"La Nebuleuse": Supranational network tied to child abuse networks, Iran Contra, cocaine cartels and the BCCI's "Black Network"

"Subject: Criminal organization (Russian mafia and related)"

"To comprehend this nebula, it is necessary to abandon traditional financial or political logic; this is not merely a question of nation, political party, or of ordinary economics... Our conclusion would be that at least over the last twenty years, the economic powers, some of which mafia types, have allied themselves with political forces and organized criminal structures, and reached the 4th stage of money laundering, namely, Absolute Power. It has been specified to us that at the present moment these characters control 50% of the world economy."

Introduction of a Belgian gendarmerie report to a number of senior officials, District of Liege, November 21, 1994. (emphasis from report).

After publishing the Beyond the Dutroux Affair article in July 2007 I was almost completely empty when it came to the information I had. Virtually everything I had learned in the previous 1.5 years went in that article. In the past six months people have sent me a number of new documents, making it possible to expand a bit on different groups which appear to be involved in a lot of the abuse.

Eight months before Beyond the Dutroux Affair, ISGP had published an article on Le Cercle, a private, secretive, and rabidly anti-communist discussion group which for decades has brought together hard-right elements of Western and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies. The Cercle had a particular focus on European integration and even though the British played an equally prominent role, the Cercle had been founded as a branch of what this site has been calling the "Vatican-Paneuropa network".

In Beyond the Dutroux Affair ISGP began to expand on the Belgian branch of both the Cercle and the Vatican-Paneuropa network. As expected, Jean Violet, the primary founder of the Pinay Cercle, was closely affiliated with the persons running Belgium's anti-communist stay-behind networks, or at the very least all its illegal offshoots.

First it turned out that in the late 1960s or early 1970s Violet had organized the Académie Européenne de Sciences Politiques in Brussels. As with the founding of Le Cercle, Violet acted as a frontman for Otto von Habsburg and his Vatican-Paneuropa network. Paul Vanden Boeynants was reportedly a board member of this hard-right think tank. This may or may not have been the case, but what we do know now is that Baron de Bonvoisin certainly was a (regular) member. 1 Persons who have read Beyond the Dutroux Affair will recall that Paul Vanden Boeynants and Baron de Bonvoisin were the twin pillars of the fascist underground in Belgium during the 1970s and 1980s, and that both have been accused of extremely sadistic child abuse.

While writing Beyond the Dutroux Affair it also turned out that Jean Violet was a member of Cercle des Nations, which we described as "a private, aristocratic club, which started out with about 80 members who generally were royalist, staunchly anti-communist, pro-Nato, pro-European integration and highly fascist." Besides Paul Vanden Boeynants and Baron de Bonvoisin, members included Paul Vankerkhoven, a side-kick of Otto van Habsburg who founded the Belgian branch of the World Anti-Communist League; and countless people who have been accused of sadistic child abuse: Jean-Paul Dumont, Count Herve d'Ursel, Roger Boas, Charly De Pauw, Guy Mathot, Ado Blaton, General Rene Bats, Philippe Cryns and the de Merode family. A lot of these men belonged to Opus Dei; Violet was no exception.

Although these associations of Violet with Belgium's subversive and apparently child abusing elite are telling, it would be nice to have more details on the personal relationship between the Pinay Cercle founder and persons like de Bonvoisin and Paul Vanden Boeynants. A "strictly confidential" report written by substitute magistrate Jean-Francois Godbille does just that. On pages 52 and 53 we read:

"Major BOUGEROL and de BONVOISIN, according to a confidential report of the gendarmerie of the Wavre district dated August 14, 1985 (photocopy in appendix),  were extremely close to the lawyer Jean VIOLET, a member of the secret services of France and the Vatican, and close to the  SAC and the P2 Lodge. This is confirmed when reading parts of the dossier  about A. de VILLEGAS ... and that of de BONVOISIN, in which it appears that at the request of BOUGEROL, VIOLET was introduced to BOUGEROL by de BONVOISIN (cfr file PDG)."

Photocopies of the Godbille Report.

Godbille did far more here than confirm Violet's closeness to de Bonvoisin. First of all he repeated the previous claims that Violet was a senior agent of the Vatican. He also stated that Violet not only was involved in running Belgium's fascist underground, which was largely overseen by Bougerol, de Bonvoisin and Vanden Boeynants through their PIO intelligence group, but also that he was in contact with similar subversive elements in France (the Service d'Action Civique, or SAC) and Italy (P2). Of course, those who have read the article on Le Cercle will find no surprises here. PIO and its successor, the European Institute of Management, like Cercle des Nations, have been tied to extreme child abuse. EIM had additional ties to Wackenhut, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the rabidly anti-communist Moony cult. The owner of EIM was a member of Prince Bernhard's 1001 Club. Update: In 2011 ISGP confirmed that Baron de Bonvoisin was a visitor of Pinay's Cercle group.

Violet's Pinay Cercle actually appears to have been a continuation of the most reactionary pro-fascist forces in France and Great Britain who were active at the time of World War II. Two key French members of the Cercle, Jean Violet and Georges Albertini, were tied to the notorious "Synarchie" movement. Sir Peter Tennant from Britain, a banker who chaired a number of early meetings of the Cercle, had a close relative, Sir Ernest Tennant, who as a leading light in the Anglo-German Fellowship and a good friend of Hitler's ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop, had tried to bring about an anti-communist Anglo-German alliance. Sir Frederik Bennett, a close associate of the British Cercle leadership, had a father who was a member of the secretive, subversive and highly anti-semitic Right Club. 2

Baron de Bonvoisin was accused by two witnesses in the X-Dossiers of child abuse: X1 and X2. These actually are not the only accusations. [update: person wishes to remain anonymous], has been in the possession of four brief summaries of witness testimonies about child abuse. De Bonvoisin's name comes up in three of them. Here's a rather familiar sounding excerpt:

"Event: Witness her husband, who has passed away, received an invitation for a party at a castle in the neighborhood of ATH. Former minister DESCAMPS and Baron de BONVOISIN were present there. At a certain point children of approximately 10 years of age were brought in. These were then abused by the guests present. The husband of the witness didn't know this would happen and left the place because he didn't want to participate … Date of the event: About 4 years ago."

Photocopy of relevant document. Event written down
in Dutch.

"Descamps" is a reference to the liberal politician Pierre Descamps, whose political allies were questionable figures as Jean Gol (partouser at Les Atrebates, together with Nihoul; X2 stated she had attended a meeting at the Hilton between Madani Bouhouche's spouse (husband of an alleged abuser), Paul Vanden Boeynants (alleged abuser), Wilfried Martens (alleged abuser), Guy Delvoie (alleged abuser who partied with Lippens and Davignon), Nihoul (alleged abuser) and Jean Gol) and Jean Militis (special forces col.; CEPIC; PRL member of parliament; named as a coup plotter along with Vanden Boeynants), and reportedly also was a friend of the notorious gang leader Patrick Haemers. Descamps was born in ATH, a Belgian municipality located in the Walloon province of Hainaut, in the West of the country. He was appointed a honorary Minister of State in 1973.

The following excerpt of a similar summary brings up another familiar element in child abuse cases involving high-placed persons: intimidation of victim-witnesses and investigators.

"The witness points out several people implicated in various affairs. She informs us that she already shared what she knew with the PJ [Judicial Police] of NAMUR [Namen].. She says to us that she received threats on behalf of examining magistrate MAROTTE of the NAMUR District Attorney's office. She seems to know an enormous amount of things, but doesn't want the NAMUR District Attorney's office to handle the information. The PJ [Judicial Police] warned her over what she said. A gendarme of the BSR [Special Investigations Unit of the Gendarmerie] of NAMUR, Daniel PETIT, would have liked to help her but he feared for his family and his job. She gives us a series of names: ..." 3

One of the names this witness mentioned was Philippe Cryns, owner of the aristocratic Mirano club. In the Beyond the Dutroux Affair article we discussed how child abuse parties would have taken place here in the 1980s involving Baron de Bonvoisin and other notables.

In another document (see document 2 at note 2 under 'sources') a witness spoke about "pink ballets" - normally a reference to parties where children are abused - at which de Bonvoisin, Frans Reyniers, and Guy Spitaels were present. Reyniers was a controversial Brussels police commissioner who in the early 1980s was a "partouzer" at Les Atrebates, together with Michel Nihoul. He also went to the Jonathan, a club loaded with members of the fascist underground. Reyniers has been a close associate of police commissioner Georges Marnette and police officer Yves Zimmer. The trio Reyniers-Marnette-Zimmer, centrally located in Brussels, has been accused of aiding numerous cover ups, from the Gang of Nijvel, to Group G, and the X-Dossiers. Both Marnette and Zimmer have been accused of child abuse (actually, Zimmer has only been seen at the wrong places with the wrong people). Interestingly, Zimmer was head of the sexual abuse department of the Brussels police from 1982 to 1987. Guy Spitaels was a socialist politician and vice prime minister under Wilfried Martens (accused of child abuse) from 1979 to 1981. In the late 1980s his nickname was "God" because of his dominant influence in government. His political career came to an abrupt end in the early 1990s after accusations that he was involved in the Agusta scandal. He would later be convicted of "passive corruption" in this affair. From 1977 to 1997 Spitaels was the mayor of ATH. Just before his career ended, in 1991, he had been invited to Bilderberg with Martens.

Among the documents received by ISGP also was a police report about the Haemers Gang, which was involved in a number of high profile robberies throughout the 1980s, starting in 1981. Leaders of the gang were Patrick Haemers and his father Achiel.

Partial photocopy of the Haemers document. The original language is Dutch, by this author considered a welcome deviation of the usual French.

