Iranian Businessman Living in China has Been Financing Hezbollah and the IRGC

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The Treasury Department has sanctioned several Chinese entities and individuals for allegedly financing Iran-related terrorist activities.The Treasury Department said the sanctions action would involve the seizure of US-based property of the individuals and entities and prohibit all transactions with them.

The agency’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said Friday it is imposing sanctions on members of the networks that finance the terrorist organization Hezbollah in Lebanon and Kuwait, according to the Epoch Times.

Several of the sanctioned companies are based in Hong Kong including PCA Xiang Gang Ltd.; Damineh Optic Ltd.; China 49 Group Co. Ltd.; Taiwan Be Charm Trading Co., Ltd.; and Black Drop Intl Co., Ltd., the news outlet also reports.

The companies are either directly or indirectly owned, controlled or directed by Morteza Minaye Hashemi, an Iranian businessman living in China who’s also on the sanctions list.

Hashemi is accused by the U.S. government of funding the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, the Epoch Times also reports.

***.US slaps new sanctions on Hezbollah over Iran's fuel ...

In part: The seven entities include PCA Xiang Gang Limited, Damineh Optic Limited, China 49 Group Co, Taiwan Be Charm Trading Co, Black Drop International Co, Victory Somo Group (HK) Limited, and Yummy Be Charm Trading (HK) Limited, according to a press release on the Treasury Department website.

The designations came as part of a broader action by the department that targeted Lebanon and Kuwait-based financial conduits that fund the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah as well as financial facilitators and front companies that support the group and Iran.

Black Drop International Co could not be found in the Hong Kong government’s company registry when the Post did a search on Saturday night. Detailed information on the other companies, such as the owners’ names and office addresses, was also not accessible.

Hashemi, Yan Su Xuan, Song Jing and the seven companies named by the Treasury department join a list of 351 entities still sanctioned under an executive order signed by former president George W Bush shortly after the terrorist attacks against the US on September 11, 2001.

The Treasury Department said international networks have laundered tens of millions of dollars through regional financial systems and conducted currency exchange operations and trades in gold and electronics for the benefit of both IRGC-QF.

Hezbollah, with the support of the IRGC-QF, uses the revenues generated by these networks to fund terrorist activities, as well as to perpetuate instability in Lebanon and throughout the region, the department said.

Is the Chinese Company Evergrande Causing a US Financial Crisis?

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China Evergrande shares plummet on default risks

EVERGRANDE GROUP

Evergrande is one of China’s leading lenders for everything from property to autos. The company has 2.3 trillion Chinese yuan in assets, which equates to about $355 billion in USD, according to the lender, which employs 200,000 workers.

By 2022, Evergrande expects to reach 3 trillion yuan in total assets, 1 trillion yuan of annual sales and 150 billion yuan of annual profits and taxes to become  “one of the world’s top 100 companies.”

FACING DEFAULT ON BILLIONS

Rating agencies say Evergrande Group appears unlikely to be able to repay all of the 572 billion yuan ($89 billion) it owes banks and other bondholders, as reported by the Associated Press, which also noted Beijing is likely to step in to prevent systemic damage.

“I suspect the Chinese government is on top of this, and I don’t doubt they will deal with it severely, but I don’t think it will have the global effects the market is suggesting this morning,”  said Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein during an appearance Monday on “Mornings With Maria.”

One U.S. investor in China tells FOX Business “just about every bank in China has exposure to the company,” which explains the heightened contagion fears.

U.S. INVESTORS?

According to Factset data, BlackRock has some holdings in Evergrande across several units, while Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and JPMorgan have small, fractional holdings. “I don’t think the major US banks are on the hook for very much money,” Rubenstein noted. sourceChina's Property Problems Go Beyond Evergrande | Barron's   related reading

Source: News that real-estate giant Evergrande Group—once China’s top property developer, now Earth’s most heavily indebted—has reached the brink of collapse is causing what you might call “market jitters” today. Evergrande reportedly told banks that it won’t be able to meet the interest payments due today on its loans, and the Dow has responded by tanking more than 700 points so far, the Nasdaq by sinking by 2%, and the S&P 500 by dropping more than 1.5%, that index’s greatest volatility since May.

Why does a single property developer in China have traders sweating bullets? Because the total debt that Evergrande has amassed ($305 billion, literally 2% of China’s GDP) suggests it may be too big to fail, and could have a ripple effect on the global economy if it did. That’s crippling nervous analysts with PTSD; some are calling this “China’s Lehman Brothers moment,” believing it’s unfolding much like the scenario in which Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy during America’s housing crisis, setting in motion the 2008 global financial crisis. The situation has investors angry enough to assemble in the plaza outside Evergrande’s Shenzen headquarters and protest over the troubled investments—something of a rarity in China, apparently.

