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Russian nationalist march on National Unity Day in Moscow on November 4, 2017 – Google Search | ||||
The death of the Russian far right<a href=”http://Aljazeera.com” rel=”nofollow”>Aljazeera.com</a>–Nov 23, 2017
Participants carry a banner during a Russian nationalist march on National Unity Day in Moscow on November 4, 2017. The banner reads: “To …
Police Detain Nationalists As Russians Mark National Unity DayRadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty–Nov 4, 2017
Police Detain Nationalists As Russians Mark National Unity Day … Police detained dozens of nationalistdemonstrators in Moscow on November 4 at an antigovernment … Organizers of the Russian March said more than 70 demonstrators were … Maltsev (right) at a Russian opposition rally on May 6, 2017.
Russian March 2017: Smaller Than in Years Past, but More Likely to …The Jamestown Foundation–Nov 6, 2017
The annual “Russian March” on November 4 (National Unity Day) has become a rallying point for the nationalist opposition to the regime. … seemed to promise parades in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Ekaterinburg, Vologda and …
Police detain dozens in Moscow amid fear of anti-government attacksChannel NewsAsia–Nov 5, 2017
Russian anti-riot policemen detain a demonstrator taking part in a nationalist march during the National Unity Day in Moscow on Nov 04, 2017.
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The death of the Russian far right | Far Right | ||||
On November 4, a few hundred people gathered for the annual ultranationalist “Russian march” in Moscow. With chants like “Glory to Russia” and “Freedom for political prisoners”, the demonstrators tried to march through the Lyublino neighbourhood of Moscow, before the police dispersed the crowd, arresting dozens.
But this year’s march was a far cry from what it used to be in the late 2000s and early 2010s when thousands of people would join well-organised columns replete with banners, flags and drummers. Today, most of the leaders of the ultranationalist groups that used to organise the march are either in jail or in self-imposed exile. Their supporters consider them to be politically persecuted and complain about increasing state repression. Although the Kremlin has been accused of supporting conservative and far-right political groups in Europe, at home it seems to be becoming increasingly intolerant towards groups that propagate ideas similar to their Western counterparts. In the past few years, and especially since the conflict in Ukraine erupted in 2014, the Russian authorities have cracked down on nationalist groups under the guise of criminal investigations or accusations of extremism under the infamous “anti-extremism” Law 282. ‘Controlled nationalism’In the early 2000s, Russian President Vladimir Putin was finishing his first presidential term when two colour revolutions struck nearby – the first in Georgia in 2013 and the second in Ukraine in 2014. Large crowds in Tbilisi and Kiev demanded democratic change and major political reforms. The possibility of a colour revolution erupting in Russia seemed too real. Schism in the far right and crackdownThe events of 2014 in Ukraine caught the ultranationalist groups in Russia by surprise. On one hand, the Kremlin was employing strong nationalist rhetoric claiming Crimea was “rightfully” Russian and that ethnic Russians living in Ukraine had to be protected; on the other, fellow Ukrainian far-right groups were supporting the Maidan and opposing the annexation. Promoting destabilisation abroad, preempting it at homeWhile the Kremlin was cracking down on the far right at home, in the West, it was seeking its support. |
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The Trump-Russia Story Is Coming Together. Here’s How to Make Sense of It | By Bill Moyers, Steven Harper | ||||
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Совещание с постоянными членами Совета Безопасности | ||||
Владимир Путин провёл совещание с постоянными членами Совета Безопасности.
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Flynn’s lawyers end communication with Trump team, signaling cooperation with Mueller: NY Times – Reuters | ||||
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Russian Fancy Bear hackers’ UK link revealed | ||||
When Russia’s most notorious hackers hired servers from a UK-registered company, they left a trove of clues behind, the BBC has discovered.
The hackers used the computers to attack the German parliament, hijack traffic meant for a Nigerian government website and target Apple devices. The company, Crookservers, had claimed to be based in Oldham for a time. It says it acted swiftly to eject the hacking team – dubbed Fancy Bear – as soon as it learned of the problem. Technical and financial records from Crookservers seen by the BBC suggest Fancy Bear had access to significant funds and made use of online financial services, some of which were later closed in anti-money laundering operations. Fancy Bear – also known as APT28, Sofacy, Iron Twilight and Pawn Storm – has been linked to Russian intelligence. The spies who came in for milkEarly in 2012, Crookservers claimed to be based at the same address as a newsagent’s on an unassuming terraced road in Oldham, according to historical website registration records. Joining the dotsOver three years, Fancy Bear rented computers through Crookservers, covering its tracks using bogus identities, virtual private networks and hard-to-trace payment systems. Apple attackThe financial account used by Mladenov and Werner was used by Fancy Bear hackers – including two using the names Bruno Labrousse and Roman Brecesku – to hire other servers from Crookservers. Follow the moneyFancy Bear spent at least $6,000 (£4,534) with Crookservers via a variety of services that offered an extra level of anonymity. Continuing operationThe financial and technical records link together several attacks previously tied to Fancy Bear. |
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The Dark Side of Allen Dulles: The Greatest Untold Story of American Power – U.S. History (2015) – YouTube | ||||
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Trump and Russia: Where the various investigations stand | ||||
WASHINGTON (AP) — Some Republicans are hoping lawmakers will soon wrap up investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 election that have dragged on for most of the year. But with new details in the probe emerging almost daily, that seems unlikely.
Three congressional committees are investigating Russian interference and whether President Donald Trump’s campaign was in any way involved. The panels have obtained thousands of pages of documents from Trump’s campaign and other officials, and have done dozens of interviews. The probes are separate from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Mueller can prosecute for criminal activity, while Congress can only lay out findings, publicize any perceived wrongdoing and pass legislation to try to keep problems from happening again. If any committee finds evidence of criminal activity, it must refer the matter to Mueller. All three committees have focused on a June 2016 meeting that Trump campaign officials held in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer and others. They are also looking into outreach by several other Russians to the campaign, including involvement of George Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty this month to lying to the FBI as part of Mueller’s probe. New threads continue to emerge, such as a recent revelation that Donald Trump Jr. was messaging with WikiLeaks, the website that leaked emails from top Democratic officials during the campaign. A look at the committees that are investigating, and the status of their work when they return from their Thanksgiving break: SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE The Senate intelligence panel, which has been the most bipartisan in its approach, has interviewed more than 100 people, including most of those attending the Trump Tower meeting. Chairman Richard Burr of North Carolina and the panel’s top Democrat, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, have said they plan to bring in Donald Trump Jr. The president’s son was one of several Trump campaign officials in the meeting. The committee has looked broadly at the issue of interference, and called in executives from Facebook, Twitter and Google, pushing them to take steps to prevent Russian election meddling on their platforms. Warner told The Associated Press the committee is still looking for more information from those companies, which were initially reluctant to cooperate. Burr has said that he wants to wrap up the probe by early spring, when congressional primaries begin. While there are many areas of bipartisan agreement on the meddling, it’s unclear whether all members will agree to the final report. It’s also unclear if the report will make a strong statement on whether the Trump campaign colluded in any way with Russia. Warner said it’s plain there were “unprecedented contacts” as Russians reached out to the Trump campaign but what’s not established is collusion. ___ HOUSE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE In the House, Democrats hope the intelligence committee can remain focused on the Russia probe as the panel’s GOP chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, and other Republicans have launched new, separate investigations into Democrat Hillary Clinton and a uranium deal during President Barack Obama’s administration. Nunes stepped back from the Russia probe in April after criticism that he was too close to the White House, but remains chairman of the committee. Some Republicans on the panel have grown restless with the probe, saying it has amounted to a fishing expedition and pushing for it to end. Still, the committee has continued to interview dozens of witnesses involved with the Trump campaign, among them several participants in the 2016 meeting. On Nov. 30, the panel will interview Attorney General Jeff Sessions behind closed doors. Lawmakers are interested in Sessions’ knowledge about interactions between Trump campaign aides and Russians, and also his own contacts. The top Democrat on the panel, California Rep. Adam Schiff, told AP the committee has multiple interviews before the New Year. He said the Republican investigations into Clinton and Obama could be “an enormous time drain,” but they have not yet fully organized. He says the committee must be thorough and he doesn’t believe the Russia investigation should end soon. ___ SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE The Senate Judiciary Committee has also divided along partisan lines as Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the panel’s top Democrat, haven’t agreed on some interviews and subpoenas. But as in the House, the panel has proceeded anyway, conducting bipartisan, closed-door interviews with several people who were in the 2016 meeting. The panel is showing recent signs that it is aggressively pursuing the investigation. The committee is the only one to have interviewed Trump Jr. And just before the Thanksgiving break, it sent Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a letter asking him to be more forthcoming with the committee. Grassley has been focused on a law that requires foreign agents to register and the firing of James Comey as FBI director. Along with the other committees, Judiciary is also looking into a dossier of allegations about Trump’s own connections to Russia. It’s not known if the panel will issue a final report, or if its probe will conclude before next year’s elections. |
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The Curious World of Donald Trumps Private Russian Connections | ||||
“Tell me who you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are.”
