by Jules Evans | Feb 13, 2008 | Europe and Central Asia
Looks like another mate of Boris Berezovsky’s might have been assassinated in London…This time it’s Arkadi Patarkatsishvili, or Badri as he was more commonly known, who was the richest man in Georgia, and Berezovsky’s long-time partner.
He was found dead yesterday in Leatherhead, outside London. He was 52, and apparently died of ‘heart failure’. The police said: “As with all unexpected deaths it is being treated as suspicious. A post mortem will be held later today to establish the cause of death”.
Badri was recently accused of plotting a coup against the president of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili. The government of Georgia claimed they had recordings of the tycoon discussing ways to bump off the president, and that they got these recordings after being tipped off by British intelligence. You can listen to the alleged recordings here, as they’ve been helpfully posted on youtube.
[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdMpHJBK7Rw 425 355]
He was the richest man in Georgia, the owner of Imeda TV station (recently closed by the Georgian government) in which his partner was Rupert Murdoch. He also owned many Russian assets with Boris Berezovsky in the 1990s, including the main TV channel, ORT. Back then, his head of security was one Andrei Lugovoi, who is now wanted by the British government for the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.The whole thing is incredibly murky. Badri told the Sunday Times a month ago that he feared for attempts on his life, and his fears seem to have been well-founded. Was it Georgian intelligence killing off an enemy of the state? Was it Russian intelligence trying to discredit the Georgian government? Was it just an accident? If it wasn’t, then one thing is clear – it’s open season for assassinations in London.
by Charlie Edwards | Feb 13, 2008 | Conflict and security, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia
Paddy Ashdown is in trenchant mood in today’s FT.
With fighting in Afghanistan now entering its seventh year, no agreed international strategy, public support on both sides of the Atlantic crumbling, Nato in disarray and widening insecurity in Afghanistan, defeat is now a real possibility. The consequences for both Afghanistan and its allies would be appalling: global terrorism would have won back its old haven and created a new one over the border in a mortally weakened Pakistan; our domestic security threat would be gravely increased and a new instability would be added to the world’s most unstable region.
But then neither is continuing as we are. So what should we do?
Some say more troops should be sent and they are certainly needed. Some say those Nato members who are not sharing the burden of the fighting should do so – and they should. Some say we need more aid – and we do. We are putting into Afghanistan one 25th the troops and one 50th of the aid per head of population that we put into Kosovo and Bosnia.
Increasing resources in Afghanistan is clearly necessary, but it is not sufficient. Even if we were to provide what was necessary, and even if everyone pulled their weight, we would still find it very difficult to turn the tide, which is now running increasingly strongly against us.
Adding troops is key to this problem. But as James Travers’ argued in his regular national affairs column yesterday:
Adding 1,000 NATO troops and more air support won’t fix what’s wrong with this attempted rescue of a failing state. As Manley found and studies warn, unco-ordinated strategies countering the insurgency, corruption and the booming opium business aren’t working and demand hurried reconsideration.
And what about increasing resources? Clearly this is crucial – but let’s be realistic. The U.S. has spent the same amount on aid and development in Afghanistan over the past five years as the military burns through in Iraq every three weeks. And resources follow priorities.
So finally it begs the question: do we need a strategy? According to Ashdown:
What we lack above all is a strategy that all (including, crucially, the Afghan government and the international military) can buy into. We know well enough what the objective is – to help President Hamid Karzai’s government to govern so that we can hand over the tasks we are doing, including the fighting, to them.
And based on a strategy, we need to develop a plan – but as Ashdown notes, we haven’t agreed a single person to head up the fractured international effort, with the authority to bash international heads together and provide the support the government of Afghanistan needs to begin winning again. So what would Ashdown do?
Firstly, we (the international community) have to concentrate fiercely on the necessary and not be distracted by the merely desirable. To have too many priorities is to have none.
The first is security.
Our second priority should be governance.
The third priority, linking these two, is strengthening the rule of law, from the judiciary, to the police, to the security structures, to the penal code.
I think governments might suggest that this is what they are already doing in Afghanistan. The problem they would point to is coordinating their efforts . But I think there is also something to be said about how they go about developing and implementing policy; and here I think we need to take a very different approach. I call it Connecting the Dots – and I think it’s what we desperately need to do with complex problems such as Afghanistan’s future.
by Jules Evans | Feb 12, 2008 | Economics and development, Global system, Influence and networks
As the unshakeable solidity of the world’s financial markets turns out to be a castle in the sky, we all wish someone had warned us about collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and the dangers of securitization, before it was too late.
