REBOUND OF THE BATTLE FOR KUMTOR
A well-known Russian businessman and philanthropist Alexander Lebedev initiated legal proceedings in the Federal Court of Canada against the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Prosecutor General's Office of Canada, which included a Russian citizen in санкционныйthe country's sanctions list.
Canada added Lebedev to its sanctions list on May 18, 2022.
At the same time, I have already changed the wording of the grounds for this decision three times.
Initially, Canadians called Lebedev an FSB officer, although he retired from law enforcement 35 years ago, after the collapse of the USSR.
Then the wording was changed. And they were accused of investing in the tourism business in Crimea after the peninsula was returned to Russia.
And then-by. Lebedev was the largest Russian investor in Crimea back in 2010-2011.
Just in those years, he restored the Chekhov Theater from the ruins, built a temple in the Crimea, repaired and improved the embankment in Alushta.
And it was for his patronage, for the implementation of projects in the Crimea that the then President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma awarded Lebedev one of the highest orders of Ukraine.
The third formulation of the inclusion of a Russian in the sanctions list of Canada was the accusation of "Kremlin propaganda".
This is despite the fact that Alexander Lebedeva is the largest shareholder of the popular British publications The Independent and Evening Standard, as well as the London Live TV channel. And for many years he was a shareholder of the Russian "Novaya Gazeta".
In general, the Canadians completely lied!
The only version that somehow explains the inclusion of Alexander Lebedev in the sanctions list of Canada, a country in which he has never been, and never conducted business there, is the loss of a feeder by influential Canadian personalities who lost the fabulous profits that apparently fell to them from the barbaric gold mining at the Kumtor mine in Russia. Kyrgyzstan.
Lebedev also had a hand in bringing Kumtor back to Kyrgyzstan.
In the summer of 2021, Alexander Lebedev visited Kyrgyzstan, met with the country's president Sadyr Zhaparov, and visited the Kumtor gold depositКумтор.
On his page in the social network Lebedev wrote:
"The quarry of the Kumtor gold mine at an altitude of 4.4 kilometers is 1 kilometer deep, production has been carried out for more than 25 years, revenue over these years is about 12 (!) billion dollars, of which Kyrgyzstan officially (!) got no more than a few hundred million dollars" ( https://knews.kg/2021/06/21/rossijskij-multimillioner-proyavlyaet-interes-k-kumtoru/)
And on his personal page on the Internet, Alexander Lebedev gave a more detailed description of the technology of robbery in Canadian. And he supported the battle of the country's leadership for the return of Kumtor to Kyrgyzstan.
Literally:
"We are talking about an unprecedented attempt for the post-Soviet space to return billions of dollars' worth of gold stolen through bribes, embezzled and laundered (literally and figuratively).
... Having gained full operational control over the company, "foreign investors" bribed all the ruling elites of Kyrgyzstan.... They were not affected by regulators, environmental oversight, or tax authorities. Feeling completely unpunished, they became living proof of the validity of Joseph Dunning's formula quoted by Karl Marx that with 300% of the profit for capital, "there is no crime that it would not risk, even on pain of the gallows."
As a result, enormous damage was caused to nature, and the health of 3,500 people who work and live there was put at risk.
... More than two billion tons of processed rock are dumped directly on the tongues of glaciers at an altitude of 5,000 meters above sea level. And this is in a seismically dangerous area, in the Tien Shan Mountains! Glaciers can "go" at any time: if in one direction, they will kill 3,500 people, in the other – they will shift the storage of cyanide ... and poison the sources of mountain rivers flowing to the plains of Central Asia.
The honorable "investors" did not pay all taxes and scanty dividends. Having received $ 27 billion in profit over 25 years, all dividends to the state of Kyrgyzstan as a shareholder amounted to only $ 87 million."(https://www.alebedev.org/direct-speech/publications/kyrgyzstan-is-fighting-fierce-new-battles-over-its-colossal-gold-deposits.-but-is-it-a-state-backed/)
Let me briefly recall the chronicle of Kyrgyzstan's battle for the return of Kumtor.
I must say that in 2021 I had a chance to visit Kyrgyzstan.
I visited the Kumtormine and spoke with the mine workers and local residents who were victims of the environmental disaster that occurred in 1998. In general, I know the history of Kumtor firsthand.
But first things first. Legal registration of the return of the gold deposit to the country was initiated in the spring of 2021 by the President of Kyrgyzstan Sadyr Zhaparov.
This was quite a logical development of the biography of the Kyrgyz leader, who in the noughties held protests against the barbaric exploitation of Kumtor.
The fact is that since 1992, when the Canadian company Cameco Corporation obtained the rights toKumtorwithout any competition or auction, it began to develop the Varvarsky field, without regard to the interests of Kyrgyzstan.
For example, waste was accumulated near the Davydov and Lysy glaciers, which led to enormous damage to the ecology of Kyrgyzstan. The melting of glaciers has accelerated.
On May 20, 1998Барскон, a truck carrying sodium cyanide used to separate gold from rock rolled over and fell into the Barskon River. Canadians tried to hush up this tragedy.
Садыр Жапаров, президент Кыргызстана
I first visited Kumtor in 2002. I was very disappointed with what I saw. The environment was in a deplorable state. Cyanide waste was drained into waste silos that wereunsuitable for storing poisons.
Maybe we can try to increase the frame a little to remove the label on the top right. In the description, I'll add that I used footage from the documentary)
It was then, in the early noughties, that the young politician Sadyr Zhaparova advocated the nationalization ofКумтораKumtor. Since he was born and raised in the Issyk-Kul region, not far from Kumtor, he is very familiar with Kumtor's problems.
