The United Nations and its “International Criminal Court” (ICC) just suffered another massive blow — possibly a fatal one — to whatever credibility they may have had left. In explosive leaked documents making headlines around the world, former ICC “chief prosecutor” Luis Moreno Ocampo (shown) was exposed using dubious offshore accounts to engage in what have been widely described as shady dealings. Among his big-spending “clients,” meanwhile, are extremely shady characters that, experts say, could someday be hauled before the very UN “court” that Ocampo used to work for. More scandals are expected to emerge in the coming days as additional documents are released as part of the #CourtSecrets project.
As the latest scandals fuel more outrage and disgust about the UN ICC around the world, and as governments continue to withdraw from the disgraced outfit, the UN’s “kangaroo” court is likely on its deathbed. Ocampo’s shady schemes, being exposed in leading media outlets around the world, may accelerate the ICC’s ongoing implosion. And many of the former ICC chief prosecutor’s most controversial acts — ordering the arrest of a duly elected Christian president, for example, as UN-backed jihadists slaughtered Christians with machetes to install a totalitarian-minded Muslim central banker as leader — have not even been brought up amid the latest brouhaha. But the ICC house of cards may be collapsing.
Among the recent scandals that have received the most attention thus far, Ocampo reportedly received huge sums of money from a mega-wealthy Libyan oil and media baron, Hassan Tatanaki, known for his close ties to a particular armed faction in that nation’s brutal ongoing civil war. The militia he supports, led by former Gadhafi General Khalifa Haftar (sometimes written Hifter) has reportedly perpetrated ghastly war crimes and atrocities in its bid to seize control over Libya and its wealth. Among the crimes the military leader has been accused of: ordering extrajudicial killings, including murdering prisoners. Speaking on Tatanaki’s own TV stations, some of Haftar’s top officers have called for “slaughtering” everyone who opposed them. Multiple allegations of war crimes have been made against the Tatanaki-backed militia leader in media outlets all over the world. Human rights groups have also documented some of the crimes.
All of that had many calling for Haftar and his associates to be arrested and prosecuted. Ocampo, though, offered costly advice on how to protect his client — who agreed to pay $1 million per year in addition to $5,000 per day for Ocampo’s “services” — from potential prosecution. As a result, Ocampo is being labeled a mercenary, a hypocrite, and worse by critics. “He told me he was trying to fix Libya,” Ocampo claimed in trying to justify his lucrative deal with Tatanaki. “What he was proposing to me was absolutely not just legal, it was positive.” Ocampo said it was “obvious” that Hafter and his men, as well as “every side,” were committing crimes. So for a million dollars a year plus $5,000 daily, Ocampo claims he told Tatanaki “be careful not to be involved in financing any crimes.”
The former UN “prosecutor,” the first to serve in that position, also reportedly used insider information to protect his “clients” from possible prosecution, according to news reports. In Kenya, where Ocampo tried to bring down much of the political establishment with ham-handed charges of alleged international “crimes,” more than a few of his targets, along with other assorted critics, are hoping to see the disgraced UN “prosecutor” put behind bars. The leaked documents reveal that after charging the current president of Kenya with “crimes against humanity,” Ocampo later campaigned to help him get off the hook after the case imploded. Nepotism has been widely alleged.
Much has been made of Ocampo’s offshore corporations and accounts, too. For instance, hacked documents show he owns or owned at least three entities in offshore “tax havens”: Tain Bay Corporation registered in Panama, Yemana Trading registered in the British Virgin Islands, and Transparent Markets in Uruguay. His wife, meanwhile, is reportedly behind “Lucia Enterprises” in Belize, another “tax haven.” According to media reports, he was routing huge sums of money to himself via Switzerland from his offshore entities to his Dutch bank account with Abn Amro. When secrecy regulations were set to change, he worked with his personal bankers to shift his offshore schemes to other jurisdictions.
