One Of The World’s Largest Oil Companies Just Ditched The Dollar — Tsvetana Paraskova

Russia’s largest oil company Rosneft has already completed the switch away from the U.S. dollar to euros in its export contracts to minimize risks from potential new U.S. sanctions, Rosneft’s chief executive Igor Sechin said on Thursday....

Russia is looking at ways to settle its energy transactions in euros and/or rubles in order to avoid dealing with dollars, Russian Economy Minister Maxim Oreshkin told the Financial Times in an interview earlier this month.

Oilprice
One Of The World’s Largest Oil Companies Just Ditched The Dollar
Tsvetana Paraskova

John Helmer on European Court "justice"

Melchior Wathelet (lead image, left), the Advocate-General of the European Court in Luxembourg, publicly recommended on May 31 that the court should dismiss a challenge to the legality of European Union sanctions by the Russian state oil company Rosneft. Wathelet has a history of secret operations against Moscow. That history ought to have disqualified Wathelet from participating in the Rosneft case, lawyers at the court say.

“He should have done so voluntarily,” one of the lawyers adds. “Instead, Wathelet, along with the Belgian President of the Court, Koen Lenaerts, have kept the past secret, allowing a serious conflict of interest to influence the outcome of the case.”

As the minister of justice in his native Belgium, Wathelet supervised the Belgian state security service, and officially participated himself over several years in NATO spying, military operations and propaganda schemes against Russia and the Soviet Union.

Details of Wathelet’s involvement in NATO’s Operation Gladio were not known to Rosneft when Wathelet was assigned to the case. Rosneft’s Anglo-American law firm did not investigate Wathelet’s bacckgournd. Also, the law firm, Hage Joseph Aaronson, has kept from Rosneft the knowledge that one of their own lawyers was a long-serving officer in the US Defence Intelligence Agency.

Lawyers engaged in European Court cases in Luxembourg say they are astonished by the conflict of interest. “This case is hugely important,” said one source engaged in a parallel sanctions proceeding. “If Rosneft were to win, the legality of sanctions would collapse”. A London lawyer adds he is surprised that Rosneft management and its lawyers in Luxembourg failed to challenge Wathelet’s participation in the case.

Wathelet is not denying the information about his past involvement in NATO operations. He won’t explain why he and the presiding judge, Court President Koen Lenaerts, acted together to arrange his assessment of the Rosneft legal papers.…

It gets worse:

Wathelet was forced out of the Belgian government in 1995. His exit followed charges of interference from the justice ministry in the faulty prosecution and early release from prison of members of a pedophile ring; they has been convicted of pandering to the sexual tastes of high Belgian officials. Wathelet was also accused of involvement in the ring himself, but no allegations came to court, and Wathelet has not been charged with wrongdoing. The challenge by the European parliament to his fitness as a European Court judge failed in 1997; read more.

Before the pedophile scandal led to Wathelet’s outing from Belgium and his promotion to the bench in Luxembourg, his involvement in Operation Gladio also came under official scrutiny by the Belgian senate in 1991. The Belgian investigation was triggered by disclosures in France and Italy, indicating that the US and British secret services had set up a NATO operation for recruiting, arming, training and operating groups of men in the NATO member states. Their mission to start with, according to the Belgium senate record, was to “stay behind” after invasion, and prepare resistance to occupation by enemy forces. Although Belgium has twice been occupied by German troops, and then by the British and American armies, the only enemy in the Gladio plan was to come from Moscow.

In practice, Gladio agents and their commanders were fanatical ideologues, German collaborators, haters of both Russia and communism, who organized violence against domestic left-wing organizations, as well as terrorist attacks against the general population. The Brabant killings in Belgium, which occurred between 1983 and 1985, have never been solved, but some investigations have believed Gladio operatives were involved.For details, click.…

Helmer's post are generally longish and detailed, as this one is. Reading through it, one would conclude that the European enterprise is hopelessly compromised and "fixed." It should be completely dismantled. If internationalists wish to pursue it, they should start afresh, disqualifying all present participants and thoroughly vetting all new participants in an atmosphere of complete transparency to regain credibility.