But wait…I did! When I was a young cub reporter covering the securitization market back in 2001, I wrote an article for Euromoney called The Hidden Risks of Synthetic CLOs. CLOs are collateralized loan obligations, whereby banks package loans such as mortgages into off-balance-sheet investment vehicles, then sell them on investors.
I warned, “if there is a stain on the ABS market’s halo, it is CLOs and synthetic CLOs…The danger is that the loans or the risk sold off will come back to haunt the banks. Says Charles Peabody, a banking analyst at Mitchell Securities in New York: “CLOs are just financial engineering that hide most of the risk that banks are taking. I call them CLOWNs – collateralized loan obligations worth nothing. US and European banks’ increased use of CLOs represent a definite danger to banks. They’re a risk that the system cannot afford to take now.”
I also said: “Another, wider, danger for investors, and indeed for the banking system at large, is the opacity and complexity of synthetic CLOs. Says Drayson: “Many investors don’t understand synthetic CLOs.” Nor do many CEOs or CFOs.”
I remember the article well, because after it was published, I was rung up by the head of CDOs and CLOs at a bank – he was American, I think the bank was Morgan Stanley, and I was subjected to a sort of verbal leg-breaking by him and his colleague, who told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and was basically a disgrace to journalism. It was bruising.
Well, I don’t want to brag, but ha! Now many commentators are saying that CLOs are a serious mess, and are going to cost banks billions of dollars.
Looks like I was right and the overpaid banker was wrong! Collateralize that, buster.
by Charlie Edwards | Feb 12, 2008 | Influence and networks
Mary Dejevsky is beside herself in today’s Independent. Apparently the UK is no longer punching above its weight on the international stage.
Cast an eye over the holders of key international jobs, hang around at an international conference or two, and you could be forgiven for wondering where the Brits have gone. There was a time, long after the sun had set on the Empire, when the British still strutted the world stage. If they had the grace not actually to monopolise the very topmost jobs, they commanded respect as the policy-makers, drafters and negotiators who helped the world go round. They could be apposite and witty at the same time, and they knew how to get things done. Even a decade ago, Britons seemed to pop up all over the place in influential positions, keeping the country truly on the global map.
It is hard to date the beginning, or the end, of our retreat, but the return of Mark Malloch Brown, then Deputy Secretary General, from the United Nations to join Gordon Brown’s “government of all the talents” might be seen as a moment when we pulled up one of the last drawbridges linking us to the outside world. Similarly, the retirement of Sir John, now Lord, Kerr, after serving as Secretary General of the Convention drafting the European Constitutional Treaty.
So what prompted Mary to be so downcast about the UK’s role on the global stage?
The absence of senior Britons from international gatherings is becoming conspicuous. At the Munich security conference last weekend – perhaps Europe’s premier defence gathering – it was noted that this was the first time in 40-plus years that no Briton spoke from the platform. What was that about our diplomacy “punching above its weight”?
Why is this?
- There may be a host of reasons why Britons are putting themselves about less abroad. The proliferation of international talking-shops is surely one. A-list dignitaries can be choosy. (or indecisive)
- A more prosaic explanation could be social change. In today’s British Cabinet an unusual number of senior ministers have young children. (changing nappies in the hindu kush is a nightmare I’m told)
Insightful.
She also worries we don’t have enough people in the upper echelons of international organisations – which are being snapped up by… you’ve guessed it… the French!
The European Central Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund are all headed by members of the French technocratic elite. Britons are nowhere to be found at the apex of these organisations, which have at least as much clout as the more hidebound diplomatic and security groupings.
But in a world with English as the universal means of communication, a world linked by the internet and mobile phones, does the nationality of international civil servants and conference speakers really matter?
It does matter. They see competition between countries to attract the best entrepreneurs, the best managers and the highest earners. They see competition to notch up the best educational standards and give the next generation an advantage in the global market. National placings in all manner of league tables are keenly studied.
This is why it matters that no Briton is even deputy head of a major international institution and no Briton speaks from the platform at an international forum. It shows an aloofness, and perhaps a diffidence, presaging a future in which we British will punch well below her weight.
Tea anyone?
by Charlie Edwards | Feb 11, 2008 | Influence and networks
I’ve just come across Maplecroft maps. If you have a few minutes to spare, go and have a look. More than 30 different issues are already available. Some of the maps may be familiar to readers as they were developed for the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Network. Issues include aid, anti-corruption and transparency, child labour, child rights risk, conflict risk, digital inclusion, displacement, education, financial inclusion, growth competitiveness, HIV/AIDS, human rights risk, hunger, landmine risk, malaria, military expenditure, political risk, poverty, tuberculosis and water. Their movies on issues like global risk are good too.
