The Pentagon dimension of American Graphite Technologies’ secret P600 project in Ukraine.
Blackwater at large in Kharkov
The secretive US company American Graphite Technologies Inc (AGIN) working on the ‘P600’ 3D Graphene project in Eastern Ukraine was formed from a shell company by its president, Rick Walchuk. Only 3 years old, the company’s registered address in Las Vegas is a humble mailbox, but US laws demanding full public listings disclosure have somehow been waived. The Slog can now reveal that, of its team of eight at work in Khakov, three are weapons scientists. And for some reason, the company has chosen to list publicly in a second territory….Germany.
Las Vegas is an odd place to start up a techonology company, but there’s no doubting the high-rolling game American Graphite Technologies Inc (AGIN) is involved in at the minute. And as details continue to emerge as to the nature of AGIN, at least some pieces in the geopolitical jigsaw of the Ukraine are dropping neatly into place.
Graphene is stronger than steel, just one atom thick, and capable of cloning anything from a 3D printer. It will clearly have myriad potential uses and model-busting consequences, but as a weapon it shift the entire balance of power in our emerging world.
It looks increasingly like AGIN is working with Ukrainian 3D Graphene scientists at Kharkov with at least one eye on military contracts. The West is also supplying heavy-duty riot control advice and security expertise to Kharkov – for it too has taken an enormous nuclear gamble in the shape of its equally obvious incursions into a sphere of strong Russian influence.
But as the Slogpost here on Wednesday tried to demonstrate, all three – AGIN, the West, and Putin – have everything to play for in their jostling for position. The economic and military strategic importance of 3D Graphene development is going to play a dominant role in effecting change.
Some visitors to the site thought the story far-fetched. But is is far from that: the Agin site itself verifies that the lead team member of the P600 (3D Graphene) team is Dmitry Vynogradov, a research scientist at the Ukraine National Science Center “KIPT”. He has ‘extensive experience in the design and manufacture of unique experimental research and instruments in the investigation of properties of nano-materials and graphite nanotubes’.
That sounds scientifically harmless enough…although its development does, of course, wipe out the manufacturing model of almost every company on the planet.
Yesterday, I revealed that the EU’s Human Brain Project (HBR) was inevitably linked to the ability to clone with graphene in 3D. Today, CNN ran a piece declaring that the EU is devoting a further €1 billion to Graphene development….in fact, it has been for a year. (But don’t hold your breath looking for any MEP who remembers seeing a Bill about it).
The AGIN website confirms the role of Vynogradov. What it doesn’t tell you however is this: three of the eight Ukrainians involved are weapons scientists. Just fancy that. And there’s more.
The base in Las Vegas is a maildrop address. It was founded in 2010 as Green & Quality Homelife by Brazilian Fabia Narita, but in November of that year current AGIN CEO and P600 team leader Rick Walchuk (left) bought the whole thing for $350,000. Walchuk is a finance man and bought Narita’s outfit as a shell. His history is that of a “pump and dump” man who buys something, puffs its potential to the markets, and then gets out.
But this time – although he started the pump op in 2012 – Mr Walchuk did something different: he stayed around. In fact, he brought in one mystery investor, and signed a patent deal with Mike Foley of Cheap Tubes – a graphene technology developer. Foley is now also a key member of the P600 project.
In January 2013, Walchuk steered AGIN onto the German bourse as well. And then not long after that (around May 2013) he began talking to the KIPT team in Kharkov.e project
What happened then is confirmed as per Wednesday’s Slogpiece : on March 21, 2014, [AGIN] closed a $300,000 unregistered offering of securities with three accredited investors. They remain a tight secret, because AGIN has been allowed to waive The Securities Act of 1933 – passed to ensure that all new securities offered to the public have been described in adequate detail, and all structural aspects of it fully revealed.
This isn’t exactly standard practice. It looks like somewhere along the line, older gentleman with lots of scrambled egg on their hats and ribbons on their jackets have paid AGIN a quiet visit. Look at the history of Graphene, and you will see that while George Osborne trumpets it as “a British invention”, from the start it has been driven by Russian and Ukrainian scientists. I think it is likely that the Ukraine has become a contemporary equivalent of the rush to grab Nazi rocket scientists at the end of the Second World War.
Some of you may have read Ambrose Evans-Pritchard’s Telegraph piece yesterday. It may seem unrelated to the subject matter of this article, but geopolitically it has the same game-changing potential. AEP observes (my emphases) that:
‘Solar power has won the global argument….The technology is improving so fast – helped by the US military – that it has achieved a virtuous circle….we are entering a new order of “global energy deflation” that must ineluctably erode the viability of oil, gas and the fossil fuel nexus over time….solar will slowly squeeze the revenues of petro-rentier regimes in Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, among others. Many already need oil prices near $100 a barrel to cover their welfare budgets and military spending. They will have to find a new business model, or fade into decline….’
This is the way global power has changed since the nuclear arms race. For the major players – and repeatedly, one has to observe, this is Washington at work – it is now much more about financially destroying Iran’s currency, bringing Hollande to heel on “reform” with an attack on his bond yields, and using scientific advance to trump any energy cards held by others. The Pentagon now gets involved in more and more of these projects, because they are just weapons by any other name: that is, they are designed to starve out and marginalise all those who might stand in the way of US hegemony.
There has to be a Pentagon/security dimension to AGIN’s presence in Kharkov. List the trouble that both Russia and the West have been prepared to take on here: the IMF has put together a life-saving loan to Ukraine in double-quick time. Before that, the Eurocrats were falling over their knickers to lend a similar sum to this country which isn’t even in the EU, let alone the eurozone. But Putin had time to see it coming: AGIN approached the Ukrainian scientists in January 2013, stepping up and formalising its involvement rapidly through the year. Suddenly, Ukraine becomes unstable. Putin puts an obviously pre-arranged plan into operation. He is swamped in hypocritical rhetoric from the usual suspects – Kerry, Hague, Hillary Clinton, Merkl, Cameron and then Obama. But then the final secretive deal takes place to ‘transform’ AGIN into a very secret and more heavily invested company. Within days, Crimea is Russian again….and the pressure’s on in Kharkov…the next stop on the line.
Late yesterday, pro-Moscow troops in the City arrested a man in Ukrainian uniform. He spoke English and claimed he was an American citizen. Although a clip of the event has allegedly been posted on the Web, this comes from the Voice of Russia. (I’ve yet to find the clip). But one shot a month ago in Donetsk did indeed seem to show what looked like heavily-armed Blackwater mercenaries in the town being harried by local civilians.
There are others around the world with far more resources than I. A good start for any mainstream hack looking for Sunday’s lead story this weekend would be to find out more about Rick Walchuk, why he stuck around this time in contrast to his usual MO, who the three secret investors in AGIN are, who the three weapons scientists are on P600, why the SEC waived all the disclosures normally required by US Law when AGIN was listed, why Walchuk chose Germany as a bourse listing – and why US mercenaries are focused far more on East than Western Ukraine.
Yesterday at The Slog: Was Greek bond launch the warm-up act for Merkel in Athens?
The Slog 