Guardian, ‘Leak reveals Rex Tillerson is director of Bahamas-based US-Russian oil company’, 18 Nov 2016:

Rex Tillerson, the businessman picked by Donald Trump to be the next US secretary of state, is the long-time director of a US-Russian oil firm based in the tax haven of the Bahamas, leaked documents show.

Tillerson – the chief executive of ExxonMobil – has been a director of the oil company’s Russian subsidiary, Exxon Neftegas, since 1998. His name – RW Tillerson – appears next to other officers who are based at Houston in Texas; Moscow; and Sakhalin, in Russia’s remote Far East.

The leaked 2001 document comes from the corporate registry in the Bahamas. It was one of 1.3m files given to Germany’s Süddeutsche Zeitung by an anonymous source. The registry is public but details of individual directors are typically incomplete or missing entirely.

Though there is nothing untoward about this directorship, it has not been reported before and is likely to raise fresh questions over Tillerson’s relationship with Russia ahead of a potentially stormy confirmation hearing by the US senate foreign relations committee.

ExxonMobil’s use of offshore regimes – while legal – may also jar with Trump’s avowal to put “America first”.

Tillerson’s critics say he is too close to president Vladimir Putin – and that his appointment could raise potential conflicts of interest.

ExxonMobil is the world’s largest oil company and has for a long time been eyeing Russia’s vast oil and gas deposits. Tillerson currently has Exxon stock worth more than $200m.

Since his nomination, Tillerson’s Russia ties have become a source of bipartisan concern. In 2013 Vladimir Putin awarded him the Russian Order of Friendship. Tillerson is close to Igor Sechin, the head of Russian state oil giant Rosneft and the de facto second most powerful figure inside the Kremlin. A hardliner, Sechin is ex-KGB.

Tillerson’s award followed a 2011 deal between ExxonMobil and Rosneft to explore the Kara Sea, in Russia’s Arctic.

It was put on hold in 2014 after the Obama administration imposed wide-ranging sanctions against Russia. The sanctions were punishment for Putin’s Crimea annexation that spring and Russia’s undercover invasion of eastern Ukraine.

The ban covers the US sharing of sophisticated offshore and shale oil technology. Exxon was supposed to halt its drilling with Rosneft. The firm successfully pleaded with the US Treasury department to delay the ban by a few weeks, with the Kremlin threatening to seize its rig. In this brief window Exxon discovered a major Arctic field with some 750m barrels of new oil.

Tillerson has criticised the US government’s policy on Russia. In 2014 he told Exxon’s annual meeting that “we do not support sanctions”. He added: “We always encourage the people who are making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage of who they are really harming.”

It is widely assumed by investors that the new Trump administration will drop sanctions. This would allow the Kara joint venture to resume, boosting Exxon’s share price and yielding potential profits in the tens of billions of dollars. According to company records, Tillerson currently owns $218m of stock. His Exxon pension is worth about $70m.

The senate foreign relations committee is currently split 10 to 9 between Republicans and Democrats. But several heavyweight Republicans, including John McCain, have raised doubts about Tillerson’s nomination and his lack of experience to be America’s top diplomat after four decades spent exclusively in the oil industry.

Republican senator Marco Rubio – who sits on the committee – said on Tuesday that he had “serious concerns” about giving Tillerson the job. Rubio praised him as a “respected businessman” but said that the next secretary of state “must be someone who views the world with moral clarity [and who] has a clear sense of America’s interests”.

Tillerson is likely to get rid of his Exxon stock if the narrowly Republican-majority Senate confirms his appointment.

Controversy over his Russian links comes at a time when the topic is politically red hot, after the CIA said earlier this month that Kremlin hackers had stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee and top Democrats in order to help Trump. The president-elect has dismissed the CIA’s assessment, dubbing it “ridiculous”. Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says Putin targeted her for reasons of personal revenge.

As well as on oil and gas, the Obama administration has imposed personal sanctions on Putin’s friends including Sechin. Sechin has said that one of his ambitions is to “ride the roads in the United States on motorcycles with Tillerson”. Currently, Sechin is forbidden from entering the country.