—Cervantes “I’ve always been blessed with a kind of intuition about people that allows me to sense who the sleazy guys are, and I stay far away.” —Donald Trump, Surviving at the Top Even before the November 8 election, many leading Democrats were vociferously demanding that the FBI disclose the fruits of its investigations into Putin-backed Russian hackers. Instead FBI Director Comey decided to temporarily revive his zombie-like investigation of Hillary’s emails. That decision may well have had an important impact on the election, but it did nothing to resolve the allegations about Putin. Even now, after the CIA has disclosed an abstract of its own still-secret investigation, it is fair to say that we still lack the cyberspace equivalent of a smoking gun. Fortunately, however, for those of us who are curious about Trump’s Russian connections, there is another readily accessible body of material that has so far received surprisingly little attention. This suggests that whatever the nature of President-elect Donald Trump’s relationship with President Putin, he has certainly managed to accumulate direct and indirect connections with a far-flung privateRussian/FSU network of outright mobsters, oligarchs, fraudsters, and kleptocrats. Any one of these connections might have occurred at random. But the overall pattern is a veritable Star Wars bar scene of unsavory characters, with Donald Trump seated right in the middle. The analytical challenge is to map this network—a task that most journalists and law enforcement agencies, focused on individual cases, have failed to do. Of course, to label this network “private” may be a stretch, given that in Putin’s Russia, even the toughest mobsters learn the hard way to maintain a respectful relationship with the “New Tsar.” But here the central question pertains to our new Tsar. Did the American people really know they were putting such a “well-connected” guy in the White House? The Big Picture: Kleptocracy and Capital Flight A few of Donald Trump’s connections to oligarchs and assorted thugs have already received sporadic press attention—for example, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s reported relationship with exiled Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash. But no one has pulled the connections together, used them to identify still more relationships, and developed an image of the overall patterns. Nor has anyone related these cases to one of the most central facts about modern Russia: its emergence since the 1990s as a world-class kleptocracy, second only to China as a source of illicit capital and criminal loot, with more than $1.3 trillion of net offshore “flight wealth” as of 2016.1 This tidal wave of illicit capital is hardly just Putin’s doing. It is in fact a symptom of one of the most epic failures in modern political economy—one for which the West bears a great deal of responsibility. This is the failure, in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in the late 1980s, to ensure that Russia acquires the kind of strong, middle-class-centric economic and political base that is required for democratic capitalism, the rule of law, and stable, peaceful relationships with its neighbors. ![]() For example, Russia’s 1992 “voucher privatization” program permitted a tiny elite of former state-owned company managers and party apparatchiks to acquire control over a vast number of public enterprises, often with the help of outright mobsters. A majority of Gazprom, the state energy company that controlled a third of the world’s gas reserves, was sold for $230 million; Russia’s entire national electric grid was privatized for $630 million; ZIL, Russia’s largest auto company, went for about $4 million; ports, ships, oil, iron and steel, aluminum, much of the high-tech arms and airlines industries, the world’s largest diamond mines, and most of Russia’s banking system also went for a song. In 1994–96, under the infamous “loans-for-shares” program, Russia privatized 150 state-owned companies for just $12 billion, most of which was loaned to a handful of well-connected buyers by the state—and indirectly by the World Bank and the IMF. The principal beneficiaries of this “privatization”—actually, cartelization—were initially just 25 or so budding oligarchs with the insider connections to buy these properties and the muscle to hold them.2 The happy few who made personal fortunes from this feeding frenzy—in a sense, the very first of the new kleptocrats—not only included numerous Russian officials, but also leading gringo investors/advisers, Harvard professors, USAID advisers, and bankers at Credit Suisse First Boston and other Wall Street investment banks. As the renowned development economist Alex Gerschenkron, an authority on Russian development, once said, “If we were in Vienna, we would have said, ‘We wish we could play it on the piano!’” For the vast majority of ordinary Russian citizens, this extreme re-concentration of wealth coincided with nothing less than a full-scale 1930s-type depression, a “shock therapy”-induced rise in domestic price levels that wiped out the private savings of millions, rampant lawlessness, a public health crisis, and a sharp decline in life expectancy and birth rates. Sadly, this neoliberal “market reform” policy package that was introduced at a Stalin-like pace from 1992 to late 1998 was not only condoned but partly designed and financed by senior Clinton Administration officials, neoliberal economists, and innumerable USAID, World Bank, and IMF officials. The few dissenting voices included some of the West’s best economic brains—Nobel laureates like James Tobin, Kenneth Arrow, Lawrence Klein, and Joseph Stiglitz. They also included Moscow University’s Sergei Glaziev, who now serves as President Putin’s chief economic advisor.3 Unfortunately, they were no match for the folks with the cash. There was also an important intervention in Russian politics. In January 1996 a secret team of professional U.S. political consultants arrived in Moscow to discover that, as CNN put it back then, “The only thing voters like less than Boris Yeltsin is the prospect of upheaval.” The experts’ solution was one of earliest “Our brand is crisis” campaign strategies, in which Yeltsin was “spun” as the only alternative to “chaos.” To support him, in March 1996 the IMF also pitched in with $10.1 billion of new loans, on top of $17.3 billion of IMF/World Bank loans that had already been made. With all this outside help, plus ample contributions from Russia’s new elite, Yeltsin went from just 8 percent approval in the January 1996 polls to a 54-41 percent victory over the Communist Party candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, in the second round of the July 1996 election. At the time, mainstream media like Time and the New York Times were delighted. Very few outside Russia questioned the wisdom of this blatant intervention in post-Soviet Russia’s first democratic election, or the West’s right to do it in order to protect itself. By the late 1990s the actual chaos that resulted from Yeltsin’s warped policies had laid the foundations for a strong counterrevolution, including the rise of ex-KGB officer Putin and a massive outpouring of oligarchic flight capital that has continued virtually up to the present. For ordinary Russians, as noted, this was disastrous. But for many banks, private bankers, hedge funds, law firms, and accounting firms, for leading oil companies like ExxonMobil and BP, as well as for needy borrowers like the Trump Organization, the opportunity to feed on post-Soviet spoils was a godsend. This was vulture capitalism at its worst. The nine-lived Trump, in particular, had just suffered a string of six successive bankruptcies. So the massive illicit outflows from Russia and oil-rich FSU members like Kazahkstan and Azerbaijan from the mid-1990s provided precisely the kind of undiscriminating investors that he needed. These outflows arrived at just the right time to fund several of Trump’s post-2000 high-risk real estate and casino ventures—most of which failed. As Donald Trump, Jr., executive vice president of development and acquisitions for the Trump Organization, told the “Bridging U.S. and Emerging Markets Real Estate” conference in Manhattan in September 2008 (on the basis, he said, of his own “half dozen trips to Russia in 18 months”):
All this helps to explain one of the most intriguing puzzles about Donald Trump’s long, turbulent business career: how he managed to keep financing it, despite a dismal track record of failed projects.4 This thicket of cross-dealing made it almost impossible to regulate “control fraud,” where insiders at leading financial institutions went on a self-serving binge, borrowing and lending to finance risky investments of all kinds. It became difficult to determine which institutions were net borrowers or investors, as the concentration of ownership and self-dealing in the financial system just soared. Of course, all of these curious relationships may just be meaningless coincidences. After all, the director shared by Telesh and Golubchik is also listed in the same role for more than 200 other companies, and more than a thousand companies besides Arbat Capital and Arigon Overseas share Westix’s corporate address. In the burgeoning land of offshore havens and shell-game corporate citizenship, there is no such thing as overcrowding. The appropriate way to view all this evidence is to regard it as “Socratic:” raising important unanswered questions, not providing definite answers.
