The first step Putin orders the Russian army to maintain peace in "Lugansk and Donetsk"

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered the military to "keep peace" in the two pro-Moscow separatist regions in eastern Ukraine that he just recognized, and Putin signed decrees recognizing the independence of Ukraine's breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday ordered the military to "keep peace" in the two pro-Moscow breakaway regions in eastern Ukraine that he has just recognized as independent.

According to two decrees signed by the Russian President, "the Russian Armed Forces shall undertake the peacekeeping mission on the territories of Donetsk and Lugansk."

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin described eastern Ukraine as an ancient Russian land, and said that "modern Ukraine was formed by Russia after the revolution of 1917."

"Ukraine is an integral part of Russia's history, and it was Stalin who liberated it and gave it some land to form its current state," Putin added in a speech to the people.

Putin accused Western intelligence services of helping Ukraine commit crimes, and said that "it is under American control and has become an independent country, and it is run by external forces, and this affects all levels of power in it."

Regarding the two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, the Russian president said that "the Donbass region has been withdrawn from the sovereignty of Russia to the sovereignty of Ukraine, and that Moscow will recognize the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions."

Putin signed two decrees recognizing the independence of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine.

He stressed that "Russia has the right to take retaliatory measures and we will not give up our sovereignty and national values, and that the decision to recognize the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions must be taken immediately."

Putin called on Ukraine to "immediately stop hostilities in the Donbass region, otherwise the responsibility will fall on its leadership."

With regard to joining NATO, Putin said that "Ukraine's accession to the alliance is a direct threat to Russia's security," stressing that Moscow had made promises not to expand NATO.

He added, "We have witnessed five waves of NATO expansion recently," noting that NATO is seeking to expand to the east and include Ukraine and Georgia.

Tensions have dramatically escalated in eastern Ukraine, with reports indicating an increasing number of ceasefire violations, multiple bombing incidents, and the evacuation of civilians from pro-Russian separatist areas of Donetsk and Luhansk.

According to the United Nations, more than 13,000 people have been killed in clashes between pro-Russian separatists and the Kiev government since 2014 in Donbass, eastern Ukraine.

Recently, tension has escalated in the Donbass region, while Western countries have accused Russia of mobilizing its forces near the Ukrainian border, and Washington has threatened to impose sanctions on Moscow in the event of an attack on Kiev.

Russia denies it is ready to invade Ukraine, and has accused Western countries of undermining its security through NATO's expansion towards its borders.

Fraud and money laundering How does Credit Suisse facilitate the plundering of the Third World?

New leaks of the data of 30,000 customers of the Swiss bank "Credit Suisse" revealed massive financial corruption scandals, as the famous bank does not hesitate to offer its services to tax evaders and money launderers, and also provides a system for corrupt politicians to plunder their poor countries.

This new financial scandal was revealed by the “Switzerland Secrets” file, which concerned the search for the leaked data of 30,000 clients from Credit Suisse, the second largest bank in the country. These data showed the bank’s great leniency in reviewing its clients’ accounts, and empowering a group of killers and merchants. Drugs, money launderers, and corrupt politicians are his services.

Data has been searched and analyzed by a team of 160 journalists and 48 media organizations, led by the New York Times and the British Guardian. This was after the German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung first obtained it, which said it had "received the data from an unknown source on a secure digital mailbox more than a year ago," and indicated that "it is not clear whether the source is an individual or a group." She also confirmed that she "did not pay any money to get it."

These leaked data reveal that the bank, from the beginning of the 1940s until the end of 2010, "received funds related to crime and corruption" worth $100 billion. It also reveals that most of the owners of this data come from developing countries, while Europeans constitute only 1% of them. Among these clients are prominent Arab political figures, whose money was smuggled there during the Arab Spring, and therefore the bank is facing accusations of enabling these people to plunder their countries and escape accountability.

Credit Suisse scandal

The "Secrets of Switzerland" project aims to shed light on one of the largest financial centers in the world, which used to work in the shadows, by revealing the ways in which it deals with its criminals and money launderers, who were able to open bank accounts or keep them open for years after their crimes were exposed, including Indicates the complicity of the Swiss bank in this. It also aims to reveal how Switzerland's famous bank secrecy laws have helped facilitate the pillaging of countries in the developing world.

It is related to Credit Suisse, the second largest banking institution in the Swiss financial system, which manages an amount of 1.74 trillion dollars in financial assets, as leaked bank statements reveal that it has received corruption funds estimated at 100 billion dollars for decades. These clients who were assigned about 3,500 relationship managers are spread around the world, while the most prominent countries whose clients were included in this data are: Egypt and Venezuela with more than 2,000 clients, and Thailand and Ukraine with more than a thousand.

Among these clients is Rudoljub Radulovic, a Serbian conman and drug baron convicted of cocaine trafficking by the Belgrade Court. He owned two Swiss bank accounts, the first dates back to 2005, a year after he was prosecuted by the US Commission for Financial Security and Exchanges for fraud, and one of them contained an amount of 3.71 Million dollars. Radulovic is serving a 10-year prison sentence for drug trafficking.

Another client is Edouard Seidel, a German employee of electronics giant Siemens, convicted in cases of bribing corrupt Nigerian officials in exchange for the company's business there. Until 2010, Credit Suisse left the German employee's account open until the last decade, which contained an amount of more than $62 million.

According to the Guardian, a leaked internal report in 2017 revealed how the Swiss bank deals with its customers. or financial services or mining. These data show that the Credit Suisse administration was aware of the identity of those with whom it was dealing, and therefore this indicates its complicity in these criminal acts.

Means to loot countries including the Arab!

According to the Guardian, one of the most scandals revealed by Credit Suisse data is related to the corrupt Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his wife Imelda, as it is estimated that the couple stole up to $ 10 billion from the Philippines during the three terms Ferdinand was president of the country, which ended in 1986. In 1995, the bank allowed them to open accounts on it in fictitious names, and the data reveal an account in the name of a lawyer who was convicted of helping the couple launder their money.

The data also bore the name of Pavlo Lazarenko, the former Ukrainian prime minister between 1997 and 1998, that is, over a one-year period that was enough for him to loot $200 million from the Ukrainian government, by threatening to harm businesses unless they paid him a 50 percent royalty of their profits.

As for the Arab countries, the name of Jordan's King Abdullah II appeared as one of the owners of accounts in Credit Suisse, in addition to the two sons of ousted Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The two brothers' relationship with the bank stretched for decades since the opening of their first account in 1993, and they owned six accounts They differed throughout that period, and their balance amounted to 253 million dollars just one year before the revolution that toppled their family from the throne of Egypt.

The name of the Algerian Defense Minister Khaled Nizar, one of the prominent faces during the black decade in the country, was accused of committing grave human rights violations and looting the resources of the Algerian people.

While the Swiss bank defended itself, downplaying the importance of what the data revealed by saying that “most of the things presented are historical, and in some cases date back to the 1940s, and are based on partial, inaccurate or selective information taken out of context,” accusing journalists of “concentrating efforts to distort the The bank’s reputation and the Swiss financial market, which has undergone significant changes over the past several years.”

The "Switzerland Secrets" team unanimously agrees that the secrecy laws associated with the Swiss financial system enable the corrupt and criminals in the world to evade follow-up, and provide easy means for politicians in developing countries to plunder the resources of their countries in violation of those peoples' right to information.