DOCUMENTARY FILM EXPOSING KAFKAESQUE KOKOREV MONEY LAUNDERING CASE

The Vladimir Kokorev case, which we have covered extensively in previous articles, is being made into a documentary by Seamus McNally, a director who is noted for creating important short films, and who is telling the story through a series of interviews of individuals with first-hand knowledge. The director, who has referred to the case a cross between Kafka's The Trial, and stories about individuals being unjustly imprisoned in a Russian Gulag for politicla purposes, became interested in the story after a number of Members of the European Parliament opened convened a public hearing into the case, which they described as a major Human Rights violation on the part of the government of Spain.

To summarize, for those who are not familiar with the case, major corporate interests in Spain, unhappy with the fact that American oil companies were engaged in extracting oil from Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony, and wanting that lucrative business for themselves, sought to find a way to depose the current EG government, and install a puppet regime loyal to Spain, which would then give them favorable contracts to develop and pump and sell the oil. They engaged EG expats to take over the government should they succeed in deposing the current president and his cabinet, and they called upon the Government of Spain to assist them.

Vladimir Kokorev, a Russian businessmen residing in Spain, who was engaged in trade with EG, was falsely charged in Spain with laundering money allegedly stolen by senior EG leaders, and investing it in real estate in Spain. There was no evidence to support this claim, even after almost two decades of investigation by Spanish authorities. He was targeted to cause a scandal to explode against present EG leadership, and to thereby effect regime change. False testimony, obtained from a corrupt Panama attorney named Ismael Gerli, was cobbled together to serve as evidence of Kokorev's money laundering, on behalf of EG leaders. It is believed that Gerli received illegal compensation to make bogus claims of criminal conduct.

Documentary director Seamus McNally

Prosecutors and judges in the Canary Islands, who have a history of both xenophobia, and of filing bogus cases against foreign national who reside these and taking their assets in settlement of spurious claims, filed an INTERPOL Red Notice against Kokorev. Spain extradited him from the Republic of Panama, imprisoning him in 2015. It also detained his immediate family, for years, in a money laundering case in which there has been absolutely no evidence presented, and which has never gone to trial, in what has been described in the EU as Spain's biggest Human Rights scandal. While Kokorev has now been released from prison, and into house arrest, he cannot leave the Canary Islands, and the case appears to be deliberately delayed, to force him to give up all his assets, in order to attain his freedom.

We will be notifying our readers when the documentary is released, and where it may be viewed.