It was only in January 1989 that the Haemers Gang really received national and international notoriety when it kidnapped former prime minister Paul Vanden Boeynants. At first it was reported that Vanden Boeynants had been kidnapped by the "Socialist Revolutionary Brigade", which no one had ever heard of, and the equally peculiar "Fighting Communist Cells" 4. Only in the weeks and months after the kidnapping it turned out that the Haemers Gang was behind the affair. Michel Vander Elst, the gang's lawyer after their arrest, later was convicted for having provided false alibis for the gang members and even for having been the coordinator of the kidnapping. 5

Looking back at Vanden Boeynants's long involvement in all kinds of illegal anti-communist and anti-socialist intelligence operations, including false flag terrorism and gangsterism, this can be considered a highly curious kidnapping; also because Vanden Boeynants knew his captors 6 and was under almost continuous investigation for forgery, tax evasion, corruption, and what not. Over the years many have suspected that the kidnapping was some sort of staged event, but the exact details have never come out. This new police report, based on information from an informant close to the Haemers Gang, adds a very important detail: namely that there was some kind of "organization" with "dangerous political ideas" behind the kidnapping and used the Haemers Gang to carry it out. According to this informant, the lawyer Michel Vander Elst, the alleged mastermind behind the kidnapping, actually was only an intermediary between the Haemers Gang and this unknown organization. The police report:

"Between mid January '89 and February (before 14 February '89) there has been contact between the HAEMERS family (Achiel, Lilis and Bobonne) and Patrick HAEMERS, Denise TYACK and Kevin. This happened somewhere at a chateau, outside Paris (probably QARTRES). ... During the conversation with his father Patrick told him that he was behind the VDB case. ... Patrick would have told Achiel that he worked for an "organization" and that he was well compensated for his services. The "organization" would pay the rent of the apartments and they needn't worry about anything. The organization would consist of influential people and has their own doctor and lawyers. They would have dangerous political ideas and Patrick described them as "the dangerous mad men". ... The contact between the "organization" and the gang around HAEMERS is a lawyer, a certain VANDER ELST... In any case Patrick feels he's super-protected by this organization. - According to the informant, VDB would also have ties to this organization and his kidnapping has possibly been staged. In any case VDB is well acquainted with his kidnappers. ... Eric HAEMERS would know more about the organization, but would be afraid to speak about it."

The name Michel Vander Elst may sound familiar to those who have read Beyond the Dutroux Affair. This is the person who provided Michel Nihoul, Dutroux's (alleged) associate in the kidnapping of children, with an alibi; an alibi which later on turned out to be incorrect. Vander Elst is also among the persons pointed out by X1 who, along with Nihoul, is said to have abused, tortured and murdered a number of children. Vander Elst's law office was located in the same building as the apartment of Vanden Boeynants 7, a person with similar accusations against his person.

Apart from gang, gladio terrorism and pedophile dossiers, Michel Vander Elst's name also popped up in an internal confidential report of BSR (Special Investigations Unit of the Gendarmerie) investigators to Belgium's top magistrates and gendarmerie officers. The report, dated November 21, 1994, was part of the ATLAS Dossier, a case opened in the summer of 1994 after the collapse of a company named Commerciale et Minière d'Uele (Comuele).

The immediate history of the Comuele affair goes back to 1990 when two members of the Russian mafia, Boris Nayfeld and Riccardo Fanchini, set up the "import-export" firm M&S International in Antwerp. Nayfeld, a top figure in the Russian mafia in New York, had just fled to Belgium because the American authorities were closing in on his illegal operations. Riccardo Fanchini was a gangster originally from Poland. He would soon become a top Russian mafia boss with close ties to President Boris Jeltsin. The Ukrainian gangster Rachmiel "Mike" Brandwain, who had a wealth of experience in arms, gold and diamond smuggling, became the managing director of M&S.

1989, on Felix's property in Antibes. From left to right: Andre Cools, Felix's son Daniel, and Felix. Georges Timmerman (De Morgen editor in chief 1992-2009) for Apache News Lab, December 10, 2009: "Przedborski was friends with, amongst others, Paul Vanden Boeynants and Pierre Salik, who introduced him to Prince Alexander [de Rethy; 1942-2009] ... Among the protection Przedborski enjoyed were then Foreign Secretary Henri Simonet (PS) and his chief of staff, the later diplomat Alfred Cahen, and also was supported by PS-leader Andre Cools. Apparently Prince Alexander traveled with Przedborski to Costa Rica... in the capacity as his driver."

In 1992, the real estate firm Comuele, headed by Bruno Goldberger and Arthur Fogel (not the tour producer of Madonna and U2), took a controlling interest in M&S International. According to the ATLAS Dossier, Comuele at this point was controlled by a shady group of Russian and Israeli financiers, who had been brought in by Bruno Goldberger with the help of Maurice Tempelsman, a Belgian-American diamond merchant who had a long relationship with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Despite the injection of capital from the east, Comuele began to collapse in the summer of 1994, leading to the exposure of the Comuele-M&S ties to the Russian mafia.

The ATLAS document is specifically focused on a person with the name Felix Przedborski and the network he controls. According to the authors of the ATLAS document, Przedborski is a mafia boss with a double nationality, Belgian and Costa Rican. His group, allegedly controlling some 7 billion dollars in assets in the early 1990s, would be involved in the trafficking of diamonds, arms, narcotics, and nuclear material, and would have considerable influence over a number of politicians in Belgium and the European Union. Przedborski's group would literally control a number of multinationals through which it launders large amounts of funds. General Electric, Alcatel, the Schneider Group, and Lyonnaise des Eaux are among the multinationals named in the document. The authors specifically wondered why Przedborski, whom they stated had been caught trafficking nuclear materials with the Chinese in 1956 (and was released after Konrad Adenauer intervened), by the 1990s was Costa Rica's permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

The Mossad played a key role in both Iran Contra and in Felix Przedborski's "Nebula".

The ATLAS document clearly indicates that elements in the Israeli government and intelligence services are involved in what is described as Przedborski's "Nebula". Particularly interesting is the statement that an Israeli colonel who protected Przedborski also trained members of the Cali cocaine cartel and the U.S.-backed Costra forces. The colonel remains unnamed, but the information is very reminiscent of a tape that surfaced in 1989 showing Israeli Colonel Yair Klein training the paramilitary chief of the rival Medellin cocaine cartel and 50 henchmen in military tactics and assassination. Klein was present in Colombia from December 1986 to May 1987, after which he moved on to train U.S. backed Contra forces in Nicaragua and Costa Rica. General Miguel Maza Marquez, head of the Administrative Security Department, Colombia's equivalent of the FBI, also explained that 11 British instructors were spotted training the rival Cali cartel, but had no video of this. 8 More than likely Yair Klein is also the colonel that trained the Cali Cartel (and the Contras), although it cannot be stated as absolute fact. From the ATLAS document we cite:

"Around 1983, PRZEDBORSKI would have hired a MOSSAD Colonel for his own safety and that of his group. ...

"Later, this Colonel would have accepted the proposal to leave the MOSSAD and put his entire team at the service of PRZEDBORSKI.

"This Colonel would have ... trained members of the CONTRAS as well as those of the CALI CARTEL...

"It is said that some weapons of IRANGATE would have been transferred to the CONTRAS of NICARAGUA by this network. (It appears that on this matter PRZEDBORSKI would have called an American president by his first name)."

The Iran-Contra affair, or Irangate, was the result of decades-long U.S. support for the Shah of Iran, as well as inaction by the Carter administration to keep the Ayatollah's influence at bay. When the Shah's regime collapsed in 1979, David Rockefeller and associates convinced Carter to allow the Shah refuge in the United States 9, leading to an acute and strong anti-American feeling in Iran, not only with the Ayatollah but also with the general population. Iranian radicals seized the American embassy while the Iranian leadership began to sponsor and train Hezbollah, an Islamic paramilitary organization in Lebanon which soon also began to take American hostages.

Anastasio Somoza, whose family almost continually ruled Nicaragua from 1936 to 1980. His brutal dictatorship was supported by anti-communist reactionaries in the United States. When Carter withdrew support for Somoza, the Israelis - again - were used to keep Somoza's dictatorship afloat - an effort which failed. Somoza lost to the far-left Sandinista forces. The Contra terrorist units, trained and funded by the Israelis and the forces behind Reagan, were largely composed of former Somoza supporters. According to John DeCamp, among Somoza's business partners was Roberto Alejos Arzu, who is said to have been involved in procuring of children for pedophile networks. 10 Arzu's biography certainly fits this accusation. Arzu was an extreme right CIA asset, a Knight of Malta, involved with the Knights of Malta-run Americares and Covenant House (tied to a major abuse scandal), involved in the Guatemalan death squad killings (including the murder of Covenant House employees who tried to clean up the institution, together with a number of children), and reportedly sent the children of the plantation workers he killed to "local charities". His plantation at one point was used by the CIA to train Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. 11

After the first hostages had been taken, members of the U.S. government - often through Israel - began to negotiate arms shipments to supposedly pro-Western factions in Iran and the Iranian government. The idea was that these factions would negotiate the release of hostages. These "arms-for-hostages" deals proved unsuccessful, however, as new hostages would be taken as soon as a previous group had been released. Eventually these secret arms shipments were exposed, leading to the Iran aspect of the Iran-Contra affair.

The Contras came in when Oliver North and his associates at the National Security Council decided to use the proceeds of the Iranian arms sales to supply the Contras of Nicaragua with weapons. Clandestine U.S. involvement in aiding the contras had been forbidden by the Boland Acts of of 1982-1984, so when the arms to Iran scandal broke in 1986 this automatically evolved into the Iran-Contra affair.

Iran-Contra was much more complex and sinister than illegally supplying arms to both Iran and the Contras. First of all, U.S. officials labeling the Contras as "freedom fighters" or even as "anti-communists" is misleading, as their daily operations consisted of terrorizing the population by brutally torturing and murdering villagers at random, including women and young children. Although the Sandinista opposition may not have been a whole lot better, the fact that the United States, in cooperation with the Israelis, were actively arming and training these Contras shows the inhumane nature of the members of this cabal. The group's involvement in drug trafficking should not be surprising then. The CIA and its allies allowed the Contras to ship huge amounts of cocaine into the United States and sell it to mafia families in New York, Los Angeles, Texas, Miami, and a number of other places. The proceeds of these sales allowed the Contras to buy (third-rate) arms and other supplies from the United States. The CIA recruited Manuel Noriega in Panama as an intermediary in a lot of the drug trafficking. 12

Costa Rica's central location in Central America.

