Italian Police Raid Yet Another Mafia Operated 'Green Energy' Shell Company

Police in Sicily have arrested six people with suspected ties to fugitive cosa nostra leader Matteo Messina Denaro and seized and estimated  €10 billion in assets last week as part of an ongoing investigation into the mafia's involvement with wind and solar energy companies.

Police said Mafia members got contracts for work on wind farms and solar-energy plants near Agrigento, Palermo and Trapani. A wave of arrests over recent years have closed the net around fugitive 50-year-old Agrigento-based boss Denaro, one of the world's 10 most-wanted men, who took control of Cosa Nostra after the 2006 arrest of Bernardo Provenzano.

A Sicilian judge has ordered that the funds of a Malta-based holding company be frozen after investigators learned that Valetta-based Eryngium, Inc was the recipient of a number of funds from the properties allegedly connected to Denaro and the costa nostra.

In recent years, green/renewable energy projects have proven attractive to Italian organized crime groups like the cost nostra in Sicily or the 'Ndragheta in Calabria. In addition to Italy buying the electricity from such projects at generous rates, there's also the opportunity to siphon off grants and subsidies from both Rome and the EU as well as using the wind and solar businesses to launder funds from other criminal activity such as drug trafficking and extortion.

Exit question- is the Italian mafia providing organized crime groups elsewhere with a blueprint for bilking public funds and laundering money through 'green energy' companies?

Not Another Obligatory Libya Update!

Despite the antipathy between Israel and the Arab world, an Israeli remix of one of Mummar Ghdaffi's defiant speeches set to a thumping techno soundtrack by an Israeli DJ seems to have gained traction among Arabic netizens.

Pretty catchy, isn't it? The dual small screens showing the dancing girl don't hurt, either.

Apparently a few months before the uprising, the US Government had stealthily consented to selling at least 50 refurbished M113 armoured personnel carriers to the Libyan military.

Congress balked, concerned the deal would improve Libyan army mobility and questioning the Obama administration's support for the agreement, which would have benefited British defense company BAE. The congressional concerns effectively stalled the deal until the turmoil in the country scuttled the sale.

As all military exports to the regime were suspended last week and President Barack Obama told Gadhafi he should step down, the State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls informed Congress that the troop transport deal had been returned without action — effectively off the table, according to U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the deal's sensitive details.

State Department spokesman Mark C. Toner said the proposed license was suspended along with the rest of "what limited defense trade we had with Libya."

The Gadhafi regime's desire to upgrade its troop carriers was so intense that a Libyan official told U.S. diplomats in Tripoli in 2009 that the dictator's sons, Khamis and Saif, both were demanding swift action. Khamis, a commander whose army brigade reportedly attacked the opposition-held town of Zawiya with armored units and pickup trucks, expressed a "personal interest" in modernizing the armored transports, according to a December 2009 diplomatic message disclosed by WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website.

Currently, the majority of Libya's military arsenal currently comes from either Russia or France.



Meanwhile, forces loyal to Mummar Ghdaffy used tanks rockets, artillery and airstrikes to lauch a fierce counterattack on rebel forces approaching the capitol from al Zawiyah, about 30 miles to the west of Triploi. Armor from forces loyal to Ghdaffy is reportedly probing the depleted defences of the city and firing randomly at homes on the outskirts before attempting to make their way to the rebel-held city center.

There have also been reports of Serbian mercenaries piloting Libyan aircraft bombing rebel positions, although Belgrade has denied this early on. Libyan rebels who claimed they managed to down two aircraft over Ras Lanuf insisted that the pilots they captured were in fact Syrian.

The insurgents told the relatively reliable Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, as translated by the Lebanese news portal Iloubnan.info, that the government is using mercenary pilots from Syria, Algeria, Ukraine, Serbia and Romania to fly air force warplanes because Libyan pilots are no longer considered reliable.

The loyalty of Libyan Air Force pilots was put into question when two Colonels from Libya's Air Force disobeyed orders to bomb protesters in Benghazi and instead flew off to the island nation of Malta with their French-made Mirage fighters and sought asylum. [Let it be noted that the Maltese have a sense of humor, at least- the two Mirages are listed as being for sale on the Malta-based classified ad site Maltapark- NANESB!]



Despite the unreliability of some of the Libyan pilots, Ghdaffi's forces hold the edge in air supremacy over the rebels. This has led to calls for a 'no fly zone' similar to what was imposed on Saddam Hussein's Iraq between 1992 and 2003. The USA, UK and NATO are reportedly exploring a 'range of options' regarding the situation in Libya and defense ministers from the USA and Europe will discuss the possible ramifications of establishing a no-fly zone across Libya in order to prevent Ghdaffi from bombing his own people. Canadian and British officials have talked of openly arming Libyan rebels opposing Ghdaffi while the Obama administration has proposed arming the Libyan rebels using Saudi weapons and resources. Already, NATO has stepped up surveillance flights over the country.