1Author’s estimates; see globalhavenindustry.com for more details.
2For an overview and critical discussion, see here. 3See Lawrence Klein and Marshall Pomer, Russia’s Economic Transition Gone Awry (Stanford University Press, 2002); see also James S. Henry and Marshall Pomer, “A Pile of Ruble,” New Republic, September 7, 1998. 4See this Washington Post report, which counts just six bankruptcies to the Trump Organization’s credit, but excludes failed projects like the Trump SoHo, the Toronto condo-hotel, the Fort Lauderdale condo-hotel, and many others Trump was a minority investor or had simply licensed his brand. 5For example, the Swiss federal and cantonal corporate registries, available here. 6For ICIJ’s April 2016 “Panama Papers” database of offshore companies, see here. 7Trump’s minority equity deal with Bayrock was unlike many others, where he simply licensed his name. See this March 2008 New York Magazine piece. 8“I dealt mostly with Tevfik,” he said in 2007. 9Case 1:09-cv-21406-KMW Document 408-1. Entered on FLSD Docket 11/26/2013. p. 15. 10Source. 11Bayrock reported its co-ownership of six Rixos hotels in a 2007 press release. 12See also Salihovic, Elnur, Major Players in the Muslim Business World, p.107, and this Telegraph piece. 13See also Zambia, Mining, and Neo-Liberalism; Brussels Times; and Le Soir. 14According to the Panama Papers database, “International Financial Limited” was registered on April 3, 1998, but is no longer active today, although no precise deregistration date is available. Source. 15According to the Panama Papers, “Group Rixos Hotel” is still active company, while three of the four companies it serves were struck off in 2007 and the fourth, Hazara Asset Management, in 2013. 16Source. 17See also TurizmGüncel.com and Le Grand Soir. 18Case 1:09-cv-21406-KMW Document 408-1. Entered on FLSD Docket 11/26/2013. p. 16. 19The exact date that Sater joined Bayrock is unclear. A New York Times article says 2003, but this appears to be too late. Sater says 1999, but this is much too early. A certified petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court places the time around 2002, which is more consistent with Sater’s other activities during this period, including his cooperation with the Department of Justice on the Coppa case in 1998–2001, and his foreign travel. 20See Financial Times, New York Times, and Washington Post. Note that previous accounts of Sater’s activities have overlooked the role that this very permissive relationship with federal law enforcement, especially the FBI, may have played in encouraging Sater’s subsequent risk-taking and financial crimes. See here. 21See here, p. 13. 22Sater’s 1998 case, never formally sealed, was U.S. v. Sater, 98-CR-1101 (E.D.N.Y.) The case in which Sater secretly informed was U.S. v. Coppa, 00-CR-196 (E.D.N.Y.). See also this piece in the Daily Beast. 23Source. Sater also may have taken other steps to conceal his criminal past. According to the 2015 lawsuit filed by x Bayrocker Jody Kriss, Arif agreed to pay Sater his $1 million salary under the table, allowing Sater to pretend that he lacked resources to compensate any victims of his prior financial frauds. See Kriss v. Bayrock, pp. 2, 18. The lawsuit also alleges that Sater may have held a majority of Bayrock’s ownership, but that Arif, Sater and other Bayrock officers may have conspired to hide this by listing Arif as the sole owner on offering documents. 24See here, p. 155. 25Author’s interview with Sigrun Davidsdottir, 26See “Report of the Special Investigation Commission on the 2008 Financial Crisis” (April 12, 2010). 27These loans are disclosed in the Kaupthing Bank’s “Corporate Credit – Disclosure of Large Exposures > €40 mm.” loan book, September 15, 2008. This document was disclosed by Wikileaks in 2009. See thisTelegraph piece. https://file.wikileaks.info/leak/kaupthing-bank-before-crash-2008.pdf, p.145 (€79.5mm construction yacht loan to Russian vodka magnate Yuri Shefler’s Serena Equity Ltd.); p. 208 (€45.8 mm yacht construction loan to Canadian-Russian billionaire Alex Shnaider’s Filbert Pacific Ltd.). 28Kriss lawsuit, op. cit.; author’s analysis of Kaupthing/ FL G employees published career histories. 29Author’s interview with an “Iceland economist, 30Source. The passage in Russian, with the father’s name underlined, is as follows: “Родители Алекса Шнайдера владели одним из первых успешных русских магазинов в русском квартале Торонто. Алекс помогал в бизнесе отцу—Евсею Шнайдеру, расставляя на полках товар и протирая полы. С юных лет в Алексе зрела предпринимательская жилка. Живя с родителями, он стал занимать деньги у их друзей и торговать тканями и электроникой с разваливающимися в конце 80-х годов советскими предприятиями.” “Евсею Шнайдеру” is the dative case of “Евсей Шнайдер,” or “Evsei Shnaider,” the father’s name in Russian. 31The Zurich company registry reports that “Seabeco SA” (CHE-104.863.207) was initially registered on December 16, 1982, with “Boris Joseph Birshtein, Canadian citizen, resident in Toronto” as its President. It entered liquidation on May 5, 1999, in Arth, handled by the Swiss trustee Paul Barth. The Zurich company registry listed “Boris Joseph Birshtein, Canadian citizen, resident in Toronto,” as the President of Seabeco Kirgizstan AG in 1992, while “Boris Joseph Birshtein, Canadian citizen, resident in Zurich,” was listed as the company’s President in 1993. “Boris Birshtein” is also listed as the President and director of a 1991 Panama company, The Seabeco Group, Inc. as of December 6 1991. See below. 32Source. 33The Zurich company registry reports that “Seabeco SA” (CHE-104.863.207) was initially registered on December 16, 1982, with “Boris Joseph Birshtein, Canadian citizen, resident in Toronto” as its President. According to the registry, it entered liquidation on May 5, 1999. See also this. The liquidation was handled by the Swiss trustee Paul Barth, in Arth. 34For Seabeco’s Antwerp subsidiary, see here. 35“Royal HTM Group, Inc.” of Toronto, (Canadian Federal Corporation # 624476-9), owned 50-50 by Birshtein and his nephew. Source. 36Birshtein was a director of Seabeco Capital Inc. (Canadian Federal Incorporatio # 248194-4,) a Winnipeg company created June 2, 1989, and dissolved December 22, 1992. 