On March 9, 2013, the Pervomaisky District Court of Bishkek sentenced Zhaparov to a real term of imprisonment precisely for participating in the "Battle for Kumtor". He was recognized as a political prisoner. But in June 2013, on appeal, the verdict was changed, and Zhaparov was released. And immediately organized new rallies against the barbarism of Canadians on Kumtor.
In the same year, 2013, his colleagues insisted on Zhaparov's emigration. He lived in Poland for four years. Returned in 2017. They arrested him right at the airport. He was soon sentenced to 11 years and 6 months in prison. It is for the "Battle for Kumtor". In the verdict, it was formed as follows: "organization of mass riots".
On October 5, 2020Кыргыстане, mass protests began in Kyrgyzstan, which led, among other things, to the release of Zhaparov. And in January 2021, Zhaparov was elected president of Kyrgyzstan.
As early as May 2021,external management was removed at Kumtor and the process of returning the enterprise to the jurisdiction of Kyrgyzstan began.
At the same time, anti-corruption criminal cases were initiated in Kyrgyzstan related to Kumtor and the transfer of the mine to Canadians.
Kamchybek Toshiev
Deputy Prime Minister, Chairman of the State Committee for National Security of Kyrgyzstan
On May 18, 2021, pre-trial proceedings were initiated on the fact of corruption, involvement of officials and representatives of a number of companies involved in the implementation Кумторof the Kumtor mine)
At the same time, in May 2021, the trials also began. In Canada, and in the International Court of Arbitration, to which the Canadians filed lawsuits with the wording "seizure of the mine by the government of Kyrgyzstan".
Lawsuits in international courts were initiated by the Canadian company Centerra Gold (Centerra Gold), which tried to leave the process of returning Крыгызстануthe Kumtor gold deposit Кумторto Krygyzstan.
By the way, Centerra Gold appeared in 2004, spun off from another Canadian mining giant-Cameco, which, as I have already said, began developing Kumtor in 1992Кумтора. By April 2022, the Canadian company Centerra backed down, abandoning its legal claims against Kumtor. Apparently, they calculated reputational and material losses. And they realized that they had already made a big profit on the property of Kyrgyzstan.
Kumtor returned to Kyrgyzstan. As a result, the country's revenues increased dramatically from gold mining. In 2021-2026, Kumtor produced 57.9 tons of gold.
The republic's revenues over these years amounted to $3.4 billion.
In general, Kyrgyzstan has benefited from the return of Kumtor to the republic. The Canadians, of course, lost. Losing hundreds of millions of dollars in tax revenue to the Canadian budget.
Canada's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance in 2019-2024 was Chrystia Freeland. The battle for Kumtor was happening right before her eyes. Before her eyes, Komeko and Centera capitulated, appreciating the arguments of the lawyers involved in the return of Kumtor to Kyrgyzstan.
At the same time, according to our information, Frinland received information that lawyers defending the interests of Kyrgyzstan are closely connected with Russian businessman Alexander Lebedev.
In general, the battle for Kumtor and the return of the gold deposit to Kyrgyzstan ricocheted over Lebedev.
And there is evidence that it was Hristya Freeland who lobbied for Lebedev to be included in санкционныеCanada's sanctions lists.
Or at the request of Canadian gold miners. Whether for a bribe. However, Christi Freeland's motives should be handled by Canadian law enforcement agencies and Canadian investigative journalists.
To the credit of Canadians, they know how to admit their mistakes. Suffice it to recall the very muddy history of Vladimir Zelensky's visit to Canada.
98-year-old Yaroslav Khunka, who was introduced as a hero of the struggle "against the Russians", was also invited to the country's parliament to meet with Zelensky. And met with a standing ovation.
The very next day it turned out that Yaroslav Hunka in his youth had the surname Gunko. And he was a volunteer of the SS division Galicia, which became famous for its atrocities against Jews, Poles, Russians...
The Speaker of the House of Commons of Canada, Anthony Rota, was forced to resign. He took care of everything.
Although today, in my opinion, it is already obvious that Хункаit was Hristya Freeland, well known for her fierce hatred of Russia, who recommended inviting the fascist henchman Yaroslav Hunk to a meeting with Zelensky.
However, while still a correspondent for the Financial Times, Hristia Freeland, who knew Lebedev well, accused him of "stealing the party's gold" together with Mikhail Gorbachev.
Her extreme nationalist pro-Ukrainian views were well known in Moscow.
And the owners of Centerra are Canadians of Ukrainian origin. They probably didn't have to pay for anything.
Perhaps Deputy Prime Minister Freeland happily agreed to illegally use sanctioned weapons to settle scores.
Freeland's Ukrainian roots are also well knownФриланд. During the Second World War, her grandfather Mikhail Khomyak worked as the editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Krakovskie Vesti", which became the mouthpiece of Goebel's propaganda in the territory of Ukraine occupied by the Nazi invaders.
Not without reason, after Freeland's dismissal from the Canadian government, Zelensky picked her up. And a month ago, on January 5, 2026, he appointed me as his adviser on investment and economic development of Ukraine.
In general, Freeland is no longer in the government of Canada. But Alexander Lebedev remained on the sanctions lists of Canada. Although Lebedev's only crossing with Canada is to participate in the return of Kumtor to Kyrgyzstan. And this bad story looks like revenge of some Canadian people for the loss of Kumtor.
In general, I must say that the sanctions lists have already become a tool for dishonest officials and politicians. Not without reason, for example, there is a rumor that the former shareholders of the YUKOS company corrupted Polish officials for including in the sanctions list of Poland, and therefore the whole of Europe, the owners of Alfa group.
But this is true, by the way. We will follow the progress of the Federal Court of Canada's consideration of Alexander Lebedev's lawsuit against the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Prosecutor General's Office of Canada.