Today’s revelation sheds light on the use by multinational companies of contrived offshore structures, now under scrutiny following April’s massive Panama Papers leak.

Exxon Neftegas’s most important oil and gas project is Sakhalin-1. It is located in the sub-Arctic, off the frozen and difficult-to-access north-east coast of Russia’s Sakhalin island. This is 10,700km (6,650m) away from the subsidiary’s official business home in Nassau, the warm semi-tropical capital of the Bahamas. The Bahamas is notorious for secrecy. It has a corporate tax rate of zero.

The documents from the Bahamas corporate registry were shared by Süddeutsche Zeitung with the Guardian and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in Washington DC. They show that Exxon registered at least 67 companies in the secretive tax haven, covering operations in countries from Russia to Venezuela to Azerbaijan.

Exxon Neftegas features in about 25 leaked offshore documents. The oil firm was incorporated in 1998 by a law firm in Nassau, Higgs & Johnson. Another veteran law firm, Lobosky Management Ltd, subsequently took over as registered agent. Company secretary Sophia Kishinevsky signed the paperwork and made annual filings.

Exxon said it had no comment on whether Tillerson should now divest his Exxon holdings and resign from his positions with all Exxon entities. It said the oil firm had incorporated some of its affiliates in the Bahamas because of “simplicity and predictability”.

“It is not done to reduce tax in the country where the company operates,” Exxon said. It added: “Incorporation of a company in the Bahamas does not decrease ExxonMobil’s tax liability in the country where the entity generates its income.”

The firm was one of the largest taxpayers in the world, with an effective global tax rate in 2015 of 34%, it said. Its effective tax rate over the past three years – 2013, 2014, 2015 – was 43%, it added. This compared favourably with other Fortune 100 companies which “have substantially lower effective tax rates than ExxonMobil”.

And if you think that’s interesting, there will be more later.

Tanya Gersh has called upon Sherry Spencer to sell her Whitefish, Montana building.

Richard Spencer’s mother, Sherry Spencer, had no intention of selling her Whitefish, Montana building until she received terrible threats, the threats she said came from Tanya Gersh, a local realtor with links to so-called “human rights” organizations.

According to Sherry Spencer, on November 22nd, Tanya Gersh spoke with her on the phone and she relayed that if Sherry Spencer did not sell her building that 200 protestors and the national media would show up outside - which would drive down the property value - until she complied. Gersh’s other conditions included that Mrs. Spencer should publicly denounce her son in a statement written by the Montana Human Rights Network and that she make a donation to this organization from the sale of the property. As Gersh announced on Facebook, she was “spear heading” the campaign.

Gersh followed up on her conditions in a number of emails, which have been made public. She even shamelessly suggested that she act as Sherry’s realtor! In other words, she and the local “human rights” organizations appeared to seek financial benefit from threats of protests and reputation damage. They also threatened tenants currently leasing space from Spencer’s mom.

Sherry had no intention of selling her property in Whitefish until being harassed and receiving this pressure from Tanya Gersh, as leveraged by threats of protest from the anti-racist protest organizations - Love Lives Here  and Montana Human Rights Network - apparently at her behest to serve three functions:

1) To punish her son for promoting White Nationalist sovereignty.

2) To profit her local real estate business by instigating Sherry to a fire sale of her property.

3) To profit liberal groups such as “Love Lives Here” through donation of sale proceeds to them or similar anti-racist organizations: which generally oppose the necessary practice of social classification and discrimination on the basis of those social classifications (a least as Whites may render them - as such, they call it “racism”); despite the fact that capacity for social classification and discrimination is humanly impossible to avoid and absolutely necessary for survival of and against certain human species; as well as a generally necessary practice in defense against predation in order to facilitate human and pervasive ecology.

DM, 15 Dec 2016:

The mother of white supremacist Richard Spencer claims she is suffering financially due to the backlash against her son’s controversial views.