The Israelis played a major role in the whole Iran-Contra affair. They were used as an intermediary to sell the arms to Iran. They also supported the United States in training the Contras, and apparently also in shipping the drugs and assassinating those who tried to expose these schemes. The accusations in the ATLAS document that the Mossad was training the Contras and members of the Cali Cartel while protecting friendly drug dealers as Felix Przedborski do not stand on their own then. In fact, the ATLAS document appears to lay bare the seldom discussed Belgian-Costa Rican aspect of the whole Contra affair.

Costa Rica sits right in between Nicaragua in the north, where the Contras were fighting the Sandinista government, and Panama in the South, where General Noriega was supporting the United States in shipping the drugs from South and Central America to the United States. It is already known that Israeli special forces as Colonel Leo Gleser were operating out of Honduras, to the north of Nicaragua (in cooperation with the "Secret Team" or "the Enterprise" from the United States), and that General Noriega's right hand man in running the drugs and arms was the Israeli Mossad officer (and former assassin) Mike Harari. 13 Costa Rica has largely been ignored, but it is known that this country was used by the United States as a staging ground for anti-Contra special operations. It is also known that drugs coming from Columbia in some cases went through Costa Rica before ending up in the United States. Key Costa Rican players in the mid-1980s included Oliver North allies as DEA station chief Bobby Nieves and CIA station chief Joe Fernandez, as well as ranch owner John Hull. President of Costa Rica throughout the Contra operations was Luis Alberto Monge, who in the ATLAS document is described as a friend of Felix Przedborski. The ATLAS document further alleges that Przedborski's group imported weapons from Belgium and, once again, had the Contras pay for them with drugs - heroin in this case. These weapons apparently would have come from Fabrique National [11] and ASCO, two very interesting companies.

Just amazing: the person who provided Nihoul with an alibi (later proven false) for the day he was named as an aide in the kidnapping of one of Dutroux's victims, not only had been involved in the kidnapping of former prime minister Paul Vanden Boeynants, but according to the ATLAS document, had a father who was the lawyer of "Nebula" leader Felix Przedborski (not to mention the lawyer of the Grand Orient Lodge and a personal counselor to King Albert II). Vander Elst, Jr. was pointed out as a child abuser by X1 two years after the ATLAS dossier was written (she also put him at ASCO). Another report had previously mentioned Vander Elst, Jr. as an intermediary between the Haemers gang and an unknown but very influential political group consisting of "dangerous madmen".

In January 1986 the Belgian fascist Juan Mendez was shot dead, apparently by a member of the fascist-pedophile underground earlier described in 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair'. Mendez was a sales director at Fabrique National (FJ). His Peruvian predecessor, a person with the name Carlos Davilla del Pielago, had fled Belgium after it had been found out that he worked for the CIA and was involved in illegal arms and drug trafficking. In the weeks before his death, Mendez himself had been interrogated about his connection to Douglas Stowell, a rich American businessman who apparently was working for or with the CIA in the Iran-Contra operation. 14 Mendez had been groomed by Madani Bouhouche - the person who apparently murdered him - as a member of a group that some day was to conduct a terror-extortion campaign against warehouses as part of an effort to destabilize the Belgian state. Just as interesting, according to his friends and family, some time before his death Mendez had informed them that he had been invited to join some kind of clandestine group that was gathering data on political adversaries to be used during and after a coup. 15 In other words, the claim that Fabrique National was part of Przedborski's network is not at all far-fetched.

The other company, ASCO, featured quite prominently in the testimonies of X1. Let's recap a portion of Beyond the Dutroux Affair:

""The factory" X1 regularly spoke about (see above) was a location, where besides regular abuse, snuff movies were shot. Vanden Boeynants' private driver Henri Bil, Baron de Bonvoisin, Annie Bouty, Michel Nihoul, Tony, the controversial lawyer Michel Vander Elst, former prime minister Wilfried Martens, examining magistrate Melchior Wathelet and lawyer Jean-Paul Dumont apparently all went to the ASCO factory to torture and abuse children. (270). In November 1996, X1 took the investigators to the location she had described. On arrival, it turned out that the witness had been talking about the ASCO factory, located just outside Brussels. The description she had given matched, and coincidentally, ASCO was (and is) owned by the Boas family, which used to be close friends and business partners of the late Paul Vanden Boeynants (271). X1 mentioned having seen a "Roger" (272) at the factory, apparently the head of the Boas family who used to be a member CEPIC and Cercle des Nations."

Isn't it just amazing how a lot of the same names keep coming up? According to the ATLAS document, the following persons were involved in illegally shipping weapons to Iran and Central America:

"a) Andre COOLS
- Assassinated former Belgian minister
b) Roger BOAS (ASCO company)
c) Abraham SHAVIT
- Right hand of Roger BOAS
- Personal friend of Israeli minister BEGIN
- It is known that Andre Cools stayed at Shavit's when he went to ISRAEL
d) Guy MATHOT
- Former Belgian minister
e) Paul VANDENBOEYNANTS
- Former Belgian minister and prime minister
f) Fernand BEAURIR
- Former Gendarmerie commandant of Belgium."

Back in 2006 and 2007 when 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair' was written, ISGP had already stumbled across reports that Israeli general Efraim Poran, a businessman and military liaison officer for prime ministers Menachem Begin (PM 1977-1983) and Yitzchak Rabin (PM 1974-1977 and 1992-1995), used to be a board member of ASCO. Nothing was done with these reports because they were not particularly authorative and because there appeared to be no real Israeli connection to the things described in 'Beyond the Dutroux Affair'. Next to Poran, there was however one other hint to the possible involvement of the Israelis in this network. This was escort madam Fortunato Israel, a mistress of Roger Boas who ran a prostitution network for the rich, including Belgian royals, Arab princes, and men working for international arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi. But again the connection to Israel was weak. She had occasionally been mentioned as someone closely tied to interests in Israel, but these connections appear not to have been investigated in any detail.

Oliver North, apparently never far away in this type of business.

The ATLAS document now mentions Abraham Shavit, and again it is ASCO that supplies the Israeli link. Shavit was a manager of ASCO at the time of Iran Contra. Besides his ties to the Israeli government and Belgian minister Andre Cools, Shavit has been described as a friend and associate of Portuguese arms dealer Manuel J. Pires. 16 This Pires, who "handled secret CIA arms transfers to Angola, and later to both Iran and Iraq", 17 worked with the infamous Lt. Col. Oliver North during the Iran Contra scheme. 18

Incredibly, not only have the Belgians that were involved in Iran Contra been accused of child abuse (Boas, Mathot, Vanden Boeynants and Beaurir), but North and his employer, vice president and later president George Bush, were uncomfortably close to the Franklin child abuse affair in the United States. Both were mentioned by witnesses as having attended the parties of alleged child abuser, Satanist, Contra supporter, money launderer and drug dealer Lawrence E. "Larry" King. 19 Another Contra supporter and alleged child abuser, Robert Keith Gray, was also close to Bush, North and King. 20

The ATLAS document also reported that both the "Przedborski Group" and the Belgian arms traffickers tied to the ASCO factory - Paul Vanden Boeynants, Roger Boas and Abraham Shavit - used the Republic National Bank, and its owner Edmond Safra in particular, to launder some of their funds. The Mossad would have used the same conduit. 21

The somewhat controversial banker Edmond Safra. A member of the Board of Overseers of B'nai B'rith International in the 1980s, together with Edgar M. Bronfman (chair) and Max Fisher (highest level connections in the US and Israeli governments), he was a prominent Zionist. Like his friend Robert Maxwell he had close connections to both the Russian and Eastern European mafias and Israeli intelligence. The ATLAS document's allegation that his bank was used by the Mossad and Israeli Iran-Contra traffickers is not a big surprise then.

In the ATLAS dossier a reference can be found to a "Geoffrey's Bank". The dossier talks about Przedborski having established contacts with the CIA, the Vatican, and the Italian mafia. An additional note with the CIA reads:

"The CIA would still play a current role in this nebula, in particular via weapons trafficking with payments having been carried out via Geoffrey's Bank."

Not much is known about this Geoffrey's Bank, with its peculiar name for a Belgian bank. It was located in Brussels, ran into financial trouble by the late 1970s and was taken over by the Gesbanque in 1980. 29 That's a long time ago, even for the ATLAS document that was written in 1994. Initially it was only possible to find two persons with connections to this bank - but that was enough to raise a few eyebrows.

The first person is Ronald A. Sablosky, today an executive vice president of a company called Business Outsourcing Solutions. He's head of the company's New York office. His biography:

"Ronald Sablosky has had broad experience in international affairs, commercial and international law, finance and banking, foreign trade and real estate development and construction. ...

"Involved in European merchant banking, Sablosky became special consultant and lead negotiator for the Geoffrey's Bank of Bruxelles, Belgium and in this connection he was directly involved in private and governmental financings, international commerce, and the financing of the oil trade."

Okay, nothing really unusual so far. But then you read:

"He is a member of the Board of Governors of the Shriners Hospital for Children, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a director of Grand Street Boys Association, in New York City, a director of OIKOS Ministries of Albany, New York, a Fellow of the Augustan Society, and a member of the St. George's Society, just to name a few." 30

Shriners are very common, also in the Anglo-American Pilgrims crowd. You wouldn't initially expect that with its Arabic origins.

The Shriners - of the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine - are a Masonic-related group. You have to be a Mason to become a Shriner. Sablosky doesn't mention it here, but since 2007 he has been a 33rd degree Mason of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of New York, of which he used to be head. Today he has the official function of emeritus deputy representative. 31

The St. George's Society is an Anglican/Episcopal "do good" group - and quite elitists at the same time because many Pilgrims Society members can be found here.

