Daily Archives: August 11, 2016

Meanwhile there is Rosneft, Deeper Russian Terror

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Primer: From January 2015

Foreign Firm Funding U.S. Green Groups Tied to State-Owned Russian Oil Company

Executives at a Bermudan firm funneling money to U.S. environmentalists run investment funds with Russian tycoons, a shadowy Bermudan company that has funneled tens of millions of dollars to anti-fracking environmentalist groups in the United States is run by executives with deep ties to Russian oil interests and offshore money laundering schemes involving members of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. One of those executives, Nicholas Hoskins, is a director at a hedge fund management firm that has invested heavily in Russian oil and gas. He is also senior counsel at the Bermudan law firm Wakefield Quin and the vice president of a London-based investment firm whose president until recently chaired the board of the state-owned Russian oil company Rosneft.In addition to those roles, Hoskins is a director at a company called Klein Ltd. No one knows where that firm’s money comes from. Its only publicly documented activities have been transfers of $23 million to U.S. environmentalist groups that push policies that would hamstring surging American oil and gas production, which has hurt Russia’s energy-reliant economy.

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Why is this important? Arms trafficking….there is always a darker side including people. Anyone remember the name Viktor Bout?

 Photo: CNN

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Notorious Russian arms dealer ‘refused US offer for lighter sentence’

FITSANAKIS: The wife of Viktor Bout, the imprisoned Russian arms dealer dubbed ‘the merchant of death’, said he rejected an offer by his American captors who asked him to testify against a senior Russian government official. Born in Soviet Tajikistan, Bout was a former translator for the Soviet military. After the end of the Cold War, he set up several low-profile international air transport companies and used them to transfer large shipments of weapons that fueled wars in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe. He made millions in the process and acquired international notoriety, which inspired the Hollywood blockbuster Lord of War. But his business ventures ceased in 2008, when he was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, by the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, with the cooperation of the Royal Thai Police. He was eventually extradited to the US and given a 25-year prison term for supplying weapons to the Afghan Taliban, and for trying to sell arms to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Bout is currently serving his sentence at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center in New York.

In a newspaper interview on Tuesday, Bout’s wife, Alla Bout, said her husband could have gotten away with a considerably lighter sentence had he agreed to testify against a senior Russian government official. Speaking to Moscow-based daily Izvestia, Alla Bout said her husband had been approached by American authorities after being extradited to the United States from Thailand. He was told that US authorities wanted him to testify against Igor Sechin, a powerful Russian government official, whom American prosecutors believed was Bout’s boss. In return for his testimony, US prosecutors allegedly promised a jail sentence that would not exceed two years, as well as political asylum for him and his family following his release from prison. Alla Bout added that her husband’s American lawyers were told by the prosecution that the ‘merchant of death’ “would be able to live in the US comfortably, along with his wife and daughter”, and that his family could stay in America during his trial “under conditions”. Alla Bout claimed she was told this by Bout himself and by members of his American legal team.

From 2008 to 2012, Sechin, who has military background, served as Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister. Today he heads the Board of Directors of Rosneft, a government-owned oil extraction and refinement company, which is considered one of the world’s most powerful business ventures. Many observers see Sechin as the most formidable man in Russia after Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is also believed to be a senior member of the Siloviki, a secretive group of government officials in the Putin government who have prior careers in national security or intelligence. Although Bout and Sechin have never acknowledged having met each other, some investigators of Bout’s weapons-trading activities believe that the two were close allies. It is believed that the two men first met in Angola and Mozambique in the 1980s, where they were stationed while serving in the Soviet military. But the two men deny they knowing each other. According to Alla Bout, Viktor told his American captors that he “never worked for Sechin and did not know him in person”. He therefore turned down the prosecution’s offer and was handed a 25-year sentence. When asked by the Izvestia reporters whether Bout was simply protecting the powerful Russian government official, Alla Bout insisted that the two “have never even met, not once”.

**** Igor Sechin

Forbes: Igor Sechin may be the left hand man to the World’s Most Powerful Man, but that didn’t stop him or his giant oil company, Rosneft, from landing on a U.S. visa and financial sanctions list announced after the Russian military intervention in the Ukraine. “Putin trusts him more than anyone else,” says Russian expert Mark Galeotti of NYU. “And if Putin trusts you, power and wealth always follow.” Suffice it to say that the Kremlin is one of Rosneft’s major stockholders.

 

It WAS the Russians that Hacked the DNC and More

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This website reported several weeks ago along with evidence it was the Russians that hacked the Democrat Nation Committee, and these hacks are reported to be wider and deeper than previously reported. This site also reported that the FBI went to the Hillary campaign headquarters with evidence of a hack and asked only for the sign in activity logs to further the investigation, but the Hillary camp refused to cooperate or collaborate.