37Since 1998, Boris Birshtein (Toronto) has also served as Chairman, CEO, and a principle shareholder of “Trimol Group Inc.,” a publicly-traded Delaware company that trades over the counter. (Symbol: TMOL). Its product line is supposedly “computerized photo identification and database management system utilized in the production of variety of secure essential government identification documents.” See Bloomberg. However, according to Trimol’s July 2015 10-K, the company has only had one customer, the former FSU member Moldova, with which Trimol’s wholly owned subsidiary Intercomsoft concluded a contract in 1996 for the producton of a National Passport and Population Registration system. That contract was not renewed in 2006, and the subsidiary and Trimol have had no revenues since then. Accordingly, as of 2016 Trimol has only two part time employees, its two principal shareholders, Birshtein and his nephew, who, directly and indirectly account for 79 percent of Trimol’s shares outstanding. According to the July 2015 10-K, Birshtein, in particular, owned 54 percent of TMOL’s outstanding 78.3 million shares, including 3.9 million by way of “Magnum Associates, Inc.,” which the 10-K says only has Birshtein as a shareholder, and 34.7 million by way of yet another Canadian company, “Royal HTM Group, Inc.” of Ontario (Canadian Federal Corporation # 624476-9), which is owned 50-50 by Birshtein and a nephew. It is interesting to note according to the Panama Papers database, a Panama company called “Magnum Associates Inc. was incorporated on December 10, 1987, and struck off on March 10, 1989. Source. As of December 2016, TMOL’s stock price was zero. 38See the case of Trimol Group Inc above. The Seabeco Group, Inc., a Panama company that was formed in December 1991, apparently still exists. Boris J. Birshtein is listed as this company’s Director and President. See “The Seabeco Group Inc.” registered in Panama by Morgan Y Morgan, 1991-12.06, with “Numero de Ficha” 254192; source here and here. 39As of December 2016, the Zurich company registry listed a Zurich company called “Conim Investment AG” (CH-020.3.002.334-7) was originally formed in May 1992, and in January 1995 was transferred to Arth, in the Canton of Schwyz, where it is still in existence. (CHE-102.029.498). This is confirmed by the Schwyz Canton registry. According to these registries, Conim Investment AG is the successor company to two other Zurich campanies, “Seabeco Kirgizstan AG,” formed in 1992, and “KD Kirgizstan Development AG,” its direct successor. Source. The Swiss federal company registry also reports the following Swiss companies in which Boris J.Birshtein has been an officer and or director, all of which are now in liquidation: (1) Seabeco Trade and Finance AG (CH-020.3.002.179-4, 4/3/92-11/30/98 ), ; (2) Seabeco SA (CHE-104.863.207,12/16/82-5/9/99) ; (3) Seabeco Metals AG (4/3/92-6/11/96); (4) BNB Trading AG (CH-020.3.002.181-9, 1/10/92-11/19/98 ); and (5) ME Moldova Enterprises AG (CH-020.3.003.104-1, 11/10/92-9/16/94). All of these liquidations were handled by the same trustee, Paul Barth in Arth. 40As of December 2016, active Birshtein companies include “Conim Investment AG” (CH-020.3.002.334-7) in the Swiss Canton of Schwyz and he Seabeco Group, Inc. in Panama. 41For example, the Zurich and Schwyz company registries indicates that the following have been board members of Birshtein companies: (1) Seabeco Trade and Finance AG: Iouri Orlov (citizen of Russia, resident of Moscow), Alexander Griaznov (citizen of Russia, resident of Basserdorf Switzerland), and Igor Filippov (citizen of Russia, resident of Basel). (2) ME Moldova Enterprises: Andrei Keptein (citizen of FSU/ Moldova; Evsei Shnaider (Russian émigré to Canada); (3) Seabeco Kirigizstan/ Conim Investment AG: Sanjarbek Almatov (citizen of Bishkek, FSU/ Kirgizstan), Toursounbek Tchynguychev (citizen of Bishkek, FSU/Kirgizstan), Evsei Shnaider (Russian émigré to Canada); (4) BNB Trading AG: Yuri Spivak (Russian émigré to Canada; (5) Seabeco Metals AG: Alex Shnaider (Russian émigré to Canada). 42Charles Clover, “Ukraine: Questions over Kuchma’s adviser cast shadows,” Financial Times, October 30, 1999, available here. See also Misha Glenny, 2009. McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (Vintage Books), pp. 63–5. 43Clover, “Ukraine: Questions over Kuchma’s adviser cast shadows.” 44See FBI, Organizational Intelligence Unit (August 1998), “Semion Mogilevich Organization: Eurasian Organized Crime,” available here. 45Clover, “Ukraine: Questions over Kuchma’s adviser cast shadows.” 46Clover, “Ukraine: Questions over Kuchma’s adviser cast shadows.” 47“Boris knows everyone,” Toronto Star, August 28, 1993. 48See Zurich corporate registry for “Seabeco Metals AG” (CH-020.3.002.181-9), formed 4/3/92 and liquidated 6/11/96. 49Source. 50Source. 51Source. 52See Kaupthing Bank, “Loan Book, September 2008,” Wikileaks. 53The Panama Papers database provides an address for “Midland Resources Holding Limited” that exactly matches the company’s corporate address in Guernsey, as noted by Bloomberg’s corporate data base. Here are the 28 companies that are associated with Midland in database: Aligory Business Ltd.; Anglesey Business Ltd.; Blue Industrial Skies Inc.; Cl 850 Aviation Holdings Ltd.; Cl 850 Aircraft Investments Ltd.; Caray Business Inc.; Challenger Aircraft Company Limited; Colley International Marketing S.A.; East International Realty Ltd.; Filbert Pacific Limited; Gorlane Business Inc.; Jabar Incorporated; Jervois Holdings Inc.; Kerryhill Investments Corp.; Leaterby International Investments Corp.; Maddocks Equities Ltd.; Maverfin Holding Inc.; Midland Maritime Holding Ltd.; Midland River-Sea Holding Ltd.; Midland Drybulk Holding Ltd.; Midland Fundco Ltd.; Norson Investments Corp.; Olave Equities Limited; Orlion Business Incorporated; Perseus Global Inc.; Sellana Investments Global Corp.; Stogan Assets Incorporated; Toomish Asset Ltd. 54With the address “11 First Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street; apt. 42; Moscow; Russia.”: here, here, and here. 55As for the Midland-related offshore vehicles still listed as active, one shareholder in two of them—Stogan Assets Incorporated and Blue Sky Industries Inc.—happens to have the same name as Russia’s Deputy Culture Minister Gregory Pirumov, reportedly arrested in March 2016 on embezzlement charges. The “Gregory Pirumov” in the Panama Papers has a registered address in Moscow (4 Beregkovskaia Quay; 121059), as do the reported agent of these two companies: “Global Secretary Services Ltd. Mal. Tolmachevskiy pereulok 10 Office No.3 Moscow, Russia 119017 Attention: Katya Skupova).” See here. A “Georgy Pirumov” is also listed separately in the Panama Papers as having been a shareholder in the same two companies. For what it is worth, in September 2016, one “Georgy Pirumov” was convicted in Moscow of “illegally taking over a building in Gogolevsky Boulevard,” and sentenced to 20 months in a minimum-security correctional facility. See The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Sept 15, 2016. At this point, however, we need to emphasize that there is still plenty that needs to be investigated—we cannot yet confirm whether “Georgy” and “Gregory” are the same person, whether they are related, how they might be related to Shnaider’s Mineral Resources, or whether they are the same people named in the articles just noted above about criminal prosecutions. 56Source. 57See Schwyz canton corporate registry, “ME Moldova Enterprises AG,” CH-130.0.007.159-5. 58See Zurich corporate registry, “ME Moldova Enterprises AG,” CH-020.3.003.104-1 (11/10/92-9/16/94). 59See “Seabeco Group Inc.,” Panama Corporate Registry # 254192, formed 12-6-1991. 60See “Seabeco Security Intl Inc.” Panama Corporate Registry #254206, formed 12-10-1991.” 61See footnotes 58 and 59. 62Source. 63See Unian Information Agency. 64Source. 65See Transparency International Russia. 66A.K.A. “Tochtachunov.” See FBI, Organizational Intelligence Unit (August 1998), “Semion Mogilevich Organization: Eurasian Organized Crime.” 