Disrupt Rosoboronexport by Cancelling Shipper's Insurance

Washington, DC – Human Rights First today urged Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to use his authority to block companies –including a planned arms shipment from the Russian state arms trader Rosoboronexport – from supplying the Syrian government with goods needed to perpetuate its ongoing human rights abuses.

The call comes as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton goes before the United Nations Security Council to support an Arab League plan that includes Syrian President Assad’s removal from office.

“We applaud the Obama Administration’s efforts to stem the escalating violence in Syria and end the atrocities and rampant abuse of human rights by government forces there,” wrote Human Rights First President and CEO Elisa Massimino in a letter to Geithner

. “While diplomatic efforts by the United States and others to end Syrian abuses move forward this week at the U.N., Syrian government forces continue to perpetrate widespread and systematic attacks on civilians every day. …

• Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), President Obama has declared the human rights situation in Syria a threat to the United States, giving OFAC [the Office of Foreign Asset Control] the authority to sanction entities that perpetrate or support human rights abuses in Syria.”
• In its letter, the group urged Geithner to use this OFAC authority to address and disrupt Rosoboronexport’s plan to fulfill its contract to sell the Syrian government 36 combat jets capable of attacking ground targets.
• According to Human Rights First’s letter to the Secretary, “This transaction is one of several where the Russian government has ignored existing arms embargoes in the face of continued attacks by the Syrian regime on unarmed civilian populations. 
• With this sale, Rosoboronexport is providing material support to the Government of Syria which may be used to commit further atrocities against the Syrian people. As such, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which has already levied sanctions against the al-Assad regime, should designate Rosoboronexport for sanctions and disrupt transactions by U.S. persons with the company.”

Since 2010, OFAC has sanctioned 20 Syrian citizens as well as the Syrian government. Last year the Treasury Department successfully intervened to block a shipment of oil from Syria to Iran.

• The Department traced the Mire - a Greek owned Eurotankers Inc. vessel – to its registration in Liberia, cancelled its American insurance, and halted the shipment. 
• This action helped to maintain the integrity of the U.S. oil embargo imposed on the Assad regime. 
• Human Rights First notes that given the widespread use of American insurance by international shipping companies, it is likely that this same tactic could also be used to disrupt shipments of Russian arms to Syria, where attacks have left more than 5,400 dead, most of whom were peaceful demonstrators.

“In the past few days alone, the Syrian military has killed hundreds of civilians, including women and children, in intensified security operations and indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas,” Massimino wrote. “The Rosoboronexport sale will enable further government-sponsored vie Volence. Condemning the sale and sanctioning  the company would send a clear message to the Syrian people that the United States will do all it can to disrupt those who enable the killing and persecution of innocent people.”

The Rest @ Human Rights First

Vladimir Gavrilov Aleged Russian Arms Trafficker Detained in Greece

Police in northern Greece say they have detained a Russian citizen wanted in Peru for a case of arms trafficking to Colombia's leftist guerrilla group FARC.

Police say the man was arrested Friday in a hotel near Thessaloniki. He will appear before an appeals court Monday in connection with an international warrant issued against him by Peru.

Police officials told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing that the suspect is named Vladimir Gavrilov.

Police say Gavrilov allegedly partVladimir Gavrilov.icipated in a deal involving 10,000 Kalashnikov assault rifles, purchased in Jordan and parachuted to the FARC in 1999. Former Peruvian spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos was sentenced in September 2006 to 20 years for masterminding the deal.

The Rest @ Taiwan News

Mikhail Khodorkovsky - What an Oligarch can do in Russia

By Graham Stack

Lee Wolosky had a great end to 2010. The man who in 2000 launched the international hunt for notorious arms trader, "Merchant of Death" Viktor Bout, saw his target finally extradited to stand trial in the United States, on charges of terrorism and arms trafficking. Bout now faces up to 25 years in jail in the United States.

All credit to Wolosky. As described by Douglas Farah and Stephen Braun in their book on the subject, it was Wolosky who first put Bout on the U.S. security radar screen in his capacity as director of the Office of Transnational Threats on the U.S. National Security Council.

