Moussavi was sentenced to eight months in prison.but why , click & read 17 years old article of Guardian

Moussavi was sentenced to eight months in prison.but why,

Click & read 17 years old article of Guardian 

Let us rethink about the man whose love with Oxford needs little attention, yet his moves are suspicious & signals as double games

Moussavi would be the last person to claim that he is a figure of world-historical importance, but it's fair to see him as a part of the global movement for glasnost . From the Soviet empire to the Philippines to Italy to South America, people who had put up with tyranny or mafia politics began to speak out in the 1980s. In his own way, Moussavi contributed to the undermining of the Par tido Revelucionario Institucional and its eventual ejection from power.

Kaveh Moussavi has also dealt in oil, but has never been content to accept the world as it is. He's a secular, liberal Iranian who settled in Britain after the Mullahs seized power in 1979. He lives in exile in Oxford where he is a pillar of the local branch of Amnesty International.

The Independent reported that mysterious callers phoned his Oxford home. One told Moussavi: 'It would be such a pity if that little blonde daughter of yours had an accident crossing the road.'

Oxford professors and Stephen Solley, then chairman of the Bar Council's human rights committee, wrote in a personal capacity to the judge saying it would be ridiculous to jail a courageous man. Moussavi was sentenced to eight months in prison.

He's out now, and back in Oxford. His family is about to lose its home. Vitol, of course, had every right to pursue him if it thought he was hiding money. It was the usual business move, the standard procedure. But the upshot is that a man who challenged the company has been bankrupted, imprisoned and lost his house.

link of the article

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/jun/01/iran.politicalcolumnists

Oil and vinegar

Nick Cohen

Sun 1 Jun 2003 03.07 BST 

From a crowde field, the cry 'It's all about oil!' was the clear winner of the competition for the silliest slogan in the Iraq debate. If it was all about oil, why waste billions of dollars on a war? The way to success in the oil business lies through cutting deals with dictators in the Middle East and central Asia, or corrupt governments with slender claims to democratic legitimacy in Africa. George W. Bush had a mediocre career in the Texan oil industry, but was surrounded by more formidable oilmen. They were perfectly capable of cutting a deal with Saddam, and Saddam was perfectly capable of cutting a deal with them. Iraqi oil would have flowed, and there would have been no need for moral qualms or a remembrance of past grievances. It would have been the standard business procedure.

I'm not implying the oil business is worse than any other. It has to deal with the authorities which control the oil fields. If it didn't, the world's economy would collapse, and unless you are prepared to accept a return to the horse and cart, you have no right to be over-fastidious.

Take Vitol, a British oil trading company based in Knightsbridge. In 2001, this paper revealed that it had cut deals with Arkan. He was some business partner. Arkan (whose real name was Zeljko Raznatovic) was the most complete criminal in the former Yugoslavia - a mafiosi in peacetime and a war criminal when the fighting started. He began his career as a juvenile delinquent and graduated to bank robbing and organising football hooligans into a private army. The Serb state saw the boy had promise and transformed the Red Star Belgrade fans he controlled into the Serbian Volunteer Force - 'The Tigers'.

It was a shadow force which Slobodan Milosevic ran in parallel to the regular army. Whenever Slobbo needed deniable murders to be committed, Arkan was his man. The Tigers helped drive Croats out of Vukovar in 1991 - the first 'ethnic cleansing' of the Balkan massacres. They encouraged Croats to leave by taking 250 patients and staff from the city hospital and killing them in cold blood. The Bosnian Muslims were next. The Tigers slaughtered civilians in Bijeljina in 1992 - the terror attack which began the Bosnian war. The tactic was the same as in Vukovar: a pitiless murder of civilians, which persuaded tens of thousands of others to leave their homes and valuables for the killers to enjoy. When the brave Tigers weren't executing the defenceless, Arkan used them in his mafia operations in Belgrade. They dealt in arms, currency, prostitutes_ anything which made a profit. Like a good gangster, Arkan had a pop-star wife and was devoted to his Serbian Orthodox church.

In 1996, Vitol had a Balkan problem. It had been negotiating with a Yugoslav dealer, but the talks had broken down. He sued, claiming Vitol had cut him out of the deal he had helped organise and began negotiating directly with the state oil company. The Yugoslav courts upheld the claim and allowed him to seize 8,000 tons of Vitol oil from a Serb refinery. Vitol didn't accept the verdict - the Belgrade courts weren't noted for their adherence to the highest judicial standards. Bob Finch, its millionaire director, flew to Belgrade to get the oil back. Vitol's local contacts said the guy who fixed problems in this neck of the woods was Arkan, and the smart move was to make his acquaintance.

Arkan lived up to his billing and was helpfulness personified. A meeting was arranged and the disgruntled dealer agreed to set aside the court decision and renounce his claim of Vitol's oil. Arkan's fee was $1 million.

