Secret police files reveal six-figure payments to Ceausescu’s henchmen, as retailer denies knowingly paying Securitate.
by the Deviant’s Matei Rosca in Bucharest
251: The picture shows the state archive’s inventory entry for the formerly classified dossier of a dedicated secret operation over several years, evidence of the close relationship IKEA had with the Securitate
– copyright Anastasia Ciupac
<<UPDATE: Tomaso and Elisabetta have been released by the Indian Supreme Court and their convictions overturned this February. They have since returned to Italy. Tomaso’s Facebook page shows him living in London.>>
“… be just, and if you can’t be just – be arbitrary.”
– Bill Burroughs, Naked Lunch
Tomaso Bruno: 30, Albenga-born (life sentence, Varanasi District Jail)
Elisabetta Boncompagni: 39, Turin-born (life sentence, Varanasi District Jail)
Francesco Montis, aka Kekko: Terralba-born (dead at 30, cremated)
-photos courtesy of Marina Maurizio
Backpacking through India in the hopes of finding one’s soul may turn out a worse trip than first imagined – and just after general elections in the world’s biggest democracy some of the reasons for this are well worth pointing out.
Tomaso Bruno, Francesco Montis and Elisabetta Boncompagni were living in London before taking that pilgrimage. Squatters and keen ravers, they were a fixture at parties and are still well known among the Italians within the capital’s crusty bohemia. Francesco and Elisabetta were in a longterm relationship at the time.
It was December 28, 2009 when the three arrived in India. A month later, on the 31st of January 2010 they checked in at Hotel Buddha, Varanasi. They were sharing the same room and the same bed, which seemed peculiar to the hotel staff.
Three days later, Francesco was dead.
From between the Deviant’s sofa cushions!
Eco-friendlier-than-thou multinational cosmetics corporation’s North America boss had ties with tar sands oil extraction and strip-mining industries.
Soap tycoon Mark ‘Castevet’ Constantine of LUSH Cosmetics talks to the Deviant on the phone – shocking revelations further down
Highlights are: attempts to discredit the reporter, a complete denial that Lush took dirty oil money although it did, an admission of his own hypocrisy, a candid admission that his top CEO isn’t ‘a big environmentalist’, a dig at the reporter personally and then an attempted bribery in the form of a veiled job offer to the reporter, swiftly withdrawn after refusal.
WOT A BELTER!!! [More copy editing and sub-editing, formatting etc on the context story soon]
Now read on –
– illustration by Anastasia Ciupac, all rights reserved
The Deviant’s plan was to make the first ‘corporate tyrants’ story on the site about LUSH Cosmetics, that naff and tacky soapmongers for soap-dodging hippies with daddy’s money to spend on priviledge-guilt allieviating soap. I do have a delightful one about Lush North America in the drawer, however, the Universe wanted the Deviant to start off with the Daily Mail. And you don’t fuck about with greater powers. So:
It reaches the Deviant that the world’s favourite news website and Britain’s most indignant, if conflicted, daily paper’s pre-teen peeving online counterpart is openly pimping out its database of vociferous patriots to any interested buyer, through a subsidiary it appears to own, up in the Sheffield wastelands. Wonder where all that spam was coming from?
The Deviant’s first head-banging, gut-kicking, moon-howling belter of a WORLD EXCLUSIVE story featuring a schizoid, lying, hundred-million international corporate powerhouse dragged out of its dark lair and in full exposure to the public eye will appear soon.
“As I’m having a large glass of rocket-fuel Romanian moonshine, its crystalline sheen clearer than the coldest of springwaters, I raise it to the defiance the people of Moldova showed the Kremlin yesterday by signing the association agreement with the EU in Vilnius, thus turning their backs to the foul soviet ways perhaps for good. Something that big Ukraine could not bring herself to do in spite of public opinion. Amen, Mahalo and Geezus bless.”
The piece below appeared in the Eye just prior to the fateful Vilnius summit:
