Category: Harut Sassounian

 

Last week, we disclosed the improper enrichment of Pres. Erdogan of Turkey by receiving a $25 million oil tanker as a gift from an Azeri billionaire. This week, we expose the Prime Minister of Turkey, Binali Yildirim, who turns out to be just as corrupt as his boss!

Craig Shaw and Zeynep Sentek revealed in their article posted on the website theblacksea.eu, based on a report by the European Investigative Collaborations’ (EIC) Malta Files, that the Yildirim family owns shipping and other foreign assets worth $140 million.

In 2009, when Yildirim was Minister of Transport and Maritime, he told a gathering of large ship owners in Istanbul: “From now on any Turkish businesses owning ships, yachts or sea vessels that flew foreign flags would be ‘treated with suspicion’ by the government.” Yildirim gave the ship owners three months to change the registration of their vessels. Yildirim added, “Now they have no excuse. If they insist on not changing to the Turkish flag, we don’t see that [they have any] good intentions.” The Minister was apparently promoting the creation of a strong, national shipping fleet which would pay taxes to Turkey.

 

Ironically, sitting just a few feet away from Yildirim during the speech was his 30-year-old son Erkam who was “the registered owner of at least one general cargo ship called the ‘City,’ through the family’s offshore company in the Netherlands Antilles. This freighter flew not the Turkish flag, but that of the Dutch Caribbean Islands,” according to EIC investigators.

 

Since then, EIC reported the Yildirim family owned 11 foreign-flagged ships registered “in a network of secretive companies in Malta, the Netherlands, and the Netherlands Antilles — specifically now Curacao, with more suspected in the Marshall Islands and Panama.”

 

In addition, theblacksea.eu revealed that “Yildirim’s son, daughter, uncle and nephews have purchased seven properties in the Netherlands, worth over $2.5 million — all of which were paid in cash.”

 

Yildirim started his career in shipping in 1994 when he managed Istanbul’s Fast Ferries Company (IDO), owned by the city. However, he was fired in 2000 over revelations he awarded a contract to manage the ferries’ canteens to his uncle, Yilmaz Erence,” according to Shaw and Sentek.

 

Yilmaz is the same uncle who registered the Turkish company, Tulip Maritime Limited, in Malta in 1998. Yilamz’s partners were: “Salih Zeki Cakir, a known ship-owner who briefly employed Yildirim, Ahmet Ergun, President Erdogan’s advisor from his days as Istanbul Mayor, as well as a former MP [Member of Parliament] and high court judge, Abbas Gokce,” according to Shaw and Sentek.

 

The Black Sea and EIC reported that six of the 11 ships owned by the Yildirim family – “worth between 1.9 million and 33 million Euro — appear to have been bought without any bank loans. If so, this suggests an enormous cache of funds exists in the Dutch operation, despite on paper being a money-losing business.”

 

On June 9, 2016, two weeks after Pres. Erdogan appointed Yildirim as Prime Minister, he acquired four new shipping companies registered in Malta. The director of these companies is Suleyman Vural, Yildirim’s nephew. Two of these companies, linked to a business in Istanbul, were set up in 2015 by uncle Yilmaz and his son, Rifat Emrah Erence.

 

Yildirim’s son, Erkam, also owns extensive businesses in the Netherlands, including “modest properties and expensive ships,” according to Shaw and Sentek. EIC reported that the Yildirim family owns a company called Castillo Real Estate BV, based in Almere, the Netherlands, where houses a dental clinic in a building owned by the son of the Prime Minister. Next door to the dentist are the offices of Castillo Real Estate and Zealand Shipping — two of the family’s major companies.

In addition to these two buildings, Castillo owns four properties in the Netherlands: an apartment building in Schoonhoven, two houses in Utrecht, and a shoemaker’s shop in The Hague. These six properties, valued over 2.16 million Euro, were all paid in cash. A seventh property in Almere was purchased personally by Erkam for Zealand Shipping’s manager.