But even after leaving office in 2001, Wolosky fought to keep Bout's name in the public consciousness, lambasting his successors for not proceeding vigorously enough against a man U.S. prosecutors are now calling "an accessory to murder on an incomprehensible scale."

But Bout's extradition was not all that may have delighted Wolosky in late 2010. One month after Bout was charged, in December 2010, a man whom Wolosky had rated as a considerably greater threat to U.S. security than Viktor Bout, was sentenced in Russia for offences Wolosky had publicly accused him of over ten years previously.

That man's name is Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former majority owner and CEO of Yukos, Russia's largest oil company. Khodorkovsky, who has become an international cause célèbre as a supposed Russian "prisoner of conscience," was sentenced on December 30 to 14 years in jail on fraud charges.

This means he will serve another six years in jail, following the end of a current eight-year sentence he is serving on charges dating from 2004. The verdict has met with widespread international condemnation for selective justice.

But for the man who launched the hunt for Viktor Bout, the charges against Khodorkovsky would have come as no surprise. In 2000, the same year as he started the hunt for Bout, in a seminal article in the U.S. flagship journal Foreign Affairs, Wolosky accused Khodorkovsky of egregious crimes, even suggesting complicity in murder, called on the Russian government to strip him of his oil company, and for the West to launch a transnational law-enforcement campaign against Khodorkovsky and his colleagues.

In hindsight, Wolosky's targeting of Khodorkovsky in 2000 shows that the West's adoption of the oligarch's cause only a few years later was hardly written in the stars. Instead Wolosky represented a new consensus among U.S. policymakers that things had gone badly wrong in Russia and the oligarchs were to blame.

"These ruthless oligarchs have fleeced Russia of staggering sums, seizing control of its oil industry one of the world's largest in the process," Wolosky wrote in the article. "Through payoffs and intimidation, they have insinuated themselves into electoral politics and virtually immunized themselves from prosecution," he continued.

The White House security official called for the United States to treat Russia's oil oligarchs Khodorkovsky, Mikhail Fridman, Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky "like pariahs." "In the battle against the oligarchs," he wrote, "Moscow and the West must rely on every weapon available. If they do not, the oligarchs will."

The manifesto-like article, entitled "Putin's Plutocrat Problem," set down the views that secured Wolosky's appointment in the last years of the Clinton administration as director at the U.S. National Security Council's Office for Transnational Threats. In this capacity, Wolosky handled interagency coordination on issues related to counterterrorism, international organized crime, and international narcotics.

His job was to protect America from what President Bill Clinton called "the dark side of globalization." Wolosky was well qualified to do so, being among the first to comprehend the shockwave of crime and violence the collapse of the Soviet Union sent around the world.

Having worked alongside Grigory Yavlinsky and Jeffery Sachs in Moscow on reform initiatives in the last years of the Soviet Union, in the later 1990s he then tangled with the misshapen results of those reforms Russia's ruthless breed of businessmen in international courtrooms as a practicing lawyer.

A research fellowship at the Council of Foreign Relations then marked his return to the policy arena, and allowed him to formulate the arguments set down in his Foreign Policy article. The influence of his views on Russia was such that the incoming Republican administration of George W. Bush in 2001 even retained him in his position, although a Democrat.

Wolosky's calls for a tougher line on Russia, and on what he regarded as its openly criminal and internationally active oligarchs, dovetailed with the views of Bush's own Russia specialists, such as new national security advisor Condoleeza Rice.

Among the weapons Wolosky advocated against the oil oligarchs was transnational criminal prosecution of individuals, similar to that later deployed against Viktor Bout. It was time, said Wolosky, for the West to "get personal" with the "oil pariahs."

Another weapon Wolosky advocated was for Russia to renationalize its oil sector. "Given the extraordinary circumstances and the considerable stakes, the United States and multilateral organizations should actively encourage and support renationalization and re-privatization on a case-by-case basis," he wrote.

And at the heart of White House official Wolosky's analysis of the "oil pariahs" stood the figure of Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

In his article, which deals only with the years 1998 to 1999 - Wolosky detailed how "Khodorkovsky's Yukos managed to siphon off some $800 million during a span of approximately 36 weeks," in 1999 through transfer pricing forcing Yukos' Russian subsidiaries to sell oil at a fraction of world market prices to the holding company.

