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Kremlin spy participated in secret meeting to fund Italian separatist party
June 29, 2021 by Joseph Fitsanakis 1 Comment
AN ALLEGED EMPLOYEE OF Russian intelligence was present during a secret meeting in Moscow, in which politicians and investors discussed a plan to fund a northern Italian separatist political party. The party, Lega Nord (Northern League, or LN) was established in 1991 as an amalgamation of northern Italian separatist groups whose members seek greater autonomy and are opposed to Italy's membership in the European Union. Under its current leader, Matteo Salvini, the LN has adopted an hard-line anti-immigration stance and has associated itself with United Russia, the political home of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In July of 2019, the investigative news website BuzzFeed released audio recordings of a secret meeting that allegedly took place in Moscow's Hotel Metropol, between members of the LN and Russian emissaries of the Kremlin. The discussion reportedly concerned a plan to sell Russian oil to an Italian firm connected to the LN at a markedly discounted price, which would allow it to compete with Italy's state-owned energy supplier and at the same time enrich the LN's election campaign coffers by nearly $70 million.
According to an investigation by Italian authorities, participants at that meeting were Salvini's former spokesperson, Gianluca Savoini, as well as two other Italians, who managed investment banks and were also supporters of the LN. There were also three Russian participants, including a Kremlin lawyer who works for the Russian Ministry of Energy, and a Russian former banker and tycoon with clsoe ties to President Putin. But the third Russian had not been identified. Until now.
The Italian newspaper L'Espresso, which has led the investigative reporting into the alleged scandal, reports that the Milan Prosecutor's Office has identified the third Russian participant as Andrey Yuryevich Kharchenko, an alleged employee of Russian intelligence. The paper said that Kharchenko's identity was supplied to the Italian government by "another Western state" that has been targeted by Russian intelligence in recent years. The investigation into the alleged scandal continues.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 29 June 2021 | Permalink
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with Andrey Yuryevich Kharchenko, corruption, Gianluca Savoini, Italy, La Lega Nord, News, Russia
Flurry of diplomatic expulsions as European states respond to Russia spy allegations
April 27, 2021 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
SEVERAL EASTERN EUROPEAN STATES announced plans to expel Russian diplomats this week, as Moscow declared an Italian diplomat persona non grata in a tit-for-tat dispute with Rome over espionage allegations. Earlier this month, the Czech Republic expelled 18 Russian diplomats in protest against an explosion that totaled a remote munition depot in the east of the country, which Prague claims was part of a Russian intelligence operation.
The explosion, which occurred in October of 2014, killed two people and destroyed a munitions storage facility belonging to the Military Technical Institute of the Czech Ministry of Defense. Czech investigators recently concluded it was perpetrated by Unit 29155, a Russian elite spy outfit that operates under the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, commonly known as GRU. The Kremlin responded to the expulsions of its diplomats by ordering 20 Czech diplomats to leave Russia, and condemning Prague's move as an "unprecedented" and "a hostile act" that was designed "to please the United States".
The Czechs retorted by calling their allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union to "expelled officers of Russian special services" in solidarity. In recent days, five countries have answered Prague's call. Seven Russian diplomats have been given just days to leave Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Meanwhile, Romania announced on Monday that it would expel Alexei Grichayev, who serves as a deputy military attaché at the Russian embassy in Bucharest. The Romanian government said Grichayev's "activities and actions [were] contrary to the Convention of Vienna on diplomatic relations" —a phrase used to denote espionage in diplomatic parlance.
Also on Monday, the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Russian ambassador in order to file an official complaint, while Hungary, Poland and Slovakia issued a joint statement decrying what they described as "deplorable act[s] of aggression and breach of international law committed by Russia on European soil". In a separate development, Moscow said on Monday it would expel an Italian diplomat in response to the expulsions of two Russian diplomats from its embassy in Rome last month. The two Russians were accused of recruiting an Italian Navy captain, who has been charged with spying for the Kremlin.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 27 April 2021 | Permalink
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with Alexei Grichayev, Czech Republic, diplomatic expulsions, Estonia, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, News, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia
Wife of Italian spy for Russia says he was desperate for money due to COVID-19
April 2, 2021 by Joseph Fitsanakis 2 Comments
THE WIFE OF AN ITALIAN Navy captain, who is facing espionage charges for allegedly selling classified documents to Russia, has claimed that he resorted to spying after facing bankruptcy due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, Italian Foreign Affairs Minister Luigi Di Maio described the case on Wednesday as "an extremely grave matter […] tied to spying and state security".
The Navy captain has been named as Walter Biot, 54, who served in the National Security Policy Department of the Italian Ministry of Defense. His job duties included advising military and civilian officials on formulating national security policy in coordination with Italy's North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) partners. He was reportedly arrested late on Tuesday evening at a car park in Rome, alongside two members of the Russian embassy in the Italian capital.
Reports in the Italian media said Biot was caught as he was handing the Russians documents and a memory card containing classified data, for which he received €5,000 (approximately $6,000) in cash. Italian authorities said on Thursday that the material Biot handed over to the Russians included 181 photos of secret and top-secret documents belonging to the Italian government, as well as 47 classified documents belonging to NATO.