67According to the Panama Papers, as of December 2016, Lytton Ventures Inc., incorporated in 2006, was still an active company but its registration jurisdiction was listed as “unknown.” 68For Telesh’s company the director’s name is given as “Stanley Williams,” as compared with “Stanley Edward Williams” in Golubchik’s, but they have the same address. See here. Telesh’s company, Barlow Investing, was incorporated in 2004. In the PP database, as of December 2016 its status was “Transferred Out,” although its de-registration date and registration jurisdiction are unknown. 69Westix Ltd., registered in 2005, is still active, according to the Panama Papers. 70In the Panama Papers, Telesh’s company and Golubchik’s reportedly have the same director, one Stanley Williams. Williams is also reportedly a director of Westix, which shares its address with two other offshore companies that use corporate names that Mogilevich has reportedly used at least twice each in the past. Arbat Capital, registered in 2003, was still active as of December 2016, as was Arigon Overseas, registered in 2007. 71See the diagram below. 72These three offshore companies are not in the Panama Papers database. Firtash acknowledged these connections to Telesh but still told FT reporters that he didn’t know her. The three companies identified in the report are (1) Highrock Holdings, which Firtash and Telesh each reportedly owned 1/3rd of, and where Firtash served as director beginning in 2001; (2) Agatheas Holdings, where Firtash apparently replaced Telesh as director in 2003; and (3) Elmstad Trading, a Cyprus company owned by Firtash which in 2002 transferred the shares of a Russian company named Rinvey to Telesh and two other people: one of them Firtash’s lawyer and the other the wife of a reputed Mogilevich business partner. See also here. 73On Mogilevich, see, for example, this. 74See also FBI, Organizational Intelligence Unit (August 1998), “Semion Mogilevich Organization; Eurasian Organized Crime,” available here. 75Source. 76See FBI archives and Slate. 77David Cay Johnston, interview with the author, November 2016. Wayne Barrett, Trump: The Greatest Show on Earth: The Deals, the Downfall, the Reinvention (Regan Arts, 2016). 78Johnston, interview; see also here. In another interesting coincidence, the President of YBM Magnex was also reportedly a financial director of Highrock in the late 1990s, before Manafort-client Dmytro Firtash joined the company as a director in 2001. See note 151. Source. 79Source. 80Source. James S. Henry, Esq. is an investigative economist and lawyer who has written widely about offshore and onshore tax havens, kleptocracy, and pirate banking. He is the author of The Blood Bankers (Basic Books, 2003,2005), a classic investigation of where the money went that was loaned to key debtor countries in the 1970s-1990s. He is a senior fellow at the Columbia University’s Center on Sustainable Investment, a Global Justice Fellow at Yale, a senior advisor at the Tax Justice Network, and a member of the New York Bar. He has pursued frontline investigations of odious debt, flight capital, and corruption in more than fifty developing countries, including Russia, China, South Africa, Brazil, the Philippines, Argentina, Venezuela, and Panama. |
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Trump mogilevich and putin – Google Search | ||||
The Trump administration is up to its neck in RussiansChicago Tribune–Nov 6, 2017
Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Ivanka Trump, senior adviser Jared Kushner and Vice President Mike Pence listen during a news conference with … really has their best interests at heart — and that he hasn’t prioritized his own personal profits or those of Vladimir Putin or his Russian business partners.”.
Former Trump Aides Charged as Prosecutors Reveal New …New York Times–Oct 30, 2017
The United States has concluded that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia tried to tip the outcome of the 2016 election in favor of Mr. Trump. As part of that effort, Russian operatives hacked Democratic accounts and released a trove of embarrassing emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Mueller …
Trump-Russia Probe: Are Paul Manafort and Rick Gates Crooks or …Newsweek–Nov 3, 2017
The 30-year-old former member of the Trump campaign’s foreign policy advisory panel claimed he was in touch, according to the Mueller indictment, with a “female Russian national” whom he believed was President Vladimir Putin’s niece and could arrange a meeting between Trump officials and top …
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mogilevich and putin – Google Search | ||||
An excerpt from ‘Collusion’MSNBC–Nov 16, 2017
Putin had missed perestroika and glasnost, Gorbachev’s reformist ideas, and had returned from provincial East Germany and Dresden. Putin was now carving …. One of Simpson’s subjects was Semion Mogilevich, a Ukrainian-Russian mafia don and one of the FBI’s ten most wanted individuals. Mogilevich …
The Trump administration is up to its neck in RussiansChicago Tribune–Nov 6, 2017
Two of its key owners are Kirill Shamalov, who is married to Putin’s youngest daughter, and Gennady Timchenko, the sanctioned oligarch whose … from a businessman and Ukrainian parliamentarian named Ivan Fursin, who is closely linked to one of Russia’s most notorious criminals: Semion Mogilevich.
Former Trump Aides Charged as Prosecutors Reveal New …New York Times–Oct 30, 2017
The United States has concluded that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia tried to tip the outcome of the 2016 election in favor of Mr. Trump. As part of that effort, Russian operatives hacked Democratic accounts and released a trove of embarrassing emails related to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Mueller …
Trump-Russia Probe: Are Paul Manafort and Rick Gates Crooks or …Newsweek–Nov 3, 2017
But anyone with basic knowledge of Russia—or access to Google—is aware that Putin is an only child (his two older brothers died before he was born) and … for businessman and Ukrainian parliamentarian Ivan Fursin, who is closely linked to one of Russia’s most notorious mobsters, Semion Mogilevich.
Why FBI Can’t Tell All on Trump, RussiaWhoWhatWhy / RealNewsProject (blog)–Mar 27, 2017
The Trump-Sater-Mogilevich–Putin saga, with its intertwining domestic and international threads, is almost certainly a battleground for powerful elements in the US intelligence complex. Even unravelling one thread — the FBI’s “running” of Felix Sater as an informant — is a challenge at every level. The FBI …
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The Strange Ties between Semion Mogilevich and Vladimir Putin | ||||
On March 23, 2009 the Moscow City Court ruled that Semion Mogilevich, also known as Sergiy Shneider, will remain in prison until May 23 while investigators continue to examine his case. (Kommersant Daily,March 24). This is the third extension of his detention the court has ordered since Mogilevich was arrested on January 23, 2008 and charged with abetting in a tax evasion scheme. What makes this case highly sensitive is that Mogilevich has been suspected of having close links to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the opaque gas trade between Gazprom and Ukraine and RosUkrEnergo.