Ocampo denied evading taxes or any wrongdoing at all. “You can have offshore companies for legal and illegal reasons,” he was quoted as saying in media reports as the growing scandal was enveloping him. “You can be a corrupt person to take money or bribes. Also, you can be an honest lawyer having money outside.” Multiple media reports, though, highlighted the irony of it all. Ocampo, an Argentinian, served as the Latin American president of Transparency International, a non-governmental organization (NGO) ostensibly dedicated to “fighting financial secrecy [privacy] and offshore tax havens.” In other words, the hypocrisy levels of Ocampo, as with other members of the self-styled global elite, are absolutely off the charts. According to ICC rules, the chief prosecutor should be a person of “high moral character.”
Of course, there are plenty of legitimate reasons to own “offshore” accounts and entities, as The New American has emphasized repeatedly in recent years amid globalist efforts to undermine privacy around the world. The irony, though, is that the UN and many of its unsavory member regimes have been relentless in demonizing financial privacy rights and the jurisdictions that respect them, as well as the people who choose to do business in ways that legally protect their privacy. Indeed, the UN has for years been dishonestly attempting to blur the line between tax avoidance (good and legal) and tax evasion (bad and illegal) — all while libeling everyone with offshore accounts as tax cheats at best or evil criminal billionaires exploiting the poor at worst. In reality, disclosures and leaks have revealed that many top globalists and government types are among the worst offenders — now including, apparently, Ocampo.
The leaked documents, obtained by French investigative site Mediapart and analyzed by leading media outlets across Europe, show that Ocampo was working with a huge network of big business bosses, celebrities, “journalists,” lobbyists, establishment-controlled foundations, and other power players. It was a highly lucrative arrangement for the former ICC “chief prosecutor,” who “served” until 2011. But while the network was a major boon for Ocampo and his wealthy cronies, it was “at the expense of the workings of the court, which after 15 years of existence, has yet to achieve major results,” the European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) said in its analysis. Among the outlets that have reported the shady schemes are Germany’s Der Spiegel, Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, Dars Spiegel, Black Sea, and many more.
Current ICC “chief prosecutor” Fatou Bensouda, a controversial Muslim lawyer from Gambia who served one of the most oppressive dictators in the world before taking a job with the UN ICC, is perhaps most infamous for ludicrously threatening to drag Americans before her kangaroo court. Now, she is busy defending the UN outfit in response to the growing avalanche of scandals that threaten to finish bringing it down. “My office has already stated, in response to media queries, that it has not initiated contact, sought advice or collaborated with the former ICC Prosecutor, Mr. Ocampo, in relation to any of the situations or cases being handled by the Office or the Court since I assumed office as prosecutor,” she said. Apparently she has reported allegations implicating her own staffers to the “Independent Oversight Mechanism.”
But the latest scandal is unlikely to blow over any time soon, and actually highlights more systemic problems in the UN system, experts say. In a statement provided to The New American magazine, Peter Anthony Gallo, a former money-laundering consultant and UN investigator, explained and broke down the enormous potential significance of the latest revelations. “There is nothing fundamentally illegal about an offshore account,” he said. “From a money laundering perspective; it is not the account that is the problem, it is the source of the money that went into it that is much more significant.”
In light of the leaks, Ocampo’s decisions while serving as a UN “prosecutor” may come into question, Gallo said. “Where this now becomes suspicious, of course, is that it will raise questions about prosecution decisions that may have been made,” explained the former UN official, who worked at the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS). “We do not know what other offshore interests Ocampo may have had, or who these offshore entities were connected to. If he was investing in holiday cottages in the Dominican Republic that is one thing; mining interests in the Congo could be entirely different.”
“The ICC has been accused of racism and being anti-African, which really is unfair,” he added, addressing a growing chorus of African dictators and their allies who have lashed out at the UN for primarily prosecuting Africans so far. “What would be much more sinister, and a much more serious accusation, however, is if it turns out that Ocampo had a financial interest — even indirectly — in backing one faction or another in the various conflicts in Africa that the ICC was investigating. That would devalue the entire existence of the ICC altogether.”
The scandal also raises fundamental questions about the UN’s own decision-making processes. “More significantly, these disclosures show a lack of adequate due diligence in the recruitment process,” Gallo said. “Ocampo should have been thoroughly vetted for a post of that level in the ICC and his financial interests disclosed. I very much doubt that he was.”