OIKOS would by many be considered a missionary "Jesus freak" group. And the Augustan Society? Well, that's an interesting one. The name comes up only twice when searching for it on ISGP. Turns out that patrons of the Augustan Society have included Otto von Habsburg and Prince Vittorio Emanuele of the House of Savoy. Habsburg has been mentioned earlier in this article in relation to Jean Violet, Le Cercle, Cercle des Nations and all the child abuse accusations surrounding this last group.

Prince Vittorio Emanuele doesn't seem much friendlier. He used to be a member of the fascist and anti-communist P2 Lodge in Italy, which Violet was close to (it was part of the Cercle network). Emanuele's family itself was close to the notorious Permindex firm through board members Carlo d'Amelio, a Rome attorney who oversaw the financial holdings of the House of Savoy, and George Mantello (33rd degree Mason), who was in contact with the House of Savoy in some business deals the family conducted with Permindex. As the next person tied to the Geoffrey's Bank actually was a board member of Permindex, we'll get back to this aspect. In general, Prince Emanuele is extremely controversional. The following 2006 newspaper report, written after Emanuele was arrested for his illegal dealings with an Italian casino (he has been released again), sums up his personality quite well:

"On the basis of a two-year investigation by local prosecutors, he [Emanuele] is accused of using his influence with the authorities to lubricate business deals involving illegal gambling machines. He was also allegedly involved in procuring Eastern European prostitutes for a northern Italian casino. ...

"In one conversation, the prince tells an associate to "give a good slapping" to a woman [prostitute] who apparently took €500 off him and failed to perform her duties properly. He is also heard arranging for his car not to be searched when he crosses the Swiss-Italian border one night last November.

"The 2,000-page prosecutor's dossier says that he was the "undisputed leader" of a group that used his high-level contacts to do deals worth millions of euros. Ten other people, including the mayor of Campione d'Italia and a Sicilian entrepreneur with alleged Mafia links, have also been arrested. [another newspaper report talked about sixteen arrests, including the spokesman of Gianfranco Fini, a formerly neofascist leader who was deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister under Berlusconi, who, of course, is another old P2 member].

"He and Italian associates reportedly struck a deal with the casino to help attract clients, and came up with the idea of a "complete package", including sex, for the gambling élite, investigators claim.

"A conversation with the Venetian businessman Ugo Bonazza: [Emanuele:] I'm going to Milan... and I've got three quarters of an hour now... I wanted to go to a whore... to go again to... what was her name? [gets to hear he doesn't have to pay her]""

The newspaper adds:

"Vittorio Emanuele, who was 9 when Italy became a republic and the Royal Family was banished in 1946 for collaborating with Mussolini and fleeing the invading German Army, is no stranger to controversy. In 1989 he was involved in a shooting incident on a yacht off Corsica in which a 19-year-old German died. He was eventually cleared of manslaughter by a Paris court after several trials." 32

The Augustan Society, clearly part of the ultra-right.

This kind of controversy is not entirely unexpected for the Augustan Society. It has largely been set up by members of the Shickshinny Knights of Malta, a pseudo templar order that used to be filled with General Douglas MacArthur's ultra-fascist clique of generals and colonels, as well as Eugene Tabbutt of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). As discussed in the American Security Council and European Institute of Management articles, MacArthur, primarily through his nephew, MacArthur II, has incredibly sinister ties to very sadistic top-level child abuse and snuff networks. The Shickshinny knights appear to have even older-standing ties to eastern European nobility; I've seen a stack of alleged documents from the early part of the 20th century mentioning names as Habsburg, Thurn und Taxis, Wittelsbach, Windisch-Graetsch and Radziwill attending meetings of the Shickshinny Knights in New York, then known under the name Sovereign Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Manager of the order at the time was Charles Pichel, a Nazi and sadistic rapist who maintained ties with the White Russian community.

While criticism on the Shickshinny Knights or the Knights of Malta (SMOM) has appeared here and there, David Guatt is actually the only person who has written critically about the Augustan Society, this after having spoken to a former member. 33 Apparently members of this group are just as fascist as those in the two afore-mentioned groups. In a recent email, Guyatt elaborated:

"Very close to SMOM and it is a general melting pot of various intell outfits - so the inside source told me. The Augustan Society was basically founded by old OSS officers of a very right wing persuasion. ... In passing the source mentioned that at their HQ, regular occult ceremonies were held. I think (but can't remember for sure now) that the influence was Crowleyian [no real details on this].

"The Shickshinny's were all over the Augustan Society. And, of course, they were deeply involved in the black gold story too [WWII gold used post-war for CIA operations]. Nasty tribe that directly links to the right-wing clique that was close to General Douglas MacArthur. Like you I also looked closely at von Habsburg and the House of Savoy - fascists all. [The House of] Liechtenstein [1001 Club] is also a patron of the Augustan Society and was, I am told, deeply involved in fencing WWII loot, particularly works of art. Probably some of the stuff plundered by the fat Goering.

"Actually, it was by chance that the subject of the Augustan Society come up at all I suppose. It was not what we were discussing - notably one particular person - but proved to be somewhat tangential to it. I had never heard of the Augustan Society before he raised the subject."

Well, isn't this more than a little alarming? The first person we find with ties to this CIA/"nebula" Geoffrey's Bank - close to numerous child abuse accusations - and immediately we see links to 33° Masons, a hospital for children, a boys club, child abusers, and a seemingly fascist religious order with intelligence origins and maybe even occult ties. Slowly these kind of ties start becoming old news. Sablosky's wife, by the way, is a vice-publisher of the monthly Manhattan magazine New York Family, which primarily gives parenting advice. Maybe it's nothing, but this couple sure loves children, maybe a bit too much to be comfortable with.

We are far from done, however. We also know that in the late 1960s an officer was working at the Geoffrey's Bank with the name "A. Newman", who has been described as a friend and business partner of - you'll never guess - Roy Cohn. 34 And there we go again: round and round. Cohn's been talked about in several previous articles of ISGP, all in relation to underground fascist groups and pedophile entrapment operations. As has already been written down in Beyond Dutroux, Senator John DeCamp once wrote:

"Said to be Harold Anderson's "closest friend in Washington," Gray [in the White House under Eisenhower; CEO Hill & Knowlton; advisory council WWF; chair George Town Club, where pedophile entrapment allegedly took place; Mason; supporter of AmeriCares at the time of its pedophile scandals] is also reportedly a specialist in homosexual blackmail operations for the CIA... Gray's associate Wilson was apparently continuing the work of a reported collaborator of Gray from the 1950's—McCarthy committee counsel Roy Cohn, now dead of AIDS. According to the former head of the vice squad for one of America’s biggest cities, 'Cohn's job was to run the little boys. Say you had an admiral, a general, a congressman, who did not want to go along with the program. Cohn’s job was to set them up, then they would go along. Cohn told me that himself.'"

Cohn was a good friend of Craig Spence and together with top CIA and Army men, as well as politicians and businessmen, he once threw his birthday party at Spence's house. Spence was later investigated for running a CIA-sanctioned homosexual and pedophile entrapment ring at his house with operations going straight up to the White House. Within several months Spence committed suicide while the records of the investigation were sealed. 35

Only recently did ISGP run into another accusation that yet again seems to indicate that Cohn "ran the the little boys" with the purpose of blackmailing high officials.

"[Author Anthony] Summers says he got his info from Susan Rosenstiel, fourth wife of Lewis Rosenstiel, chairman of Schenley Industries, a liquor distiller with reputed mob connections. Ms. Rosenstiel claimed that in 1958 she and her husband went to a party at a New York hotel, where they met Hoover and McCarthy witch-hunt lawyer Roy Cohn. Hoover, whom Cohn introduced as "Mary," was supposedly wearing a wig, a black dress, lace stockings, and high heels. Hoover went into a bedroom, took off his skirt to reveal a garter belt, and had a couple of blond boys--one wearing rubber gloves--"work on him with their hands." Cohn and Hoover then watched while Lewis Rosenstiel had sex with the boys. A year later Ms. Rosenstiel attended another party at the same hotel; this time Hoover wore a red dress and a black feather boa. He had one of the blond boys, who were now dressed in leather, read to him from a Bible while the other "played" with him. Hoover then grabbed the Bible, tossed it down, and told the first boy to join in." 36

Whatever the truth, Hoover was part of the same hard-right, anti-"communosocialist", and JFK-hating group that Cohn and many intelligence men were part of. There also are more than a few accusations of Hoover's homosexual inclinations, mainly related to his associate director at the FBI, Clyde Tolson. The pedophile accusations do seem to be new, but they are not really out of place. But to solidify Cohn's "Nebula" connections, here is another quote from the Beyond Dutroux article:

"According to a 1954 news report, Cohn and his aide David Schine had met up with Spanish members of an international underground Nazi network while on a spy-hunting trip in Europe. Some of the leading members of this network, according to the newspaper, were Col. Otto Skorzeny, Hjalmar Schacht and Werner Naumann."

1953, Sen. Joseph McCarthy, at the time his communist witch hunt began. On his right is David Schine; to his left Roy Cohn.

Also frequently mentioned on this site: Cohn was a board member of the notorious Permindex firm (there it is again). This company brought together an international group of shady intelligence-connected men whose (overt) idea it was to fight communism on the economic front with the slogan "world trade for world peace". 37 Board members had connections to the CIA, FBI, and Mossad, not to mention the mafia. The Schlumbergers, through Jean de Menil, provided a link to the covert anti-Castro war with Clay Shaw and Guy Banister (the latter only associated with Permindex board members) providing Jim Garrison with a link to the John F. Kennedy assassination. In a previous article ISGP compared Permindex to the notorious European Institute of Management (EIM), which appears to have been at the center of this fascist underground with its apparently very sadistic pedophile entrapment rings. Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II, of the same political wood of Roy Cohn, just happened to be chairman of EIM.