Evergrande’s problems began last year, when Beijing clamped down on the amount of debt that big real-estate developers can owe. The way Evergrande grew so large, to a market cap of $50 billion at its peak, was by borrowing money—that $305 billion. (One estimate says as much as two-thirds of its liabilities could be cash that people put down for homes that have not been finished yet.) Evergrande responded to Beijing’s clampdown by selling properties at serious discounts to shore up its bottom line. Despite that fire sale, the company still struggled to make interest payments on its enormous debts, leaving it teetering on default.

Obviously, this liquidity crisis has been months in the making. It also didn’t sneak up on traders: Evergrande’s shares have plunged by 85% since the start of the year. China’s real-estate market has also been looking more and more like an America-circa-2007-esque bubble. Here’s video from the city of Kunming, of 15 unused skyscrapers being demolished last month after sitting vacant for nearly a decade:

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Perkins Coie Lawyer Sussman Took Orders from Hillary in Russian Collusion Fabrication

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Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan is not exempt either. He was always Hillary’s secret agent man including the back channel in the beginnings of the Iran nuclear deal. His fingerprints are all over the Perkins Coie, Clinton campaign and Russian collusion lies. He needs a subpoena along with dozens of others and should be stripped of his security clearance.

Hillary Clinton attends Jake Sullivan-Maggie Goodlander ...

In part from Yahoo News: In the closing days of the 2016 race, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tweeted: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.”

She also shared a lengthy statement from Sullivan, one of her top advisers.

“This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow,” Sullivan claimed. “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank. This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia… This line of communication may help explain Trump’s bizarre adoration of Vladimir Putin.”

Sullivan added: “We can only assume that federal authorities will now explore this direct connection between Trump and Russia as part of their existing probe into Russia’s meddling in our elections.”

“Alfa Bank” is mentioned nine times in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, but never in reference to the alleged Trump-Russia server story. In his December 2019 report, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz said the FBI “concluded by early February 2017 that there were no such links” between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization.

A bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report from 2020 did not find “covert communications between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization personnel.” The Senate said that “based on the FBI’s assessment, the Committee did not find that the Domain Name System activity reflected the existence of substantive or covert communications between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization personnel.”

INDICTMENT

But read on.

FNC: Former Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell said the indictment of Perkins-Coie attorney Michael Sussmann by Special Counsel John Durham is an important development in the probe into the origins of the FBI’s investigation into connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, but is not necessarily key to the entire genesis of the Russia investigation.

Grenell, who also served as President Trump’s ambassador to Germany, called the entire probe “such a ‘swamp’ situation” and added that Sussmann was simply one of the subjects of 63 transcripts released while he was DNI, after Durham requested them.

“I hope that we have a lot of time to focus on these issues going forward. The media that pushed this, I don’t believe that the FBI officials were duped by an outside lawyer working with Hillary Clinton who lied about his client,” Grenell, speaking on “Fox News Primetime,” said of Sussmann.

“Michael Sussmann, whoever he is and whatever lie he told, we released his transcript … There is a treasure trove of information of people lying under oath in these,” Grenell said.

As Durham, a former Connecticut federal prosecutor, is investigating the origins of the Russia investigation, Grenell advised that the original Russia probe continued past September of 2016 not because of “some lawyer [lying] to the FBI about who he was working for – because the FBI leadership knew this information was wrong –  they continued the investigation because it would help Hillary Clinton.”

RELATED READING:

The First Possible Prosecution from the Durham Investigation

“Everybody in Washington — lobbyists, newsrooms, a whole bunch of people — wanted Hillary to win. So what did they do? They allowed this opposition research to become part of the DOJ and FBI. That is so scary to think that politics permeated into the DOJ and to the FBI. This is what we call political prosecution, and when it happens in third world countries we call it out.”

Host Lawrence Jones added that one person of interest to him who is allegedly connected to the Sussmann case is current Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan. The Vermont native previously served under Clinton when she was secretary of state and further advised her 2016 campaign.

“Sussmann claimed [evidence presented to the FBI] it was a tip from a cybersecurity expert who had nothing to do with Hillary Clinton, even though he worked for her. Total coincidence, sure,” he said.

“I guess it is also a coincidence that Hillary tweeted about it around the same time: Jake Sullivan … signed off on that tweet. Now, that’s significant.”

