Corruption

‘The Arabian Phoenix’ – Saudi Arabia’s resurgence in global trade

A new era is dawning in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Historically, KSA’s riches have derived from abundant oil reserves, making it one of the globe’s leading exporters in this energy sector. The revenue generated from this exceptional wealth has shaped the country’s economy and infrastructure. However, dependence on and exposure to a single …

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Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp – businessmen or terrorists?

It appears that Iran is entering into business negotiations in the Near Abroad and is looking to benefit from the new detente with Russia and China. Members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC) are already in negotiations in Uzbekistan where a million barrels of oil a day (from a daily production of 1.46 million …

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Georgia – the second front of the U.S./Russia economic proxy war?

Revelations of corruption, money laundering and embezzlement from within the banking industry in Georgia does not, in and of itself, cause much surprise: that investigations by the Georgian Prosecutor's Office (coming to a head in 2019 ) resulting in charges of money laundering against several senior directors - Mamuka Khazaradze, the founder, his deputy Badri …

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Divide and conquer: The Kremlin’s gambit

Petrov’s Defence, known popularly as the Russian Game, is a chess opening based around symmetry: the second player matching the moves of the first through pawn, knight and so on, in a game that has a reputation for leading to protracted, difficult draws unless a player can seize upon a momentary advantage that may come …

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The magic black money tree

While walking through the edge of Utah’s Fishlake Forest, it is possible to cross over 100 acres and simultaneously pass forty thousand trees, and just one. This is because the colony of Pando Aspen trunks (‘I spread’) share a single underground root system, with each apparently individual tree simply being part of a larger, hidden, …

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Rebuilding Turkey will come with seismic risks for foreign investors…

21 February 2023 NEWS RELEASE - FOR IMMEDIATE USE Rebuilding Turkey will come with seismic risks for foreign investors, warn leading security and intelligence experts  KCS Group Europe says earthquakes have fractured Erdogan's support base and President could pay the price at May’s elections - but only if they are held fairly   Leading strategic …

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Modi, Putin and the future of India: Does truth still triumph?

If great minds think alike, then so too must great dictators. As the world emerged from pandemic lockdowns in December 2021, Russia’s President Putin made Narenda Modi of India the subject of only his second international visit in almost two years, and the first in a subsequent line of appearances in autocracies across Central Asia, …

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Creating a Dictator

The quagmire of a lengthy, painful, and ultimately unsuccessful campaign in Afghanistan in the 1980s is credited with hastening the demise of the Soviet Union. History could well be repeating, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine stretches into an eleventh month and domestic discontent with Putin’s war continues to rise. Could this be the trigger that …

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Russia and Putin: The end of the road?

If you drive south-east out of St. Petersburg, you find yourself on the Trans-Siberian Highway, a network of roads eleven thousand kilometres long that is, depending on your disposition towards Australia, either the longest or second-longest highway on the planet. But even eleven thousand kilometres must come to an end, and the prospect of Vladivostok …

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