On Thursday, Biot's legal team told Italian media that their client was a father of four, and that his income was insufficient to provide for one of his children, who was "seriously ill and needed special care". Biot's wife, Claudia Carbonara, said in an interview that her husband committed espionage in order to supplement the family's €3,000 ($3,500) income, which had been reduced significantly in recent months due to the coronavirus pandemic. According to his lawyers, Biot reportedly said that he "made a mistake but I did it for my family [during] a moment of great weakness and fragility".
Meanwhile, the two Russian diplomats who were arrested alongside Biot have been identified as Dmitry Ostroukhov and Alexei Nemudrov. They reportedly served in the office of the military attaché at the Russian embassy in Rome. Both have been expelled from the country. Russia has threatened to retaliate in the coming days, possibly by expelling a number of Italian diplomats from Moscow.
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with diplomatic expulsions, espionage, Italy, News, Russia, Russian embassy in Italy, Walter Biot
Austria expels alleged assassin accused of working for Turkish government
January 13, 2021 by Ian Allen 1 Comment
AUSTRIAN AUTHORITIES HAVE REPORTEDLY expelled from the country an Italian citizen of Turkish origin, who was allegedly hired by the Turkish government as an assassin. The man, Feyyaz Öztürk, 53, reportedly turned himself in to Austrian intelligence last year. According to the British press, Öztürk claimed he had been hired by the Turkish government to assassinate Berivan Aslan (pictured). Aslan, who is of Kurdish heritage, is a Viennese parliamentarian and a leading critic of Turkey's treatment of its minority Kurdish population.
News reports claimed Öztürk's mission was to terrorize members of the Kurdish expatriate community in Austria and elsewhere in Europe, who tend to be vocal critics of the Turkish government's human rights record. British newspaper The Telegraph claimed that Öztürk had been tasked by Ankara to "ensure [Aslan] was hurt or died", so that "other politicians get the message". Öztürk also claimed that Turkish intelligence officials had blackmailed him in order to force him to carry out Alsan's assassination. Moreover, he had been asked to kill two more Austrian public figures who are of Kurdish origin.
However, Öztürk reportedly aborted the assassination operation in March of last year, after he broke his leg in an accident during a trip to the northern Italian city of Rimini. Austrian prosecutors confirmed that an official investigation on Öztürk had concluded. It found that he had carried out "military espionage on behalf of a foreign state", but did it not identify the state. Turkey has strongly denied that its intelligence agencies have any connection with Öztürk.
Öztürk's espionage trial has been scheduled for February 4. However, according to Austrian law, he cannot be held in pre-trial detention and must be freed prior to his day in court. Rather than allow him freedom of movement inside Austria, the authorities decided to expel him to Italy. Öztürk's lawyer said yesterday that her client had been designated "an imminent danger to public security" and taken to the Italian border shortly before Christmas.
The lawyer added that Öztürk wishes to return to Austria to attend his trial in February. There are suspicions among intelligence observers that the Austrian state would prefer Öztürk not to return to Austria, so as to avoid exposing espionage methods and sources in court. Meanwhile, Aslan said she remains under police protection, which was initially extended to her last year, when the alleged assassination plot against her became known.
► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 13 January 2021 | Permalink
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with assassinations, Austria, Berivan Aslan, Feyyaz Öztürk, immigration intelligence, Italy, Kurdistan, News, Turkey
North Korea's missing ambassador may be most senior defector since 1997
October 8, 2020 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
North Korea's ambassador to Italy, who disappeared without trace in 2018, is believed to have resettled in South Korea. If true, this would make him the most senior official to defect from North Korea in over 20 years. Jo Song-gil (pictured), 48, a career diplomat who is fluent in Italian, French and English, presented his diplomatic credentials to the Italian government in May of 2015. In October 2017 he became his country's acting ambassador, after Italian authorities expelled Ambassador Mun Jong-nam from the country.
Jo comes from a high-ranking family of North Korean officials with a long history in the ruling Workers Party of Korea. His father is a retired diplomat and his wife's father, Lee Do-seop, spent many years as Pyongyang's envoy in Hong Kong and Thailand. It is believed that Jo had been permitted to take his wife and children with him to Rome, a privilege that is bestowed only to the most loyal of North Korean government official. But in November of 2018, Jo suddenly vanished along with his wife and children. The disappearance occurred a month before Jo was to be replaced as acting ambassador to Italy. At the time of Jo's disappearance, South Korean media reported that the diplomat and his family "were in a safe place" under the protection of the Italian government, while they negotiated their defection. However, this was never confirmed.
On Tuesday of this week, a social media post by a South Korean parliamentarian claimed that Jo and his wife were living in South Korea under the protection of the government, but provided no evidence of this claim. Yesterday, this information appeared to be confirmed by another South Korean parliamentarian, Jeon Hae-cheol, who chairs the Intelligence Committee of the Korean National Assembly (South Korea's parliament). Jeon said the North Korean diplomat had been living in South Korea since the summer of 2019. He added that Jo had arrived in South Korea after having "repeatedly expressed his wish to come to South Korea".
This information has not been officially verified by the South Korean government. Additionally, the South Korean National Intelligence Service has not issued a statement on the matter. If this information is confirmed, it would make Jo the most senior North Korean official to have defected since 1997. That year saw the sensational defection of Hwang Jang-yop, Pyongyang's primary theorist and the ideological architect of juche, the philosophy of self-reliance, which is North Korea's officially sanctioned state dogma. Until his death from heart failure in April 2010, Hwang had been living in the South with around-the-clock security protection.