It was Willy Van Damme, a Belgian political researcher who is working on a book about arms trafficker Jacques Monsieur, who provided additional details about the Geoffrey's Bank. 38 In several emails Van Damme explained that the "A. Newman" mentioned in the 1968 Securities and Exchange Commission's document was Arno Nejman. The Nejmans were a Jewish family (like the Cohns) living in Brussels at a time that it was a Jewish center for the international textile trade. The Nejmans were close to Levi (Strauss) family, of the well-known Levi-Strauss jeans, and also were part of the circle of another jeans producer: Pierre Salik.

Salik has been mentioned earlier in this article. He was a friend of Felix Przedborski, Paul vanden Boeynants and Prince Alexander de Rethy, not to mention the Monsieurs. Unsurprisingly, also Salik was a member of the notorious Cercle des Nations. According to Van Damme, Salik was at the center of the Jewish community in Brussels that was involved in the arms trade and paid protection money to Israel. Van Damme's sources say Salik was close to the Mossad and had partly financed the emigration wave of Soviet Jews to Israel.

Arno and his wife Elizabeth founded the bank in 1958, naming it after their son Geoffrey - born in 1956. The bank made a name for itself in the international textile trade with the United States and China. Only when the bank began to fail in the late 1970s, and eventually was taken over by the Spanish Gesbanque on orders of the Belgian Bank Commission, it was found out that it had been involved in the international arms trade. Arno was in possession of 99.9% of the shares of the bank, while most of the arms trading had been done by his son Geoffrey (who in conversations referred to the arms as "stitching machines").

According to Van Damme, arms traders the Geoffrey's Bank was involved with included Jean-Bernard Lasnaud and Jacques Monsieur. Lasnaud was a known CIA asset during Iran Contra and has been involved in clandestinely buying and selling arms and other military equipment around the world: from Argentina to Sierra Leone and from Croatia to Ecuador. He was protected from prosecution by the Americans throughout the 1990s, some of his associates have died under mysterious circumstances, and Lasnaud himself mysteriously disappeared off the face of the earth in 2002. The other arms dealer, Jacques Monsieur, was also involved in the Iran-Contra affair, worked for the CIA, and has connections to numerous international intelligence agencies. He was arrested in 2009 in the United States. Monsieur and Lasnaud have worked together in the past, with Lasnaud largely having the role of mentor.

Idi Amin's Uganda neighbored Mobutu's Belgian Congo. Western intelligence agencies have been active in a many African counties: Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania. South Africa, Nigeria, and possibly every other African country. Because of all the old colonial interests, it's a very complex story.

According to Van Damme, the Geoffrey's Bank had been in business with Idi Amin, the ruthless dictator of Uganda who in 1971 had come to power with clandestine support of the intelligence agencies of Britain, the United States and Israel. Amin overthrew Milton Obote, halting the nationalisation of foreign corporate interests in Uganda. Although the relationship between Amin and the West was troublesome, mainly because Amin was not given enough sophisticated military equipment to attack its neighbor Tanzania, covertly the dictator did receive enough arms, goods and trained personnel to keep him in power throughout the 1970s. Various U.S., British, and Israeli companies and banks were used to ship the material to Amin and it could well be that the Geoffrey's Bank was part of this network.

To make a long story short: the ATLAS document's statement that the Geoffrey's Bank was part of a sinister "nebula" - again - does seem to have quite a bit of merit. And one thing that would be especially interesting to see - in light of the Beyond Dutroux subject - is any relationships between Roy Cohn and Douglas MacArthur II of EIM.

In Beyond the Dutroux Affair ISGP created a separate list of Belgians tied to controversial affairs who have died under suspicious circumstances. There are no less than 48 people on the list, and includes the earlier-discussed gang leader Patrick Haemers who hung himself in prison in 1993. Even Jean Denis Lejeune, father of one of the girls Dutroux murdered, stated:

"As if by coincidence people die. There is no explanation for their deaths. For instance, they are victims of a deadly traffic accident just when they are under way to testify. Or one finds their charred bodies. Our judiciary apparently doesn't have sleepless nights over this." 39

Going through the ATLAS document one realizes the same thing: a lot of people die under suspicious circumstances in these circles. Examples are the politician Andre Cools, who was murdered; mafia businessman Mike Brandwain - assassinated; former French vice-prime minister Pierre Beregovoy (who spoke at Bilderberg in 1992) - suicide; Edmond Safra - died in a fire. There also was the report of an unnamed person who "would have committed suicide by jumping off the 47th floor of a New York building". The ATLAS document elaborates that it would actually have been wealthy diamond trader Joseph Kaszyrer who would have given the order for this assassination.

It is possible to see the same pattern of suspicious deaths in other countries where really big, criminal interests are threatened. Note: This link effectively replaces the rest of this section, which therefore has been removed.

Time Magazine, a publication dominated by Pilgrims Society members, did an excellent investigative article on the BCCI in 1991. To them the BCCI's senior management referred to a "black network".

Iran-Contra, which is what the ATLAS document largely comes down to, is just one of many scandals tied to the same international network of conspirators, consisting of anti-communist military and intelligence men, pro-Zionist neoconservatives, arms dealers, bankers, businessmen, mafia organizations, diplomats, etc. Examples of scandals tied to this network are the collapse of the Nugan Hand Bank in 1980, the October Surprise in 1981, Iran Contra in 1986, the collapse of the Franklin Credit Union in 1988, the Craig Spence affair in 1989, Iraqgate in 1990, and the BCCI scandal in 1991.

It was during the BCCI scandal that senior executives of the bank actually gave a name to this network. They referred to it as the "black network", and made sure not to elaborate too much on it. The influence of this "black network" turned out to be so pervasive that even the official investigators of the scandal suspected they had been put under surveillance by this network, which was described as a "a global intelligence operation [with] a Mafia-like enforcement squad". 40 Only a handful of reporters ever reported on this black network. Among the exceptions was Jack R. Payton, editor of the St. Petersburg Times, who in October 1992 wrote:

"Well I've just finished slogging through a 794-page government report on the scandal, and believe me it's even worse than I thought. Much worse...

"Consider, for a moment, what it might mean to have an organization around that could pull off the following: Manipulate the Central Intelligence Agency and the spy agencies of Britain, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, China, Syria, Israel and who knows how many others all at the same time...; Help Pakistan buy nuclear technology on the international black market...; Launder drug money for the Medellin cocaine cartel in Colombia; Bankroll Abu Nidal, the most notorious terrorist in the world; Handle Manuel Noriega's finances in Panama; Procure prostitutes, some of them children, for traveling Middle Eastern potentates; Rig international commodity markets so that a few insiders could make hundreds of millions of dollars in a single day; Intimidate potential opponents to the point that they feared for their lives. There's a lot more, but you get the idea...

"This is scary enough as it is. The reason we may never know is that as thorough as the Senate investigation may have been, it didn't have access to reams of information that could shed more light on BCCI. The CIA has several hundred reports on BCCI but allowed the subcommittee to look at only three of them. British authorities also have a stockpile of information on BCCI they won't make available because it was classified by British intelligence, MI-5...

"But despite the years of investigation, the arrests and confiscations, even the Senate subcommittee had to admit that we may never know the full extent of BCCI's crimes, how many top politicians it bribed or if it really had a so-called "black network'' of assassins who would eliminate anyone who got in its way.

"Even so, what we do know about BCCI is mind-boggling. It's also incredibly complicated - as the Senate subcommittee itself admits, almost beyond comprehension." 41

A few years after the reports on this black network, the Comuele scandal in Belgian broke out. After an elaborate investigation, gendarmerie investigators working on the ATLAS dossier, wrote:

"To comprehend this nebula, it is necessary to abandon traditional financial or political logic; this is not merely a question of nation, political party, or of ordinary economics.

"Our conclusion would be that at least over the last twenty years, the economic powers, some of which mafia types, have allied themselves with political forces and organized criminal structures, and reached the 4th stage of money laundering, namely, Absolute Power. [emphasis taken over from original]

"It has been specified to us that at the present moment these characters control 50% of the world economy. ...

"One should not lose sight of the fact that this nebula would control the majority of the financial traffic, as well as the highest political leaders, worldwide.

"This same structure could, if it wanted, put pressure on the most important cities of this world, controlling in each one almost everything (energy, communications, provisioning of water, environment....) ... in order to impose itself, its strategy has been to use corruption, and has done so for many years."

Powerful words. Both the BCCI and the ATLAS report talk about very powerful international networks involved in drug trafficking, the procuring of child prostitutes (indirectly in the case of ATLAS), the use of terrorists 42, the smuggling of nuclear materials, and massive money laundering. Both reports also concluded that these networks are extremely complex, very hard to understand, and just as hard to fight. We all heard the rumors, the "conspiracy theories"; but now it slowly begins to seem as if important police and judicial reports that can confirm the existence of above-government, criminal networks are locked away in national security archives around the world. We definitely need to find ways to get these files out.

