In the latest news from Bloomberg, Vladimir Putin is finally responding to hundreds of billions being stolen from Russian business people by the corrupt Western elites. Or, as the business bullhorn of Michael Bloomberg headlines it, “Putin Critic Warns Kremlin Will Seize More Assets to Punish Foes.” Keep reading; this one will be fun, I promise.
So, in other words, a new Putin hater has had his criminality discovered and is pissed off because Russians will now benefit from the Rolf auto dealerships. The lead to the story by Bloomberg’s Vienna chief Marton Edor goes like this:
“Sergey Petrov could do nothing from his home in the outskirts of Vienna as Russian President Vladimir Putin moved to take over the car dealership he had founded and built.”
The poor man. He should seek comfort and advice from the Russians, who’ve had $330 billion seized or frozen by the United States and her allies. Wasn’t it Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova who warned of a tit-for-tat response if the West went forward with what she termed “thievery?” RFERL reported, so it’s inevitable the Western policy machine knew it was coming. And now another Putin hater and criminal wanted by the Russian Federation for a laundry list of crimes has a bellyache because his car company is now owned by the Russian government.
Like big-mouth Bill Browder, Yukos Oil mafioso Mikhael Khodorkovsky, and other West-backed privateers, Petrov sits comfortably in posh surroundings (in his case, Austria), ready to bitch and gripe about what was inevitable. You see, these people committed the most grievous thefts from the people of Russia. Then, when caught by Mr. Putin and his colleagues, they fled elsewhere to be harbored beneath the wings of Western oligarchs and CIA weasels. But let’s focus on Petrov and his company.
According to mighty Wikipedia, Rolf Group is owned by Cyprus Trusts on behalf of Petrov. Russia’s biggest auto dealership had roughly 19 billion rubles (207 million) seized when authorities ruled Petrov had illegally transferred funds overseas and was charged with massive fraud allegations. (see Panabel Ltd.) Petrov was also charged with using his parliamentary status/influence to make business deals. Ironically, it was Petrov who was once quoted saying:
“Businessmen need fair play: they should not be afraid that tomorrow someone will come and take everything away.”
Now, Petrov is used as a poster boy for Bloomberg and other elite-controlled Western media for the “pot” to call the kettle “black.” Russians investing in Western markets only to have their funding seized, is, of course, not the same as the Putin administration taking over businesses that steal from the Russian people’s tax base.
It should be noted that the first dealer center of Rolf was opened in Moscow city in 1991, during the tremendous liberal order gold rush to steal all of Russia from underneath her people. Rolf sells most of the biggest Wester and major Japanese car brands but only a few Russian ones. Rolf’s most recent parent company is KLYUCHAVTO, a car dealership based in the Krasnodar region that provides auto sales, leasing, insurance, and credit services. It was this company that proposed an initial public offering (IPO) which was halted when the Russian government seized the company. Of particular note are the investors of the proposed Rolf IPO, namely Alpha Bank. I’ve no space here to trace the origins of this Greek bank back to the era of WW2. The dissolution and reorganization during the so-called Decembrian are fascinating and crucial to today’s West-East crises. The treaty of Varkiza, an end to the hostilities between the Greek people in 1945, saw the creation of entirely new banking structures throughout Europe.
Though Rolf Group’s initial investors are hidden behind a maze of holding companies, if we look at past CEO Nick Hawkins during the group’s biggest expansion era, we see connections symbolic of all the West-backed pirates aiming to carve up Russia. Hawkins, a former partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Russia, was CEO of Rolf Group from 2006-2010. He then went into the finance realm in the U.S., the Netherlands, and elsewhere, ending up, strangely, in dental and tooth ventures. Another interesting connection to Rolf Group is Phidias Pilides, who was with PWC and is now with Cyprus’s National Gaming and Casino Supervision Authority. Casinos, tons of money, and cars, all that’s missing are sex, drugs, and rock and roll.
Since 2015, the Director of Rolf has been Ekaterina Kolmakova, who’s also Profmedia Limited, Russia’s most prominent independent media outfit (see Rambler). The list of people and defunct investment companies linked to Petrov, Rolf Group, Hawkins, and others is an untraceable line of breadcrumbs. Perhaps a Russian billionaire, whom I shall not name, got involved in order to keep Russia’s most significant car company private? Who can say? As for Petrov, it seems highly likely he was a CIA plant since the Reagan administration. His being alive at all, along with Browder and the Yukos Oil kleptocrat, is verifiable proof Vladimir Putin is not the vengeful supervillain the West paints him as.
Discovering where Petrov got his backing is like the proverbial needle in a Cyprus haystack. What we can be sure of is that the expelled billionaire has sided with Lord Richard Branson and a cadre of Ukraine business people since 2014 and the Euromaidan coup. As to my assertion, the automotive billionaire is an agent; Petrov was a former Soviet Air Force commander, arrested in 1982 by the KGB as a member of an anti-communist/Soviet group. His “mission” was to transform Russia into a Western-modelled democracy through business gradually. (see Vedomosti interview in Russian)
Interestingly, a critical deal with Japanese carmaker Mitsubishi catapulted Rolf into the top position in the Russian market. This exclusive deal was possible because Petrov could pay cash for all the Mitsubishi cars exported to Russia. This hints at unseen players off the stage. Mitsubishi and certain Saudi interests are mentioned, but Petrov never discloses who the “Cyprus” investors are.
To sum things up here, Bloomberg and other vested interests in seeing Putin and Russia fall always seem to turn to Russians who’ve run amok with illegal (or, at best, questionable) business dealings. They also always seem to be exiled billionaires who started siphoning their treasures from the time of Yeltsin before Putin took over. And now that the Russians are beginning to visit the idea of reverse sanctions and taking appropriate (equal) actions against those devoted to real (or) perceived enemies, the flagrant kleptocrats cry “foul.” And where better to report from, than Bloomberg financial news?
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
