The compromise within the EU on coordinated tough financial sanctions would probably have never been reached if E.U. citizens had not been killed in a terrorist attack in Ukraine on July 17. This attack has already been called Europe’s 9/11.
A Malaysia Airlines plane traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down by high-precision weapons and fell near the village of Hrabove in the Donetsk region. This area is controlled by armed terrorists – organizers of terrorist groups known as the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic. The plane carried 298 passengers and crew members. All of them died.
The Ukrainian and U.S. governments and independent journalists have presented plenty of facts and evidence showing that DPR and LPR terrorists shot down the passenger plane.
Despite this, the DPR and LPR are mistakenly called separatists in documents related to the third stage of sanctions, and in the British list of sanctions the Army of the Southeast, which is controlled by the DPR and LPR, is designated as an illegal armed group. But some media call the terrorists “activists.”
Meanwhile, the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine recognized the DPR and LPR as terrorist organizations as early as at the beginning of May – two months before the MH17 attack.
The DPR and LPR are well-organized groups created in order to commit intentional acts that severely damage the country, destabilize and destroy fundamental political, constitutional, economic and social structures.
The DPR and LPR persecute and kill civilians, seize government buildings, kidnap people, undermine transport security, destroy the urban infrastructure of an entire region, use weapons and explosives and block access to water and power supply.
Also, DPR terrorists are not allowing foreign investigative groups to access the plane crash site to examine the incident.
According to EU law, such actions are qualified as terrorist acts, and the organizations behind them are defined as terrorist groups.
EU law strictly bans any support for or funding of terrorist groups.
Ukraine has already shown plenty of evidence of Russia funding and supporting terrorists from the the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic. But Europe is silent.
Where does Russia, whose financial and economic situation is rapidly going down the drain, take money to finance terrorism?
Oil and gas revenues account for over half of Russia’s budget. They are produced by state companies, including Gazprom and Rosneft, which effectively have a state monopoly on the production and sales of oil and gas.
Vladimir Putin has direct influence on these companies – they are managed or owned by people from the president’s inner circle. These industrial giants have a complicated and intricate structure of anonymous legal entities based, among others, in EU countries. In the Netherlands alone, there are 24 Gazprom operating, while Germany and Switzerland harbor six Gazprom affiliates each, and four are based in the UK. Rosneft has seven affiliated companies in the Netherlands.
Thanks to close ties to the Russian government and clandestine oil and gas supply contracts with these state monopolies, some “international” companies have created a transnational business. For instance, they include Gunvor Group, one of the largest international oil traders. It was founded by a tycoon from Putin’s inner circle, Gennady Timchenko. In March the U.S. Treasury explicitly stated that Putin had an interest and investments in Gunvor and imposed sanctions on Gennady Timchenko, linking his activities in the energy sector directly to the Russian president.
European countries, including the Netherlands, have seen neither this nor Gunvor Group’s concealed ownership structure – neither in March nor in July, when they introduced the third stage of financial sanctions against tycoons and companies linked to Putin.
The company itself reacted to official statements by the U.S. Treasury about Putin’s possible influence and interest by publishing a cynical official report named “Who is behind Gunvor?” It mentions 1,600 employees who work at companies in over 20 countries: Sweden, Belgium, Germany, Cyprus etc. And it does not say a word about Gunvor Group’s de facto owners.
“Gunvor employs over 3,000 qualified specialists,” the company said.
But according to the research of activists of Ukraine’s Anti-Corruption Action Center, Gunvor is a complicated network of offshore shell companies.
Who is behind these companies and entities? Why are Europeans not investigating these companies’ financial flows? It’s clear to us that, when a company’s ownership structure is unjustifiably complicated and it’s impossible to identify the beneficiary owner, it is at least a reason for a mandatory thorough audit of their financial flows by financial institutions and regulators.
Dutch and British people, Belgians and Germans whose compatriots were killed aboard the plane shot down by terrorists must understand at last that their countries are helping Putin earn petrodollars and keep a whole army of DPR and LPR terrorists who persecute, rob and kill civilians, shoot down planes and destroy the infrastructure of dozens of cities and villages every day.
After the Malaysian plane crash in the Donetsk region EU countries have all grounds and proofs to label the DPR and LPR as “terrorist organizations.”
The world’s civilized countries must track down the sources through which terrorists receive aid from Russia and block them, as required by special recommendations by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) and a whole series of EU directives.
After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks the U.S. passed the Patriot Act. This document laid the foundation of international legal tools for blocking terrorists’ access to the global financial system.
Investigating and exposing the concealed owners of European-registered companies affiliated with Russian state oil and gas firms must become the Patriot Act of the Netherlands, Germany, Great Britain and all countries whose citizens were cynically killed by Russian-financed terrorists.
Otherwise next time it will might dead people over the sunflower fields of another country – this time a European one.
See the complete list of Gazprom affiliates here.
See the complete list of Rosneft affiliates here.
Daryna Kalenyuk and Tata Peklun are activists of Kyiv-based Anti-Corruption Action Center.