Wolosky also described how Khodorkovsky had engaged in massive asset-stripping of Yukos subsidiaries following the 1998 financial crisis: "

• After three international banks acquired approximately 30 percent of Yukos following a default on a loan to an affiliated bank, Khodorkovsky sought to turn Yukos into an empty shell.
• He forced it to convey its most significant asset its controlling position in oil production subsidiaries to unknown offshore entities.
• At the same time, he attempted the mother of all share dilutions: by transferring a massive number of new shares to offshore entities he is believed to control."
• Not content with this, according to Wolosky, Khodorkovsky and his colleagues "loot(ed) their companies even more directly by stealing valuable assets, including wells, equipment, and anything else that can be found on an oil field." "
• From 1997 to 1998, Yukos made the oil production companies it controls part with assets having a book value of some $3.5 billion," the U.S. White House official wrote.
  

But even this theft on a grand scale was not the worst of Khodorkovsky's offences, according to Wolosky. Wolosky suggested Khodorkovsky had been complicit in two contract killings in the course of 1998 to 1999 alone. "

• In June 1998, the mayor of Nefteyugansk was murdered. That spring, he had led a very public crusade and hunger strike against Yukos, protesting the enormous wage and tax arrears that he claimed were impoverishing the region. (...) The mayor had previously sent a secret cable to Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko requesting his assistance in the showdown. But the mayor was found dead before Kiriyenko could answer."
• "In March 1999," continued the U.S. official in the Foreign Affairs article, "the car of a Russian oil executive allied with Western investors against Yukos was attacked in a military-style ambush. The executive was not in the car at the time of this attempt on his life, the second such attack. His bodyguards and driver were not as fortunate, however: one was killed in the assault, the others badly wounded."

In 2006, a Russian court sentenced former Yukos head of security Aleksei Pichugin to lengthy prison sentences for organizing these and other contract killings. European representatives have however disputed that Pichugin, who claims innocence, had a fair trial.

Khodorkovsky never took legal action against Wolosky for the very damaging allegations made against him in a highly influential U.S. journal. Remarkably, nor did he specifically refute any of Wolosky's allegations in a letter he subsequently wrote to the journal's editor.

Instead he merely called Wolosky's analysis "simplistic" and "misguided" and warned the U.S. that any "economic warfare" against oligarchs would worsen already fragile relations between the United States and Russia.

Today, Wolosky, who has returned to practicing international corporate law for Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP, stands behind his views on Khodorkovsky of over ten years ago.

"I have little doubt that Mr. Khodorkovsky's business practices were highly irregular," he says, while however skeptical that Khodorkovsky has been afforded due process. Wolosky said he was unable to comment on the Russian state's case against Khodorkovsky. Wolosky's political career ended in 2001.

But, while he has been largely silent on Russia and its oligarchs since then, he made numerous high-profile public interventions on the Bout case, forcing reluctant officials to keep the gunrunning mastermind on the national security radar.

He attributed this reluctance to Bout's role in performing dangerous airlifting contracts for the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. Two thousand and ten finally brought him the public accolades he deserved, for his groundbreaking work in bringing Viktor Bout to justice.

Meanwhile, nearly eleven years after a White House national security official called for Mikhail Khodorkovsky's prosecution and the renationalization of Yukos, international debate still rages over Khodorkovsky's jailing, and what it tells us about Vladimir Putin's Russia.

But it is in a very different vein from the debate about Khodorkovsky in 2000. "After the last presidential election, in 1996, the oligarchs captured Yeltsin, his successive governments, and the political process," wrote Wolosky in 2000. "Regrettably, few signs so far point to significant changes under Putin."

The Rest @ Russia Other Points of View

Russian S-300 Missils Captured in Route to Iran

A CARGO ship that vanished in the Channel was carrying arms to Iran and was being tracked by Mossad, the Israeli security service, according to sources in both Russia and Israel.

The Arctic Sea, officially carrying a cargo of timber worth £1.3m, disappeared en route from Finland to Algeria on July 24. It was recovered off west Africa on August 17 when eight alleged hijackers were arrested. The Kremlin has consistently denied that the vessel was carrying a secret cargo. It claims the ship was hijacked by criminals who demanded a £1m ransom.

