The California Courier Online, August 1, 2019
1 – U.S. Places Sanctions on Turkish Firm
For its Corrupt Trade with Venezuela
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
2- Robert Morgenthau, Longtime Manhattan District Attorney, Dies at 99
3 – Turks welcome ‘Ottoman grandson’ Boris Johnson as British leader
4- Salpy Eskidjian Weiderud Honored With International
Religious Freedom Award
5- Armenian, Assyrian Communities Sign
Memorandum of Understanding & Cooperation
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1 – U.S. Places Sanctions on Turkish Firm
For its Corrupt Trade with Venezuela
By Harut Sassounian
Publisher, The California Courier
www.TheCaliforniaCourier.com
In addition to U.S. and European Union punitive actions against Turkey
for various violations, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions
last week against a Turkish company “involved in a global corruption
and money-laundering network directed by Venezuelan strongman Nicolas
Maduro,” according to Aykan Erdemir, a former member of the Turkish
parliament and senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for
Defense of Democracies.
This corrupt relationship is the result of Turkish President Recep
Tayyip Erdogan’s support for Maduro’s regime which could lead to more
U.S. sanctions against Turkish firms and officials.
Erdemir wrote that U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control
“designated Istanbul-based Mulberry Proje Yatirim for facilitating
payments made as part of a ‘corruption network for the sale of
[Venezuelan] gold in Turkey.’ Mulberry’s owner is an associate of
Colombian national Alex Nain Saab Moran, who has laundered hundreds of
millions of dollars for Maduro since 2009 by exploiting Venezuela’s
food subsidy program Local Committees for Supply and Production, or
CLAP. Treasury also accused Mulberry of purchasing food in Turkey on
behalf of Venezuelan clients and marking up prices before selling it
back to Venezuela. The [U.S. Treasury] department condemned Saab and
his associates for ‘profiting from starvation.’”
The State Department’s Special Representative for Venezuela Elliott
Abrams stated last week, “Venezuela has to go to places willing to
trade gold illegally— that’s Turkey and Iran.”
Earlier this year, Marshall Billingslea, U.S. Treasury’s assistant
secretary for terrorist financing, warned, “We are looking at the
nature of Turkish-Venezuelan commercial activity, and if we assess a
violation of our sanctions, we will obviously take action.” His
warning came “shortly after a visit to Turkey by Tareck El-Aissami,
Venezuela’s minister of industries and national production, who is
known for his links to Iran and Hezbollah.” The U.S. Treasury
sanctioned El-Aissami in 2017 “for playing a significant role in
international narcotics trafficking.”
Erdemir further reported that “Mulberry is just the tip of the Maduro
regime’s illicit network in Turkey. Since 2017, with Erdogan’s
encouragement, Venezuelan government associates have established
numerous front and shell companies in Turkey.” According to Bloomberg,
in January 2018, shortly after Venezuela’s President visited Turkey,
an Istanbul-based mysterious Turkish firm [Sardes] sprang into action
by importing $41 million of gold from Venezuela. The following month,
Sardes imported another $100 million of Venezuelan gold. “By November,
when President Donald Trump signed an executive order authorizing
sanctions on Venezuelan gold—after sending an envoy to warn Turkey off
the trade, Sardes had shuttled $900 million of the precious metal out
of the country. Not bad for a company with just $1 million in capital,
according to regulatory filings in Istanbul.”
Bloomberg added, “It’s not the first time that Turkey has positioned
itself as a work-around for countries facing U.S. sanctions,
potentially undermining Washington’s efforts to isolate governments it
considers hostile or corrupt. Ankara has often tested the boundaries
of U.S. tolerance, and the alliance between the key NATO members is
now essentially broken, according to two senior U.S. officials.”
Erdemir indicated that U.S. Treasury’s sanction against the Turkish
firm is just the first step. “The Venezuelan government’s gold mining
company, Minerven, established a joint gold venture called Mibiturven
with the obscure Turkish company Marilyns Proje Yatirim, which shares
an address with Mulberry. Similarly, Grupo Iveex Insaat, a tiny
Turkish company tied to Maduro that has capital of just $1,775 and no
refineries, was responsible for eight percent of Venezuela’s oil
exports in April 2019.”
Erdemir concluded: “Under Erdogan’s rule, Turkey has become a
permissive jurisdiction for illicit finance and sanctions evasion. The
Turkish president’s solidarity with sanctioned countries such as
Venezuela and Iran is part of his overall pivot toward authoritarian
and kleptocratic regimes and his challenge to the U.S.-led liberal
international order. Unless Washington goes after the remaining
elements of the Maduro regime’s network in Turkey, Erdogan will see
this inaction as a license for further transgressions involving not
only Venezuela but other rogue regimes, as well.”