As the Washington Examiner reported, Clinton tweeted that “computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank,” later adding a statement from Sullivan:

“This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow… This secret hotline may be the key to unlocking the mystery of Trump’s ties to Russia… This line of communication may help explain Trump’s bizarre adoration of Vladimir Putin,” wrote Sullivan at the time, according to the outlet.

***

Hillary Clinton’s other secret agent man was Marc Elias who headed up the Perkins Coie law firm. He hired Crowdstrike and Fusion GPS. Another fact is he was the campaign lawyer of record for Kamala Harris when she ran for president.

Democrat Lawyer Behind 'Russia Dossier' Pressures Nevada ...

Facebook Internal Documents Show Stasi Operations Including Murder

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What about Apple and Tim Cook?

  • Apple threatened to remove Facebook from its App Store after a report about an online slave market.
  • The BBC in 2019 reported that human traffickers were using Facebook’s services to sell domestic workers.

    Apple threatened to kick Facebook off its App Store after a 2019 BBC report detailed how human traffickers were using Facebook to sell victims, according to The Wall Street Journal.

    The paper viewed company documents that show a Facebook investigation team was tracking down a human trafficking market in the Middle East whose organizers were using Facebook’s services. What appeared to be employment agencies were advertising domestic workers that they could supply against their will, per the Journal.

    The BBC published a sweeping undercover investigation of the practice, prompting Apple to threaten to remove Facebook from its store, the paper said.

    An internal memo found that Facebook was aware of the practice even before then: A Facebook researcher wrote in a report dated 2019, “was this issue known to Facebook before BBC inquiry and Apple escalation?,” per the Journal.

    Underneath the question reads, “Yes. Throughout 2018 and H1 2019 we conducted the global Understanding Exercise in order to fully understand how domestic servitude manifests no our platform across its entire life cycle: recruitment, facilitation, and exploitation.”

    Apple and Facebook did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

    The Wall Street Journal on Thursday also reported how Facebook’s AI content moderators cannot detect most languages used on the platform, a needed skill if the company is going to monitor content in foreign markets where it has expanded. source

Source: The dozens of internal Facebook documents obtained by the outlet showed how employees have expressed concerns about how the social media giant is being used in countries across the globe and how Facebook has failed to properly respond to these issues.

Some of the documents reportedly showed that Facebook employees raised concerns about human trafficking organizations in the Middle East that used Facebook to attract women. Other documents showed Facebook employees alerting their higher-ups of groups involved in organ selling and pornography.

The news outlet reported that while some of the groups and pages flagged by employees have been taken down, dozens of others remain active on the social media site.

Mexican cartels that are feeding America's drug habit ... source

Another document detailed a Facebook employee’s investigation into a Mexican drug cartel that was active on the social media site. The employee, who was a former police officer, was able to identify the Jalisco New Generation Cartel’s network of accounts on both Facebook and Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

The employee wrote in the report that his team had found Facebook messages between cartel recruiters and potential recruits “about being seriously beaten or killed by the cartel if they try to leave the training camp.”

México: Cártel Jalisco Nueva Generación lanzó un video ... source

The documents reportedly showed that the cartel was open about its criminal activity, with several pages on the social media site showing “gold-plated guns and bloody crime scenes.”The Wall Street Journal reported that even after the employee recommended Facebook increase its enforcement on the groups, documents showed that Facebook didn’t completely remove the cartel from its site and instead said that it removed content tied to the group. Just nine days after the report from the employee, his team found a new Instagram account tied to the cartel, which included several violent posts.

Many of the documents apparently showed employees raising concerns about how the social media giant was being used in developing countries, such as militant groups in Ethiopia using Facebook to promote violence against minority groups.

Brian Boland, a former Facebook vice president, told the Wall Street Journal that the social media site sees these issues in developing countries as “simply the cost of doing business.”

“There is very rarely a significant, concerted effort to invest in fixing those areas,” Boland said.

In a statement sent to Newsweek, a Facebook spokesperson said: “In countries at risk for conflict and violence, we have a comprehensive strategy, including relying on global teams with native speakers covering over 50 languages, educational resources, and partnerships with local experts and third-party fact-checkers to keep people safe.”

In a series of tweets on Thursday, Facebook spokesman Andy Stone wrote, “As the Wall Street Journal itself makes clear, we have a team of experts who help us uncover patterns of harmful behavior so we can disrupt it. We’ve got arguably more experts and resources dedicated to this work than any other consumer technology company in the world.”