 

The Yildirim family’s biggest assets in the Netherlands — worth $129.8 million — were established in 2007 by Erkam under the name of Zealand Shipping until 2014, when it was bought by Holland Investments Cooperatif UA, also owned by Erkam. In addition, the Yildirim family “owns 30% of Q-Shipping BV based in Barendrecht. The partner in this venture is Abdulvahit Simsek, a Turkish businessman who shares an office with the Yildirims in Istanbul…. Q-shipping BV and its subsidiaries manage 20 ships — none of which sail under a Turkish flag,” according to Shaw and Sentek.

 

Until a year ago, New Zealand Shipping owned 10 ships flying the Dutch flag, two of which were sold to “a Turkish conglomerate close to the Erdogan government, Kolin Group,” according to Shaw and Sentek. They summarize the “Foreign Wealth of the Turkish Prime Minister’s Family” as follows:

 

— 18 ships (Dutch conglomerates, fully or partly owned)

— 1 ship (Netherlands Antilles company)

— 4 Malta companies

— 7 properties in the Netherlands

— 8 ships in the Netherlands

— 3 ships in Malta

— Total estimated assets: $140 million.

 

Shaw and Sentek conclude their article by noting that “after Turkey’s constitutional referendum which granted Pres. Erdogan the power to destroy the Prime Ministry in two years, Yildirim’s tenure at the top is coming to an end. But in the nearly 20 years since he ‘transferred his businesses’ to his children, they have created a soft cushion for him to land upon when he leaves politics for good!”

 

 

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  When Recep Tayyip Erdogan first came to power as Turkey’s Prime Minister in 2003, he was welcomed by the majority of Turks as a devout Muslim and honest politician, after being ruled by corrupt leaders for several decades.

   

  Regrettably, as time passed, Erdogan and his fellow Islamist Party leaders (AKP) became gradually corrupted! Greed replaced their piety, and the temptation of big money was too hard to resist. The expression, ‘power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” aptly describes the transformation of Erdogan into a corrupt and autocratic leader.

   

  In a lengthy article on the website theintercept.com, Andrew Fishman disclosed the unusual circumstances of Erdogan’s family receiving a $25 million oil tanker as a gift, under a secretive offshore arrangement! This sensational revelation comes a few years after the exposure of Erdogan’s recorded telephone conversations with his son Bilal, during which he advised him how to hide hundreds of millions of dollars in cash obtained mysteriously by Erdogan.

   

  According to Fishman, the oil tanker was donated to Erdogan by Azeri billionaire Mubariz Mansimov back in 2008, as revealed by the European Investigative Collaboration (EIC) network, composed of 49 journalists from 13 media organizations in 16 countries. “Mansimov became a Turkish citizen two years earlier and adopted a Turkish name, Mubariz Gurbanoglu, allegedly at Erdogan’s suggestion,” Fishman reported. Not surprisingly, “after the deal was struck, his business dealings in Turkey took off, including lucrative contracts with state firms.”

   

  Mansimov also befriended Pres. Donald Trump and was an invited guest at the presidential inauguration earlier this year, as a major investor in Istanbul’s Trump Towers. “When the 39 floors of residential and office block of Trump Towers opened in Istanbul in 2009, Mansimov was the first customer — buying eight apartments, including the penthouse,” according to the website: theblacksea.eu.

   

  Fishman’s article on the intriguing and convoluted details of how the 13,000 ton ship was donated to Erdogan was based on the Malta Files, an investigation led by EIC, using a leaked cache of 150,000 documents from a Malta-based provider of legal, financial and corporate services, as well as a scraped version of the Malta Public Register of companies. In 2007, Mansimov purchased the oil tanker Agdash in Russia and registered it in the name of Pal Shipping Trader One, a Maltese holding company. In 2008, Bumerz, a company registered in the tax haven Isle of Man [UK] co-owned by Erdogan’s son (Burak Erdogan), brother (Mustafa) and brother-in-law (Ziya Ilgen) purchased all shares for $25 million. “The next day, that firm took out a $18.4 million loan arranged by Mansimov…. Documents show that Mansimov pledged to pay off the entire seven-year loan plus interest in exchange for leasing rights through 2015 (the remaining $7 million of the purchase price was paid by a close personal friend of Erdogan for reasons unknown. Mansimov’s company, which controls two-thirds of Black Sea oil shipping, extended the leasing option through 2020 for $1.2 million a year. All told, the deal amounts to a $21.2 million cash transfer from Mansimov to Erdogan’s family.”

