Robert Maxwell

Introduction

Robert Maxwell was born in the easternmost province (now Ukraine) of Czechoslovakia on June 10th, 1923, his original name is Ján Ludvík Hyman Binyamin Hoch. Robert Maxwell’s parents were Mechel Hoch and Hannah Slomowitz. He had six siblings. He was married to and had 9 children, Ghislaine Maxwell, Philip Maxwell, Ann Maxwell, Christine Maxwell, Isabel Maxwell, Karine Maxwell, Ian Maxwell, Kevin Maxwell, and Michael Maxwell. Karine Maxwell died of leukemia at age three and Michael Maxwell died at age 15 after a car accident.

At the peak of his business empire, his net worth was $1.9 billion. After his death, his business empire was nearly $4 billion in debt. His companies included the Mirror group of newspapers, Maxwell Communications, Nimbus Records, P.F. Collier, Official Airline Guide, Prentice Hall Information Services, Macmillan publishing, the Berlitz language schools, and Pergamon Press, a technical publishing company. Maxwell led a flamboyant lifestyle living in Headington Hill Hall in Oxford, where he frequently flew in his helicopter and sailed his £15M luxury yacht, the Lady Ghislaine. Named after his favorite daughter Ghislaine Maxwell who was arrested in 2020 for her role in the Epstein child trafficking network. Robert Maxwell had known links to the British Secret Intelligence Service MI6, to the Soviet KGB, and the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. He was also part of the Mega Group which was heavily linked to Israel and organized crime, founded by Charles Bronfman and Leslie Wexner, the latter being Jeffrey Epstein’s main monetary source.

Robert Maxwell was notably litigious and often embroiled in controversy, including his support for Israel at the time of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, his ties to Iran Contra, and his involvement in the PROMIS affair. In 1989, he had to sell businesses, including Pergamon Press, to cover some of his debts. In 1991, his body was discovered having fallen overboard from his yacht. He was given a full state funeral and buried in Jerusalem. Major discrepancies in his companies’ finances were revealed soon after his death, including his fraudulent misappropriation of the Mirror Group pension fund at the tune of £460m.

Robert Maxwell and WW2

In 1939, the area Maxwell was living in was taken over by Hungary until 1944 when it was occupied by Nazi Germany. Maxwell fled to France while most members of his family died in Auschwitz. In May 1940, he joined the Czechoslovak Army in exile in Marseille France. After the fall of France and the British retreat to Britain, Robert Maxwell using the name “Ivan du Maurier”, or “Leslie du Maurier”, the surname taken from the name of a popular cigarette brand took part in a protest against the leadership of the Czechoslovak Army, and with 500 other soldiers, he was transferred to the British Army under the Pioneer Corps and later to the North Staffordshire Regiment in 1943. He was then involved in action across Europe, from the Normandy beaches to Berlin, and achieved the rank of sergeant. Robert Maxwell gained a commission in 1945 and was promoted to the rank of captain. In January 1945, he received the Military Cross from Field Marshal Montgomery. Robert Maxwell naturalized as a British subject on June 19, 1946, and legally changed his name by deed poll from Ludvick Hoch to Ian Robert Maxwell on June 30, 1948.

In 1991, the U.K. Metropolitan Police Force began a war crimes investigation into Robert Maxwell after it was revealed he murdered an unarmed German civilian in 1945. It was also claimed Maxwell ordered the indiscriminate shelling of civilians and towns while serving in the British army. The German victim was the mayor of a small town in Germany, the murder was revealed in a letter penned by Robert Maxwell to his wife, where he admits how he summoned the town’s mayor, who he instructed to tell German troops to surrender, “… so I sent one of the Germans to fetch the mayor of the town,” “In half an hour’s time, he turned up and I told him that he had to go to tell the Germans to surrender and hang the white flag otherwise the town will be destroyed. One hour later, he came back saying that the soldiers will surrender and the white flag was put up so we marched off, but as soon as we marched off a German tank opened fire on us. Luckily he missed so I shot the mayor and withdrew.” Maxwell when on to admit how he was destroying civilian towns and homes on his way through Germany, “As you can well imagine, I am not taking any prisoners, and, whatever home my men occupy, before I leave I order it to be destroyed.” The name of the affected towns are not specified and the Metropolitan Police Force closed the investigation after being allegedly unable to find evidence or witnesses while disregarding Maxwell’s own admission to the crime.

Maxwell, MI6, and Pergamon Press

In 1945, the British were looking to acquire technical information and documents. First, they set up the British enemy publications committee to filter German classified scientific information extracted from captured documents or scientists. When it failed to produce satisfactory results, MI6 set up its own networks and fronts to develop British scientific publishing.