Notes

1. Who's Who: "BONVOISIN, Benoit ... Memb.: ... Académie Européenne de Sciences Politiques"
2. Discussed and sourced in ISGP's Pilgrims Society article
3. Declaration of witness [update: person would like to remain anonymous] to the Belgian Judiciary, October 24, 199x, (copy for Neufchateau cell) (scan appears in bibliography note 2, document 4)
4. January 18, 1989, New York Times, 'Hunt Pressed for Belgian Ex-Prime Minister': "The Belgian authorities investigated presumed terrorist organizations today in their search for former Prime Minister Paul Vanden Boeynants, who disappeared from his home here Saturday night. The Belgian authorities investigated presumed terrorist organizations today in their search for former Prime Minister Paul Vanden Boeynants, who disappeared from his home here Saturday night. Several ransom notes and claims of responsibility have been sent to newspapers. The police said they believed that the case was a kidnapping rather than a hoax and that they took seriously claims from a previously unknown group calling itself the Socialist Revolutionary Brigade. There was also a call today from a man claiming to belong to the Fighting Communist Cells, a terrorist group responsible for 27 bombings in Belgium in 1984 and 1985. The man said Mr. Vanden Boeynants would be killed in 72 hours unless the authorities freed four Belgian terrorists from the group serving life sentences."
5. March 25, 1989, Washington Post, 'Belgians arrest kidnapping suspect': "The lawyer of an alleged gang leader being hunted for the kidnapping of a former Belgian prime minister has been arrested on suspicion of masterminding the abduction, the prosecutor's office said today Michel Vander Elst, 41, was placed under arrest after nine hours of questioning on suspicion of being "the author, coauthor or an accomplice in the kidnap" of Paul Vanden Boeynants, a spokesman said. Other accusations included extortion and forgery... Vander Elst represents Patrick Haemers, 36, the alleged leader of a gang being sought by police for a string of unsolved violent crimes. Vanden Boeynants was snatched in the garage of his Brussels home Jan. 14 and released a month later after a ransom payment of up to $2.5 million. The spokesman charged that Vander Elst had seen some of the suspected kidnapers after they had rented a villa in the northern French resort of Le Touquet, where Vanden Boeynants was held for a month. He said the lawyer also had received calls from public booths in Le Touquet."
6. Vanden Boeynants visited some of the same clubs as members of the Haemers Gang. Haemers Gang gendarmerie file (as published on ISGP website), pp. 1, 3: "According to the informant, VDB would also have ties to this organization and his kidnapping has possibly been staged. In any case VDB is well acquainted with his kidnappers. --- Additional info:... The lawyer is Michel VANDER ELST, who usually keeps himself occupied with financial business and has his bureau in the same building as the appartment of VDB, in the Franklin Roosevelt avenue..."
7. Ibid.
8. August 30, 1989, Los Angeles Times, 'Tape Shows Israelis Training Cartels' Killers': "Experienced Israeli instructors trained private paramilitary units whose members included a leader of the Medellin drug cartel's death squads, blamed in the killings this month of four judges and nine court workers, according to a videotape prepared by the Israelis themselves. The 48-minute color videotape clearly showed former Israeli army Col. Yair Klein running military and assassination training exercises for about 50 men, including one known as Vladimir. Other foreigners speaking Hebrew were shown and heard on the videotape. Vladimir, whose real name is Alfredo Vaquero, is identified by Colombian authorities as the leader of the Medellin cartel's paramilitary organization. He was arrested 10 days ago and charged with murder in the slayings of the judges and court workers. In addition to Vladimir, the security authorities identified at least four key figures in Colombia's massive drug trade as attending a graduation ceremony at the end of the training program. A secret report prepared for a government security agent also disclosed that the trainees in the film had been recruited at the behest of Pablo Escobar and Gonzalo Rodriguez Gacha, two leaders of the Medellin cartel. The video was prepared by Klein as a promotion for a company, The Spear of Glory, that he had established to train paramilitary groups, according to Gen. Miguel A. Maza Marquez, head of the Administrative Security Department, Colombia's equivalent of the FBI. ... [Maza] said that at least 11 British instructors also had trained paramilitary units for the Cali drug cartel, but he made clear that the Israeli trainers were his targets. "With this (videotape), everything is proved, and in this country everything has to be proved," he said. ... Klein, a former commander of an Israeli anti-terrorist unit, returned to Israel last year. He told Israel television that he had worked in Colombia for six months, from December, 1987, to May, 1988. The group he trained "included only farmers who have been physically injured by guerrilla bullets and survived or had their families killed," he said. "Nobody else was accepted into this organization." ... Maza, whose car was blown up last week in an apparent attempt by the drug dealers to kill him, said the Israelis had now left his country. The secret report asserted that Klein had told his employers that he and his men were going to Costa Rica and Honduras to train Nicaraguan rebels."
9. *) Support of the David Rockefeller clique for the Shah to be provided with asylum in the United States has been discussed and documented in the CIA and coup section of ISGP's Pilgrims Society article.
   *) The Shah's secret police and torture chambers have been described in ISGP's American Security Council article.
   *) 2002, David Rockefeller, 'Memoirs', pp. 365-366: "My relationship with the Shah had never been that close... but I told Newsom [under secretary of state for political affairs] I found it incomprehensible that the President [Carter] would ignore American tradition by denying political asylum to a man who had been a great friend of our country. I refused to become complicit in the decision... I had dinner with Henry Kissinger and Happy Rockefeller, Nelson's widow, at her home in Pocantico. Henry and I discussed our telephone calls from David Newsom and the Shah's plight. Happy told me of Nelson's close friendship with the Shah and about the weekend they had spent with him and Farah Diba, the Shah's wife, in Tehran in 1977. Happy reminded me that when the Shah realized he would have to leave Iran, Nelson offered to find a suitable property for him in the United States. We also talked about the precedent that President Carter had established by refusing to admit the Shah into the United States. Both of us believed our allies, particularly those in the Middle East such as Sadat and King Hussein, who had taken great risks on our behalf, were likely to entertain second thoughts about the dependability of the United States in light of this action... Jack McCloy... soon joined our effort [to convince Carter to allow the Shah access to the US]."
10. 1996, Senator John DeCamp, 'The Franklin Cover-Up,' second edition', p. 180: "Lauded by the Reagan and Bush Administrations as a showcase for the privatization of social services, Covenant House had expanded into Guatemala as a gateway to South America. According to intelligence community sources, the purpose was procurement of children from South America for exploitation in a pedophile ring. The flagship Guatemalan mission of Covenant House was launched by a former business partner of Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza, Roberto Alejos Arzu, who had ties to the CIA, according to the Village Voice of Feb. 20, 1990. The Voice quoted Jean-Marie Simon, author of Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny: "It's like having Idi Amin on the board of Amnesty International." A top source of money for Covenant House has been Robert Macauley, founder of Americares, a service organization implicated in channeling funds to the Contras." See ISGP's Cercle article for more information on Americares.
11. *) May 2, 1981, Boston Globe, 'Guatemalan Death Squads Make Politicians the Target': "In preparation for next year's national elections, death squads are murdering opposition political leaders here. Liberal politicians and foreign diplomats say they are convinced that the killings are the work of the right wing. The principal target has been the reformist Christian Democratic Party, which has lost 76 leaders during the last year to assassination and kidnaping. … Another active campaigner [on behalf of the right wing] is Roberto Alejos Arzu, a founder of the conservative Guatemala Freedom Foundation. He is best known abroad as the owner of La Helvetia, the sprawling plantation that was used as a training camp for Cuban exiles preparing for the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba."
    *) October 7, 1990, Newsday (Melville, NY), 'War for the Children Guatemala Covenant House confronts death squads': "In Guatemala, where New York's embattled Covenant House extended its social service empire 10 years ago, a new director's crusade against death squads was followed by the murder of a counselor and six children. The brutal counterattack began a year ago, human rights officials say, after Bruce Harris took the helm of Casa Alianza, as Covenant House is known in Guatemala. Harris severed the charity's ties to right-wing Guatemalan patrons and began to criticize official violence against children. He also fired 22 staffers and rooted out what he said was financial chaos and sexual abuse at Casa Alianza, in a campaign that was a strange mirror image of the unfolding sex scandal that ousted Father Bruce Ritter, founder of Covenant House. But it was Harris' decision to break Covenant House's silence and demand justice for Nahaman Carmona Lopez, 13, a street child allegedly beaten to death by police, that proved most fateful. It placed Covenant House in the line of fire of Central America's most notorious police force, human rights groups say. Members of Guatemala's security forces, which include municipal and Treasury police and the military, according to human rights observers, for decades have formed unofficial, right-wing "death squads." … After Harris brought legal cases against Nahaman's accused killers, more children died… In June, a former Covenant House counselor was shot in the head and killed, allegedly by a policeman. No one has been arrested in that case. "It is feared that the killing may be a reprisal against