Some reports have suggested that Jo's teenage daughter refused to follow her parents to South Korea and that she was "repatriated" to North Korea in February of 2019, at her own request. Her whereabouts remain unknown.
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with defections, Italy, Jeon Hae-cheol, Jo Song-gil, News, North Korea, North Korean embassy in Italy, Rome (Italy), South Korea
Italian police seize largest amphetamines shipment ever found, bearing ISIS markings
July 2, 2020 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
Police in Italy have announced the seizure of the largest shipment of amphetamines in counter-narcotics history, containing drugs believed to have been manufactured by the Islamic State in Syria. The drugs shipment was intercepted at the port of Salerno, located south of Naples in southwestern Italy.
Italian police announced on Wednesday that it had made "the largest seizure of amphetamines in the world", both in terms of quantity and street value. The latter is estimated at approximately $1 billion. Drug traffickers are rarely known to transport such large volumes of drugs in a single shipment, due to the risk of capture by the authorities. However, the lack of supply in Europe due to the coronavirus pandemic has prompted suppliers to take unusual risks, according to experts.
The amphetamines —approximately 84 million tablets— were found hidden inside three containers filled with paper cylinders. More pills had been placed inside the hollow parts of agricultural machinery products, according to police. The confiscated tablets are marked with the logo for the drug Captagon, which is better known by its generic name, Fenethylline. Captagon was a popular drug in the Middle East in the 1990s, and today amphetamines produced by the Islamic State bear its logo, according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration.
The drug is regularly given to Islamic State volunteers prior to battles and terrorist attacks, in order to help reduce their inhibitions, including susceptibility to fear, and to prevent them from feeling physical pain. Security agencies in the Middle East refer to the substance as "the jihad drug". It is particularly prevalent in Syria, which has become the global leader in the production of illicit amphetamines in the past decade.
Italian police said the shipment was most likely intended for distribution by "a consortium of criminal groups", who would then traffic the substance to illicit markets across Europe. It would be unthinkable for a single distributor to be able to afford a $1 billion single purchase, according to officials. The largest buyer among these distributors was probably the Camorra —the organized crime syndicate based in the region of Naples. The Camorra has international links through which it can channel the illicit drugs in much larger volumes than other crime syndicates, according to experts.
Asked about the clues that led to the seizure of the amphetamines, a spokesman for the Italian police said the force knew when the shipment was coming in, due to "ongoing investigations we have with the Camorra". He added, "we intercepted phone calls and members, so we knew what to expect".
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with amphetamines, Camorra, Italy, narcotics trade, News, organized crime, terrorist financing
Former CIA officer connected with abduction of Muslim cleric flees Europe
October 30, 2019 by intelNews Leave a comment
A former officer in the United States Central Intelligence Agency, who was convicted of involvement in the 2003 abduction of a Muslim cleric in Italy, says she fled Europe for the United States in fear of her safety. Sabrina De Sousa, 63, was a diplomat at the US consulate in Milan, Italy, when a CIA team abducted Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr from a Milan street in broad daylight. Nasr, who goes by the nickname Abu Omar, is a former member of Egyptian militant group al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, and was believed by the CIA to have links to al-Qaeda. Soon after his abduction, Nasr was renditioned to Egypt, where he says he was brutally tortured and raped, and held illegally for years before being released without charge.
Upon Nasr's release from prison, Italian authorities prosecuted the CIA team that abducted him —apparently without Italy's permission or consent. They were able to trace the American operatives through a substantial trail of evidence they left behind, including telephone records and bill invoices in luxury hotels in Milan and elsewhere. In 2009, De Sousa was among 22 CIA officers convicted in absentia in an Italian court for their alleged involvement in Nasr's abduction. The US government has refused to extradite the 22 officers to Italy to serve prison sentences. However, those convicted are now classified as international fugitives and risk arrest by Interpol and other law enforcement agencies, upon exiting US territory.
De Sousa was arrested in Lisbon, Portugal, in 2015. Portuguese authorities threatened to extradite her to Italy, but in 2017 the Italian government partially commuted her sentence to house arrest and reduced it from seven to four years. There were reports at the time that Italy had bowed to diplomatic pressure from Washington. On Monday, however, Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera said that De Sousa had fled Europe and returned to the US in fear for her personal safety. The former CIA officer told the paper that she decided to return to the US after senior American officials, including CIA Director Gina Haspel and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, visited Italy earlier this month. Pompeo traveled to Rome for an official visit on October 1, while Haspel met with senior Italian intelligence officials on October 9.
De Sousa told Il Corriere della Sera that Haspel's visit to Italy "verified for the Italian government that the American administration had washed its hands of my situation". For this reason, and "terrified of the consequences that I could face" in Italy, "I decided to leave", said De Sousa. She did not elaborate on the precise connection between her partially commuted sentence and Pompeo and Haspel's visit to Italy. She added that recent changes to the US Whistleblower Act made it possible for her to openly discuss further details on her case, but did not elaborate. Her Italian lawyer, Andrea Saccucci, spoke to the Reuters news agency and confirmed that his client had left Europe for the US.