The official version was challenged by sources in Tel Aviv and Moscow who claimed the ship had been loaded with S-300 missiles, Russia’s most advanced anti-aircraft weapon, while undergoing repairs in the Russian port of Kaliningrad.

Mossad, which closely monitors arms supplies to Iran, is said to have tipped off the Russian government that the shipment had been sold by former military officers linked to the underworld.

Russian Navy joins hunt for missing 'piracy' ship
Piracy fears as cargo ship disappears off UK coast

Multimedia

The Kremlin then ordered a naval rescue mission which involved destroyers and submarines. Any evidence that the Kremlin had let advanced weaponry fall into the hands of criminals or be sold to Iran would be highly embarrassing, so military officials believe a “cover story” was concocted.

• “The official version is ridiculous and was given to allow the Kremlin to save face,” said a Russian military source.
• “I’ve spoken to people close to the investigation and they’ve pretty much confirmed Mossad’s involvement.
• It’s laughable to believe all this fuss was over a load of timber. I’m not alone in believing that it was carrying weapons to Iran.”
  

The alleged hijackers, four Estonians, two Russians and two Latvians, will go on trial in Moscow. According to the Kremlin’s account, they boarded the Arctic Sea in the Baltic by claiming their inflatable craft was in trouble and then took over the ship at gunpoint.

Sources in Moscow suggested Mossad may have played a part in the alleged hijacking by setting up a criminal gang, who were unlikely to have known anything about a secret cargo. “The best way for the Israelis to block the cargo from reaching Iran would have been to create a lot of noise around the ship,” said a former army officer.

“Once the news of the hijack broke, the game was up for the arms dealers. The Russians had to act. That’s why I don’t rule out Mossad being behind the hijacking. It stopped the shipment and gave the Kremlin a way out so that it can now claim it mounted a brilliant rescue mission.”

According to Israeli military sources, Israel received intelligence that weapons bound for Iran were being loaded in Kaliningrad, a port notorious for gun runners. “A decision was then taken to inform the Kremlin,” said the source.

Had the S-300 missiles been delivered, Iran would have significantly strengthened its air defences. An Israeli air force source said that in the event of an attack on Iranian nuclear installations, such missiles could increase Israeli casualties by 50%.

Since the Arctic Sea was retaken, Russia has imposed a security blackout. The hijackers, the crew and two investigative teams were flown back to Moscow in three Il-76 air freight planes. For more than a week after being freed the crew were not allowed to talk to their families. The captain and three crew are still on board the ship, which has resumed its voyage to Algeria, but they have not been able to call home.

Last week Mikhail Voitenko, an outspoken piracy expert who disputed the Kremlin’s original version of events, fled Russia, claiming he had received threats from an official angered by his statements.

Admiral Tarmo Kouts, former commander of Estonia’s armed forces and the European Union’s rapporteur on piracy, has infuriated Moscow by saying the only plausible explanation of the mystery is that the ship was transporting weapons. A spokesman for the Finnish owners denied that missiles could have been secretly loaded onto the ship.

Sources who suspect Mossad’s involvement point to a visit to Moscow by Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, the day after the Arctic Sea was rescued. Peres held four hours of private talks with Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president.

Although the Israeli foreign ministry would not be drawn on the Arctic Sea, it confirmed that the two leaders had discussed the sale of Russian weapons to countries hostile to Israel. According to Israeli officials, Peres received verbal guarantees from the Russians that they would not sell advanced weapons systems to Iran or Syria.

“Clearly the Israelis played a role in the whole Arctic Sea saga,” said a Russian military source. “Peres used the incident as a bargaining chip over the issue of arms sales to Arab states, while Israel allowed the Kremlin a way out with its claims to have successfully foiled a piracy incident.”

The Rest @ The Times Online

Aleged Real Life Arms Trafficking Story of Far West Ltd

The arms trafficking adventures of Far West Lt or Far West LLC, as they are now called
The following Story reads a bit like a Jason Bourne movie, perhaps too much like a movie to be true, but here it is:

I do know that Cyprus is the past and current shipment of may arms trafficking deals by many countries.