   

  Another source, Sg.news.yahoo.com, estimated the value of the oil tanker donated to the Erdogan family as $29.64 million. This website also disclosed that the “close personal friend of Erdogan” who paid $7 million for the purchase of the oil tanker is Sitki Ayan, a Turkish businessman.

   

  The newspaper, Malta Today, revealed that Erdogan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, in 2012 set up eight companies in Malta to avoid paying millions of dollars in taxes for his company, Calik Holdings, a massive energy, textile and construction conglomerate that earned billions of dollars in public tenders. He also opened four companies in Sweden.

   

  Albayrak, the husband of Esra Erdogan, the President’s eldest daughter, received from a close associate an email in 2011, warning him that the secretive offshore companies are “based on tricking the finance authority; it’s not a secure system. If the finance authority discovers this, it wouldn’t be good for [Calik’s] reputation,” according to Malta Today.

   

  In the end it turns out that Albayrak did not need a secret offshore network because in 2015 he was appointed by Erdogan as Minister of Energy and Resources. He helped pass the “Wealth Peace Act,” a tax amnesty which allowed Calik Holdings to repatriate unlimited amounts of offshore cash, tax-free!

   

  Malta Today also reported that Erdogan is grooming his son-in-law Albayrak as his successor. It is not surprising that Albyarak accompanied Pres. Erdogan on his recent trip to the United States.

   

  The reason many foreign companies are registered in Malta is that the country “boasts the lowest effective corporate tax rate [5%] in the European Union and has become a preferred destination for tax avoidance in the EU,” whereas in France, for example, the corporate tax rate is 33.33%, according to Fishman.

 

 

Armenians and non-Armenians alike were saddened and outraged seeing videos of the attack on 11 protesters who were injured after being hit, kicked and choked by Pres. Erdogan’s security guards in front of the Turkish Embassy in Washington, D.C., on May 16. Regrettably, several thousand Turks shamelessly sent tweets expressing their joy that Armenians, Assyrians, Kurds, Greeks and Yezidis were bloodied by Turkish thugs!

 

This vicious brawl has done more damage to the image of Turkey in the United States and around the world than any other brutality recently committed by Turkish soldiers, police or security guards inside Turkey. Turkish denialists constantly complain that Armenian ‘propaganda’ on the Armenian Genocide has stained the reputation of Turks worldwide, ignoring the fact that Turks have tarnished their own image by committing a mass heinous mass crime.

 

In fact, the May 16 nasty attack by Turkish goons on peaceful protesters has done more to reinforce the ‘Terrible Turk’ image than anything Armenians or others could have done. The Turkish government spends millions of dollars each year to pay public relations firms to present Turkey in the best possible light. However, the latest incident, which was condemned by many Members of Congress and covered widely by the mass media, has blackened the reputation of Turkey and its autocratic President Erdogan to such an extent that even $100 million spent on public relations cannot undo the damage inflicted on their image.

 

Here are some of the critical comments made by Members of Congress:

 

Sen. John McCain (Rep.-AZ), Chairman of Senate Armed Services Committee, told ABC Nightly News and MSNBC: “We should throw [Turkey’s] Ambassador the hell out of the United States of America!”

 

In addition, Sen. McCain and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (Dem.-CA), Ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent a joint letter to Pres. Erdogan asking for an apology.

 

Four Republican Senators: Marco Rubio (FL), Tom Cotton (AR), Mike Lee (UT), and Ted Cruz (TX) issued a joint statement demanding an immediate apology from the Turkish government.

 

Condemnatory statements were also issued by: Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (Dem.-NY), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (Dem.-RI), Sen. Jack Reed (Dem.-RI), Sen. Ben Cardin (Dem.-MD), Sen. Patrick Leahy (Dem.-VT), and Sen. Ben Sasse (Rep.-NEB).

 

House Foreign Relations Committee chairman Ed Royce sent a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Attorney General Jeff Sessions stating: “Agents of foreign governments should never be immune from prosecution for felonious behavior.”

