OPEC accused of 'economic terrorism', would you believe this? I think not ... but here we goes.


Lawsuit says organization is 'willing participant in price-fixing scheme'



The Organization of Oil Exporting Countries is a "price-fixing scheme" intent on damaging the free world with its "economic terrorism," according to the founder of Judicial Watch.

Larry Klayman, who now runs a new organization called Freedom Watch, has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the southern district of Florida asking for a jury trial determination that OPEC's actions are "per se and/or an unreasonable restraint of trade or commerce in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act … [and] an order enjoining Defendant OPEC, and those unnamed co-conspirators, from continued violations of the antitrust laws."

Citing crude oil prices in the range of $140 a barrel Klayman's Freedom Watch Inc., a non-profit watchdog that promotes and protects freedom in the United States, reports it has purchased fuel "from the Defendant and its agents and co-conspirators."

The lawsuit was brought to target "the illegal actions of the Defendant, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries 'OPEC', which, as a form of economic terrorism, are designed to severely harm the economies of the United States and Western Europe."



Klayman today told WND the lawsuit, filed last week, is exactly what it is: a demand for U.S. law to be applied to OPEC the same way it has been applied to other foreign cartels in court rulings dating back to the 1930s.

"The primary purpose [is] to enjoin price fixing," he said. "The federal court does have the authority to do that."

Secondly, it would show the U.S. government that it should be pro-active in dealing with the economic hurt that such financial maneuvers create in the United States.

"If American citizens can take action, why shouldn't the U.S. government?" he said.

Third, it is to apply international pressure to oil producers and to seek out and reveal any secret deals that have been made.

Just over the weekend, Saudi Arabia called for a meeting of oil producing and consuming countries on June 22 to talk about the soaring energy prices. The New York Times has reported that a production increase is scheduled to be announced soon.

"I think they [oil-producing nations] are busy, maybe already have done so, cutting deals under the table with the Bush administration and members of Congress to get what they want, to move faster on a Palestinian state, to get [the U.S.] out of Iraq," Klayman told WND.

"The big issue is what are we trading that we don't know about for higher oil production," he told WND.

The lawsuit said OPEC's actions are supportive of, "in the case of Hugo Chavez and Venezuela, communism throughout Latin America, and in the case of the Arab members of OPEC such as Saudi Arabia, radical [Wahhabe] and derivative strains of radical Islam in its centuries-old struggle for domination over Jews and Christians and Judeo-Christian interests and nation states, such as Israel, in the Middle East and throughout the world."

The lawsuit accuses OPEC and its members of "direct or indirect financial and other support for terrorist groups."

"Some of the members of OPEC are, not coincidentally, on the U.S. State Department's watch list of terrorist nations," Klayman said, which are "bent on destroying American and other Western interests."

The lawsuit cites the Sherman Act, which is being violated by the "agreed-upon limits and restrictions on the production of oil and other petroleum products by OPEC's 13 member nations," Klayman's lawsuit said.

Those members are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Bolivarian Republican of Venezuela.

"The current effect of this unlawful scheme has been to raise prices of oil and petroleum to in excess of $140 per barrel, bringing the economy of the United States and the entire Western world to its economic knees," the lawsuit said.

"In the absence of this agreement, OPEC members and co-conspirators would be producing more oil and the price of gasoline and other petroleum products would be less," the lawsuit said. "The acts … are not the unilateral, independent acts of sovereign nations taken and effectuated entirely within the confines of their own territorial boundaries. As a multinational cartel, OPEC depends upon the concerted and agreed upon acts of all of its members … to achieve the conspiracy's price fixing scheme."

Klayman, 56, made a name for himself as founder of Judicial Watch, a conservative group that filed at least 18 suits against the Clinton administration in the 1990s alleging cover-ups.

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Posted: June 16, 2008


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Larry Klayman