Sherry Spencer, who lives in Whitefish, Montana, said she is being forced to sell a building she owns in the small town because residents are rebelling against her son.

Sherry Spencer says she is being forced to considering selling the building she owns at 22 Lupfer Avenue (pictured), because of backlash against her son.

Richard Spencer shot to prominence last month when footage emerged of him delivering a ‘hateful speech’ at a white nationalist meeting held to celebrate Donald Trump’s election win.

A video by The Atlantic taken inside the Ronald Reagan building showed Spencer, leader of the National Policy Institute, shouting, ‘Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!’ as some of the people in attendance lifted their hands in a Nazi salute.

He also claimed America belongs to white people, who he suggested are faced with the decision to either ‘conquer or die’.

The speech drew intense criticism from the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, which said in a statement Spencer made: ‘several direct and indirect references to Jews and other minorities, often alluding to Nazism.’

‘He spoke in German to quote Nazi propaganda and refer to the mainstream media. He implied that the media was protecting Jewish interests and said, “One wonders if these people are people at all?”’

And according to Sherry Spencer, the criticism has been echoed by people in her hometown - where he son also has a business registered and visits regularly.

Sherry Spencer told KTMF she is selling a building she owns at 22 Lupfer Avenue, which she currently sublets. It houses a beauty salon and vacation rentals. She also runs a real estate business from the building.

‘As painful as this is, I am exploring a potential sale of the building,’ she said.

She also took aim at a local human rights group, Love Lives Here, and accused it of damaging her family.

‘We are stunned by the actions of Love Lives Here, an organization claiming to advocate tolerance and equal treatment of all citizens, yet coursing financial harm to many innocent parties,’ she said.

One of the strongest opponents to Sherry is local real estate agent Tanya Gersh, who said Spencer has backed her son and allowed him to spread his views.

‘She is profiting off of the people of the local community, all the while having facilitated Richard’s work spreading hate by letting him live and use her home address for his organization,’ Gersh told the network.

Love Lives Here also responded to Sherry’s remarks, saying it ‘did not know what she (was) talking about’.

‘We don’t cause financial harm to anybody,’ co-founder Ina Albert said, before going on to say the group does not have a specific problem with the Spencers.

‘I don’t know what (Richard) does when he comes here. But that is not our problem with Richard Spencer.

‘It is the National Policy Institute and what that stands for and our town being smeared by his philosophy.’

The National Policy Institute was established in 2005 by Spencer, and it is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as ‘hate group’.

Gersh went on to call for Sherry to sell the building immediately, and then use the money to help human rights causes.

‘(She) Could address this by selling the building, making a donation to human rights efforts, and making a statement in opposition to white supremacist ideas spread by Richard,’ Gersh said.

Sherry Spencer also told the network she loves her son, but does not agree with his ‘extreme positions’.

Sherry Spencer is pictured with her husband Dr. Rand Spencer at a benefit in April 2016

As Sherry Spencer writes:

These threats came from Tanya Gersh, a local realtor with links to “human rights” organizations Love Lives Here [Phone: 406-309-5678] and the Montana Human Rights Network [Phone:406-442-5506].

On November 22, Gersh and I spoke on the phone. She relayed to me that if I did not sell my building, 200 protesters and national media would show up outside — which would drive down the property value — until I complied. Gersh’s other conditions included that I make a public denunciation of my son in a statement written by the Montana Human Rights Network and that I make a donation to this organization from the sale of the property. As Gersh announced on Facebook, she was “spear heading” the campaign.

Gersh followed up on her conditions in a number of emails, which I’ve just made public. She even shamelessly suggested that she act as my realtor! In other words, she and the local “human rights” organizations appeared to seek financial benefit from threats of protests and reputation damage.

READ MORE...

Mark Collett:

Nationalism should never be about being edgy and scaring people. We aren’t some 1% motorcycle club, with the motto, ‘no one likes us and we don’t care.’  ..we aren’t trying to scare people or offend them. In fact, we are trying to offer scared people hope…and our people have plenty to fear.