In November 1945, Robert Maxwell was employed as an interrogation officer in Bad Salzuflen, Germany, which was an Intelligence Corps facility. There he interrogated German scientists and extracted information from them. Robert Maxwell’s work sometimes took him into Soviet territory where he made Soviet contacts, which exposed him to rumors and suspicions about his loyalty. Correspondence between various members of the Information Research Department (IRD), a covert unit of the Foreign Office, reveals that Maxwell had been considered to be a suspicious figure directly after the war. In 1946, Robert Maxwell served in the Press and Publicity Branch of the British Information Service in Berlin, for the Foreign Office for two years as a newspaper censor at the British Control Commission. There Robert Maxwell accumulated contacts such as Hugh Quennell, Dr. Paul Rosebaud, and Ferdinand Springer, which he used to go into business. British intelligence officers, in reports submitted to the Information Research Department (IRD), suspected that Robert Maxwell was “a thoroughly bad character and almost certainly financed by Russia”.

In November of that year, the MI6 heavy Cabinet Office of the Scientific Advisory Board held its first meeting, the objective of the meeting was to develop scientific publishing through a new company, Butterworth Scientific Publications, using the expertise of German exile Dr. Paul Rosebaud, who attended the meeting. The meeting chaired by Sir John Anderson, the secretary was Professor Robert Hutton and other scientific advisers included Sir Wallace Akers, Sir Charles Darwin, Sir Alfred Egerton, Sir Richard Gregory, Sir Edward Salisbury, Sir Alexander Fleming, and Sir Edward Appleton. The meeting also included Special Operations Executive (SOE) officer Charles Hambro, the son of Sir Eric Hambro a partner in C. J. Hambro & Son (later to become Hambros Bank), who acted as Lieutenant Commander Eric Welsh’s Representative. A notable outcome of the meeting was the forging of a relationship with the old publishing firm, Butterworth. The representative at the meeting for Butterworth was Count Frederick Vanden Heuvel, a Dutch-born MI6 officer, known as ‘Fanny the fixer’, his primary role was to recruit ‘Z’ agents – journalists, publishers, and businessmen. One of his agents was Major John Whitlock, a former SOE officer and ‘intelligence veteran who worked as Butterworth’s joint managing director. He had been at the board meeting with fellow director and SOE officer Hugh Quennell, who had acted for Hambros when the bank purchased a quarter of a million Butterworth shares during the war.

In 1946, Robert Maxwell met Dr Ferdinand Springer, owner of the German Springer Verlag, Europe’s leading pre-war scientific publisher which was under financial burden due to the war. While still working at the Control Commission, Robert Maxwell became the director of a firm that offered distribution for Springers journals across Europe and the United States. In 1948, Butterworth Scientific Publications failed to take off and a joint company was created with its partner Springer Verlag, the new company was called Butterworth-Springer. In 1951, Robert Maxwell bought three-quarters of Butterworth-Springer and the remaining quarter was held by the former Springer Verlag scientific editor Paul Rosbaud. They changed the name of the company to Pergamon Press and rapidly built it into a major publishing house..

Digby Ackland from the Information Research Department (IRD) wrote in a 1959 report that “Captain Maxwell’s questionable activities have been brought to the attention of the Foreign Office on several occasions over the past ten years.”

Robert Maxwell was widely regarded as a self-obsessed and vain individual. He frequently used his London newspaper, The Mirror, to promote himself with favorable coverage and to spread disinformation about his political adversaries. Even more notorious were his dealings with international business leaders and state officials, whom he often bribed with luxuries and women.

Despite his high profile life and persona, Maxwell’s death is shrouded in mystery with his nude and bloated body found floating by Spanish fishermen in the waters of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. After allegedly falling off by accident from his £15m yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, on Nov. 5, 1991; ultimately given a near-state funeral by Israel of which six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence services attended the funeral in Jerusalem, while Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir eulogized him: “He has done more for Israel than can today be said.”.Robert Maxwell was working as a triple agent for Mossad, the Soviet KGB, and MI6, often acting as a two-way conduit between the agencies to pass intelligence and communications.

At the time of his death, Robert Maxwell was engulfed in tremendous financial and legal turmoil, crippling debt, and found himself engaged in extensive fraud, as his media Empire began to collapse around him, except for the still-profitable Mirror Group Newspapers. He brazenly stole the entire pension funds, hundreds of millions of pounds, from Maxwell Communications leaving thousands without their pensions, and he mortgaged his entire wealth in a last-ditch effort to save his fortune and estate. Weeks before Maxwell’s death, a former Mossad agent named Ari Ben-Menashe had approached a number of UK and US media outlets exposing Maxwell as a long-time Mossad agent, which media refused to publish from fear of being sued for libel. It wasn’t until an MP asked the question in the House of Commons that the media began to publish the allegations days before Maxwell died after rejecting the allegations, which were later proven true. Ben-Menashe also claimed that Maxwell tipped off the Israeli embassy in London that whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, a nuclear scientist later jailed for two decades in Israel, exposed Israel’s illegal nuclear capabilities to The Sunday Times, then to the Daily Mirror.

