Freedom Watch Attorney Sues OPEC Oil Minister for Economic Terrorism

by: jim kouri | published: 10 31, 2008

In a bold move in front of members of the news media, Freedom Watch Chairman and Chief Legal Counsel Larry Klayman literally jumped out from behind a line of TV cameras and microphones on Friday, October 24, to serve a complaint on an OPEC oil minister.

The lawsuit filed on behalf of Klayman's Freedom Watch in Southern District, Miami, Florida, charges OPEC with illegal price fixing, market division and collusion in having agreed to lower oil production worldwide by 1.5 million barrels a day, said Klayman, chairman and chief legal counsel.

Klayman said, "The cartel's strategy is designed to raise oil prices globally and ultimately the cost of gasoline at pumps across America at a most unpropitious time with a depression looming."

The OPEC oil minister, Darlis Palacios Guerrero of Equador, was leaving the emergency meeting of OPEC ministers following their vote to cut production and was on his way to be interviewed by Bloomberg Television reporters when Klayman surprised him by handing him a copy of the complaint, which the minister graciously accepted.

"Being Latin, he was most cordial and apparently thought I was handing him a gift," Klayman said.

"The gift I'm really hoping to give to OPEC ministers is a court injunction for perpetrating on the world a form of economic terrorism by their brazen use of oil as a weapon against our staggering economy," he added.

Klayman, an attorney widely known for taking on powerful groups and individuals, including the administrations of Presidents Clinton and Bush on behalf of Judicial Watch, another public interest group he founded, was undeterred after having been thwarted earlier from serving the complaint on OPEC. On Thursday, he was ordered off OPEC property in Florida by an OPEC official flanked by security and police offers. The official refused to give his name.

"Leave our property," the OPEC representative told Klayman sternly when he had tried to serve the complaint at OPEC headquarters here.

"That's the way these people operate," Klayman said, "They continually display an arrogant disregard for the law.

Last Wednesday, Klayman held a press conference outside the cartel's quarters where he waved a gas pump nozzle at OPEC calling the nozzle a "smoking gun" that ties OPEC to the current financial disaster in the US Their artificial run-up in oil prices earlier this year set the stage for the economic problems we're now having, he said.

"OPEC has bled billions out of our economy already and now wants to try to bleed us again, while our economy is so week and on the edge of collapse," said the well-known public-interest lawyer.

"This is a great first step in revealing the collusion between the OPEC hierarchy and New-World Order politicians within the United States," said political strategist Mike Baker.

"The liberals in congress -- in both major political parties -- are talking tough but in essence they are helping OPEC in its corrupt price-fixing. There's even suspicion that OPEC representatives are illegally funnelling campaign contributions to American lawmakers," warns Baker.

For more information visit: www.freedomwatchusa.org

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