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West Australian
38 minutes ago
- West Australian
Russian spy haven Nornickel remains in Australia and spending big via West Perth subsidiary
A Russian miner that harboured convicted spies in Western Australia controls a West Perth shell company inexplicably spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. The revelation comes less than three weeks after Australia's chief spy warned that Russia remains a 'persistent and aggressive espionage threat'. Nornickel, formerly Norilsk Nickel, is headquartered in Moscow and run by politician turned oligarch Vladimir Potanain. The billionaire is sanctioned by the Australian Government and is a close ally of Russia's leader Vladimir Putin. Mr Potanain's Nornickel splurged on a $7 billion acquisition of LionOre to begin building a WA nickel empire at the height of the mining boom in 2007. The nickel price soon crashed and following more than a decade of bleeding cash the Russian giant cut off its withered WA arm in June 2020 — declaring a 'strategic exit from Australian operations' with the sale of its remaining assets to BHP's Nickel West. Nornickel's numerous Australian subsidiaries were promptly wound up, except for one. This remaining subsidiary has a small letterbox in the foyer of a West Perth office building, with no other known property presence. Nornickel used to have floor space in the same building as the letterbox but the company abandoned that space at least two years ago, according to other tenants of the building who spoke to The West Australian. The West Perth-registered entity's financial accounts only raise more questions. More than $675,000 was mysteriously spent in 2024, despite there being no debts to pay or no assets to maintain during the year, with just over $467,000 left by December 31. About $800,500 was also mysteriously spent in 2023. East Perth-based Australian Audit received $5000 both years to audit the accounts. Nornickel's West Perth subsidiary was 'primarily involved in holding assets under care and maintenance,' according to commentary in its financial accounts. But WA's Department of Mines, Petroleum and Exploration confirmed this subsidiary had no assets on care and maintenance or any mining tenements under its control. The West Perth shell company paid $440,205 to 'key management personnel' during each of 2023 and 2024. Its immediate parent company was originally in the Netherlands but two years ago became domiciled on the Greek side of Mediterranean island nation Cyprus. Cypriot banks have been used to manoeuvre around Western World sanctions since the invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. Nornickel and Australian Audit declined to comment. A spokesperson for The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation declined to comment, but they pointed to a recent speech given by ASIO director general Mike Burgess. Mr Burgess called out Russia in this speech on July 31. 'Russia remains a persistent and aggressive espionage threat. Last year, two Russian-born Australian citizens were arrested and charged with an espionage-related offence,' he said. 'Separately, I can confirm in 2022 a number of undeclared Russian intelligence officers were removed from this country. 'The decision followed a lengthy ASIO investigation that found the Russians recruiting proxies and agents to obtain sensitive information, and employing sophisticated tradecraft to disguise their activities.' Mr Burgess said Russia was 'by no means the only country' Australia's domestic spy agency had to deal with. He said foreign intelligence agencies were aggressively targeting Australia's 'green technology, critical minerals and rare earths extraction and processing'. Nornickel was embroiled in a local spying scandal when The West Australian in 2013 revealed a convicted Russian spy was responsible for shepherding workers into a Goldfields nickel mine. Elena Vavilova was employed as a senior human resources manager at Nornickel, tasked with organising visas and travel for Russian nationals working at the company's WA operations. Just three years prior to this revelation, Ms Vavilova and her husband were involved in one of the biggest spying scandals in decades. They were among 10 agents of the Russian foreign intelligence service arrested in the United States by the FBI in a swoop on deep-cover operatives after an investigation spanning a decade. Ms Vavilova was quickly freed via a prisoner swap and personally awarded a state honour by Mr Putin on her return to Russia. Other ex-Nornickel employees in Australia, like Roman Panov — a director of Nornickel Australia in the 2010s — served as an officer in the former Soviet intelligence agency.
Sky News AU
38 minutes ago
- Sky News AU
Vladimir Putin has ‘already achieved' what he wants from Donald Trump
University of Melbourne Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Michael Wesley says Vladimir Putin has 'already achieved' what he wanted from Donald Trump. Mr Wesley told Sky News Australia that Vladimir Putin would 'love' for Donald Trump to agree to his demands. 'To keep the territory in Ukraine that Russian forces have seized.'
Sydney Morning Herald
an hour ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
A MAGA influencer tried to be a tradwife in Australia. It almost broke her
Lauren Southern, one of the most well-known right-wing influencers during Donald Trump's first term, first went viral with a 2015 video titled 'Why I Am Not a Feminist.' Then 19, beautiful and blond, Southern argued that women are advantaged in many areas of life, including child custody disputes and escaping abusive relationships. 'Feminists are unintentionally creating a world of reverse sexism that I don't want to be a part of,' she said. But being an antifeminist, it turns out, is no shield against abusive male power. Southern's new self-published memoir, This Is Not Real Life, is the story of conservative ideology colliding with reality. It's made headlines for her claim that Andrew Tate, an unrepentant online misogynist accused of human trafficking, sexually assaulted her in Romania in 2018. (Tate has denied this.) The book is particularly revealing, though, for its depiction of Southern's painful attempts to contort herself into an archetypical tradwife, an effort that left her almost suicidal. Her story should be a cautionary tale for the young women who aspire to the domestic life she once evangelised for. Despite the presence of a few high-profile women in Trump's administration, the right is increasingly trying to drive women out of public life. Some of this push comes from the unabashed patriarchs atop the Republican Party; last week, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth reposted a video in which leaders of his Christian denomination said that women shouldn't be allowed to vote. ('All of Christ for All of Life,' wrote Hegseth.) But there are also female influencers who present housewifery as the ultimate in wellness, an escape from the soulless grind of the workplace. 'Less Prozac, more protein,' podcast host Alex Clark told thousands of listeners at a conservative women's conference in June. 'Less burnout, more babies, less feminism, more femininity.' (Clark is unmarried and has no children.) This Instagram-inflected traditionalism is taking hold at a time when the workplace is becoming even less friendly to women. As The Washington Post reported last week, large numbers of mothers have left the workforce this year. Many have been driven out by return-to-office mandates and a backlash against diversity policies that's led to hostile working environments. But some, according to the Post, 'say they are giving up jobs happily, in line with MAGA culture and the rise of the traditional wife'. Southern had more reason than most to want to retreat into the cult of domesticity. As she recounts in her memoir, her antifeminist video helped propel her to international notoriety, and soon she was travelling the world as an avatar of irreverent online reaction. She gave out flyers saying, 'Allah is a Gay God' in a Muslim neighbourhood in England, popularised the idea that there's a white genocide in South Africa and interviewed reactionary philosopher Alexander Dugin on a trip to Moscow seemingly arranged by shadowy Russian interests. It was during this phase of her life that she said she was assaulted by Tate, who was just beginning to build his global brand. Her politics made the trauma particularly hard to process. 'It wouldn't be very helpful to 'the cause' (or my career, for that matter) for me to become exactly what I criticised,' wrote Southern. 'A victim.' After her encounter with Tate, she wrote, her life 'unravelled.' She yearned to escape her own infamy and the need to keep shovelling more outrageous content into the internet's insatiable maw. So when she met a man who wanted to settle down, she jumped at the chance to give up her career and become a stay-at-home wife and mother. She posted photos of herself baking, and 'selfies in the mirror showing how quickly I had bounced back to fitness and health after pregnancy'.