Comrade of all trades

For decades Robert Maxwell had cultivated work and personal relationships especially with Eastern European communist countries, the bloodline of his Pergamon Press Company. Which he used to provide special services by selling favorable coverage and propaganda to dictators and states which needed to be polished up for an international audience. As was the case with the Soviet-imposed East German dictator Erich Honecker, who personally ordered guards at the Berlin Wall to shoot escapers on sight, Maxwell publicly praised him and the “colossal” achievements of communist East Germany and even exchanged kisses with him. He went as far as to publicly oppose the unification of Germany, a view shared by former PM Margaret Thatcher, by stating “German reunification is out of the question“, merely a month before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In a more direct effort to prolong the collapse of the USSR, Maxwell requested a $20 billion loan from the UK government on behalf of Mikhail Gorbachev. In return for the loan, Maxwell negotiated that the USSR was willing to supply coal, chemicals, and fertilizers as well as aircraft to the UK. Trade Secretary Nicholas Ridley, rejected the offer and stated, “Mr. Maxwell mentions sales of chemicals, fertilizers, and coal, but the USSR also has reserves of gold, platinum, and diamonds.” Hinting that that the UK was more interested in pillaging and plundering the weakened USSR than forming any sort of alliance or trade relationship. Senior officials of the former Soviet KGB and GRU intelligence services, were interviewed by Germany’s ARD television in 1994, and strongly suggested that Maxwell’s death was linked to efforts to cover up money laundering operations, between the late 1980s to early 1990s, to western countries before the collapse of the USSR.

Maxwell gained access in Moscow to the Soviet Academy of Sciences and the VAAP, the KGB’s assassination and disinformation apparatus, his interest in sensitive scientific themes caught the attention of th KGB and he was assigned three top intelligence contacts: Solovyov and Stanislav Sorokin, as well as Feliks Sviridov, a GRU colonel specializing in U.S. affairs. Maxwell worked alongside Bulgarian Ognan Doinov, a close ally of former Communist dictator Todor Zhivkov, with who he built business connections to Israel’s military-scientific establishment. Behind the scenes, Maxwell secretly mediated weapons deals between Israel and the USSR, while he himself held large investments in the Israeli weapons industry. In his later years, he worked alongside the Soviet state and Israel to displace and extradite Jews from across the USSR towards Israel in what can be considered a soft pogrom. In a secret agreement between the USSR and Israel, Maxwell smuggled 105 Soviet Jewish nuclear physicists and computer scientists to Israel in 1983-84, making him a major player in Israel’s illegal nuclear capabilities.

Former Soviet KGB colonel Stanislav Sorokin, of the special tasks unit operating under the VAAP, stated: “I would say that he was used by higher-ups, just as the Americans used Kissinger as a messenger or ambassador. Maxwell left England and brought with him a message from Thatcher-an unofficial one. He left Gorbachov to go to America, and tried to bring with him a message from Gorbachov.” Roy Cole, the former press spokesman at the Mirror stated: “There is no doubt that Mr. Maxwell saw himself as a type of new version of Henry Kissinger, and certainly played the role of an international Mr. Fix-It.” Coincidentally, Henry Kissinger is also listed in Jeffrey Epstein’s infamous little black book; prolific paedosadist Jimmy Savile who was Prince Charles’ best friend (father of Epstein’s best friend Prince Andrew) also had a long term show at the time called ‘Jim’ll Fix-It’. What either of these men fixed for their wealthy and prominent connections, is up to speculation.

Former Soviet KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov, one of Maxwell’s KGB intelligence handlers, went to jail for his role in the failed August 1991 coup d’etat against Gorbachov. He claims, that the U.S. and U.K. secret services, who are experienced, could, if they want to, find the truth on Maxwell. “That is, if they want to. I consider it possible, that more things will still come to the surface.” Such as Mikhail Gorbachov and Maxwell’s project in Minnesota, “GorbachovMaxwell Institute”, which turned out to be a cover for money laundering. Previous to the collapse of the USSR organised crime across Eastern Europe skyrocketed as former Soviet KGB and other Eastern Bloc intelligence agencies scrambled to loot the riches and assets of the dying state for their personal use. Maxwell who had established contacts with these Soviet spies turned kingpins received a 15 to 20 percent cut for laundering their money through Bulgaria and Western banks. Maxwell laundered money for international criminals who dealt in weapons trafficking, child trafficking, human trafficking, money laundering, drugs, and contract killings. According to documents revealed by The Sunday Express, Soviet leadership had instructed the KGB security police and intelligence organization to protect Maxwell’s personal reputation and his business activities.”It is strictly forbidden to highlight the KGB’s view of any activities pursued by Robert Maxwell,” said the document circulated within the KGB and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: CPSU. During this period the Yeltsin government launched an investigation into missing funds belonging to the CPSU. Soon after there was a suspicious string of suicides involving those being investigated. At least seven leading members of the CPSU, responsible for the finances of the party, and Maxwell KGB collaborators, were found dead; ten weeks later Robert Maxwell who had surrounded himself with Mossad bodyguards was dead too.