Well, turnabout is fair play. It is all about favors right? Yuppers….

Cyberattack on Democrats bigger than originally believed: report
TheHill: The cyberattack targeting Democratic politicians was more widespread than originally believed, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The likely Russian cyberattack breached the private email accounts of more than 100 party officials and groups, sources told the Times.
Email accounts of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign officials, party operatives and Democratic Party organizations seem to have been the focus of the attack.

The FBI is now widening its investigation, and officials have started to tell Democrats that Russians may have gained access to their email accounts.

It had been previously reported that Russian hackers accessed the networks of the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Clinton campaign’s network was also believed to have been breached.

But the hack may also have extended to other organizations such as the Democratic Governors’ Association, according to the Times.

Ahead of the Democratic National Convention last month, a trove of emails was released by WikiLeaks that appeared to show officials at the DNC planning how to undermine Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign.

The emails resulted in the resignation of former DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other top officials.

Last week, FBI officials briefed staff members of House and Senate Intelligence Committees on its investigation into the issue and are expected to brief other congressional committees in the coming days.

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Impeach Loretta Lynch! Why? She is not serving justice under a RICO or public corruption.

Report: Loretta Lynch’s Justice Dept. Declined FBI Request To Investigate Clinton Foundation

DailyCaller: The Department of Justice declined a FBI request to open up a public integrity investigation into the Clinton Foundation, CNN reported on Wednesday.

According to the news network, the FBI made the request earlier this year, but the DOJ said it did not have enough evidence to open a formal probe. CNN reported:

The Clinton Foundation was not part of the recent investigation into her private server; it was separate. The FBI went to Justice Department earlier this year asking for it to open a case into the foundation, but the public integrity unit declined. The Justice Department had looked into whether it should open a case on the foundation a year prior and found it didn’t have sufficient evidence to do so.

Opposition to the FBI’s request — if the report is accurate — is likely to raise even more questions about whether the DOJ is acting impartially. Attorney General Loretta Lynch came under fire last month after it was revealed that she met in secret on her government airplane with Bill Clinton in late June.The meeting occurred days before the FBI and DOJ were set to interview Hillary Clinton as part of its investigation into whether Clinton or her aides mishandled classified information by using a private email system.

Lynch has insisted that she did not discuss the investigation with the former president. It has also been reported that the Clinton campaign has considered asking Lynch to remain as attorney general if Hillary Clinton is elected president.

The CNN report helps settle a question that government officials have largely avoided addressing.

FBI Director James Comey declined last month to say whether an investigation into the Clinton Foundation was underway.

Clinton’s campaign spokesman Brian Fallon recently said that there is “no evidence” that the Clinton Foundation is or was under investigation.

Though the DOJ decided not to pursue a public integrity investigation, new questions about the Clinton Foundation were raised on Tuesday after the watchdog group Judicial Watch released a new set of emails showing that a top adviser for the non-profit asked Clinton’s State Department aides to help out several individuals — including a major Clinton Foundation and a close associate. (RELATED: Clinton Foundation Official Asked Hillary’s State Dept. For Favors For Donor, Associate)

The Clinton Foundation official was Doug Band. He has worked for Bill Clinton for years and now runs the consulting firm Teneo Strategies.

In an April 25, 2009 email, Band asked Clinton aides Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills to help put Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury in touch with the State Department’s “substance person” on issues related to Lebanon.

Chagoury, a longtime Clinton donor who was once a close associate of Nigerian dictator Sani Abache, has given between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation. In 2009 he pledged $1 billion to help with a project undertaken by the Clinton Global Initiative, a Clinton Foundation offshoot which Band helped advise.

“This is very important,” Band said in his request to Mills and Abedin. “He’s key guy there and to us.”

In another April 2009 email, Band forwarded an email to Mills, Abedin and another Clinton aide, Nora Toiv, entitled “A favor.”

The individual seemingly asked for a job with the State Department.

“Important to take care of [redacted],” Band wrote.

On April 29, 2009, Band emailed the same trio of advisers asking: “Can someone pls call [redacted]? He calls me every day and we owe him some attention.”

It is unclear who the individual was, but Abedin told Band that she would place the call. Band’s remark that “we owe him some attention” suggests that the functions of the Clinton Foundation overlapped with the State Department.

Abedin and Toiv later landed a job at Band’s firm, Teneo.

The Clinton campaign denied to CNN that the Band emails were evidence of collusion between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

“Neither of these emails involve the secretary or relate to the Foundation’s work,” Clinton campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin told the network. “They are communications between her aides and the President’s personal aide, and indeed the recommendation was for one of the Secretary’s former staffers who was not employed by the Foundation.”

Notably, Schwerin’s comment does not address Band’s request on behalf of Chagoury, the major Clinton Foundation donor.