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with abductions, CIA, extraditions, extraordinary rendition, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, Italy, News, Portugal, Sabrina De Sousa
Italy arrests Russian ex-foreign ministry official for espionage following US request
September 6, 2019 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
Italy has arrested a Russian business executive and former foreign ministry official who is wanted by the United States for carrying out espionage against an American aviation firm. Alexander Yuryevich Korshunov, 57, who is a former official in Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was reportedly arrested on August 30 at Naples International Airport in Italy. On Thursday, the US Department of State filed a criminal complaint against Korshunov, accusing him of trade secret theft. According to the complaint, Korshunov's espionage benefited a Russian state-owned aviation company. He was allegedly assisted by 59-year-old Maurizio aPolo Bianchi, an Italian citizen, who remains at large.
The US government claims that the two men conspired to steal blueprints for the design of gearbox accessories used in jet engines. The company they allegedly stole the information from is GE Aviation, a company based in the US state of Ohio. Bianchi reportedly used to work for one of GE Aviation's subsidiaries in Italy and dealt with clients from Russia and China, among other countries. But he eventually left the company and joined another firm that contracted with Aviadvigatel, a subsidiary of United Engine Corporation. The latter is a Russian-owned aerospace company that employed Korshunov. During his work for Aviadvigatel, Bianchi is accused of having employed a number of current and former employees of GE Aviation as consultants. But the work that Bianchi carried out for his new company compromised trade secrets belonging to GE Aviation, according to the US Department of Justice. Moreover, the Department claims that both Bianchi and Korshunov, who supervised Bianchi's work on behalf of Aviadvigatel, were aware that they were exploiting trade secrets that did not belong to them.
There is no information on Bianchi's whereabouts. If convicted, the two men face up to 10 years in prison each. On Thursday, the Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed the charges against Korshunov as biased and said they were likely motivated by "unfair competition" practices by American companies. The Italian government has issued no public comment about Korshunov's arrest.
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with Aviadvigatel, aviation, corporate espionage, GE Aviation, Italy, Maurizio aPolo Bianchi, News, Russia, United Engine Corporation, United States, Yuryevich Korshunov
Italian police find 'combat-ready' air-to-air missile in raids on far-right groups
Police in Italy have found an air-to-air missile in "perfect working order" alongside dozens of guns during raids on homes belonging to members of far-right groups. The raids took place in several northern Italian cities and were coordinated by the Digos, a special unit of the Turin Municipal Police that deals with organized crime and terrorism. Aside from Turin, synchronized raids took place in Varese, Novara, Forli and Milan. According to reports in the Italian media, the raids were part of a large-scale investigation into an extensive network of Italian far-right groups whose members provided logistical and material support to Russian-backed separatists in southeastern Ukraine.
At least three men were arrested in connection with the raids, two of them in Forli and one in Galarate, a small town near Varese on the Italian-Swiss border. They were named as Alessandro Monti, 42, a Swiss national, and Fabio Bernardi, 51, an Italian national. A third man, Fabio Del Bergiolo, 50, also an Italian national, is reportedly a retired customs officer who in 2001 run for office with Forza Nuova, a neo-fascist Italian grouping. Until 2014, Forza Nuova activists were known to have close links with Svoboda, the far-right Ukrainian paramilitary group. But in the past five years, the Italian neo-fascist group's leaders have openly sided with Ukraine's pro-Russian rebels. Italian police reported that they found several guns in Bergiolo's home, including nine unspecified "assault weapons" and 29 hunting rifles, as well as pistols and ammunition. But the most worrying find was an air-to-air guided missile at an airport hangar, which was placed inside a box that belonged to one of the three men. The missile is designed to be fired from an aircraft to target another aircraft. It is reportedly a Matra Super 530F, which was manufactured by France in 1980. According to the police report, it is "in perfect working order". The most recent legal owner of the missile was the Qatar Air Force. It is not known how it ended up in the hands of the three suspects, but it is believed that they have been seeking to sell it in the black market.
The police raids took place less than two weeks after a court in Genoa sentenced three men for traveling to Russia and taking up arms alongside pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine's Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The three men were identified in court reports as Antonio Cataldo, an Italian citizen, Olsi Krutani, from Albania, and Vladimir Vrbitchii, who is from Moldova. The three men received jail sentences ranging from 16 months to 34 months. As a reminder, last September security agencies in Eastern Europe voiced concern about the rise of far-right paramilitary groups whose members allegedly have access to increasingly heavy weaponry, including in some cases armored vehicles and tanks.
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with Italy, News, rightwing extremism, Turin (Italy), weapons smuggling
Italy rebukes France for blocking EU resolution calling for end to Libyan war
April 12, 2019 by Joseph Fitsanakis 1 Comment
Several European Union member states, led by Italy, have criticized France for blocking a joint resolution calling on all warring factions in Libya to cease all hostilities and return to the negotiations table. The latest round of hostilities was sparked by an all-out attack by a group calling itself the Libyan National Army (LNA). The commander of the LNA is Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, an old adversary of the Libyan leader Muammar al-Gaddafi, who lived in the United States under Washington's protection for several decades. In 2011, following an uprising that toppled Gaddafi, Haftar returned to Libya and launch a military campaign from the eastern city of Tobruk. Since that time, he has led the LNA in a war of attrition against the United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA), which is based in the Libyan capital Tripoli.