 

Several other House members also issued statements condemning the Turkish attack: Don Breyer (Dem.-VA), Devin Nunes (Rep.-CA), Adam Schiff (Dem.-CA), Steny Hoyer (Dem.-MD), Frank Pallone (Dem.-NJ), Dave Trott (Rep.-MI), David Valadao (Rep.-CA), Brad Sherman (Dem.-CA), James McGovern (Dem.-MA), Jim Costa (Dem.-CA), Zoe Lofgren (Dem.-CA), Ron DeSantis (Rep.-FL), Tulsi Gabbard (Dem.-HI), Ted Deutch (Dem.-FL), and District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton.

 

Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power, tweeted: “Clearly Erdogan’s guards feel complete impunity, drawing on tools of repression they use at home and knowing he has their back, no matter what.”

 

In addition, both the Mayor and Police Chief of Washington, D.C., condemned the brutal attack in the nation’s Capital, shortly after Pres. Erdogan met with Pres. Trump in the White House.

 

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told FOX news that the Turkish attack is “simply unacceptable” and is under investigation. Turkey’s Ambassador to Washington, Serdar Kilic, was summoned to the State Department by Under Secretary of State Thomas Shannon. The State Department issued a statement condemning the Turkish government “in the strongest possible terms.” The Wall Street Journal reported that the State Department “is exploring ways to block members of Erdogan’s security detail from re-entering the United States.” This is the least the U.S. government should do! Amazingly, Amb. Kilic was quoted as telling a police officer who was trying to break up the fight, “you cannot touch us,” referring to the possible diplomatic immunity granted to some of the Turkish guards. Incredibly, the Turkish Foreign Ministry summoned the U.S. Ambassador in Ankara to complain about the behavior of Washington, D.C., police.

 

The most serious aspect of this attack was the fact that Pres. Erdogan was video-taped by Voice of America (Turkish news service) directing his security detail to attack the protesters, according to the Washington Post. Regrettably, this is not the first time Pres. Erdogan’s bodyguards have gotten involved in beating or threatening individuals during his overseas trips.

 

In 2009, then-Prime Minister Erdogan’s security members were involved in a brawl with Pres. Obama’s Secret Service agents.

 

In 2011, Erdogan’s bodyguards broke the ribs of a United Nations security guard, during an attack at the U.N. headquarters in New York City.

 

In 2014, Turkish security in New York threatened and pushed around journalists working for a newspaper unfriendly to Erdogan.

 

In 2015, during a visit to Brussels, Pres. Erdogan’s security guard attacked a Belgian government bodyguard.

 

In February 2016, Pres. Erdogan’s bodyguards assaulted three women who were protesting his speech at the National Institute of Higher Studies in Quito, Uruguay. The Turkish security members also broke the nose of an Ecuadorian Parliament member who was trying to intervene. Erdogan arrogantly justified the attack: “Appropriate responses will always be taken to handle these disrespectful people.” Rosana Alvarado, deputy speaker of Ecuador’s Parliament, responded: “We don’t want to see Erdogan in our country again!”

 

In March 2016, Pres. Erdogan’s security attacked journalists and protesters outside the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., where the Turkish leader was invited to give a speech.

 

After listing some of the aforementioned attacks, National Review Online columnist Tom Rogan concluded: “As Erdogan centralizes power and attacks his opponents, the TPPD [Turkish Presidential Protection Department] has morphed from law enforcement into suited thuggery.”

 

It will take a long time for Turkey to recover the flood of negative publicity in hundreds of U.S. newspapers, TV stations, and websites, including a devastating editorial in the Washington Post. Anders Corr writing in Forbes magazine suggested that “next time Turkey comes to town, mobilize the riot police to corral Erdogan’s thuggish security if they get out of hand.” In an editorial, The New York Times aptly described the May 16 attack: “The enduring image of Mr. Erdogan’s visit will not be the pomp at the White House but that of his security guards and other supporters beating up protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence.”

 

Erdogan’s security exhibited their typical criminal behavior in front of the whole world. They behaved in the United States the way they behave routinely in Turkey!