“As for advising Hassan Tatanaki after he retired; if it is true that Ocampo did not know about Tatanaki’s militia before accepting the contract, and had to be told by one of his former colleagues at the ICC; that shows a combination of a lack of judgment and a mercenary attitude,” Gallo continued. “Those are hardly the characteristics of someone who should be making major legal decisions on prosecuting war crimes! The U.S. Government was very wise not to subject its Armed Forces to the jurisdiction of such a court!”
In a period of less than a week, the ICC has been exposed as a global laughing stock, with even some of its targets now ridiculing the court and calling for Ocampo’s prosecution. But this is only the latest major blow to the ICC and whatever credibility it may have had. In recent years, there have been several high-profile withdrawals from the court. And more importantly, perhaps, the U.S. government never joined the outfit to begin with — and for very good reasons. Yet for years, the discredited global body has been making weird noises about prosecuting Americans, including U.S. troops, for vaguely defined crimes such as “aggression.” But the reasons why the U.S. government has never joined are perhaps more relevant today than ever.
Among other concerns that have made the court a joke, legal experts pointed out that the ICC recognizes none of the traditional rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. The late Dr. Charles Rice, a professor of law at Notre Dame University, for example, called the ICC “a monster” that essentially “repudiates the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence and cancels the 4th of July.” Especially troubling, he said, is that the court acknowledges no boundaries to its supposed authority. “In our system, law is supposed to be a rule of reason which, in a sense, controls the state and compels the state to operate under the law,” Dr. Rice explained. “What are the limits on the ICC? There are none. It’s insane!”
In Africa, the ICC has been losing legitimacy for many years as well — again for good reason. While complaints among African dictators about an alleged anti-African bias at the court are perhaps overblown, as Gallo explained — many of the ICC “judges” are actually Africans, as is its “chief prosecutor” — there are very legitimate concerns surrounding the UN’s kangaroo court. Perhaps most alarming to observers around the world, from an African perspective at least, was the brutal UN-backed overthrow of Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo and his subsequent railroading by the UN’s farcical “justice” regime.
The elected Christian president challenged vote fraud by a Muslim central banker, and won at the nation’s constitutional court, which is supposed to decide such matters under the Ivorian legal system. But the UN dictators’ club, in its infinite wisdom, decided to ignore that nation’s constitutional procedures and instead support brutal Islamic militias that butchered their way to the capital. After savagely slaughtering thousands of Christians, the UN-backed jihadist militias installed the brutal UN-backed usurper and tyrant with a known history of loyalty to globalism. (For perspective, imagine the UN invading America and supporting militias to arrest George W. Bush because the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for Bush instead of Gore following the election dispute).
An October 8 report by Mediapart, which first obtained the hacked Ocampo documents, has new revelations on Ocampo’s lawless role in the Ivory Coast fiasco. “A confidential French foreign ministry document obtained by Mediapart reveals how International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo, without any legal basis, was involved in an operation to keep Gbagbo prisoner — five months before the ICC had even opened an investigation into his alleged crimes against humanity, for which he is now on trial in The Hague,” the investigative site reported. “Fanny Pigeaud reports on a covert operation in which the ICC appears to have played a key role in France’s political maneuvering in its former West African colony.”
Gbagbo became the first head of state to be taken into custody by the UN’s kangaroo court, offering a strong warning to nations worldwide about the dangers of joining the UN’s extremist “justice” outfit. Meanwhile, the predatory UN “peacekeeping” troops that, according to surveys, regularly raped and sexually exploited four out of five underage girls in an Ivorian town where a survey was taken, remain at large, enjoying their immunity. In a sign of how detached from common sense they have become, leading establishment globalists such as Council on Foreign Relations figures have proposed empowering the UN’s discredited “courts” as a way of dealing with the swarms of gun-toting predators and child rapists wearing UN uniforms. Seriously. But there is a simpler, saner solution: the U.S. government should sever ties with the monster that is the dictators’ club, better known as the UN, and evict its headquarters from U.S. soil.
Photo: AP Images
Alex Newman, a foreign correspondent for The New American, is normally based in Europe but has lived all over the world. Follow him on Twitter @ALEXNEWMAN_JOU or on Facebook. He can be reached at [email protected].
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