Last week, Haftar launched an all-out attack to defeat the GNA and take Tripoli —a move that many observers have been expecting for several months. With the LNA receiving substantial military assistance from Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, among other countries, most observers expected that Haftar would be the ruler of Tripoli within days. But his troops were unexpectedly pushed back by GNA troops on Monday, and have been unable to enter Tripoli from the south, as was their initial plan. Meanwhile the EU attempted on Wednesday to issue a joint statement calling on all warring sides to put down their weapons and enter into negotiations. But France blocked the draft statement, prompting heavy criticism.
On Thursday, Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini criticized France for blocking the EU statement "for economic and commercial reasons" and warned that he would "not stand by and watch" France continue to support "a party that is fighting" in the Libyan Civil War. Salvini expressed the view that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's military intervention in Libya in 2011, which was strongly supported by France, was "triggered more by economic and commercial interests than by humanitarian concerns". Unlike France, which has been a strong supporter of Haftar, Italy backs the UN-supported GNA and Libya's legitimate Prime Minister, Fayez al-Sarraj.
In 2017, two leading international legal scholars accused Haftar of having ordered his troops to commit war crimes. Ryan Goodman, a professor and former special counsel to the general counsel of the United States Department of Defense, and Alex Whiting, a Harvard University law professor who served as an international criminal prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, said that in September of 2015, Haftar openly urged his troops to "to take no prisoners" in battle. The Libyan warlord denies these charges against him.
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with 2011 Libyan civil war, diplomacy, France, Italy, Khalifa Haftar, Libya, Libyan Government of National Accord, Libyan National Army, News
North Korean ambassador to Rome missing since November, says Seoul
January 4, 2019 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
The acting ambassador of North Korea to Italy has been missing for two months and there are reports that he may be under the protection of a Western country. Jo Song-gil (pictured), 48, a career diplomat who is fluent in Italian, French and English, presented his diplomatic credentials to the Italian government in May of 2015. In October 2017, he became his country's acting ambassador after Italian authorities expelled Ambassador Mun Jong-nam from the country. The expulsion came in response to North Korea's nuclear test in September of that year, when Pyongyang announced the detonation of a hydrogen bomb that could be loaded onto an intercontinental ballistic missile.
Jo is believed to be from a high-ranking family of officials and diplomats with a long history in the ruling Workers Party of Korea. His father is a retired diplomat and his wife's father, Lee Do-seop, spent many years as Pyongyang's envoy in Hong Kong and Thailand. It is believed that Jo had been permitted to take his wife and children with him to Rome, a privilege that is bestowed only to the most loyal of North Korean government official. Sources in the Italian government were quoted by British media on Thursday saying that Pyongyang had notified Italy's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in October that Jo would be replaced in December. On Thursday, however, Kim Min-ki, a South Korean member of parliament, told reporters in Seoul that Jo had been missing since November. Kim added that he and a group of other parliamentarians had been briefed on the mater by officials from the National Intelligence Service, South Korean's primary external intelligence agency. He went on to say that Jo's wife and children were believed to have vanished with him and that South Korean authorities had not made contact with them since their disappearance.
Meanwhile, South Korean press reports stated on Thursday that Jo and his family "were in a safe place" under the protection of the Italian government, while they negotiated their defection. But Italian officials told the BBC that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had "no record of an asylum request made by Jo" or other members of his family. Citing an anonymous "diplomatic source", the Seoul-based JoongAng Ilbo said that the former ambassador and his wife were in the process of negotiating their defection to a Western country, along with an offer of political asylum. The paper did not name the country, but said that the missing family did not intend to remain in Italy. IntelNews regulars will recall the last defection of a senior North Korean diplomat in August 2016, when Thae Yong-ho, second-in-command at the North Korean embassy in London, defected to South Korea with his family.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 04 January 2019 | Permalink
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with defections, Italy, Jo Song-gil, Lee Do-seop, Mun Jong-nam, National Intelligence Service (South Korea), News, North Korea, North Korean embassy in Italy, Rome (Italy)
Italian mafia may be supplying weapons to ISIS, say investigators
July 26, 2016 by Joseph Fitsanakis 2 Comments
Organized criminal groups in southern Italy may be supplying assault weapons to groups and individuals that are associated with the Islamic State, according to European investigators. British newspaper The Guardian said last week that security officials in Italy, Britain, and elsewhere in Europe have traced weapons used by Islamists to at least one arms cache that entered the European black market through a Sicilian crime family with links to the mafia.
According to The Guardian, the initial link to the supply of weapons seems to originate with an organized criminal family in Catania, on Sicily's eastern coast. The family, known locally as the "Ceusi", is part of the "Santopaula" clan, which is the dominant criminal network in that part of Italy. Investigators have confirmed that two years ago the Ceusi family purchased a cache of 160 deactivated AK-47s from AFG Security Corporation, a Slovakia-based European weapons dealer. The purchase of the weapons, for $40,000, was legal. But the Sicilian mafia then illegally reactivated the weapons by removing the deactivating metal pins that had been inserted into the weapons' barrels. The reactivated weapons were then supplied to the 'Ndrangheta, the Italian organized crime network that operates in the region of Calabria, in the Italian mainland. In turn, the 'Ndrangheta, which specializes in the trafficking of contraband to and from Europe, sold many of these reactivated weapons to a smuggling ring headquartered in the Egyptian port of Alexandria.