One has to wonder how is it that the U.S. Treasury Department placed
sanctions against a Turkish firm given the reluctance of Pres. Trump
to take any action against Turkey.
Could it be that Pres. Trump was unaware of the Treasury’s
anti-Turkish sanctions, being too busy with sending tweets against his
political opponents and making racist comments about Black Members of
Congress?
In a meeting with Republican U.S. Senators last week, Pres. Trump
asked for more time before implementing Congressionally-mandated
sanctions against Turkey for purchasing Russian S-400 missiles.
Any inaction by Pres. Trump on legally-mandated sanctions on Turkey
would serve to encourage Pres. Erdogan to further undermine U.S. and
NATO interests. Congress should take decisive steps to force Pres.
Trump to implement severe sanctions against Turkey.
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2- Robert Morgenthau, Longtime Manhattan District Attorney, Dies at 99
By Robert D. McFadden
Robert M. Morgenthau, a courtly Knickerbocker patrician who waged war
on crime for more than four decades as the chief federal prosecutor
for Southern New York State and as Manhattan’s longest-serving
district attorney, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 99.
Mr. Morgenthau’s wife, Lucinda Franks, said he died at Lenox Hill
Hospital after a short illness.
In an era of notorious Wall Street chicanery and often dangerous
streets, Mr. Morgenthau was the bane of mobsters, crooked politicians
and corporate greed; a public avenger to killers, rapists and drug
dealers; and a confidant of mayors and governors, who came and went
while he stayed on — for nearly nine years in the 1960s as the United
States attorney for the Southern District of New York and for 35 more
as Gotham’s aristocratic Mr. District Attorney.
For a Morgenthau — the scion of a family steeped in wealth, privilege
and public service — he was strangely awkward, a wooden speaker who
seemed painfully shy on the stump. His grandfather had been an
ambassador in President Woodrow Wilson’s day, and his father was
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s treasury secretary. His own early
political forays, two runs for governor of New York, ended
disastrously.
But from Jan. 1, 1975, when he took over from an interim successor to
the legendary district attorney Frank S. Hogan, to Dec. 31, 2009, when
he finally gave up his office in the old Criminal Courts Building on
the edge of Chinatown, Mr. Morgenthau was the face of justice in
Manhattan, a liberal Democrat elected nine times in succession,
usually by landslides and with the endorsement of virtually all the
political parties.
He presided over a battalion of 500 lawyers, a $75 million budget and
a torrent of cases every year that fixed the fates of accused stock
manipulators, extortionists, murderers, muggers, wife-beaters and
sexual predators, and in turn helped to shape the quality of life for
millions in a city of vast riches and untold hardships.
While he rarely went to court himself, Mr. Morgenthau, by his own
count, supervised a total of 3.5 million cases over the years. Many of
them were run-of-the-mill drug busts, but there were also highly
publicized trials, like those of the subway vigilante Bernard Goetz;
the Central Park “preppy” killer, Robert Chambers; and John Lennon’s
assassin, Mark David Chapman.
His victories included the 2005 conviction of L. Dennis Kozlowski,
chief executive of Tyco International, whose $6,000 shower curtains
and a $2 million birthday party for his wife on the Mediterranean
island of Sardinia came to symbolize corporate greed. Found guilty of
misappropriating more than $100 million from his company, Mr.
Kozlowski was sentenced to 8 to 25 years, although he won parole in
2014.
Mr. Morgenthau was probably the most innovative prosecutor in the
city’s history. To pursue financial crimes, he hired scores of
accountants and detectives with financial expertise. He promoted DNA
testing and other modern investigating techniques. Enlarging the
homicide bureau and other units, he hired Spanish-speaking
interpreters and hundreds of black, Hispanic and female prosecutors,
and he created the office’s first sex-crimes and consumer affairs
units.
He stressed the prosecution of career criminals, drug pushers, child
pornographers, landlords who harassed tenants and perpetrators of
attacks on gay men and lesbians. And throughout his tenure he opposed
the death penalty, arguing that it was inhumane and was ineffective as
a deterrent.
His former protégés included Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor of the
United States Supreme Court; Gov. Andrew Cuomo; former Gov. Eliot
Spitzer; Lanny A. Breuer, head of the Justice Department’s criminal
division; and Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who succeeded him as the district
attorney.
Robert Morris Morgenthau was born in Manhattan on July 31, 1919. His
grandfather, the real estate tycoon Henry Morgenthau Sr., was
President Wilson’s ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in World War I and
a prominent voice against Armenian genocide. Robert’s father, Henry
Jr., was Roosevelt’s treasury secretary from 1934 to 1945, and his
mother, Elinor (Fatman) Morgenthau, was a niece of Herbert H. Lehman,
the New York Democratic governor and United States senator.
