← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Centinel
Thread ID: 3627 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2002-11-21
2002-11-21 05:21 | User Profile
From The Times of London, available online at: [url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-487547,00.html]http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-...-487547,00.html[/url]
November 21, 2002
Russian billionaire behind worldwide trade in oil
By Carl Mortished, International Business Editor
THE ownership of the heavy fuel oil fouling the beaches of northwest Spain can be traced back to Mikhail Fridman, one of the so-called Russian ââ¬Åoligarchsââ¬Â and the man at the helm of Alfa Group, a private conglomerate with interests in oil exploration, commodities trading, banking, telecommunications, food, vodka and supermarkets.
One of Alfa Groupââ¬â¢s many tentacles is Crown Resources, an oil-trading business set up by Alfa in Gibraltar in 1996. It was Crown that chartered the Prestige, a vessel that had previously been used as a floating storage tank, to hold deliveries of fuel from inland Russian refineries.
Alfa Groupââ¬â¢s myriad interests are impossible to value, but some estimate Mr Fridmanââ¬â¢s personal fortune to be as much as $2 billion (ã1.3 billion). He made his fortune in trading. In the 1980s, he was hustling everything from Siberian wool shawls and imported cigarettes to computers and photocopiers. It is said that he even bred mice for laboratories before setting up Alfa-Eco, a commodities trading business that formed the core of his financial and trading empire.
Today, Alfa-Eco exports oil from Russia and imports sugar, tea and wine, and also owns Smirnov Trade House, a vodka producer.
With its Russian commodities trading arm, Alfa-Eco, the Alfa Group has become a significant player in the oil-trading business. Last month, Alfa-Eco secured the largest Iraq oil deal in years, purchasing 20 million barrels of crude and helping to bring a flood of Iraqi crude on the market. The sudden surge in supply was a big factor in the recent fall in the oil price.
2002-11-21 19:35 | User Profile
Today's report on the oil spill:
[url=http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-20-02.asp]http://ens-news.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-20-02.asp[/url]
Board of the Alfa Group, owner of Crown Resources AG, the cargo owners:
[url=http://www.alfagroup.org/consortium/board/]http://www.alfagroup.org/consortium/board/[/url]
Crown chartered a cheap but unsafe old supertanker that had been dodging EU safety inspections. The ship owners were of course Greeks.
The Greek captain of the Prestige claimed he was sailing direct to Singapore, but the third-world crew members reported that the ship was preparing to stop at Gibraltar to take on fuel. The captain interfered with rescue efforts for the first 4-6 hours for as yet unknown reasons. With the ship at the bottom of the ocean, there is no physical evidence of what went wrong.