Covenant House for the role it has taken," noted an Amnesty International report in July, 1990. Those killings, and death threats against Harris and his staff, prompted Covenant House president Sister Mary Rose McGeady to visit Guatemala last month. Appointed months after Ritter resigned amid allegations of sexual and fiscal misconduct, McGeady is credited with recasting Covenant House's mission and purpose, both in the United States and overseas. … Simon, Grace, Macauley and Ritter are members of the Knights of Malta, an international, conservative Catholic organization with diplomatic status and ties to the Guatemalan right wing. The four also served on the board of Americares. None returned repeated phone calls. Both organizations came together in Guatemala in the person of a sugar plantation owner named Roberto Alejos Arzu. A Knight of Malta, Arzu agreed to ship hundreds of pounds of medicine and food from Americares to Casa Alianza and to broker private donations to the charity. Arzu is also a prominent member of Guatemala's right-wing aristocracy, say human rights officials and experts. In 1960, Alejos lent his sugar plantation to the Central Intelligence Agency to train Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Atkinson shrugged off talk of Alejos' background. "Roberto [Alejos] was the conduit for tons of supplies," Atkinson said. "He was a good man and I'm not going to condemn him on hearsay." Alejos, however, has also been linked to the abortive kidnaping of a Guatemalan cardinal in 1968 - in a 1982 report prepared by the Washington Committee on Latin America - and by local media to the death squad killings of workers on his plantation. Alejos could not be reached for comment. "When his workers complain, they end up in a ditch," said Allan Nairn, a longtime reporter in Latin America and a regional expert. "Soldiers would take the surviving children of the workers to local charities.""
12. There are quite a number of books on this. One I recommend and which also talks about the Israeli aspect:
    *) 1991, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, 'Dangerous Liaison - The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship', pp. 244-261
    See also the following articles taken from ISGP's Cercle article:
    *) January 28, 1990, Washington Post, 'The Case Against Noriega': "On Monday, November 14, 1983, Noriega's entourage took off for Washington... all expenses paid by the U.S. government. Almost two whole days, however, were set aside for the institutions that already had long-standing working relations with Noriega. At CIA headquarters in Langley, Noriega was swept off for a meeting with CIA Director William Casey. Back in Panama, Noriega would later boast about his four-hour lunch with Casey..."
    *) August 23, 1991, The Miami Herald, 'Noriega: CIA, DEA OKd Deals': "Manuel Noriega says he had good reasons for allowing drugs and guns to slip through Panama: The last seven CIA directors, including George Bush, asked him to help with the guns, while four directors of the Drug Enforcement Administration sought his help on the drugs... The weapons shipments were destined for Nicaragua and Honduras, the papers said. Besides Bush, the CIA directors who asked Noriega to allow them to travel through Panama included Richard Helms, William Colby, James Schlesinger, Stansfield Turner, William Casey and William Webster... The DEA directors who purportedly asked Noriega to allow drugs to pass through his country included Terrance Burk, Francis Mullen, Jack Lawn and John Ingersoll... Diane Cossin, a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office, said the prosecution will present evidence that links Noriega's BCCI money and drugs."
13. Good source: 1991, Andrew and Leslie Cockburn, 'Dangerous Liaison - The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship', pp. 244-261
14. ATLAS document, part 5: "The weapons would have left the FN [24] through the airport of BIERSET25 to go initially to NANTES/FRANCE, and from where they left for COSTA RICA. (to SANTA ELENA... apparently an immense area in this country). In return drugs would have been shipped back."
15. 1990, Hugo Gijsels, 'De Bende & Co. - 20 jaar destabilizering in België' ('The Gang & Co. - 20 years of destabilization in Belgium'), p. 98, 153-155: "On top of that, the detectives dug up a large amount of explosives in the backyard of Mendez. Confronted with the testimonies of Amory, Bouhouche admits that he set up such an organization, that the group had political motives and that it had been structured in a military way... It is a fact that Bouhouche explained to the detectives that he had been given the assignment to recruit Mendez from the WNP leadership and that the role of Mendez in the 'brewery affair' was part of an admission test the FN-engineer had to pass... Shortly before his death Mendez had told family members that 'one' had offered him membership in a clandestine organization which at that point was working on the political categorizing of opponents and this with an eye towards a coup... Bouhouche was a member of the WNP [others doubt that and just consider him a close associate] and his main contact was Michel Libert, the right hand of Paul Latinus... It all seems a little bit too much for one man. A number of detectives therefore assume that Bouhouche was only a small part within the clandestine organization Mendez spoke about, a Belgian version of the P2. An interesting coincidence: Robert Beijer stated in an interview with the RTBF that Bouhouche had proposed to him to become a member of a clandestine organization. Beijer said he had declined this offer, that he doesn't know the name of the organization and that he knows nothing about its purposes."
16. 2002, Alan A. Block (Professor of Crime, Law and Justice at the Pennsylvania State University), 'The origins of Iran-Contra: Lessons from the Durrani Affair', p. 61: "Pires was especially chummy with the Israelis, particularly Abraham Shavit who was based in Belgium and was the manager of a Belgium company called ASCO."
17. Ibid., p. 59: "He [Durrani] ended up working on this project with a Portuguese arms dealer, who held a Spanish passport, Manuel J. Pires. In years past, Pires had handled secret CIA arms transfers to Angola, and later to both Iran and Iraq."
18. July 26, 2003, Hartford Courant, 'Man wants arms conviction reversed claims relationship with CIA': "[Arif] Durrani, a Pakistani, was deported from the United States in 1998 after a 1987 conviction for illegally dealing to Iran spare Hawk missile parts he obtained from Radio Research in Danbury. [Mark] Zaid's mission now is an attempt to get Underhill to reopen the case on the premise that Durrani was working for the government through alleged Central Intelligence Agency weapons operative Manuel Pires and Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a former White House national security aide. Zaid said a document has been found from the Office of Independent Counsel that references a CIA document about Pires. Durrani claims he worked with Pires as go-between for North to get the missile parts Iran wanted."
19. *) 1996, Senator John DeCamp, 'The Franklin Cover-Up,' second edition', pp. 173-174, 322: "Direct ties of Larry King to persons and institutions active in Iran-Contra are a matter of public record. In 1987, according to the World-Herald, King donated $25,350 to Citizens for America, a group that sponsored speaking tours for Oliver North and the Contra leaders. CFA was a key public relations group for Iran-Contra; King was a founding member and one of its largest contributors. According to his May 22, 1989 interview with Omaha radio station KKAR, King was trying to bring North to Nebraska. A former security guard for King has sworn that he saw North attend at least one of King's parties at which children were also present. Since he was stationed outside, he has no knowledge of what might have happened inside. "I just thought it seemed kind of curious, the whole set-up," he said. ... Lt. Col. Oliver Noth--whom at least one witness reported seeing at a party thrown by Larry King--had overseen the Contra resupply effort, and had been fully aware of the planeloads of drugs coming into the United States. A U.S. Senate subcommittee report under Massachusetts Senator John Kerry cited extensive evidence that the Contras were involved in drugs, and North had noted the fact in his publicly exposed notebooks. ... Think about the constant rumors that King was involved in financing the Contras, who have now been proved to have been running dope by the ton. The first investigative reporter to ever look at Franklin, the World Herald's James Flanery, told associates that King was "running guns and money into Nicaragua," and that the CIA was heavily involved. (Flanery was soon taken off the story and shipped out of state for a year.) Records exist to show that Larry King was a top contributor to a Contra "support committee," the Citizens for America (CFA). King's own public relations firm was also used by the Contras."
    *) 1996, Senator John DeCamp, 'The Franklin Cover-Up,' second edition', pp. 164, 176-177, 180: "Nelly first brought up Bush in 1986, when she told Julie Walters about the sex parties she was flown to in Washington and Chicago. She saw Bush at two of these parties, she said, one in each city. ... Bush's name surfaced again in Lowe's May 1989 review of reports by Thomas Vlahoulis from the state attorney general's office: "Sorenson told Vladhoulis that both Kimberley and Nelly brought up the name of George Bush and indicated that they had both met him. ..." On June 10, 1989, Lowe received a letter from a citizen: "There is a psychologist in Omaha who used to work for the CIA. In response to a direct question by an Omaha psychiatrist regarding George Bush's private life, this psychologist reported hearing rumors when Bush was head of the CIA, that corresponded directly with one of the inferences made by Nelly Webb, and commented to the psychiatrist, "But how do you investigate your boss?" ... From what I know from my own corner of the world, there is excellent reason to investigate Bush for possible involvement in the dope business. Think back to what I reported in Chapter 13, "The Washington Connection," about how George Bush and Larry King were linked in multiple ways, including eyewitness placing Bush at King's sex parties. ... [King] made a ten-minute "get-out-the-vote" video on behalf of Bush, for the 1988 campaign."
20. 1996, Senator John DeCamp, 'The Franklin Cover-Up,' second edition', pp. 178-180.
21. ATLAS document, part 10: "k) Mentioned to us are the names of banks through which the “Przedborski Group” would have laundered money: ...
    