-Shimron Issachar

SARFRAZ Haider died when the quad bike he was riding hit a wall at relatively low speed in Cyprus in January, 2004.

The bizarre, but seemingly innocuous accident that took the life of the Australian businessman was treated almost perfunctorily by the local police.

But for Mr Haider's family it was the culmination of a bizarre plot -- worthy of a spy thriller -- in which nuclear missiles were allegedly stolen from the Russians and sold to Iran for $63 million.
Mr Haider's eldest son, Sam, has revealed the story of his father's shadowy life to the Sunday Herald Sun after spending four years and thousands of dollars trying to get to the truth. He plans to write a book on the saga.

He has pieced together details of his father's life, along with deals from company records and the accounts of his business associates.

And an investigation by this newspaper has confirmed the details of many of his claims.

"It is amazing to me, but my dad was an arms dealer who was turning over hundreds of millions of dollars," Sam said this week.

"He was close to some seriously dangerous people and he lived an incredible, jet-set life.
"But in the end, I believe, it caught up with him. The deals and the intrigue, that's what killed him."

Sarfraz Haider, an Australian citizen of Afghan-Iranian origin, lived in Canberra and Sydney for almost two decades before leaving his family and moving to London and then Cyprus in 2000.

He became one of the world's leading arms dealers who is said to have brokered deals worth more than $10 billion. His code name was "Dex".

[Here is the Story]

• After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's nuclear arsenals in its satellite states were dismantled and sent home, or destroyed.
  

In the Ukraine, in 2001, some of this arsenal disappeared.

Up to 20 nuclear-capable Kh-55 missiles -- with a 3000km range -- and four 200-kiloton nuclear warheads were stolen by a shadowy group of former Russian and Ukrainian intelligence and military officers. What happened to these weapons is the subject of international debate and much speculation. But one version of events, supported by documents obtained from the Ukrainian parliament and the investigations of the Haider family, is that they ended up in Iran and China.

Letters written by Hryhoriy Omelchenko, a former intelligence colonel to Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko, give details of the arms deal.

• The letters also confirm Mr Haider, 53, was suspected of being part of the arms trafficking gang that sold the missiles to Iran and China.
• The group used a fake contract and end-user certificate with Russia's state-run arms dealer and with a company called Ukrspetseksport -- Ukraine's weapons exporting agency -- to conceal the sale of the weapons that were officially listed as destroyed, the letters reveal.

While wrangling with lawyers and local officials over his father's estate in Cyprus, Sam Haider was contacted by a man called Ruslan Saidov, who claimed to be a friend and business associate of Sarfraz.
"Saidov told me the whole story," said Sam, who runs a Sydney import-export business.
"He said the theft of the missiles was masterminded by the partners of an intelligence and military consultancy firm called Far West Ltd ( now Far West LLC ).

"He said my father had been killed because the people at Far West and their Iranian partners feared the Americans would get to him and make him tell them about the missiles.
"They feared that he knew too much information about their dealings, and knew more information than anybody else."

• Far West's partners, all former Russian or Ukranian military or intelligence officers, had close contacts with military figures and mafia groups within Russia and its former satellites.
• They spirited the missiles out of the Ukraine and shipped them to Cyprus under the auspices of a company called SH Heritage Holdings -- whose owner and sole director was Sarfraz Haider.
• The missiles were crated up and marked as "turbine parts" intended for Iran's oil industry.
• Six of the missiles and two warheads were then allegedly shipped to Iran with the acquiescence of the Iranian secret service.
• Six more missiles and another two warheads were shipped to China.
• The deals were said to be worth more than $126 million.
• Mr Saidov revealed himself to Sam Haider as one of the partners in Far West.

Another partner, Oleg Orlov, was arrested in the Czech Republic in 2005 over the missile theft.

• He was extradited to the Ukraine, but died in jail after his throat was slit.
• A third partner, Vladimir Filin, has disappeared.
• Six men were eventually indicted over the missile sales and Ukrainian businessman Sergei Petrov, a former a partner in Far West, blew the whistle to German authorities on other illicit arms deals.

He alleged Far West had smuggled portable surface-to-air missiles to FARC guerrillas in Colombia in return for 600kg of cocaine,

He also accused Far West of supplying weapons -- including mortars, assault rifles and ammunition -- to ethic Albanians in the Macedonian conflict and Palestinians attacking Israeli targets.