It was the Egyptian network, say investigators, that sold the AK-47s to Islamist militants in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, who have close connections with the Islamic State in Syria and other Islamist groups. A few of the weapons even ended up in the hands of European Islamists in France and elsewhere. Much of the intelligence regarding the AK-47s comes from telephone intercepts, said The Guaridan. But the newspaper cautioned that concrete links between the Mafia and the Islamic State have not yet been established. Nevertheless, the paper said that, according to European investigators, "organized criminals are increasingly open to trading with extremists", and there are mounting "signs of an even closer relationship between organized criminals and Islamists" operating in North Africa and the Middle East.
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with 'Ndrangheta, Islamic State, Italian mafia, Italy, News, organized crime, weapons smuggling
Italian spy chief paid secret visit to Syria: news reports
July 18, 2016 by Joseph Fitsanakis 1 Comment
The head of Italian intelligence paid a secret visit to Syria earlier this month, a week after his Syrian counterpart visited Rome, according to reports from the Middle East. The Dubai-based newspaper Gulf News, which first reported the alleged behind-the-scenes exchange, said the visits focused on counter-terrorism cooperation between Syria and the European Union. The paper said that the initial contact was made in late June by Major General Deeb Zeitoun, head of Syria's General Intelligence Directorate, who paid a secret visit to Rome. General Zeitoun's visit was allegedly in response to an official invitation issued by the Italian government. The general is believed to have stayed in a secluded private villa, which was provided by the Italian External Intelligence and Security Agency, known as AISE. He subsequently met with several Italian intelligence officials, including AISE Director, General Alberto Manenti.
A week later, Manenti secretly traveled to Syrian capital Damascus, where he stayed for several days. According to Gulf News, General Manenti met with his Syrian counterpart and other senior intelligence officials, as well as with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The main purpose of the secret meetings was to explore the potential for enhanced collaboration between Syria and the European Union on counter-terrorism issues. It appears that the Syrian government is willing to share intelligence on citizens of the EU who have traveled to Syria and have joined the ranks of the Islamic State, as well as other al-Qaeda-inspired groups in the country. Damascus is even willing to give EU intelligence personnel access to captured Islamist fighters that are being held in Syrian government facilities.
In return, however, the Syrians are asking that the EU enters negotiations on possibly normalizing diplomatic relations with Damascus. Contacts between the EU and Syria were severely disrupted at the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War and remain officially non-existent to this day. According to Gulf News, the Syrians told General Manenti that full intelligence cooperation in the area of counter-terrorism will ensue as soon as the EU normalizes diplomatic relations with the government in Damascus. The Italian intelligence official is believed to have told the Syrians that Rome will press the EU to move toward re-establishing relations with Damascus, in return for concrete steps taken in Syria toward "political transition" in the war-torn country.
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with AISE (Italy), Alberto Manenti, Deeb Zeitoun, European Union, General Intelligence Directorate (Syria), intelligence cooperation, Italy, News, secret meetings, Syria
Russian, Portuguese intelligence officers arrested in Rome on espionage charges
May 26, 2016 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
Two intelligence officers, one Russian and one Portuguese, have been arrested by Italian authorities on charges of espionage. The arrests took place in Rome on Monday by Italian police, who were reportedly accompanied by Portuguese counterintelligence officers. It is suggested in Portuguese media that the two men were arrested in the act of exchanging classified documents and money. The Portuguese intelligence officer has been identified in news reports as Frederico Carvalhão, a section chief for Portugal's Security Information Service, which is tasked with domestic security and counterintelligence. The Russian intelligence officer has not been identified, but is believed to be an employee of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, known as SVR. Interestingly, the Russian officer does not have diplomatic status and was therefore arrested, since he holds no diplomatic immunity.
A press release by the Portuguese government prosecutor said that Carvalhão had been arrested "along with a foreign subject linked to an intelligence organization" after a lengthy investigation into "concerns that [classified] information was being exchanged for money". It is believed that Portuguese authorities began investigating Carvalhão in 2015, and now believe that he frequently traveled abroad to meet his Russian handler. He is thought to have been recruited by the Russians in 2014. According to Portuguese media reports, the documents that Carvalhão appears to have been giving the SVR contain information about the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of which Portugal is a member.
Carvalhão is said to have flown from Lisbon to Rome on Friday of last week in order to meet his SVR handler. The two men were meeting in a café on Saturday when they were arrested. The Portuguese government prosecutor said that Saturday's arrests resulted from "rigorous collaboration between Portuguese and Italian authorities". He also thanked Eurojust, a European Union agency based in the Netherlands, which focuses on cross-national judicial cooperation between European Union member-states. Security officers also raided Carvalhão's home in Portugal, where they allegedly seized "documents and cash". Both he and his alleged Russian hander remain in detention in Rome, while Italy is preparing to extradite them to Portugal.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 26 May 2016 | Permalink | News tip: C.W.
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with counterintelligence, espionage, European Union, Frederico Carvalhão, Italy, NATO, News, non-official-cover, Portugal, Russia, SIS (Portugal), SVR (Russia)
Portuguese appeals court orders extradition of ex-CIA officer to Italy
An appeals court in Portugal has ruled that a former officer of the Central Intelligence Agency is to be extradited to Italy, where she faces charges of helping kidnap a man as part of a secret operation sponsored by the United States government. Sabrina De Sousa, 59, was an accredited diplomat stationed at the US consulate in Milan, Italy, in 2003, when a CIA team kidnapped Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr from a Milan street in broad daylight. Nasr, who goes by the nickname Abu Omar, is a former member of Egyptian militant group al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, and was believed by the CIA to have links to al-Qaeda. Soon after his abduction, Nasr was renditioned to Egypt, where he says he was brutally tortured, raped, and held illegally for years before being released without charge.