Mogilevich is a former Ukrainian citizen, now residing in a prison cell in Moscow. He is wanted by the FBI on major fraud charges for his role in what is known as the “YBM Magnex Scam.” Numerous police sources claim that he is one of the leaders of the Russian mafia, a charge he denied in an interview with the BBC in 1999 when he was still at liberty living in an exclusive neighborhood in Moscow (BBC, June 12, 1999). Mogilevich is alleged to be a secret billionaire linked to Vladimir Putin and is reputed to be a hidden business partner of Dmytro Firtash, the 50 percent owner of RosUkrEnergo, the Swiss-based gas trader, 50 percent owned by Gazprom. Firtash has consistently denied any criminal links to Mogilevich, yet he admits knowing him (Vedomosti, 27 June, 2006). Mogilevich has also been described by Leonid Derkach, the former head of the Ukrainian security service, the SBU, as a close friend of Vladimir Putin’s during a conversation with former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma. The questions surrounding the Putin-Mogilevich relationship – if indeed there is one – are not simply theoretical; the answers touch on the nature of power in the Kremlin; how it functions and which players serve its purposes. Part of the answer can be found in the Kuchma-Derkach dialogue held in Kuchma’s office on February 8, 2000. According to a recording of the conversation made by a member of Kuchma’s security detail, Mykola Melnychenko:
A second key to the puzzle lies in the alleged relationship between Firtash and Mogilevich in the Eural Trans Gas and RosUkrEnergo, companies involved in the strategically important transit of natural gas from Central Asia to Ukraine which worked closely with Gazprom, the Russian state-owned gas company apparently controlled by Putin.
Another document linking Mogilevich to Andras Knopf, the executive director of Eural Trans Gas, the Hungarian gas intermediary company created by Firtash to act as the middleman in the transit of Turkmen gas to Ukraine, is a letter allegedly written by MVD Major-General Alexander Mordovets on November 14, 1998 to the former first Deputy Head of the Department for the Struggle Against Organized Crime of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, in which Mordovets described the close criminal relationship between Knopf and Mogilevich. However, on September 16, 2004, six years after this letter surfaced, Mordovets suddenly recanted. In an affidavit sent to Mark J. MacDougall, a lawyer working for the law firm Akin Gump in Washington, DC., Mordovets claimed that he never wrote this letter implying that it was a forgery. |
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Semion Mogilevich – Wikipedia | ||||
Semion Yudkovich Mogilevich[1] (Ukrainian: Семен Ю́дкович Могиле́вич, tr: Semen Yudkovych Mohylevych, [sɛmˈɛn ˈjudkɔwɪt͡ʃ mɔɦɪˈlɛwɪt͡ʃ]; born June 30, 1946) is a Ukrainian-born, alleged Russian organized crime boss, believed by European and United States federal law enforcement agencies to be the “boss of bosses” of most Russian Mafia syndicates in the world.[2] Mogilevich is believed to direct a vast criminal empire and is described by the FBI as “the most dangerous mobster in the world.”[3][4] He has been accused by the FBI of “weapons trafficking, contract murders, extortion, drug trafficking, and prostitution on an international scale.”[5]
Mogilevich’s nicknames include “Don Semyon” and “The Brainy Don” (because of his business acumen).[6] According to US diplomatic cables, he is said to control RosUkrEnergo, a company actively involved in Russia–Ukraine gas disputes, and a partner of Raiffeisen Bank.[7] He lives freely in Moscow, and has three children. He is most closely associated with the Solntsevskaya Bratva crime group. Political figures he has close alliances with include Yury Luzhkov, the former Mayor of Moscow, Dmytro Firtash and Leonid Derkach, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine.[8][9]Oleksandr Turchynov, who was designated as acting President of Ukraine in February 2014, appeared in court in 2010 for allegedly destroying files pertaining to Mogilevich.[10] Alexander Litvinenko, shortly before his assassination, claimed that Mogilevich has allegedly had a “good relationship” with Vladimir Putin since the 1990s.[11] |
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Mogilevich and Putin | ||||
This conversation, which was secretly recorded by a Kuchma bodyguard, is difficult to follow, but it gives you a sense of Mogilevich’s power and reach. First, he ran his own powerful intelligence service that was useful to a Russian president. He was an agent of the KGB in the days of the Soviet Union and remains a source to modern Russian intelligence. And he is protected by powerful interests in Russia.
In Russia, criminals and intelligence services aren’t adversaries. They are birds of a feather. They share information. The Mob helps the state, and in return, Russian criminals like Mogilevich get to share in the riches and remain free.
Mogilevich’s ties to the Russian political “upperworld” go deep. Very deep.
According to Litvinenko, the poisoned ex-FSB agent, Putin was Mogilevich’s “krishna” or protector in Russian underworld slang.
Most countries, even corrupt ones, go after their biggest criminals. But in Russia, criminals have their uses. |
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manafort – Google Search | ||||
Amid legal challenges, Gates, Manafort get OK to spend …CNN–Nov 21, 2017
(CNN) Former Trump campaign officials Paul Manafort and Rick Gates will be able to spend Thanksgiving with their families and leave their …
Manafort, Gates given ‘limited’ house arrest break for Thanksgiving
Highly Cited–ABC News–Nov 21, 2017 Paul Manafort And Rick Gates Will Get To Leave House Arrest For …
Highly Cited–BuzzFeed News–Nov 21, 2017 |
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Crime lord from FBIs Ten Most Wanted list seen at funeral of Russian mafia leader | ||||
Officials, businessmen, and prominent figures of the Russian criminal world have come to bid final farewell to an alleged founder of the Solntsevskie OCG, Avera-mladshy (Avera-Junior).
Hundreds of people who came to see Aleksandr Averin (Avera-Mladshy, deceased on October 11) on his way included known businessmen, officials, and major figures of the Russian criminal world. Eyewitnesses of the funeral service counted at least ten representative cars with AMR series state numbers. According to Pyaty Kanal (Channel 5), even President of the Russian Wrestling Federation, Mikhail Mamiashvili, and unnamed high-ranking employees of Prosecutor’s Office came to say goodbye to the deceased. ![]() As reported by the Telegram channel Oper Slil, which regularly publishes insider information of law enforcement agencies, apart from the alleged leader of the Solntsevskie OCG (Sergey Mikhaylov aka Mikhas’), Averin’s funeral was also attended by Semion Mogilevich, who was included in the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list up to 2015. To recall, the Russian-Ukrainian businessman linked to the Solntsevskie OCG – Semion Mogilevich – is an odious character in the West. Law enforcement bodies of a number of countries consider Mogilevich (also known under the surnames Telesh, Schneider, Palagnyuk, Saiman, and Suvorov), who has multiple citizenships, one of the largest criminals of the world scale. In 1999, Mogilevich was declared wanted for financial crimes in the UK, and in 2003, the FBI also put him on the wanted list. In the state of Pennsylvania, Mogilevich and several of his accomplices were charged in absentia with 45 items in the case of $150-million embezzlement from the shareholders of YBM Magnex. In addition, he was suspected of money-laundering via Bank of New York. Mogilevich’s aggregate penalty in the United States amounted up to 400 years in prison. Moreover, it was previously reported about the police of Israel and Hungary (the states of which Mogilevich is also a national) having a number of questions to his business activities. ![]() Picture from FBI website In Russia, where Semion Mogilevich has resided continuously for the past few years, he was detained in the case of tax evasion by Arbat-Prestige trading network along with the network’s co-owner Vladimir Nekrasov in January 2008. After a year and a half spent in a pre-trial detention center, Mogilevich was released on his own recognizance; in April 2011, the criminal case against him and Nekrasov was terminated for lack of evidence constituting an offense. It was when it became known that Semion Mogilevich under the surname Schneider had been excluded from the list of persons wanted by Interpol back in 2005. However, the Russian Interpol National Central Bureau has not given the reason for Mogilevich’s exclusion from the list. In December 2015, the FBI also excluded Semion Mogilevich from its search register, as it became known that he resided in Russia, with which the United States did not have an agreement on extradition. |
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mogilevich – Google Search | ||||
Mueller Reveals New Manafort Link to Organized CrimeDaily Beast–Nov 2, 2017
Mogilevich is frequently described as “the most dangerous mobster in the world.” Currently believed to be safe in Moscow, he is, according to …
An excerpt from ‘Collusion’MSNBC–Nov 16, 2017
One of Simpson’s subjects was Semion Mogilevich, a Ukrainian-Russian mafia don and one of the FBI’s ten most wanted individuals.
Crime lord from FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list seen at funeral of …<a href=”https://en.crimerussia.com/” rel=”nofollow”>https://en.crimerussia.com/</a>–Oct 14, 2017
To recall, the Russian-Ukrainian businessman linked to the Solntsevskie OCG – Semion Mogilevich – is an odious character in the West.
Yulia Tymoshenko Warned Us About Paul Manafort Years AgoReason (blog)–Oct 31, 2017
Tymoshenko, who served as prime minster from 2007 through 2010, was not just an enemy of Tanukovych’s but also of Firtash and Mogilevich.
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firtash – Google Search | ||||
Donald Trump’s Russia Ties: How Is Paul Manafort’s Work in …Newsweek–Nov 8, 2017
RUE—the entity run by Firtash—was the conduit through which gas came from Central Asia through Gazprom’s pipes to Ukraine. The suit …
How Paul Manafort Helped Elect Russia’s Man in UkraineTIME–Oct 31, 2017
“I can tell you he’s a real specialist,” says Manafort’s friend Dmitry Firtash, the Ukrainian billionaire and former partner to the Kremlin in the …
Paul Manafort is finally facing justice — and we Ukrainians couldn’t …
Opinion–Washington Post–Nov 3, 2017 Diane Francis: Ukraine’s next revolution won’t be on the streetsKyiv Post–Oct 27, 2017
Firtash has worked closely with the Kremlin. “There is a serious criminal investigation (into Firtash) by the general prosecutor. And (Firtash) …
Russia Playbook against Democratic World Forged in UkraineHuffPost–Oct 25, 2017
Firtash made billions for himself, and for Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs and officials, by controlling the sales of Russian energy through …
Breitbart News
Exclusive: Manafort flight records show deeper Kremlin ties than …Sacramento Bee–1 hour ago
Ukrainian oligarch Firtash had been arrested there the prior month on U.S. charges that he helped orchestrate an $18.5 million bribery scheme …
Feds claim ‘thousands of intercepts’ in the case of Ukrainian …Chicago Tribune–Sep 15, 2017
Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash arrives for the start of his trial at the courts of justice in Vienna, Austria on Feb. 21, 2017. Firtash was arrested …
Extradition of Ukrainian oligarch with links to Trump campaign …Chicago Tribune–Aug 31, 2017
Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash arrives for the start of his trial at the courts of justice in Vienna, Austria on Feb. 21, 2017. Firtash was arrested …
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Manafort took 18 trips to Moscow while working for Putin allies. | ||||
Political guru Paul Manafort took at least 18 trips to Moscow and was in frequent contact with Vladimir Putin’s allies for nearly a decade as a consultant in Russia and Ukraine for oligarchs and pro-Kremlin parties.
Even after the February 2014 fall of Ukraine’s pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych, who won office with the help of a Manafort-engineered image makeover, the American consultant flew to Kiev another 19 times over the next 20 months while working for the smaller, pro-Russian Opposition Bloc party. Manafort went so far as to suggest the party take an anti-NATO stance, an Oppo Bloc architect has said. A key ally of that party leader, oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, was identified by an earlier Ukrainian president as a former Russian intelligence agent, “100 percent.” It was this background that Manafort brought to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which he joined in early 2016 and soon led. His web of connections to Russia-loyal potentates is now a focus of federal investigators. Manafort’s flight records in and out of Ukraine, which McClatchy obtained from a government source in Kiev, and interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with his activities, including current and former government officials, suggest the links between Trump’s former campaign manager and Russia sympathizers run deeper than previously thought. What’s now known leads some Russia experts to suspect that the Kremlin’s emissaries at times turned Manafort into an asset acting on Russia’s behalf. “You can make a case that all along he …was either working principally for Moscow, or he was trying to play both sides against each other just to maximize his profits,” said Daniel Fried, a former assistant secretary of state who communicated with Manafort during Yanukovych’s reign in President George W. Bush’s second term. “He’s at best got a conflict of interest and at worst is really doing Putin’s bidding,” said Fried, now a fellow with the Atlantic Council. A central question for Justice Department Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller and several congressional committees is whether Manafort, in trying to boost Trump’s underdog campaign, in any way collaborated with Russia’s cyber meddling aimed at improving Trump’s electoral prospects. His lucrative consulting relationships have already led a grand jury convened by Mueller to charge him and an associate with conspiracy, money laundering and other felonies – charges that legal experts say are likely meant to pressure them to cooperate with the wider probe into possible collusion. Government investigators are examining information they’ve received regarding “talks between Russians about using Manafort as part of their broad influence operations during the elections,” a source familiar with the inquiry told McClatchy. Suspicions about Manafort have been fueled by a former British spy’s opposition research on Trump. In a now-famous dossier, former MI6 officer Christopher Steele quoted an ethnic Russian close to Trump as saying that Manafort had managed “a well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between the campaign and the Kremlin.
You can make a case that he …was either working principally for Moscow, or he was trying to play both sides against each other just to maximize his profits.
Daniel Fried, an assistant secretary of state in the Bush administration Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort, called that allegation “false,” saying that Manafort “never – ever – worked for the Russian government.” He also denied that Manafort ever recommended Ukrainian opposition to NATO, saying he “was a strong advocate” of closer relations with the western military alliance while advising political parties there.
Paul Manafort did not collude with the Russian government to undermine the 2016 election. No amount of wishing and hoping by his political opponents will make this spurious allegation true.
Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni California Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead Democrat in the House Intelligence Committee’s inquiry, told McClatchy: “It certainly looks like Mr. Manafort viewed his position on the campaign as a way of further profiting personally from the work that he was doing on behalf of Russian interests.”
He certainly brought a pro-Russian proclivity to a campaign that already seemed to have one. Whether he was attracted to the trump campaign or the campaign was attracted to him on the basis of his Russian contacts … he did bring those Russian contacts and pro-Russian prejudices with him to the campaign and apparently found a welcome environment there.
California Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee Globe-trotting consultant
EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM
Manafort’s first client in Ukraine was Rinat Akhmetov, the country’s richest man and a key funder of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. Deripaska introduced Manafort to Akhmetov, who hailed from Russia-leaning Eastern Ukraine. In the summer of 2005, Akhmetov tapped Manafort to help Yanukovych and his party in the 2006 elections, according to an American consultant based in Kiev, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid damaging relationships.
EDITORS: END OPTIONAL TRIM
In 2014, however, Manafort’s business took a hit when Yanukovych fled to Russia, days before Kremlin-backed forces invaded Eastern Ukraine. He was quickly hired by the Opposition Bloc, which leaned even more toward Moscow.
138 The number of trips Paul Manafort took to Ukraine between 2004 and 2015 while consulting for Russian and pro-Russian oligarchs.
Some former U.S. government officials, though, are skeptical.
EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM
Charlie Black, a onetime partner of Manafort’s, says he remains baffled by the change.
EDITORS: END OPTIONAL TRIM
In late July after FBI Director James Comey said he would not back prosecution of Clinton over her use of a private email server to conduct State Department business, Trump took a bizarre step. He publicly beseeched Russia to help unearth 30,000 emails that Clinton said she had deleted because they dealt with personal matters.
Paul Manafort maintained ties to the Opposition Bloc party and Viktor Yanukovych’s former cronies, thus choosing to associate himself with crooks and kleptocrats rather than Ukraine’s pro-Western reformers.
Mike Carpenter, senior Pentagon and White House official who specialized in Russia during the Obama administration. During the summer, a U.S. group supporting Ukraine asked both presidential candidates for a letter recognizing the country’s 25th year of independence since the fall of the Soviet Union. Clinton obliged. But the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America was unable to wrest a letter from the Trump campaign, said a person familiar with the matter. The group’s president did not respond to phone messages. |
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Russias Lies Are Aimed at Undermining European Democracies | ||||
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harding collusion – Google Search | ||||
Breitbart News
Journalist Investigating Trump And Russia Says ‘Full Picture Is One …NPR–Nov 21, 2017
The new book “Collusion” is about what the author, my guest Luke Harding, says appears to be an emerging pattern of collusion between Russia, Donald Trump and his campaign. Harding also writes about how Russia appears to have started cultivating Trump back in 1987. The book is based on original …
The Ex-Spy Behind the Trump-Russia Dossier Left a Clue for MuellerVanity Fair–Nov 16, 2017
“Check their values against the money Trump secured via loans,” the former spy said, according to a conversation detailed in Harding’s new book, Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win. “The difference is what’s important.” According to his book, Steele did not …
Christopher Steele believes his dossier on Trump-Russia is 70-90 …
Highly Cited–The Guardian–Nov 15, 2017 Is the Trump Dossier About to Grow With New Expose?HuffPost–Nov 9, 2017
Will Luke Harding’s forthcoming book — Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win—deliver the long sought after conclusive confirmation of collusion? We will find out on November 16th when his book, published by Penguin Random House in the U.S., will be …
Vladimir Putin could secretly be one of the richest men in the world …Business Insider–Nov 18, 2017
Luke Harding, journalist and author of “Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win,” explains why he believes Vladimir Putin may secretly be one of the richest people in the world. Following is a transcript of the video. Luke Harding: My name is Luke Harding.
LISTEN: British journalist details the ‘constellation of Russian …Raw Story–11 hours ago
Gross asked Luke Harding, author of the new book “Collusion” on President Donald Trump, Russia and the dossier compiled by former MI-6 spy Christopher Steele. “Well, the KGB really forever has been interested in cultivating people, actually, who might be useful contacts for them, identifying targets for …
Vintage to Release ‘Collusion,’ A New Book on Trump-Russia …Publishers Weekly–Nov 6, 2017
Just as special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion begins issuing its first indictments, Penguin Random House plans to release Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win by Luke Harding, a book that claims to offer new details on the …
An excerpt from ‘Collusion‘MSNBC–Nov 16, 2017
Moscow, summer 1991. Mikhail Gorbachev was in power. Official relations with the West may have softened, but the KGB still assumed all Western embassy workers were spooks. The KGB goons assigned to them were easy to spot. They had a method. Sometimes they pursued targets on foot, sometime in …
Jeffrey Toobin to Publish Book on Russia ProbeNew York Times–Nov 14, 2017
Luke Harding, a foreign correspondent for The Guardian, will release “Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win” this week, and Michael Wolff is working on “Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House,” an up close look at the current administration based on …
What Does Trump Know About the Russia Dossier? A Judge Could …Newsweek–Nov 18, 2017
… with Glenn Simpson, co-founder of the firm that commissioned the document, telling lawmakers Friday that Steele did not pay sources for information contained in it. According to Collusion, a new book about Trump’s ties to Russia by Guardian journalist Luke Harding, Steele surmises the document as 70 …
The Hidden History of Trump’s First Trip to MoscowPOLITICO Magazine–Nov 19, 2017
It was 1984 and General Vladimir Alexandrovich Kryuchkov had a problem. The general occupied one of the KGB’s most exalted posts. He was head of the First Chief Directorate, the prestigious KGB arm responsible for gathering foreign intelligence. Kryuchkov had begun his career with five years at the …
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Alt-America and English Uprising review Trump, Brexit and the far right | ||||
Both David Neiwerts book on the US radical right and Paul Stockers on Brexit argue that economic factors take second place in explaining populismDonald Trump is US president because just under 80,000 people in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin flipped those states his way. Many of his extra voters were working-class white men who had voted for Obama in 2012 and switched because of Trumps pledge to bring jobs back to the rust belt. They may not have liked Obamas liberal policies on gay people and guns, but for them the big issue remained the economy. |
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trump and far right – Google Search | ||||
Alt-America and English Uprising review – Trump, Brexit and the far …The Guardian–5 hours ago
In Alt-America, journalist David Neiwert argues that Trump won not because of economic stagnation in the northern midwest, but because a far–right racist movement had been growing since the early 90s, which both enabled Trump’s victory and has been legitimised by it. Neiwert’s narrative begins with the …
Trump’s Mar-A-Lago is Losing Palm Beach Elite, Can Only Bring in …Newsweek–Nov 19, 2017
Trump’s Mar-A-Lago is Losing Palm Beach Elite, Can Only Bring in Far–Right Groups … People are ditching Donald Trump’s Palm Beach resort for a competitor he once ridiculed for getting “the leftovers.” … President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate is seen in Palm Beach, Florida, April 15, 2017.
Even France’s Far–Right Doesn’t Like TrumpHuffPost–Nov 3, 2017
The far–right leader Le Pen, meanwhile, was one of the first foreign politicians to congratulate Trump on his win. Her rhetoric is often similar to Trump’s on issues such as immigration, and she received Trump’stacit endorsement just before the French vote when he called her the “strongest” candidate on …
A year ago, Trump was the hero of Europe’s far right. Not anymore.Washington Post–Nov 9, 2017
Among those celebrating, though, were members of Europe’s far right. President Trump’s unlikely triumph was, for them, a dramatic repudiation of a liberal status quo they had long reviled. Trump’sright-wing populism was a validation of their own anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, ultranationalist agendas.
Donald Trump Was a Hero to Europe’s Far Right, But They Still Can’t …Newsweek–Nov 8, 2017
As Donald Trump toasted his victory following the U.S. presidential election one year ago, he and his team weren’t the only ones celebrating. Thousands of miles away in France, Florian Philippot, then vice president of France’s hard-right National Front, was smiling, too. “Their world is collapsing. Ours is …
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