The First Possible Prosecution from the Durham Investigation

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Durham “has told the Justice Department that he will ask a grand jury to indict a prominent cybersecurity lawyer on a charge of making a false statement to the FBI,” the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing “people familiar with the matter.”

Sussmann’s lawyers, Sean M. Berkowitz and Michael S. Bosworth, acknowledged Wednesday that they expected him to be indicted, but denied wrongdoing.

“Mr. Sussmann has committed no crime,” they told the Times. “Any prosecution here would be baseless, unprecedented and an unwarranted deviation from the apolitical and principled way in which the Department of Justice is supposed to do its work. We are confident that if Mr. Sussmann is charged, he will prevail at trial and vindicate his good name.

Durham has until the weekend to charge Sussmann because of a five-year statute of limitations, the newspaper said. source

Michael Sussmann (@michaelsuss) | Twitter

Breaking report from the New York Times (Savage and Goldman, et al.): Special Counsel John Durham “will ask a grand jury to indict” former DNC/Clinton campaign lawyer (and Perkins Coie partner) Michael Sussman for giving false statements. The false statement charges would relate to a September 19, 2016 meeting FBI lawyer James Baker had with Sussman, where Sussman relayed to the FBI the discredited theory that the Trump Organization was communicating with Alfa Bank.

The New York Times states:

Mr. Baker, the former F.B.I. lawyer, is said to have told investigators that he recalled Mr. Sussmann saying that he was not meeting him on behalf of any client.

This was contradicted by (1) Sussman’s testimony to Congress; and (2) Sussman’s own billing records. Sussman’s lawyers acknowledged “they expected him to be indicted.”

As to Sussman’s testimony, here is a portion where he discusses the Alfa Bank information was given to him by a client.

As we have discussed, the New Yorker first reported back in 2020 that Durham had impaneled a grand jury relating to the false Alfa Bank/Trump Organization story. There is the potential that former Feinstein staffer Daniel Jones – as well as the researches behind the Alfa Bank matter – will also face charges of giving false information to federal officials.

More recently, we noted that Fusion GPS has been fighting to keep secret its communications about Trump/Alfa Bank secret in a civil suit. Court records we reviewed appear to show the degree with which Fusion GPS, Glenn Simpson, and their associates went in drafting and promoting the false Alfa Bank/Trump Organization story.

One court document of interest is this August 26, 2016 e-mail from Fusion GPS to Michael Sussman.

That Fusion GPS-Sussman correspondence occurred not long before Sussman met with FBI General Counsel James Baker weeks later.

The e-mails correspond to the dates the Alfa Bank/Trump Organization was getting media exposure. One has to wonder what other correspondence Sussman had with Fusion GPS.

Questions have long been asked about Sussman’s involvement in the potential cover-up of the DNC hack in 2016. It was Sussman who brought in CrowdStrike (given his close relationship with founder Shawn Henry) to look into the DNC hack. According to Politico:

In late April [2016], the DNC’s IT department noticed some suspicious behavior and contacted DNC chief executive officer Amy Dacey, according to a DNC official. Dacey reached out to DNC lawyer Michael Sussmann, a partner at the Perkins Coie law firm and a former federal prosecutor specializing in cybercrimes. Sussmann called Shawn Henry, the president of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, to get his company’s help.

This CrowdStrike/Perkins Coie links put into perspective this information in the the New York Times article, where Durham

has been pursuing a theory that the Clinton campaign used Perkins Coie to submit dubious information to the F.B.I. about Russia and Mr. Trump in an effort to gin up investigative activity to hurt his 2016 campaign.

If that is the case, then we doubt it would be limited to the Alfa Bank allegations.

Future Developments

We’ll be following the Sussman story closely and will post the charging documents and criminal information once – or if – Durham gets the indictment. (hat-tip)

***

When Fox News anchor Bret Baier asked about the origin of the infamous Trump dossier, James Comey brushed off most of the questions. The former Federal Bureau of Investigations director said someone on his “senior staff”—he couldn’t remember who—had “briefed” him on the dossier “sometime in the fall” of 2016. Mr. Comey had been told it came “from a reliable source.” He insisted he “never knew exactly which Democrats had funded” it. He then continued on about his book, which meditated on the importance of “truth.”

Testifying before a joint session of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, Mr. Baker said Mr. Sussmann approached him. The contact was initiated before the FBI and Justice Department applied for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant for key Trump campaign figure Carter Page, according to the Daily Caller’s report.

Mr. Baker was instrumental in obtaining the warrants for Mr. Page. source