    * Banque NATIONAL REPUBLIC [103]
    - branches in Luxembourg and New York
    - It seems that in this bank it is a certain SAFRA [104] who would be responsible for special transfers.
    
    It is indicated to us that this bank would also be used by:
    
    A) Paul VANDENBOEYNANTS
    - Former prime minister and Belgian minister
    B) Roger BOAS
    - of the ASCO company
    C) Abraham SHAVIT
    - right arm of Roger BOAS
    D) the Mossad
    - The Israeli Secret Service"
22. 2002, Gordon Thomas and Martin Dillon, 'Robert Maxwell - Israel's Superspy - The life and murder of a media mogul', pp. 37-38, 228, 352-353: "There were others on the list who did not need such a document [reference to Maxwell's crime associates, including the notorious mafia boss Semion Mogilevich]. One was Edmund Safra, a US-billionaire banker who had made tens of millions of dollars managing the funds of other members of the Russian Mafia. Safra had links to Maxwell: they had dined on board the Lady Ghislaine when the yacht berthed opposite Safra's home in Monte Carlo. Who can doubt they had spoken of their common wish to see those untold tens of thousands of Jews in the crumbling Soviet Union safely make their way to Israel. ... The invitation to the [Spanish] royal dinner had been extended by Edmund Safra, the billionaire banker who owned the National Republic Bank in New York. He had been a close friend of Maxwell's for some years and had personally allowed funds to be funneled through his bank from Eastern Europe. 'But like so many activities the FBI were trying to link to Maxwell, the ones between Safra and organised crime was another one hard to prove,' John P. O'Neill would later say. ... 'When Safra realised the bureau [FBI] was moving in,' John O'Neil recalled, 'he did a deal. He agreed to keep the bureau informed of what moved through his bank to the Bank of New York, which had been targeted by Russian and Bulgarian crime syndicates. Safra didn't like the heat on him, so he agreed to help the bureau.' But, when Safra announced he was going to sell his bank for $9.8 billion in 1999, he also attracted powerful enemies."
23. April 3, 1989, Newsday (Melville, NY), 'U.S. Banks Praised for Help In Laundering Crackdown'.
24. See note 20.
25. July 25, 2000, Jamestown Foundation, 'Newspaper scandal over IMF diversion expands': "The scandal surrounding allegations that a US$4.8 billion IMF "stabilization credit" in the summer of 1998 was diverted before reaching Russia with the help of Mikhail Kasyanov... Even more sensationally, the author of Novaya gazeta's investigation, Oleg Lurye, claims that following the diversion of the IMF credit and the subsequent collapse of the ruble and Russia's banking system, Edmond Safra, the late head of the New York-based Republic National Bank, gave evidence to the FBI concerning the diversion. Safra died in December of last year of asphyxiation as the result of a fire in his Monte Carlo residence. Lurye quotes Geneva prosecutor Bertrand Bertossa as saying that Safra was murdered for giving evidence to both the FBI and Swiss prosecutors concerning the diversion of the IMF credit. Both La Repubblica and Novaya gazeta claim that the US$4.8 billion credit went from the New York Federal Reserve Bank to Republic National Bank and then to various banks in Switzerland and elsewhere, but not to Russia. Lurye also claims that at the start of autumn 1999 Boris Berezovsky visited Safra at his estate in southern France. The two men, according to Lurye, had a three-hour conversation in "raised voices," after which Safra fled in a panic to his heavily fortified Monte Carlo residence (Novaya gazeta, July 24)."
26. Ibid.
27. 1987, 1001 Club, confidential membership list (provided by Kevin Dowling in September 2008). See ISGP's article on the 1001 Club for more information on this group.
28. February 6, 2004, London Evening Standard, 'A guide to the new 'east-ablishment'.
29. 1995, Charles Albert & Eric Goodhart, 'The Central Bank and the financial system', p. 375: "*12* Geoffrey's Bank, 1980 (IBCA, p. 20). The Banking Commission had long been concerned with the poor liquidity, the lack of proper management and control procedures and with the concentration of Geoffrey's Bank's loans in problem sectors of the economy. ... Groupe Bancaire Gesbanque ...purchased the bank."
30. Bio at the Business Outsourcing Solutions website:
    bizoutsolutions.com/aboutus.htm
31. aasrvalleyofnewyorkcity.com/awards.htm (his name is still listed, but the additional explanation is not available anymore from the site): "Ronald A Sablosky, MSA, 33; Our Past Commander-in-Chief was one of the few to be coroneted the honor of the 33rd degree for the Northern Masonic Scottish Rite Jurisdiction on August 27, 2007."
    *) aasrnys.blogspot.com (right column): "Deputy's representative: Ill. Ronald A. Sablosky, 33°"
32. June 19, 2006, The Times, 'The prince and the prostitutes scandal'
33. David Guyatt, 'Princes of Plunder' (written around 2004/2005)
    http://www.deepblacklies.co.uk/princes_of_plunder.htm
34. Loislaw Federal District Court Opinions - Sec. & Exch. Com'n v. Fifth Ave. Coach Lines, Inc. - ... No. 67 Civ. 4182. United States District Court, S.D. New York. July 26, 1968: "The first of these was a deposit of $500,000 in Geoffrey's Bank, Belgium, made on October 18, 1966, the very day that Fifth received the money from the City. An officer of Geoffrey's Bank is A. Newman, a friend of Cohn's with whom he had had certain business dealings. A few days after this deposit, i.e., on October 31, 1966, Geoffrey's Bank transmitted $100,000 to Cohn who deposited this sum in his personal bank account. The coincidence of dates not unnaturally aroused the suspicions of the Securities and Exchange Commission. But Cohn testified that the $100,000 was a payment of a fee due him from Newman on some other transaction, and there is no evidence to the contrary."
    http://www.loislaw.com/livepublish8923/doclink.htp?
    alias=FDCR&cite=289+F.+Supp.+3
35. See Beyond Dutroux for details.
36. December 6, 2002, The Straight Dope, 'Was J. Edgar Hoover a cross-dresser?'
    straightdope.com/columns/read/2423/was-j-edgar-hoover-a-cross-
    dresser
37. January 24, 1960, Pacific Stars and Stripes, 'Ex-Hungarian Leader Visits Tokyo - Fights Reds via Economic Route': "By BRIAN KENNEDY S&S Staff Writer TOKYO—Dr. Ferenc Nagy, former Hungarian Prime Minister who took political "refuge in the U.S. in 1947, has switched his f i g h t against international communism from politics to economics. To carry on his fight lie has accepted the presidency of Europe's first permanent industrial exhibition, Permindex, to open in Rome in Slay. In an interview at the Imperial Hotel, the Hun- NAGY garian leader explained how Permindex—backed by private U.S., Canadian, Swiss and Italian capital is preparing to meet communism's economic challenge on.an international scale. He said his organization represents a new business concept and has adopted as it's slogan, "World Trade for World Peace." Dr. Nagy stressed communism's biggest threat is no longer political but economic. ^'The newly emerging and developing nations in Africa and Asia are,uncommitted in. the struggfe," Nagy said. "They are potential allies and prospective buyers who are striving to raise their living standards." "Under these conditions the communists began a determined effort to raise their own living standards as an example to the world's underprivileged and uncommitted nations," he added. Nagy said, the Free World, to meet this challenge, should not only match, but surpass, the communists. "Fernihulex, entirely free and unhampered by government bureaucracy, can and will help the free nations," he explained. "It will also help developing nations to remove financial obstacles blocking their natural desire to increase living standards." Dr. Nagy said present international trade requires a permanent and centralized market place where the newest products can be bought and sold. "It also rquires a place where men of all free nations can work cut mutual prob* lems in financing, manufacturing, marketing and distribution, as well as other problems presently affecting world commerce," he said. He said the businessmen and industrialists from 52 nations supporting Permindex would be able to use the new center'g 126 permanent exhibition halls. They include nearly a million square feet to display the latest and best products: They are prepared to accept orders for delivery within a rea* sonable time. Dr. Nagy recently signed a contract with the Japan External Recovery Organization (JETRO), which he. described as of mutual benefit to Permindex and JETRO and the rest of the Free World. The onetime premier, who now lives in Virginia, arrived in Tokyo earlier this week. He was to leave Tokyo Saturday for the U.S. Via Rome."
    Additional note: Pretty much nothing has been written about Permindex over the years.
38. Emails from Willy Van Damme (willyvandamme.wordpress.com).
    September 23, 2010: "Concerning Geoffrey’s Bank. The owner for almost 100% was Arno Nejman with his wife Elizabeth Schurmann, a Brussels based Jewish family active in textile business and originating from Austria and Hungary. They were friends with the Levi’s known for their jeans. It was created in 1958 and named after their son Geoffrey born in 1956 who now lives in Cannes. ... They often named themselves as Newman to disguise their Jewish background."
    September 29, 2010: "99,9% of the stock was held by Arno Nejman (Newman). [The bank] was named after their in 1956 born son Geoffrey Nejman. [The bank] used to be called the A & J van den Bergh Bank that was active in the meat trade and was taken over in 1958 by people who were active in the international textile trade (U.S., China). These days Geoffrey Nejman lives in Cannes and would not comment. Around 1980 [the bank] basically was broke and on orders of the Banking Commission was taken over by the Liege-based Gesbanque (a Spanish bank). ... Only at that point the [weapons] trade was discovered. Amongst others they traded with Idi Amin Dada and in coversations weapons were referred to as "stitching machines". Directors was mother Elizabeth Nejmans (Schurmann) until the Banking Commission intervened. Originally they came from Austria/Hungaria and were friends with the Levi family (Strauss). They also didn't speak any French. Partners in the weapons trade of Geoffrey certainly were Jacques Monsieur and Jean Bernard Lasnaud."
    September 30, 2010: "I'm working on a book about Monsieur. From the Chamber of Commerce file of the Belgian Matimco NV (there also is a in 1994 erected Matimco Ltd in Mauritius) it turns out that Nejman and Monsieur were partners. That about Amin comes from people who had taken over the bank and then found that out. They didn't know anything about the weapons trade of Geoffrey; only about the financial problems. You'll all find that in the book. Lasnaud himself stated to Le Parisien that he and Monsieur worked together. He even stated that he had learned Monsieur de ropes. In Brussels of the 70s and also still the 80s the textile trade was very important and Jewish families played a large role here. The influence of Israel was central. According to two very reliable sources, all textile barons payed protection money to Israel. Pierre Salik (Salik jeans) was a central figure here. According to those sources, the man (a Jew) even helped finance the large emigration wave of the Soviet Jews to Israel. Pierre Salik and his father were clients of notary Paul Monsieur, father of Jacques. And while still in college, Monsieur started selling Salik jeans in a warehouse in Brucom, Sint-Pieters-Leeuw. I still have to get the details about this. From Salik to the Mossad and the Brussels arms traders was only a small step in that period. Paul Van den Boeynants/Henri Simonet controlled Brussel in those days."
39. 2004, Herwig Lerouge, 'Het Dossier Nihoul: De knoop in het proces-Dutroux' ('The Nihoul Dossier: The knot in the Dutroux trial'), p. 192. According the author, Jean Denis Lejeune made this comment on ZDF (German) television on January 30, 2001. It appears to be a reference to the deaths of Francois Reyskens (1995) and Bruno Tagliaferro (1995) and his wife (1998). This comment is entirely plausible, because on other occasions the parents of Julie have claimed there's a cover up in the Dutroux affair.
40. July 29, 1991, Time Magazine, 'The Dirtiest Bank of All': "From interviews with sources close to B.C.C.I., TIME has pieced together a portrait of a clandestine division of the bank called the "black network," which functions as a global intelligence operation and a Mafia-like enforcement squad... [it] operates a lucrative arms-trade business and transports drugs and gold. According to investigators and participants in those operations, it often works with Western and Middle Eastern intelligence agencies... The black network was the bank's deepest secret, but rumors of its activities filtered through the bank's managerial level with chilling effectiveness. Senior bankers voice fears that they will be financially ruined or physically maimed -- even killed -- if they are found talking about B.C.C.I.'s activities... Businessmen who pursued shady deals with B.C.C.I. are just as frightened... Currently the black units have focused their scrutiny and intimidation on investigators. 'Our own people have been staked out or followed, and we suspect tapped telephones,' says a New York law-enforcement officer."
41. October 8, 1992, St. Petersburg Times, 'Latest revelations about the BCCI scandal are mind-boggling'
42. A comparison of:
    *) October 8, 1992, St. Petersburg Times, 'Latest revelations about the BCCI scandal are mind-boggling': "... Bankroll Abu Nidal, the most notorious terrorist in the world..."
    *) ATLAS document, part 7: "This Colonel would have been used as an intermediary for: - installing in BELGIUM a person with the name KETIB EL KETIB [39] (financier Palestinians) deceased?? - setting up the PLO [40] Bureau in Brussels"
    Can't really make sense of both of them. Don't know exactly what is behind this financing.

Sources