Counterintelligence

Beim Lesen alter Ausgaben von "Horch & Guck" fiel mir der Name Andrei Mironow auf - jenem Russen, der am 24. Mai 2014 bei Gefechten zwischen ukrainischen Streitkräften und prorussischen Kräften in Slowjansk getötet wurde. Das Foto, das in der Ausgabe von "Horch & Guck" - wer kennt diese Reihe überhaupt noch? - von ihm abgedruckt war, sieht ein wenig anders als die letzen Aufnahmen von ihm aus: [Quelle: Horch & Guck, Heft 17 (4/95), S. 53] Interessant fand ich in dem Artikel dieser Ausgabe den Satz: Und wenn er gerade mal nicht an der Front ist, sammelt er fieberhaft geheime Informationen über die neue chemische Waffe Nowitschok , an deren Produktion Rußland arbeite. Ich werde wohl nie erfahren, was er zu Nowitschok alles gesammelt hatte. Mein letzter Besuch in London zeigte mir zumindest erneut, dass die politische Bedeutung der russischen Organisierten Kriminalität im Zusammenhang mit solchen Fällen unterschätzt wird. Und wer weiss, was ...

...or: The rise of Frankenstein's Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats .  Discussing this with a few people from the counterproliferation branch I recognized that I have to learn something new regarding Weapons of Mass destruction (WMD): Who knows anything about CRISPR? But a lot more people read about Genetic Engineering - which is a good starter to understand CRISPR -  and I remember a case, many years ago, when a North Korean scientist disappeared in Australia. He was suspected of having developed a weapon based on genetic experiments. This case is still shrouded in secrecy and rumours, but it was one of the first cases ever appeared in the public. I plan to write a brief paper about it in the near future. Genetic Engineering was already in the seventies subject of e.g. a meeting about INFORMAL MEETINGS ON NEW MASS DESTRUCTION WEAPONS : Combining various search operators - which include CRISPR and WMD - I was surprised by my own data I o...

In the last days a lot of media reports referred to a UN Report not published yet, describing that " North Korea has been sending equipment to Syria that could be used to make chemical weapons ". In a few reports one responsible Syrian institution is mentioned: The Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC). Hundreds of people working for this Center are sanctioned since last April 2017. Interesting for me is that organisations which are connected to this Center and which are playing a crucial role, are not sanctioned. First of all I think about the Network of Syrian Scientists, Technologists and Innovators Abroad (NOSSTIA), which is working somehow under the radar. I came across a brief notice about a meeting on "environment projects", which was described by the Syrian Arab News Agency in April 2016. This was the first time ever I read about NOSSTIA and so I tried to take a look at their website. Today they seem to operate two Facebook accounts which I w...

The last months a lot of paper about the CPEC were produced - regarding the Chinese political-economic agenda in South East Asia. Beside the official and more or less transparent economic relations between both countries Jens Rosenke and me are, as always, more interested in the shady corners of economic projects, especially when it comes to sanctioned or in general security related technology. Therefore we worked a while on a paper, which is mainly about the research in proliferation and illegal procurement issues. But of course we also found a lot of smaller and bigger entities somehow connected in interesting ways and sometimes busy in disguising their intentions. The good thing is: "Investigating proliferation activities between China and Pakistan" is free for download ! Recently, I had put a part of my archive online as a searchable version , where o ne can find also various entries on proliferation, China or Pakistan. The paper, which is now available fo...

... can look for a T-Shirt here: One can also buy it as a "Braunhemd" which means here a brown coloured T-Shirt: Who is behind Abarcshop? But this time no Chinese company, but a German contact: Boring....

Funny to see: Since months one can read about the so-called Reichsbürger movement, sometimes about really alarming incidents, e.g. German anti-terror police uncover hidden paramilitary training camps for far-right extremists . But there are always smart people who see the opportunity: I found this on 25th January 2018 and it doesn't look like fake : Everything is possible and I remember the Hitler-cups sold in Germany by the Chinese in 2014. So I took a brief look into this company. The section "Über uns" ( "About us") is in pretty horrible German, looks like a foreign background. There we go: It's so obvious: China doesn't like political uproar in it's own country, but it doesn't care for others: The registrar is http://www.bizcn.com/ which is a Chinese company, you can call them and complain about double standards:

...reminds me of something... Reading that the Egypt President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi issued a presidential decree on Thursday afternoon appointing his office director General Abbas Kamel as acting director of Egypt’s General Intelligence Directorate let me think about the past. I wonder if the Abbas Kamel mentioned in an unclassified cable about IRAQI MEDIA OUTLETS BASED IN JORDAN: PROFILES is the one who is now the acting director of the Mukhabarat: In 2015 my old friend Nizar Manek wrote - together with Jeremy Hodge - an excellent paper about Opening the black  box of Egypt's slush funds and there Abbas Kamel appeared again. Nizar wrote: So Abbas Kamel, who is named by Intelligence Online  the eminence grise of Egyptian President , is somehow famous. It is obvious that a few people getting bad-tempered about this.

...is also maintained by vessels, but obviously it is not so easy to detect every single entity. Actually it is reported that South Korean authorities have seized a Panama-flagged vessel suspected of transferring oil products to North Korea . The vessel named KOTI is the former SEMUA SEJATI. The IMO number of a vessel remains linked to the hull for its lifetime, regardless of a change in name, flag, or owner . Due to the ongoing reflagging and renaming of vessels one must look for the shipping company, the owner etc. In this case owner and manager of the KOTI resp. the SEMUA SEJATI in former times was SEMUA SHIPPING in Malaysia. This is a company with a rich history of details, documents, addresses etc. Information: I do not suggest that any of the companies, agencies and persons I mention in this Post are engaged in illicit activity. SEMUA SHIPPING is a subsidiary of Hoe Leong Corporation Ltd. , a company holding stake in various industries and which already gained experien...