When questioned by The Observer , Finch said: 'I have met Arkan once. It does not look good, I agree. We do have local people in Belgrade. They said, "Go there. Meet the man. It can be sorted out." And, to be honest, it was sorted.'

From Vitol's point of view, it had done nothing wrong. It wasn't the company's fault that Serb and Croat irredentists combined nationalism and religion to create modern variants of fascism. I'm sure Vitol executives wished Yugoslavia had had a happier history. But they had to live in the 'real world' and protect their business. Vitol had a problem, and Arkan sorted it.

Kaveh Moussavi has also dealt in oil, but has never been content to accept the world as it is. He's a secular, liberal Iranian who settled in Britain after the Mullahs seized power in 1979. He lives in exile in Oxford where he is a pillar of the local branch of Amnesty International.

In the late 1980s, he too was confronted with an unpleasant regime. Moussavi was acting as IBM's agent in a competition to secure a contract to upgrade Mexico's air traffic control system. The IBM bid had many attractive features. The corporation had installed the air traffic system in the US and could ensure that the two were were compatible. IBM insisted he shouldn't pay bribes, and Moussavi happily concurred.

He had to negotiate with the functionaries of the satirically named Partido Revelucionario Institucional, which institutionalised revolution and ruled Mexico from 1929 to 2000. Over the years it had been accused of rigging elections and institutionalising corruption. As if to substantiate the charge, Moussavi was approached by men who appeared to be close to the institutionalised revolutionaries. They told him he needed a 'guardian angel' and suggested that one could be found if he made a $1m contribution to a charity associated with the ruling party. He refused and IBM lost the contract.

This kind of thing happens all the time, and many in business learn that in the long run it's better not to make a fuss. Moussavi broke with convention and went public. The Financial Times covered the story and his testimony was presented to the US Congress. Mexican journalists who tried to cover the affair had their reports spiked. The Mexican government threatened to jail Moussavi if he set foot in the country. The Independent reported that mysterious callers phoned his Oxford home. One told Moussavi: 'It would be such a pity if that little blonde daughter of yours had an accident crossing the road.'

Moussavi would be the last person to claim that he is a figure of world-historical importance, but it's fair to see him as a part of the global movement for glasnost . From the Soviet empire to the Philippines to Italy to South America, people who had put up with tyranny or mafia politics began to speak out in the 1980s. In his own way, Moussavi contributed to the undermining of the Par tido Revelucionario Institucional and its eventual ejection from power.

He still had to earn a living, and in the mid-1990s he approached Vitol with a solid proposition. The new states of central Asia were anxious to find export routes for their oil which didn't cross Russia. They didn't want to pay tariffs to their old masters. Moussavi said he could see if the Iranians would agree to redirect the oil south.

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He claims what happened next was a replay of the Yugoslav case: once he had established contacts, Vitol cut him out and dealt directly with the Iranian government. He sued for breach of contract in 2001. Vitol strenuously denied the charges and said Moussavi had no right to compensation.

I've no idea who is right, not for the usual reasons that it's all terribly complicated and it's hard to know who to believe - although it is both those things - but because the English justice system never actually delivered a verdict.

Instead it destroyed Moussavi. When he failed to meet a deadline to produce evidence Vitol won an order to make him pay a part of its legal fees. As the bills mounted up Moussavi dropped the case. He then owed Vitol hundreds of thousands of pounds, a debt which pushed him into bankruptcy.

That should have been that, but Vitol didn't believe Moussavi when he said he was bankrupt. Vitol lawyers persuaded the courts to order the seizure of his computers so his records could be checked. Moussavi refused. He was a human rights activist and his files contained the names of the opponents of Iranian theocracy which he didn't want to risk being passed to the mullahs. Perhaps he was being paranoid, it's impossible to say. But by refusing to obey the order, he was in contempt of court.

Oxford professors and Stephen Solley, then chairman of the Bar Council's human rights committee, wrote in a personal capacity to the judge saying it would be ridiculous to jail a courageous man. Moussavi was sentenced to eight months in prison.

He's out now, and back in Oxford. His family is about to lose its home. Vitol, of course, had every right to pursue him if it thought he was hiding money. It was the usual business move, the standard procedure. But the upshot is that a man who challenged the company has been bankrupted, imprisoned and lost his house.

Vitol had a problem and, to be honest, the judges sorted it.

Further readings

https://www.crowdjustice.com/case/ending-impunity-in-iran/

I am Kaveh Moussavi.  For decades, I have campaigned against the death penalty, and for democracy, human rights and the rule of law.   With my legal team at McCue and Partners LLP, we are working to investigate allegations of international crimes and human rights abuses by the state of Iran and its proxies.

Judgement 

https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5b46f1f22c94e0775e7eea37