Dances with Bears
Melchior Wathelet, The Gladio – Advocate-General Of European Court In Rosneft Sanctions Case Worked With Secret Nato Spy And Terror Ring Against Russia; Rosneft Lawyers In Sanctions Case Include Us SpyJohn Helmer

John Helmer — The Quality Of European Union Justice – How To Dismiss Rosneft’s Challenge To The Legality Of Sanctions

Further mockery of the traditional liberal concept of justice and the rule of law by the eurocrats — justifying economic warfare on a specious legal basis.

Dances with Bears

The Quality Of European Union Justice – How To Dismiss Rosneft’s Challenge To The Legality Of Sanctions

John Helmer

John Helmer — The Illegality Of Sanctions – Uk High Court Sends Rosneft Claim To European Court

Britain loses sovereignty. David Cameron upset.

The UK High Court has rejected a lawsuit by Rosneft challenging the legality of sanctions against its oilfield operations and international financing. 

The court has ruled that for testing the legality of the sanctions British law and British courts are subordinate to the European Union, and that Rosneft must try its case in the European Court of Justice (CJEU) in Luxembourg. The ruling, which was issued on Monday, contradicts the judgement of the Supreme Court, the UK’s highest court, which decided last March that sanctions against the Iranian bank, Bank Mellat, had violated British law. The new judgement makes no reference to this or any other case decided recently in London on the illegality of UK Government sanctions.

The ruling by Lord Justice Sir Jack Beatson (lead image) and Justice Sir Nicholas Green also flies in the face of the British Government’s promise to preserve the primacy of the British courts over the EU judiciary, and keep London’s market dominance for global litigation. Acknowledging that the issue will be tested in the parliamentary election due in three months’ time, embattled Prime Minister David Cameron has claimed: “We want to make the Supreme Court supreme”. Cameron has promised to introduce a new Act of Parliament to establish the superior status in law of UK courts over the European Court.” That hasn’t happened.…

According to The Lawyer’s review last month of “the top 20 cases of 2015: global disputes in the English courts”, the first and most important is Rosneft’s sanctions challenge. “In the judicial review application to be heard at the end of this month Rosneft will argue that the delegated legislation introduced by the UK to implement the EU’s sanctions – as well as the underlying EU regulation – is unlawful…As well as being closely linked to an ongoing political crisis between Russia and the EU, the case examines questions over the Government’s obligations when implementing EU legislation.”

That’s shorthand for the politically explosive issue of whether the UK should stay in the European Union (EU), or call a national referendum and leave. Four British judges have now issued public calls condemning what they are calling the “export” of sovereignty. In December 2013, the retired Lord Chief Justice, Baron Igor Judge (right), declared: “we should beware of the danger of even an indirect importation of the slightest obligation on parliament to comply with the orders and directions of any court, let alone a foreign court.”…

“Beatson and Green are no Wellingtons”, a British lawyer comments, referring to the Battle of Waterloo whose 200th anniversary will be celebrated in London in June. “This time the British have run from the battlefield. Napoleon finally wins.”

Dances with Bears
THE ILLEGALITY OF SANCTIONS – UK HIGH COURT SENDS ROSNEFT CLAIM TO EUROPEAN COURT
John Helmer

Zero Hedge — Europe Goes "All In": Will Sanction Rosneft, Gazprom Neft And Transneft

Raising the stakes in what's beginning to look like a winner takes all game with the Global North facing off against the Global South. Has a decision been taking to go for permanent dominance now instead of letting the opponents get stronger, which many Western strategist think was the mistake after WWII in not confronting the USSR and China when the Allies were still dominant militarily and the US had "the bomb." It's pretty certain that this is the way that some geostrategists are going to be thinking about it.

Zero Hedge
Europe Goes "All In": Will Sanction Rosneft, Gazprom Neft And Transneft
Tyler Durden