Upon Nasr's release from prison, Italian authorities prosecuted the CIA team that abducted him. They were able to trace the American operatives through the substantial trail of evidence that they left behind, including telephone records and bill invoices in luxury hotels in Milan and elsewhere. In 2009, De Sousa was among 22 CIA officers convicted in absentia in an Italian court for their alleged involvement in Nasr's abduction. Since the convictions were announced, the US government has not signaled a desire to extradite those convicted to Italy to serve prison sentences. However, those convicted are now classified as international fugitives and risk arrest by Interpol and other law enforcement agencies, upon exiting US territory.
De Sousa was arrested at the Portela Airport in Lisbon, Portugal, in October of last year. She spent two nights in jail before being released. However, her passport was seized by Portuguese authorities until they decided whether to extradite her to Italy to face her conviction. After a decision was made to extradite De Sousa, her lawyers filed an appeal. Last week, however, her appeal was denied, which means that she is to be extradited after May 4. It appears that De Sousa will now have to travel to Italy in order to be given official notice of her conviction, as well as the sentence, according to European legal conventions. Following that, she will probably have to return to Portugal to serve her sentence. Her lawyer said, however, that De Sousa plans to challenge her conviction at the Supreme Court of Cassation, Italy's highest court of appeal.
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with abductions, CIA, Egypt, extraditions, extraordinary rendition, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, Italy, Lisbon (Portugal), Milan (Italy), News, Portugal, Sabrina De Sousa, torture


Disclaimer: In case you didn't know, I am not a medical doctor. Some of the information in the following piece is purely my opinion and the various results are based on my own personal experiences. Good, that's out of the way.
A couple of years ago, I took an improv course at Second City. During one of the first classes, we did an exercise where the teacher asked us all to pretend we were animals. Along with the animalistic movements, we were to add noises - grunts, growls and such. I thought to myself, I feel so stupid doing this. I looked out over the class, at all these grown adults making animal noises and learned something. We were in a closed classroom, the teacher encouraged us to go as far as we could and everyone there was acting like idiots. It wasn't the teacher or anyone else in that room stopping me from acting like an animal, it was me. There was a voice in my head that told me how stupid I looked, how stupid I was for signing up for this class, how ridiculous the entire endeavour was and that I should just leave.
That damn voice has been there for as long as I can remember. I think, or at least hope, that other people have the same one in their head. Imagine that, we are all individuals with distinct personalities, but one thing that potentially binds us is a similar voice of contempt for ourselves. Maybe some people don't have that critical voice in their head, to which I say to them, Either you're fooling yourself or you're some kind of evolved species.
A few years ago, I had a writing teacher that told us about the two voices in our head. Within a paragraph, I've upped the ante to two voices. By the end of this piece, I might realize I have multiple personalities. Anyway, she told us that there is the voice of the devil, not in a theological sense, just the side of us that holds us back and stops us from doing things. The other one is a doubting voice, not necessarily bad, it just keeps us in check, makes sure we're making the right decisions. I could do with a little less devil and a little more doubting. The devil is loud and obnoxious and tends to get his way.
For me, the devil has been a kind of shadow, a dark figure that follows me around. He's faceless and has a voice like he's chewing on charcoal. He wears all black, including a black fedora with a long brim that dips down over his featureless face. But he hasn't been following me around as much lately. Here's why.
A couple of months ago, I was in a car accident and suffered a concussion. I went to some pretty dark places, got depressed and felt all sorry for myself. My mother gave me a book called Superbetter by Jane McGonigal. She is a game designer and went through many of the same problems I did in the aftermath of the concussion. So, she designed a game to help heal her brain. As in a lot of video games, you create a persona and play as a character. There are power ups, quests and bad guys. The difference is that the power ups and quests are all designed to keep you on track to do things that are good for you and for healing your concussion. You can also create bad guys to fight and eventually conquer.
I thought about this and the devil came to mind. But I did something a little different. Because the devil is so critical of what I do, I decided to call him The Critic. You can upload photographs to represent the different bad guys you create, and I immediately thought of the animated show from the 1990s called The Critic, created by Matt Groaning and which starred Jon Lovitz. If you remember this show, the main character is hardly what comes to mind when you think of the devil. It made me laugh. By personifying this voice in my head as an animated Jon Lovitz, it somehow instantly disarmed the ambiguous nature of this part of my brain. With ambiguity comes fear and uncertainty. With The Critic came an image that I could deal with easily.
The video game Superbetter led to other forms of positive rehabilitation. I was told not to use my brain, that it needed time to heal. Although I do agree with this, at the same time, it was my need to use my head that made me better. Yes, at times I pushed myself and paid for it. Maybe I'm still not completely there, but it was the creative activities that I'm involved with that made the different.