Exit question: Assuming they survive, once Ghdaffi bites it, who's going to get custody of his all-girl bodyguard squad?

Libyan Evacuation: Ferry Bring Americans to Malta, USAF Flying Egyptian Nationals Home.

While some 200 Americans being evacuated from Libya had to wait for a ferry to Malta last week, President Obama dispatched US Air Force C130s to Tunisia in order to aid in the evacuation of Egyptian workers trapped in Libya since an uprising against the Gahdaffi regime and ensuing crackdown

President Obama announced today that he had approved the use of military planes to transport Egyptian refugees from the Tunisian border back to Egypt.

Defense officials says the operation will be run by Africa Command (Africom) which is based in Stuttgart, Germany. One of the officials says Africom will use between two and four C-130 aircraft based in Germany to carry out the flights between Tunisia and Egypt. C-130’s are smaller aircraft compared to C-17’s so it looks like they could be making a lot of trips.

The flights will operate between Tunisia and Egypt. A Department of Defense official said that USAID would charter additional civilian aircraft to evacuate foreign nationals who are fleeing strife-torn Libya via the Tunisian border. Spain and German are sending aircraft and warships to aid in the evacuation of foreigners (mostly Egyptians) while India and South Korea have dispatched Naval vessels to evacuate their citizens.

You know what? I hope I don't come off like I'm against using US Air Force aircraft and personnel to evacuate foreign nationals from the escalating and increasingly bloody clusterfuck in Libya, because I'm not....

Simply put, It's the right thing to do......

I'm sure there were some logistical concerns as well. But with that said, how come these assets weren't made available to the American citizens who needed them first?

Food for thought.

Libya on the Brink? Reports of Defections From Libyan Military As Ghadffi Orders Crackdown on Protestors

Reuters is reporting that two Libyan Air Force colonels fled the country on Monday after disobeying orders to bomb antigovernment protestors. The Maltese Foreign Ministry confirmed that two single-seat Mirage F1 fighters from the Libyan Air Force landed at the island country's international airport outside the capital of Valetta. Upon disembarking, the pilots then identified themselves and requested asylum according to local news reports.

The asylum request came amid reports of Libyan soldiers siding with antigovernment demonstrators in Libya's 2nd largest city of Benghazi and the capture of African mercenaries flown in by the Ghdaffi regime. On Sunday afternoon, Libyan security forces loyal to Ghdaffi and mercenaries opened fire on a funeral procession for demonstrators killed in earlier clashes in Benghazi.

Libyan military jets have reportedly begun indiscriminate aerial bombardment of targets in Tripoli and Benghazi. In the capitol of Tripoli, the Austrian Army is reporting that the airspace over the city is closed after sending a C-130 transport as far as Malta to evacuate European nationals from Libya. However, the attempt was delayed upon finding that only a handful of European nationals were able to reach the airport at Tripoli.

Libyan leader Mummar Ghdaffi appeared briefly on TV Monday to quell rumors that he had fled to Venezuela. Communications in and out of Libya appear to have been cut, including mobile phones and social networking sites like Facebook. Foreign journalists have also been banned from Libya, although even prior to the unrest in that country, the movement and activities of foreign reporters were tightly controlled and monitored by the Ghdaffi regime.

The following is a capsulized version of developments in Libya in the last week or so:

Feb. 15-16:

- Police in Benghazi use force to disperse a sit-in protesting against the regime.

- Protesters demand the release of a lawyer representing the families of 1,000 prisoners gunned down in a Tripoli prison in 1996.

- At least two protesters reported killed by security forces in Al-Baida.

Feb. 17:

- Eight reported killed in clashes between demonstrators and security forces; calls go out on Facebook to turn the day into A Day of Rage against Gadhafi's regime.

- At Zenten several people arrested and a police station and public building torched.

- Feb. 18: Death toll is estimated to pass 40. Clashes reported in the east, notably Benghazi, where a radio station was burned down.

- The "Islamic Emirate of Barqa" hangs two policemen trying to disperse the crowd.

- Social-networking site Facebook blocked in Tripoli.

Feb. 19:

- Death toll passes 80, says Human Rights Watch (HRW).

- At least 12 reported killed as the army fires on a Benghazi crowd storming a barracks.

- Clashes spread to Misrati. Feb. 20:

- HRW says the death toll is at least 223; a hospital official is quoted saying it is 200.

- Authorities arrest dozens of Arab nationals from a "network" they say aims to destabilize Libya.

- Witnesses in Benghazi say Libyan security forces backed by "African mercenaries" have been shooting at crowds "without discrimination."

- Dozens of lawyers join a sit-in outside a Tripoli court, protesting against repression.

- Libya warns European Union president Hungary's ambassador to Tripoli that the bloc must stop fanning pro-democracy protests if Libya is to continue to co-operate against illegal immigration.

- Attempt by saboteurs to set fire to oil wells is foiled.

[Hat tip: Pundit Press]