 

Two Turkish journalists, writing in the independent Al-Monitor website, correctly characterized the recent ugly incidents with Erdogan’s bodyguards: “The Washington visit ended with scenes making a mockery of Turkey’s image,” wrote Fehim Tastekin. Pinar Tremblay added: “Erdogan’s security personnel are notorious for attacking protesters all around the globe, thus presenting a brutal face of Turkey that no anti-Turkey lobby could accomplish in one day.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Continuing the series of articles we published in the last two weeks about corruption in Azerbaijan, we wish now to reveal additional scandalous details about funds deposited in a Malta bank by family members of Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev.

 

Interestingly, the Prime Minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat, has emerged at the center of Azerbaijan’s financial scandals. London’s The Guardian newspaper reported last week that Muscat’s wife, Michelle, had received large amounts of money from Leyla Aliyeva, daughter of Pres. Aliyev.

 

Investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia of Malta revealed “a series of payments, in the form of loans, had been routed to Egrant [a Panama-registered shell company which belongs to the wife of Malta’s Prime Minister]. The largest, for $1.07 million, was allegedly made in March of last year. They are claimed to have come from an account at Pilatus bank belonging to Al Sahra FZCO. And the owner of Al Sahra was allegedly the daughter of Azerbaijan’s leader, Ilham Aliyev,” The Guardian reported. Muscat and his wife have denied receiving payments related to Egrant.

 

Significantly, Azerbaijan’s state oil company happens to be a shareholder of Malta’s new power station. One of the accounts at Pilatus bank is in the name of Konrad Mizzi, Energy minister of Malta. Another account is in the name of Pres. Aliyev’s daughter, Leyla Aliyeva. Mizzi and Malta Prime Minister’s Chief of Staff, Keith Schembri, “had set up two Panama-registered companies four months after entering office in 2013. A third shell company, Egrant, was created at the same time by the same Maltese accountant.” Prime Minister Muscat and his wife hosted the Aliyevs during their visit to Malta in 2014.

 

In 2005, President Aliyev’s wife, Mehriban Aliyeva, recently appointed by her husband as Vice President of Azerbaijan as his possible successor, was named as one of two managers of the Panamanian UF Universe Foundation, according to “Panama Papers” documents published by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ). “The UF Universe Foundation would have ultimate control of AtaHolding, a major Azeri conglomerate. The 2005 proposal named Pres. Aliyev’s three children in addition to other senior members of the Azerbaijan’s tax office as beneficiaries…. In addition, Aliyev’s daughters controlled a Panama-incorporated company and two others in the British Virgin Islands. The Panamanian company held a significant stake in a consortium of companies exploring gold fields in Azerbaijan. Aliyev’s sister was the sole shareholder and owner of a BVI [British Virgin Islands] company registered in December 2005. Registration records list her at an address in a West London neighborhood where average home prices touch $9 million.”

 

In an article published on May 9, 2017, The Guardian further reported that members of the European Parliament “are openly calling for [Prime Minister Muscat’s] departure amid a growing corruption scandal involving his wife, a Panamanian shell company, and alleged payments from the President of Azerbaijan’s daughter. The European Parliament’s inquiry committee invited Muscat to its headquarters in Strasbourg to give evidence on the accusations against him. Muscat declined the invitation.

 

Investigative journalist Galizia reported that a woman who had worked as executive assistant to the owner of Pilatus bank, Syed Ali Sadr Hasheminejad, found in a safe and scanned bank account paperwork naming Michelle Muscat. The executive assistant told the reporter that “she was given a list of companies, maybe eight or 10 names, and told that these were to be given special attention for payment transactions. The companies included Willerby Inc., Tillgate Inc., Hearnville Inc., Egrant Inc., and Al Sahra FZCO,” a company owned by Leyla Aliyeva, daughter of Pres. Aliyev, according to the Times of Malta. The executive assistant was quoted as stating that she had seen the forms for the opening of the bank account. “Payments of hundreds of thousands of dollars from Al Sahra FZCO, always marked as loan payments, were not made to their accounts at Pilatus bank, but to accounts they had at a bank in Dubai…. Once, she said, the bank’s CEO, Mr. Ghanbari, received instructions from Mr. Hasheminejad for the transfer of some $400,000 to a Maltese woman who lives in New York and has a jewelry business. It had to be marked as loan payment.”