Robert grew up with his brother, Henry III, and his sister, Joan, in
New York City, on the family’s farm in upstate East Fishkill, N.Y.,
and in a privileged world of estates, private schools and social
connections, notably with the Kennedys of Boston and Hyannis Port,
Mass., and the Roosevelts of Hyde Park, N.Y. He attended the Lincoln
School in Manhattan and graduated from the Deerfield Academy in
Massachusetts in 1937 and from Amherst College in 1941 with high
honors and a political science degree.
As a young man, he raced sailboats with Jack Kennedy off Cape Cod,
spent memorable New Year’s Eves at the White House with his father,
and in 1939 roasted hot dogs for King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of
Britain at the home of his Hudson Valley friends Franklin and Eleanor
Roosevelt. (On leave from the Navy during World War II, he served mint
juleps to Winston Churchill and F.D.R. on the lawn of his family’s
apple farm.)
While studying at Amherst, Mr. Morgenthau met Martha Pattridge, a
Smith College student. They were married in 1943 and had five
children. His first wife died in 1972. In 1977 he married Ms. Franks,
a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. They had two children.
Besides his wife Lucinda Franks, he is survived by the children of his
first marriage, Jenny Morgenthau, Anne Morgenthau Grand, Elinor
Morgenthau, Robert P. Morgenthau and Barbara Morgenthau Lee; the
children of his second marriage, Joshua Franks Morgenthau and Amy
Elinor Morgenthau; and by six grandchildren and three
great-grandchildren.
This article appeared in The New York Times on July 21, 2019.
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3 – Turks welcome ‘Ottoman grandson’ Boris Johnson as British leader
By Ali Kucukgocmen
ISTANBUL (Reuters)—Turkey celebrated incoming British prime minister
Boris Johnson’s Turkish heritage last week, with politicians and media
proclaiming that the “Ottoman grandson” could strengthen ties between
two countries on Europe’s fringes.
The former London mayor is the great-grandson of the Ottoman Empire’s
last interior minister, Ali Kemal, and his ancestry has been a source
of pride for many Turks.
Despite his sometimes disparaging remarks about Turkey, including a
crude limerick about President Tayyip Erdogan and demands in 2016 that
Britain veto Turkey’s accession to the European Union, Johnson is
affectionately referred to as “Boris the Turk” by some Turkish media.
“Ottoman grandson becomes prime minister,” read a front-page headline
of the opposition newspaper Sozcu. “For England, a prime minister with
roots in Cankiri,” it said, referring to Kemal’s home province in
central Turkey.
Like Johnson, his great-grandfather was a journalist who went into
government, a move that proved ill-fated. In the final days of the
Ottoman Empire, Kemal was captured and lynched by nationalists
fighting to establish the Turkish state.
Erdogan congratulated Johnson on Twitter, adding that ties between
Turkey and the United Kingdom were set to improve. Foreign Minister
Mevlut Cavusoglu also congratulated him, sharing a video of Turkish
reporters asking Johnson about his roots in Cankiri during a 2016
visit to Ankara.
Demiroren News Agency quoted a resident of Cankiri’s Kalfat village as
saying it was an honor that someone from their village had become
prime minister, adding that Johnson owed his distinctive mop of blond
hair to his Turkish forefathers.
“They call his ancestors from this house ‘Blond Boys’. Boris Johnson’s
blondness comes from this lineage,” Mustafa Bal said.
Johnson’s own relations with Turkey have sometimes been rocky.
Three years ago he won first prize in a British magazine competition
which asked readers to compose limericks about Erdogan “as filthy and
insulting as possible”. He later said the Turkish leader had not
brought up the verse when they met.
Johnson, a leading campaigner for Brexit in Britain’s 2016 EU
referendum, wrote to then-Prime Minister David Cameron before the vote
calling for the government to veto Turkish EU accession and stop a
planned extension of visa-free travel to Turkey.
Turkey’s EU accession talks are now stalled, while Johnson has barely
three months to meet an Oct. 31 deadline to negotiate Britain’s exit
from the bloc.
Pro-government newspaper Aksam said Johnson, who succeeds Theresa May
as prime minister after winning the leadership of the ruling
Conservative Party, may have been helped by a bit of Turkish folklore.
Receiving a Turkish award in 2012 for his work as London mayor,
Johnson was told of a belief in the Black Sea province of Rize, where
then-premier Erdogan’s family hail from, that no one could become
prime minister unless they could play the kemence, a traditional
stringed instrument.
Johnson had a go, video footage shows, and despite his limited skills
the instrument appears to have worked its charm. “The kemence brought
good luck,” Aksam newspaper said.