Petrov was later blown up in his own car around the time Sarfraz Haider died.

Another member of the gang, Valery Malev, who was based in Kiev, died in mysterious circumstances in 2002.

Sam Haider claims the fortune his father amassed selling arms has largely disappeared.
He blames Mr Haider's business partners, and local lawyers and officials in Cyprus.

"The money has all gone and no one can tell us where it is," he said.
"When we went to Cyprus to find out what had happened we were met with brick walls."
Up to $12.6 million is missing from Mr Haider's accounts, and there are doubts about the fate of his properties in Cyprus, Sam claimed.

At the heart of the mystery is the role of Mr Haider's mistress and her family, who are allegedly linked to the Russian mafia. He said the chance discovery of a memory stick hidden inside his father's mattress was the first clue to the scale and seriousness of the arms deals.

"We couldn't believe it. We found this USB stick and on it were all these records of deals and financial transactions," Sam said.

The family never accepted the official "accidental" finding on Mr Haider's death, but an autopsy on his body, conducted by his brother, Dr Tedo Haider, from Batlow in NSW, heightened their suspicions.

Dr Haider claims his brother's neck had been broken, his aorta split and there were signs of a struggle.

"We want the truth to come out and we want justice," Sam said.

"This story needs to be told. There needs to be an accounting, and the world needs to know what is going on with these arms deals.

"We think there has been a cover- up. We think people have been paid off; my father's death and the events surrounding it need to be investigated properly."

Sam said he has been told his father had close connections to Iran's secret service, that he was the go-between for the Iranians in gaining nuclear secrets from the Pakistani atomic engineer A.Q. Khan, and that in 1986-87, he oversaw shipments of special military equipment and technical co-operation to Iran from Russia.

• "The sale of the missiles, Far West's involvement in it and the links to the A.Q. Khan syndicate in Pakistan -- I believe that's what led to my father's murder," Sam said.
  At the time of his brother's death, Dr Haider asked the then Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Attorney General Philip Ruddock to intervene.
• The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation has a file on the case and the Australian Federal Police and Interpol carried out an investigation in Cyprus.
  However, according to an AFP source the results were "inconclusive".

The Rest @ News.com (Australia)

Gazprom & Odex Compete for Libyan Oil Development

Originally Posted in October of 05, but of note today

-Shimron

The successful Mitsubishi-Teikoku bid for two concessions in Ghadamès basin Area 82, offering production shares of 7.5 per cent and $6 million signature bonuses, frustrated another relatively aggressive bidder.

Russia's state-owned gas giant Gazprom narrowly missed all three of the Ghadamès basin licences it bid for, in what was overall a bad result for the Russians, Tatneft excepted. It had been hoping to use EPSA-IV as a means of substantially increasing the reach of its overseas E&P.

Gazprom had been very keen on acquiring Libyan acreage, and is likely to pursue other options as a result of its failure in this round, such as an asset swap with Libya's Oilinvest. Gazprom's banking arm is a shareholder in Odex, a subsidiary of Oilinvest established three years ago with UK-based Soco International, and negotiations for Libyan-Russian asset swaps between the three parties are reportedly underway.

Soco's interest in Libya arose through the relationships between some of its non-executive directors and larger shareholders such as Pontoil Intertrade, owned by the family of Mario Contini, which has an Italian refinery among its other interests. Pontoil has a 20.55 per cent interest in Soco and Ettore Contini is a non-executive director. Mario Contini, chairman Patrick Maugein and another non-executive director, Rui de Sousa, all have a background in the downstream sector and were instrumental in bringing Soco into Libya. Gazprombank now has 20 per cent of Odex, alongside Oilinvest (46 per cent) and Soco (34 per cent).

So far, Odex has not found either upstream or downstream opportunity, partly because the government has been focused on open bidding rounds. According to Soco's Roger Cagle, "We can't compete at the levels bid in the last bid round." Rather, "our intention is to partner with Libyan companies and look for some sort of exploitation/development project. [But] with the government focusing on open bid rounds this concept takes a back seat."

Menas Associates 27-Oct-05