-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.aci.net/kalliste/ <A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A> ----- Today's Lesson from The Outsider by Colin Wilson Who am I?--This is the Outsider's final problem. Well, who precisely is he? 'Man is a bourgeois compromise', a half-way house. But a half-way house towards what? The superman? We have seen that the superman is not a gigantic piece of Nietzschean crankery, but a valid poetic concept that develops from the same urges as the saint and spiritual reformer. But 'the great man is a play-actor of his own ideals', and you cannot act well unless you have a clear idea of the part you are going to play. So when Tolstoy's madman wakes up in his carriage with a nightmarish sense of horror, and the question What am I? then the road towards the superman, or the saint or the artist of genius, is temporarily blocked up. The question of Identity lies across it. ===== Money Laundering Swiss Join Russian Money Probe So much for Swiss secrecy. GENEVA, Oct 7, 1999 -- (Reuters) U.S. federal investigators have begun a formal examination of possible Swiss links to the Bank of New York money-laundering scandal, a Swiss judge said on Wednesday. Geneva magistrate Laurent Kasper-Ansermet told Reuters his office had its first formal meeting and began cooperating with U.S. investigators on Wednesday in the widening money-laundering probe, described by Interpol as the biggest of its kind. The meeting in Geneva came just a day after a U.S. federal grand jury in Manhattan indicted a former vice president of the Bank of New York, her husband and an associate in the first criminal charges filed in the international investigation. Kasper-Ansermet, who is probing possible Swiss links in the scandal, said he expected to deepen his formal contacts with officials of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). "In the framework of my investigation into the Bank of New York case, I've just met an American delegation to see how to exchange information with U.S. investigators. It is important because we are beginning a formal cooperation," he said. Kasper-Ansermet said Switzerland had yet to receive a formal request for judicial assistance from the U.S. government but added he was expecting such a demand soon. A U.S. embassy spokeswoman confirmed FBI officials met Swiss investigators in Geneva but declined to give details. The judge said he expected to receive fresh information from U.S. investigators to help further the probe. "We are now working hard to try to establish cooperation as speedily as possible between the two countries," he said. By unsealing the indictments, investigators can now share information with foreign governments to help determine how the vast sums of money traveled through Bank of New York accounts to financial institutions throughout the world. THREE INDICTED IN MONEY-LAUNDERING PROBE The three individuals indicted were Lucy Edwards, a former vice president in Bank of New York's Eastern European division; her husband Peter Berlin, a Russian �migr�, and his business associate, Aleksey Volkov. Edwards, who worked in London, was recently fired by the bank, which was not named in the indictment. The charges relate to the transmission of about $7 billion through accounts for Benex International Co and Becs International LLC at Bank of New York. Berlin was president of both companies and Edwards was an officer, the papers allege. Little has surfaced in Switzerland on tangible links to the case apart from a slow drip of revelations on frozen accounts. It emerged last month that Swiss banks, responding to tough new laws obliging them to report suspect funds, had frozen 26 million Swiss francs on suspicion of links to the affair. Separately, prosecutors in Geneva are also probing charges that a Swiss company paid the Kremlin bribes to get renovation contracts, and money-laundering allegedly linked to a list of 24 Russian politicians, businessmen and their family members. But Geneva's cantonal prosecutor Bernard Bertossa told Reuters that investigators in Switzerland were a long way from determining the workings of the alleged laundering scheme. "We are pulling on a ball of string. We cannot say what we've discovered today is the whole story. We just don't know," said Bertossa, who said his office was probing Russian organized crime cases running into hundreds of millions of dollars. Bertossa said some Swiss bankers may have "problems" in the probe but declined to say if any might face criminal charges. Swiss banks - which handle an estimated $2 trillion in client assets or one-third of the global offshore wealth - say they have stepped up vigilance to prevent taking dirty deposits. But none has been disciplined under a new money-laundering law in effect since April 1998, which obliges banks and other financial institutions to report suspicious deals and freeze accounts. Reuters, October 7, 1999 Hacking for Jesus Computer Intruders Traced Back to Russia We're your friends. Tell us your secrets. WASHINGTON, Oct 7, 1999 -- (Reuters) A string of raids that plucked data from Defense Department and other U.S. computers appears to have been launched from Russia, the top U.S. cybercop told Congress Wednesday. Disclosing a probe he said had been under way for more than a year, Michael Vatis of the Federal Bureau of Investigation said intruders had stolen "unclassified but still-sensitive information about essentially defense/technical research matters." "About the furthest I can go is to say the intrusions appear to originate in Russia," said Vatis, director of the FBI-led National Infrastructure Protection Center (NIPC), a bulwark to detect and deter threats to U.S. electronic lifelines. An ongoing investigation, code-named Moonlight Maze, involved U.S. agencies and their international counterparts, Vatis told the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Technology and Terrorism. At issue, he said, were "a series of widespread intrusions, into Defense Department, other federal government agencies and private-sector computer networks." Vatis did not spell out whether the intrusions were continuing nor who might be behind them in Russia. In an interview with Reuters last week, he had declined comment on the case, as had other federal officials. Sen. Robert Bennett, who has received classified briefings on "information warfare" as chairman of the special committee on the Year 2000 problem, said the intruders vacuumed up vast amounts of publicly available data over at least several months. One possibility was that they had burrowed into "places we don't know about and (are) still getting information that we can't trace," the Utah Republican said in an interview with Reuters. A U.S. official said suspects in the case apparently were from the Russian Academy of Sciences, a government-supported organization said to interact with Russia's top military labs. Susan Hansen, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the Defense Department knew of no classified information that had been jeopardized in the Moonlight Maze intrusions. Vatis made his comments in reply to a question from panel chairman Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona. Although key U.S. networks have escaped "serious harm" so far, "our luck is likely to run out unless we take aggressive steps" to plug