Having to do podcast interviews or prepare a story to share in front of a roomful of people, whatever the case, I needed to exercise my brain in order for it to work for me the way it used to. I understand that concussions are still a mystery. The severity of them can vary and the symptoms are all over the map. For me, what I needed to do was start thinking creatively again. I needed to uncross whatever wires got crossed. One of those wires was turning the shadow of the devil into the ridiculousness of The Critic.


text:
Can the industry get TikTok to pay per view? – Music Industry
November 16, 2022 by Jacob Smith
Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group are asking TikTok to share advertising revenue and increase the royalties it pays them for the rights, according to people familiar with the conversations in a report from fortune.
Both sides have been negotiating all year and are trying to reach an agreement before their contracts expire in the coming months. As TikTok has grown in popularity, it has become one of the most powerful hit makers in the music industry.
Record labels rely on TikTok to identify up-and-coming artists and market new releases. is the most important marketing tool that the industry has, to the point of having become a standard.
Promotion or Consumption? the eternal debate
According to the research firm eMarketerTikTok is on its way to get $12 billion in revenue in 2022, and music companies want TikTok to share more of that money, compensating them with a share of ad sales based on the number of streams their artists get.
An executive from a major record label said TikTok should be paying two to 10 times more than its existing deal, based on similar relationships with other platforms with large audiences, such as Facebook Y Youtube.
However, TikTok shields itself by arguing that its platform is a promotional tool, a complement to listen to music, and not a replacement for other consumer platforms.
Music companies first licensed the rights to TikTok when it was a small music app. lipsync It didn't make money. TikTok paid big music groups a flat fee to use music from their catalogs in videos shared on the social media platform.
Viral hits on TikTok draw audiences for artists on streaming platforms like Spotify, that it does pay the industry according to the number of reproductions. However, if a song becomes a huge viral hit on TikTok, that doesn't translate to more TikTok revenue.
Sony, Warner, and Universal announced their current agreements with the company in November 2020, January 2021, and February 2021, respectively. Businesses continued to charge flat fees, rather than reduced revenue, in part because TikTok he was just beginning to discover his advertising business. These contracts run for two years, although the parties tend to reach short-term extensions during negotiations rather than let the contracts lapse.
TikTok's deal with Marline, which represents independent labels, expired at the beginning of the year and the two parties used short-term extensions to avoid the need to remove music from the service. "Record labels and publishers gave TikTok a license to monetize their catalogs while they figured out how it works," according to an article by Mark Mulligan. "Now they have found out."
Many executives believe that TikTok should share revenue from advertising, and its owner, ByteDance should create a paid music service that operates globally. ByteDance could then use TikTok to feed users with its subscription product.
ByteDance has already created a paid music service called Resso in 2019 and introduced it to three markets: Indonesia, Brazil and India. Resso has tens of millions of monthly active users, according to people familiar with the business, but the service has so far struggled to convert many of them to paying subscribers.
ByteDance has been seeking the rights to expand Resso to a dozen new territories for more than a year. He has asked partners to lower their fees, offering to pay less than his peers as Spotify Y Apple Music. Rights holders have refused and Sony removed his music from Resso last September.
Beijing-based ByteDance has registered a trademark for TikTok Music and has discussed rebranding Resso under that name. But the company has yet to ask record labels for the rights to use its music in a potential branded service. TikTok Music.
The new "value gap"
Music companies remain optimistic that they can convince ByteDance to pay up. The record companies' uneasy relationship with TikTok—Mulligan described it as schizophrenic—reminds executives of their decade-long spats with Youtube Y Facebook.
Music companies criticized their business partners in Silicon Valley for years, claiming they didn't do enough to stop piracy and got rich off their work.
Record labels lobbied YouTube to offer a subscription music service, arguing that it would make a fortune converting even a small percentage of its two billion users into paying customers.
As a result, as of date YouTube paid the music industry over $6 billion between July 2021 and June 2022, and is now the second largest revenue stream after Spotify.
While Facebook hasn't created a paid music service, now share the ad revenue generated by the videos containing music with rights holders.
TikTok seems to be looking for ways to cut record labels out of the process. In March, the company launched SoundOn, a service that allows artists to upload their music directly to TikTok and earn royalties when that music is played.
Bytedance has also been looking to hire executives who can discover new artists and sign them to contracts like a record label would, it reported. MBW earlier this month.
"We will fight and determine how our artists are paid," Lucian Grainge, Universal's chief executive, told investors when asked about TikTok last month. "I've seen this movie before, and I know the ending."
We would love to give thanks to the author of this post for this amazing material
Categories Musicians Tags Industry, music, pay, TikTok, View
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
Séminaire Bourbaki
Talk no. 577
Affine Lie algebras and modular forms
MacDonald, I. G.
Séminaire Bourbaki : vol. 1980/81, exposés 561-578, Séminaire Bourbaki no. 23 (1981), Talk no. 577, p. 258-276
MR 647501 | Zbl 0472.17006 | 1 citation in Numdam
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title = {Affine Lie algebras and modular forms},
booktitle = {S\'eminaire Bourbaki : vol. 1980/81, expos\'es 561-578},
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MacDonald, I. G. Affine Lie algebras and modular forms, in Séminaire Bourbaki : vol. 1980/81, exposés 561-578, Séminaire Bourbaki, no. 23 (1981), Talk no. 577, pp. 258-276. http://www.numdam.org/item/SB_1980-1981__23__258_0/
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