720732540935?s=20&t=XFkF-zeI8I7Zxf3JZ1W94g

When police responded to an oil workers’ strike in 2011 — one supported by Ablyazov — by shooting dead at least 12 protesters, the president took advice from Tony Blair on a speech to manage the fallout.

24 Nov 2012

Tony Blair is at the centre of a press freedom row over the impending closure of a newspaper which has been critical of his £8 million-a-year consultancy deal with a dictator.

dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2…

Respublika, an opposition newspaper in Kazakhstan, has been ordered to close by the country’s notorious president Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has controversially hired the former Prime Minister to advise him.

After a crackdown last December, when police killed 15 protesters, Respublika ran the headline ‘Blood on your hands, Blair’, and called on him to quit.

The newspaper has also been used as a mouthpiece for Mukhtar Ablyazov, a fugitive bank chairman and sworn enemy of Nazarbayev

Respublika has also claimed that Peter Mandelson and former spin doctor Alastair Campbell were deployed by Mr Blair in Kazakhstan.

Now the dictator has ordered his prosecutor-general to shut the newspaper as part of a crackdown on the opposition in his oil-rich state.

Officially, the closure of Respublika along with seven sister titles and 23 news websites, plus another opposition newspaper and a satellite TV station, is for ‘propagating extremism’, inciting unrest and urging the overthrow of the government.