 

The executive assistant confessed that she turned over the documents she had copied from the bank to the authorities in Malta because “I could not stand to read any more of the lies, denials and half-truths. It was too much!”

 

 

 

 

For years, the government of Azerbaijan has been showering politicians and dignitaries from around the world with expensive gifts, such as silk carpets, gold, silver, caviar, cash, and all-expense paid trips in exchange for their votes in favor of Azerbaijan and against Armenia and Artsakh (Karabagh). This illicit practice is so prevalent that Europeans describe it as “caviar diplomacy.”

Even though this bribery goes on behind closed doors and it is disclosed neither by Azeri officials nor by crooked foreign politicians, once in a while it comes to light. We should all remember that what is disclosed is a tiny portion of the large amount of bribery doled out to Baku visitors, officials in various countries, and those serving in international organizations like the United Nations.

Recently, a great scandal was exposed in the Council of Europe involving millions of dollars of cash given to some of its members in return for defeating decisions critical of Azerbaijan or supporting unfavorable reports on Artsakh.

As a result, Transparency International, the world’s largest anti-corruption group, has called on the Council of Europe to investigate serious allegations of corruption. The European Stability Initiative (ESI) also accused Azerbaijan of unduly influencing Council of Europe decisions by transferring huge sums of money and other favors to key parliamentarians. ESI urged that an independent investigation be conducted to look into the PACE vote in 2013, rejecting a highly critical report of political prisoners in Azerbaijan and the role of members of that country’s delegation.

The Guardian published a lengthy expose on April 20, 2017, titled: “Fresh Claims of Azerbaijan vote-rigging at European human rights body.” Two high ranking officials of PACE (Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) have informed The Guardian about PACE members receiving bribes from Azerbaijan in exchange for votes in favor of that country. PACE is composed of 324 Parliamentarians from 47 European countries, including Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, and Turkey.

Arif Mammadov, a former Azerbaijani diplomat informed The Guardian that a PACE member was given over $30 million by the government of Azerbaijan to hand out as bribes to other PACE members. “Tobias Billström, a Swedish delegate to the assembly and former justice minister, said ‘very credible members’ had told him they had been offered bribes to vote in a certain way. He is one of 64 parliamentarians to have signed a resolution calling for an independent investigation into ‘serious and credible allegations of grave misconduct’ centered on an Azerbaijani vote,” The Guardian reported.

“The claims were first laid out in a 2012 report by the European Stability Initiative think tank, but have gathered momentum since Italian prosecutors began investigating a former chair of the center-right group, Italian deputy Luca Volontè. He is accused of accepting €2.39m [$2.6 million] in bribes from Azerbaijan in exchange for supporting its government in the Council of Europe. He faces a trial for money laundering, and Milan’s public prosecutor is appealing a decision to drop a corruption charge against him. He has always denied any wrongdoing,” according to The Guardian.

Even the President of PACE, Pedro Agramunt, is in trouble because he has refused to open an investigation into Azerbaijan’s bribery scandal. His recent trip to Syria has increased the number of PACE members who have called for his resignation. Since Agramunt cannot be fired under the Rules of Procedure, the PACE Bureau censored him last week by resolving that he is not authorized to make any official visits, attend meetings or make any public statements on behalf of the Assembly in his capacity as President. He is expected to resign shortly.

Furthermore, the Council of Europe launched an investigation in 2015 into Azerbaijan’s compliance with the European Convention on human rights, the first such inquiry into a member state in the last 25 years!

It is shameful that PACE, a body created to champion human rights, is falling victim to the Azeri dictator’s bribery schemes. These allegations undermine the core values of the Council of Europe. It should be unacceptable that during previous Azeri elections when PACE members went there as observers, they surprisingly issued highly positive reports, whereas the rest of the international observers had very negative assessments. Such a contrast brought up concerns that Azerbaijan had managed to bribe the PACE observers to cover up the corrupt elections.

The Guardian concluded that “Azerbaijan uses the [PACE] assembly to add a veneer of legitimacy to the authoritarian rule of its president, Ilham Aliyev, who has ruled the country since 2003.”

Ignoring Azerbaijan’s abuses of bribery would mean that the Council of Europe could no longer be viewed as the guardian of human rights!