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4- Salpy Eskidjian Weiderud Honored With International
Religious Freedom Award
Salpy Eskidjian Weiderud, leader of the Religious Track of the Cyprus
Peace Process, has received an International Religious Freedom Award
from the US Department of State. The awards “honor extraordinary
advocates of religious freedom from around the world” and will be
presented on 17 July in Washington, D.C.
Weiderud was born in Cyprus, a grandchild of Armenian refugees. She is
an architect and facilitator of the unprecedented peacebuilding
initiative in Cyprus known as the Religious Track of the Cyprus Peace
Process, which operates under the auspices of the Embassy of Sweden.
Weiderud has focused her career on facilitating peace with passion,
said World Council of Churches (WCC) general secretary Rev. Dr Olav
Fykse Tveit. “Salpy has used her special talents and energy for
peacemaking in many settings, some of them in the service of the WCC,”
he said. “We are grateful for her many contributions, and this award
for the work in Cyprus is well-deserved.”
Beginning as a student in the 1980s, Weiderud worked on a variety of
bicommunal civil society and women’s peace initiatives in Cyprus. She
was the first young female program executive working on religious
freedom, human rights, and peace issues at the Middle East Council of
Churches.
During her time at the WCC—between 1995 and 2005—Weiderud served as
executive secretary for International Affairs, program executive for
the Middle East, and special consultant on Palestine and Israel.
She founded the Ecumenical Accompaniment Programme in Palestine and
Israel, was a founding member of the International Action Network on
Small Arms and Light Weapons, and initiated and led the Ecumenical
Action Network Against Small Arms. As the executive coordinator of the
Programme to Overcome Violence of the WCC, she led its Peace to the
City Campaign (1997-1998) and initiated the WCC’s Decade to Overcome
Violence: Churches Seeking Reconciliation and Peace (2000-2010).
Weiderud has served as the executive director of the Office of the
Religious Track of the Cyprus Peace Process since 2012. Originally a
quiet initiative that started in 2009, the religious track is now an
active peacebuilding effort based on four pillars: to get to know and
build trust among the religious leaders and respective faith
communities; to promote confidence-building measures; to advocate for
the right to free access and worship at churches, mosques and
monasteries; and to ensure the protection of all religious monuments
in Cyprus.
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5- Armenian, Assyrian Communities Sign
Memorandum of Understanding & Cooperation
GLENDALE—The Armenian National Committee of
America–Western Region and the Assyrian American Association of
Southern California, during a special ceremony last week, signed a
Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation in an effort to further
deepen and institutionalize relations between the two organizations.
The ceremony took place at the ANCA-WR headquarters in Glendale, ANCA
Western Region Chairperson Nora Hovsepian, Esq. and AAASC President
Ramond Takhsh signing the MOU, which went into effect immediately
The MOU recognizes the historic relations between both communities,
accentuates the importance of collaboration and mutual understanding,
and commits both communities to ensure comprehensive cooperation.
“The signing of this Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation
elevates our relationship with the AAASC to a deeper institutional
level,” said Hovsepian. “Our nations have lived side by side for
millennia, and we’re codifying both traditional as well as novel areas
for our extensive collaboration, taking our advocacy work to new
heights.”
“We have valued our relationship with the ANCA-WR for several years
now,” said Takhsh. “The Armenian and Assyrian peoples have experienced
the best of times together, and, of course, the worst of times. We’ll
always continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our Armenian
brothers and sisters… in this struggle to fight for justice for what
happened to our people.”
“In many ways, the struggle continues for both of our peoples, with
what’s happening with the Armenians of Artsakh and the Assyrians in
the Nineveh Plains. The struggle still persists. There might be
different actors, but essentially it’s the same struggle,” added
Takhsh.
Both AAASC and ANCA-WR have agreed to continue in collaboration to
undertake joint advocacy measures and public education initiatives
promoting human rights, peace, and the rule of the law, and continue
their commitment in seeking justice for the Armenian, Assyrian, and
Greek Genocide.
In recent years, both groups have worked tirelessly to fight for
recognition and justice for the Genocide of 1915 and have garnered the
support of elected officials including Cong. Brad Sherman, Cong. Adam
Schiff, Sen. Scott Wilk, LA City Councilmember Paul Krekorian, and Los
Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who has been vocal about his support for
both communities in their fight for justice.
“The lies that are put out must be answered with truth. Every single
time someone says ‘that wasn’t a genocide’ we say ‘Yes it was.’ Or,
‘that didn’t happen’ we say ‘yes it did.’ We all know Ellie Wiesel who
said ‘The second death is to forget those that have died’. We will not
allow that to happen– we will not allow them to be killed twice,” said
Garcetti.
Both parties have agreed to continue their collaboration to further
strengthen their key messaging relating to the Genocide and will
continue to advocate on behalf of their communities in their homelands
and abroad.
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