So what are the sort of clients that the directors of Monaco's Transat Maritime SAM, Peter and Sandra Coleridge, have in their portfolio.
Well the likes of Mr Heiko Luikenga.
The Coleridges 'looked after' Luikenga's money for years using the umbrella of an offhsore comany called Anchor Navigation Limited. This money being placed in banks such a Republic National Bank of NY, Safra, Barclays and ING Monaco.
Strangely enough for an 'Offshore Wizard', Coleridge has even been known to use Berenberg Bank in Hamburg, Germany for his schemes !! As if the management of a Bank in Germany would be silly enough to agree to harbour accounts in the name of Offshore companies. Same goes for a French based bank such as BPCA. They're offshore for a reason.
Even for running the accounts of a St. Petersburg based ticketing agency that is trying to pretend it's an Offshore structure - GLOBE TRAVEL LIMTED... and not fully liable to taxation in Russia.
8
Arrested in Scheme to Sell Arms to Iraq
WASHINGTON — Six former high-ranking officials in the Polish government and
two Southern California men have been arrested in a U.S. Customs Service sting
operation for allegedly trying to sell $96 million worth of arms to Iraq,
federal officials said Friday.
The alleged international arms ring was uncovered by customs agents posing
as front men for the Iraqi government, authorities said.
The Poles, who included a former third-ranked general in the Polish army
and two former deputy Cabinet ministers, were arrested at a Frankfurt hotel
March 10 as they signed the $96-million deal to ship the agents 4,000 grenade
launchers, 1,000 portable antiaircraft missiles and 73,000 Kalashnikov assault
rifles, authorities said.
The plot's reputed mastermind, Ronald James Hendron, 51, of El Toro, and
its alleged financier, Jehmin Lah, 44, of Newport Beach, were apprehended in
New York City a day later as they flew in from Europe, officials said.
"Our goal was to find people willing to sell arms to the Iraqis,"
said Tanya Hill, the assistant U.S. attorney in Brooklyn who is prosecuting the
case. "We found some."
Such weapons sales are illegal under U.S. and German laws, and the arrests
dramatize Western concerns that the financially strapped former Soviet Bloc
countries have been stepping up sales of arms--one of their few easily
negotiable commodities--to developing countries.
Not all the weapons were conventional arms: Hendron promised the undercover
agents that he could provide uranium, bomb triggers and even nuclear bombs,
according to federal court complaints.
Hendron, who describes himself as a licensed international arms dealer,
denied any wrongdoing in a lengthy interview with The Times. He said the deal,
as planned, was to send arms legally to the Philippines, not to Iraq.
He said once meetings began between the undercover agents and his group,
the agents changed their story, and said the arms would be going to Iraq.
Hendron said that it was the undercover agents who demanded that the East
Bloc officials supply nuclear weapons, including a nuclear bomb, but that they
had never intended to do so.
Arrested in Germany were Jerzy Napiorkowski, deputy minister of finance in
the last Polish Communist government; Wojciech Baranski, former deputy chief of
staff in the Polish army; Jan Gorecki, a former Polish diplomat in Washington;
Zbigniew Grabowski, former director of the Polish technology office; Jerzy
Brzostek, former deputy minister of the Polish Housing Ministry; and Rajmund
Szwonder, general manager of the Lucznik armament factory in Radom, Poland. The
factory is the largest manufacturer of Kalashnikov assault rifles in Eastern
Europe.
U.S. officials have filed papers seeking to extradite the six to face
export-law violation charges in the United States. The story of the sting,
pieced together through documents and interviews, was also detailed in today's
editions of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's largest newspaper.
In January, 1991, customs agents made their initial contact with Hendron,
who told them that his El Toro-based company could provide a variety of weapons
from East European sources. This contact led to eventual introductions to
several Polish arms firms, including an arms broker called ATS, a manufacturer
called Radom Group that was selling Kalashnikov assault weapons and a third concern,
called Urbil, that offered a range of hardware.
In November, Hendron allegedly placed a $43,000 order for a "trial
shipment" of 100 Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles to demonstrate that he
could deliver the weapons.
The rifles were shipped from Bulgaria through Rotterdam to New York, where
they arrived in wooden crates that identified them as "technical
equipment." They were seized by customs inspectors.
But the shipment was only the prelude to the far bigger deal that the
undercover agents hoped to complete with the arms dealers at the Frankfurter
Hof hotel two weeks ago.
Most of the arms for the final deal were to come from weapons stocks that
the Soviet army had built up in Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
The arms dealers planned to send the shipment with papers that described
the cargo as bound for the Philippines.
Hendron's business partner in Poland, a Polish-born American named Stan
Kinman, and other arms dealers introduced the undercover agents to a German sea captain, Heiko Luikenga, whom they said they
had used "many times in past deals," according to court
papers.
Two Polish arms dealers at the meeting promised "that the ship would
incur no interference because the highest levels of Polish government were
involved in the transaction," documents show.
Prosecutor Hill declined comment when asked about evidence that any
officials of Poland's current government were involved in the case. Officials
of the Polish Embassy in Washington could not be reached for comment.
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