Theresa May will chair a meeting to discuss the issue.

“CYBER-WARFARE: Putin launches ‘propaganda campaign’ against Britain, officials claim.”

Express, 17 Dec 2016:

RUSSIA is engaged in a “campaign” of propaganda and cyber-warfare against Britain, Government officials have acknowledged for the first time. British officials are concerned about growing Russian influence on UK institutions. Theresa May will chair a National Security Council session within weeks to discuss the issue after senior Whitehall figures claimed the Kremlin is responsible for a plot to sabotage the UK with espionage and misinformation.

This comes after Barack Obama directly challenged Russia in an astonishing response to reports by US intelligence services claiming November’s general election was hacked under Vladimir Putin’s watch..

The outgoing President vowed the US would retaliate to the suspected espionage, and said the country would take action “at a time and place of our own choosing”.

He added: “Don’t do this stuff to us, because we can do this to you.”

US officials have expressed near-certainty Putin supervised the data breaches which brought Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign to ruin.

One official said: “If anything, given his background as a KGB officer, Putin has a much tighter grip on all Russian surveillance operations, civilian and military, foreign and domestic, than any democratic leader does.”

And in a cabinet meeting two months ago, top intelligence officers and civil servant voiced worries the same scale of threat from Moscow could extend to Britain.

A source told the Times: “There was an agreement on the need to do more across Whitehall to understand and assess and formulate options on how to reposed to Russian activities.”

Security services fear British institutions and companies have been infiltrated by Russian agents – some of whom could even be UK citizens.

And last night it was revealed several leading academics at Cambridge University left an intelligence forum following concerns over Russian interference.

The head of the armed forces earlier this week urged for counterintelligence efforts to be ramped up in an attempt to catch Russian cells.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach said: “We need to pay more attention to counterespionage and counterintelligence to protect our hard-won research, protect our industry and protect our competitive advantage.”

The extent of Russian infiltration in Britain is believed to be more severe than during the Cold War.

Bloomberg, “Dollar Rises, Treasuries Fall With Stocks as Fed Raises Rates”, 14 Dec 2016:

- FOMC lift interest rates for only second time since 2006

- Officials signal steeper path for borrowing costs in 2017

The dollar rose and two-year Treasury yields reached the highest in seven years as the Federal Reserve signaled a steeper path for borrowing costs in 2017 after raising rates for the first time this year.Stocks pared declines as Chair Janet Yellen said changes in rate projections were ‘very modest.’

   

“The bottom line is that this is more hawkish than the markets expected,” said Dennis Debusschere, a senior managing director and global portfolio strategist at Evercore ISI in New York. “I don’t think the shift higher in the dots was priced in. The consensus going in was that they’d wait until they had details of the fiscal program before they actually raised the rate forecast, and they did that before they saw the details.”

The Fed’s path to tighter monetary policy has been delayed throughout 2016, as first instability in Chinese markets, then the shock votes for Brexit and Trump, put policy makers on the defensive. After Wednesday, traders see a two-in-three chance of additional rate increases from the Fed by June, futures show.

Update: New York Times, “Trump Picks Rex Tillerson, Exxon C.E.O., as Secretary of State”, 12 Dec 2016:

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump on Monday settled on Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, to be his secretary of state, dismissing bipartisan concerns that the globe-trotting leader of the energy giant had forged a too-cozy relationship with Vladimir V. Putin, the president of Russia, transition officials said.

Mr. Trump planned to announce the selection on Tuesday morning, finally bringing to an end his public and chaotic deliberations over choosing the nation’s top diplomat — a process that at times veered from rewarding Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of his most loyal supporters, to musing about whether Mitt Romney, one of his most vicious critics, might be forgiven.

Russia’s Prime Minister Putin speaks with Tillerson in Sochi in 2011

President-Elect Trump ‘will name Exxon CEO with close links to Putin as his secretary of state’, snubbing Mitt Romney.”

DM, “BREAKING NEWS, 10 Dec 2016:

Trump is expected to name Rex Tillerson as secretary of state.

Exxon Mobil chief emerged on Friday as the leading candidate.

Favored status was revealed as Giuliani withdrew.

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name the chief executive of Exxon Mobil as the country’s top diplomat, NBC News reported Saturday.

Exxon chief Rex Tillerson emerged on Friday as Trump’s leading candidate for U.S. secretary of state and is expected to meet with him later on Saturday, a transition official told Reuters.

NBC News cited two sources close to the transition team in reporting that Tillerson will be named as secretary of state.

The president-elect had interviewed 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney twice – taking him to a three-Michelin starred dinner on one of those occasions.

Should Tillerson be nominated, his business ties, too, will come under scrutiny. Exxon Mobil has operations in more than 50 countries and boasts that it explores for oil and natural gas on six continents.

In 2011, Exxon Mobil signed a deal with Rosneft, Russia’s largest state-owned oil company, for joint oil exploration and production. Since then, the companies have formed 10 joint ventures for projects in Russia.

In 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Tillerson his nation’s Order of Friendship.

‘He has had more interactive time with Vladimir Putin than probably any other American with the exception of Henry Kissinger,’ John Hamre, a deputy defense secretary to Bill Clinton told the Wall Street Journal.

But U.S. sanctions against Russia for its incursion into Crimea cost Exxon Mobil dearly, forcing it to scrap some projects and costing it at least $1 billion in losses. Tillerson has been a vocal critic of the sanctions.

Trump has spoken of wanting warmer relations with Moscow, which has sparked concerns in Congress that he could lift or loosen some of the sanctions on Russia.

Tillerson has been chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil since 2006. He is expected to retire from the company next year.

Should Tillerson be nominated, climate change could be another divisive issue. The company is under investigation by the New York Attorney General’s Office for allegedly misleading investors, regulators and the public on what it knew about global warming.

Trump’s campaign was unavailable for comment.

Reuters, “The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, the Washington Post reported on Friday.” 9 Dec 2016:

Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Post said intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.

The officials described the individuals as people known to the intelligence community who were part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and reduce Clinton’s chances of winning.

“It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” the Post quoted a senior U.S. official as saying. “That’s the consensus view.”

The Post said the official had been briefed on an intelligence presentation made by the Central Intelligence Agency to key U.S. senators behind closed-doors last week.

The CIA, in what the Post said was a secret assessment, cited a growing body of evidence from multiple sources. Briefers told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, the Post quoted officials as saying on condition of anonymity.

In October, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election.

President Barack Obama has said he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about consequences for the attacks. But Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election.

A CIA spokeswoman said the agency had no comment on the report.

Trump has said he is not convinced Russia was behind the cyber attacks. His transition team issued a statement on “claims of foreign interference in U.S. elections” on Friday but did not directly address the issue.

The hacked emails passed to WikiLeaks were a regular source of embarrassment to the Clinton campaign during the race for the presidency.

The CIA presentation fell short of a formal U.S. assessment by all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, the Post said. A senior U.S. official said there remained minor disagreements among intelligence officials about the assessment because some questions are unanswered, it said.

Intelligence agencies did not have specific intelligence showing the Kremlin directed the individuals to pass the hacked emails to WikiLeaks, another senior official told the Post. The actors were “one step” removed from the Russian government rather than government employees, the official said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has said in a television interview that the Russian government was not the source of the emails, the Post said.

Related story - Luke Harding:

The British reporter, Luke Harding, who revealed “the dossier” which alleged Trump campaign ties to Russia. Harding discusses the disposition of Russian ‘Active Measures’ to influence the US election and White Nationalist politics in Europe - such as with Marine le Pen (Russia gave her a 10 million dollar loan). He also talks about the brutal treatment of dissenters from Putin’s regime and how that reflects Putin’s long term goal for the Russian Federation to be one of only a few grand players in the world, expanding its reach well beyond ethno-national borders.

* Yes, that’s (((Klitchko))) in avid attendance, front and center.

[...]

[...]

..........

READ MORE...