security gaps, Kyl said. Vatis linked the greatest potential national-security threat to "information warfare," the ability to launch viruses and other cyber weapons against the bits and bytes that glue together modern life. Among countries believed to have developed offensive information warfare capabilities are China, France, India, Iraq, Russia and South Korea, according to the National Communications System, a Defense Department-led interagency task force to ensure national-security links. In a March report, the task force also named Bulgaria and Cuba as having built limited offensive capabilities. It said Japan and Israel likely were working on them. Vatis said the FBI's caseload for computer hacking and network-intrusion cases had doubled for each of the last two years, with more than 800 cases pending. Reuters, October 7, 1999 Russian Follies Russia Begs for IMF Cash They need to replace those frozen Swiss accounts. RUSSIA pleaded with the West yesterday not to let the growing scandal over alleged money laundering by its firms delay the release of loans from the International Monetary Fund and tip it into bankruptcy. The plea came after indictments were issued in New York against three Russian immigrants involved in the transfer of billions of pounds from Russia through accounts at the Bank of New York. The FBI said this was just the beginning of an ever-widening investigation into Russian financial corruption. The coverage of mass capital flight from Russia via the Bank of New York was creating problems for Moscow at the highest political level, President Yeltsin's envoy to the Group of Seven developed nations complained. More than �600 million of loans from the West expected by the beginning of this month had not materialised, inflicting strains on Russia's tight budget, the finance minister said. "We are doing everything and receiving nothing," said Mikhail Kasyanov. "We can't go on like this." The IMF has postponed a decision on �400 million of aid amid disquiet over the corruption tainting politicians, bankers and businessmen and the danger of it spreading to the West. The indictment unsealed in New York on Tuesday named Lucy Edwards, a vice-president with the Bank of New York based in London, her husband Peter Berlin, who is at the centre of the FBI investigation, and his associate Aleksey Volkov. Investigators want to know the source of the estimated �4.3 billion that passed through accounts at the Bank of New York between February 1996 and July 1999. The indictment charges that the trio "conspired to illegally transmit funds and receive deposits" through accounts held by Benex International Co and Becs International LLC. A third company, Torfinex, made the transfers at the instructions of "individuals in Russia", according to the indictment, which also says that "typically there were hundreds of wire transfers per day to and from the Benex and Becs accounts." The Bank of New York has not been charged with any wrongdoing. The question of which Russian individuals were involved in the transfer has provoked a variety of theories about the source of the money. Parallel investigations in Switzerland into alleged payments made by a Moscow construction company to members of Mr Yeltsin's family have led to speculation that the Bank of New York scandal may be the tip of an iceberg of corruption involving the Kremlin. One of the first direct links between the Swiss and American investigations emerged yesterday when it was reported that two Bank of New York accounts held indirectly by Mr Yeltsin's son-in-law, Leonid Dyachenko, had dealings with a company at the heart of the Swiss investigation. Mr Dyachenko has had his financial records subpoenaed by a Federal Grand Jury in New York but is not under investigation. Western governments have called for ever fuller audits of the spending of past IMF aid packages before releasing further tranches of support. Russia needs prompt payment of each instalment of the �2.8 billion agreed with the IMF in July to avoid the risk of defaulting on its existing debts to the fund or having to cut state spending still further in an election year. The Bank of New York scandal is not linked directly to IMF funding although some of the money that was allegedly channelled through Wall Street may have been dollars sold by Russia's Central Bank to support the rouble before the 1998 crash. The London Telegraph, October 7, 1999 European Union ECB Set to Raise Interest Rates? German manufacturing is the culprit. The European Central Bank faces growing pressure to raise interest rates today after Germany reported a surge in manufacturing orders in August, the largest month-on-month increase since unification in 1990. The surprisingly strong rise followed hawkish statements last week from the ECB's three most important officials, Wim Duisenberg, Christian Noyer and Otmar Issing, all of whom suggested the ECB might soon raise rates for the first time since the euro's launch in January. However, some economists said Germany would not welcome a rise since it would hamper the government's efforts to bring down its budget deficit and public debt. Ernst Welteke, the Bundesbank's new president, has recently played down the need to raise rates, and some economists say the desire of the ECB's governing council to build an internal consensus may cause it to leave rates unchanged today. The council includes the heads of the euro-zone's 11 national central banks as well as its six-member executive board. "Even if rates do remain on hold [today], the overwhelming likelihood is now that rates will rise before the end of the year," said Richard Reid, of the investment bank Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette. The 5.1 per cent increase in German manufacturing orders compared to private economists' forecasts of about 0.5 per cent and was largely driven by a surge in demand for west German exports. Taken with recent figures that show France's economy growing strongly, the data indicate the euro-zone's two largest countries can expect healthy growth next year of about 3 per cent. There are also worries about inflation in Italy. Confindustria, the Italian employers' federation, last night warned that the country's inflation rate could show a sharp rise to an annualised 2 per cent this month, well above the euro-zone average. Stephan Monissen, of Salomon Smith Barney, described the rise in German orders as "stunning" and said it could mean that the ECB's 17-member governing council would decide at its fortnightly meeting today to raise its benchmark refinancing rate to 3 per cent from 2.5 per cent. The ECB cut rates by 0.5 percentage points last April largely because it feared the euro-zone was in danger of slipping into a deflationary recession. Market expectations of an interest rate rise have pushed up the euro's value against the dollar this week, causing a de facto tightening of monetary conditions in the euro-zone. The euro's weakness has been partly responsible for the rise in foreign orders for German manufacturing products over the past five months. Foreign orders rose by 8.1 per cent in August compared with July, while domestic orders rose by 3.3 per cent. The Financial Times, October 7, 1999 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance�not soapboxing! 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