...or: Chatting with Chinese secretary I did some research about the North Korean Tanchon Mining Machine Factory, a well known actor in the DPRK, often mentioned in various reports and a factory the North Koreans are proud of . Looking for this factory I was guided to one company in China, named Xinhai Machine . Why? Because on their website they are aggregating news from their industry.Beside others they offered me an article in an North Korean journal I sometimes read anyway: Staying a few seconds on their website I received friendly  help: I didn't want to frustrate my business-minded star and so I started an interesting chat, which offered me some insights into trading with - firstly - totally unaware people:   Due to the easy atmosphere I decided to be straightforward: Following the email is easy and I found a few interesting clues, e.g. about their participation in the 12th International Exhibition of Mine, Mining, Construction Machinery and Rela...

...is something I like to do, because it definitely pays off. 2016 I wrote something about the connection between China, Pakistan and North Korea - which resulted in a lot of harsh reactions from Pakistan. Well, I am ready to take another slap: My new piece is some kind of continuation - even if North Korea seems not to be so present this time. The key-points in this case are: State-sponsored or state-owned companies that are engaged in illicit proliferation and procurement are likely to use networks of smaller, less prominent companies in their activities. A case study involving the sale of potentially proliferation-relevant products from a Chinese company to a Pakistani company underlines the level of complexity and opacity that is involved in the operations of these networks. Organised crime groups may be able to circumvent sanctions by using small, inconspicuous companies, as well as discreet financial transactions. The paper is published by Jan...

An article by the Wall Street Journal describes the cooperation between a Chinese and a North Korean company: Limac Corp. and Ryonbong General Corp. The article declares: „For most of the past decade, a Chinese state-owned company had a joint venture with a North Korean company under sanctions for involvement in Pyongyang’s atomic-weapons program, Chinese corporate and government records show.“ In my opinion: This is nothing new! The article further says: „The partnership of nearly a decade, not previously reported, shows how easily North Korea has skirted sanctions to do business with Chinese firms, a vital lifeline for the regime … The Ryonbong-Limac link was identified by Sayari Analytics, a financial-intelligence firm that works for banking and U.S. government clients and didn’t publicize its findings.“ Hm....As far as I understand: This is wrong! A little research in my files shows me, that this described cooperation was of cour...

The practical thing is that in many cases mob and political power are near to each other – literally: Sometimes they live next door. This can be confusing for both. And for the media. It is not so new but I still cannot believe it how ignorant parts of the media reported this nearly forgotten tweet from POTUS: Is this really McCarthyism? Or is it fighting organised crime? Take a deeper look at the brave work of the United States District Court/Southern District Of New York and their investigations about the Taiwanchik-Trincher Organisation, obviously part of the Russian Organised Crime scene. Regarding the indictment this organisation "was a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in crimes including operating an illegal gambling business, money laundering, and extortion." Beside others the Feds looked at this nice flat: The adress can be found in the indictment: Yes, it is the Trump Tower. Nice coincidence. A current look into a re...

Actually there is a lot to read about the possible reasons for the death of Kim Jong Nam. Beside all those theories I also like reading tea leaves: First: A group inside the elite (possibly from the military or security circles and not from the Kim dynasty) works as a stand-alone organisation, willing to build up another type of regime. Their aim is to eliminate the Kim bloodline and all who are loyal to the Kims. Second: Since approximately three years there are concrete plans to conduct a covert, maybe a clandestine operation, targeting the elite in North Korea. Those people took a look into the Kim family and draw a huge graph, conducting Social Network Analysis. They studied M. S. Granovetter, “The Strength of Weak Ties”  (1973) , and came to the conclusion, that „removal of weak ties, starting from the weakest link and working up, caused the communication network to break apart, while the removal of strong ties had little effect on the overall integrity of the network.“...

... at home and abroad: - My last report on  NK Pro about the efforts of the Kim Clan to make profit - anyhow. I try to show that the DPRK's inner circle relies on hard currency from abroad - and operates much like an organized crime cartel. In my opinion the nice  graph from an informative Wikipedia article about the North Korean economy should definitely be supplemented somehow by an entity named "Criminal activities".

...in den deutschen Medien wollte ich eigentlich ignorieren, aber ich sehe mich nun mal wieder genötigt, auf die allgemeine Verflachung hinzuweisen, die sich ausbreitet. Liest man das ratlose und schlecht recherchierte Gestottere im Blätterwald zu den "rätselhaften Clowns", die derzeit in Deutschland ihr Unwesen treiben, dann fragt man sich: Haben diese Freelancer unter den "Journalisten" denn nicht wenigstens in den bisher drei absolvierten Semestern Politikwissenschaft aufgepasst oder sich auch in dieser Zeit eher mit Handyspielchen und dem von Mutti gesponserten MacBook beschäftigt? Jede anständige Recherche hätte auf eine bestimmte und seit Jahren bekannte Subkultur in den USA hingewiesen und auch die (pseudo)kulturellen Hintergründe verständlich gemacht, die nun von einigen Dummköpfen hierzulande kopiert werden - wie überhaupt die ganze, sinnentleerte "Gangsta"-"Kultur" diverser Kleinkrimineller ohne Schulabschluss. Man werfe einen Blick...