A few weeks after Maxwell’s death, German journalists at AFD were tipped off by Russian sources that they should look into Nordex in Vienna, It was founded with approval of what was then the Soviet Latvian government, when Boris Pugo was KGB chief in Riga. Its head, Grigory Luchansky, is from Riga, a former leader of the Komsomol (communist youth) there. The journalists found and filmed, Robert Maxwell’s sons Ian and Kevin, together with their father’s Bulgarian partner Ognan Doinov, at a meeting in Vienna with Luchansky and others, meaning, Robert Maxwell’s deals and criminal operations were passed on to his children and continue to the present day.

MEGA Group

Prior to his death, Robert Maxwell was a prominent member of the Israeli linked organization named MEGA Group formed in 1991 by the Canadian Charles Bronfman, grandfather of NXIVM human trafficker Clare Bronfman, and the USian Leslie Wexner, close mentor and financier of child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. MEGA Group offers membership to the wealthiest and most influential jewish businessmen in the west, whom are major political donors in both the U.S. and Israel, with close ties to government and intelligence agencies across several countries. Also notable is that many Mega Group members share mutual and deep ties to transnational organized crime, and in particular to the New York mobster Meyer Lansky. In May 1997, an intercepted phone call between a Mossad official in the U.S. and his superior in Tel Aviv revealed Mossad’s efforts to steal U.S. classified information.

The Post:
“According to a source who viewed a copy of the NSA transcript of the conversation, the intelligence officer, speaking in Hebrew, said, ‘The ambassador wants me to go to Mega to get a copy of this letter.’ The source said the supervisor in Tel Aviv rejected the request, saying, ‘This is not something we use Mega for.’”

The leaked communication led to a failed investigation that sought to identify the mole code-named “Mega”. According to Mossad “Mega” was a codeword for the CIA, but U.S. intelligence was dead set on the idea “MEGA” was a prominent individual associated to the Whitehouse. The MEGA in question, was more than likely MEGA group which allegedly acted as a vessel for the Israeli state in D.C. through its influential billionaire network.

Maxwell used his connections in the U.S. to gain access and steal the NSA tool PROMIS (Prosecutors Management Information Systems) designed to – Eventually the Mossad adopted the same process used by the CIA to hide its own money distributions. Maxwell ultimately sold Promis software worth over $500 million to the intelligence agencies of Zimbabwe, South Africa, Guatemala, Colombia, Nicaragua, Bulgaria, Egypt, East Germany, Poland, Belgium, Turkey, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and China, to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the KGB—all of whom the Mossad monitored as Promis developed intelligence for the benefit of the owner—and, unknowingly, the Mossad.

The circumstances behind his death remains a mystery, however, what is not a mystery is Maxwell dying, much like Epstein, would have been beneficial to many prominent individuals and intelligence agencies. At the height of his career, he had acquired numerous contacts worldwide involving political figures, royals, celebrities, businessmen, and criminals across the West, the USSR, Israel, and various communist states across Eastern Europe. An investigation into his death left more questions than answers after three pathologists who performed post-mortem examinations gave three different verdicts. One concluded that he died of a heart attack, another concluded he suffered a heart attack and drowned while a third dismissed the heart condition as a cause of death and concluded that he had fallen into the sea and drowned. However, an Israeli autopsy found several bruises on Maxwell’s face, shoulders, stomach and calves, indicating he was beaten before he fell – or was thrown – from his yacht. Despite all the revelations near the end of Robert Maxwell’s life, it did not compare with the bombshell dropped by senior agents of the former Soviet KGB and GRU who eagerly revealed the extent of Maxwell’s collaboration and allegiance to the former USSR .

1. https://www.timesofisrael.com/from-wooden-shack-to-global-media-magnate-the-rise-and-fall-of-robert-maxwell/
2. https://moneyweek.com/great-frauds-in-history-robert-maxwell
3. https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/ian-robert-maxwell
4. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/robert-maxwell
5. Here are the URLs:
6. https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb
7. https://governamerica.com
8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzFsHWlfsj0