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WashingtonTimes:The Department of Housing and Urban development announced Tuesday that it would consider evicting tens of thousands of public housing residents who earn too much money to qualify for public housing.
The announcement comes in response to a July audit from the department’s Office of Inspector General that revealed over 25,000 families had an income that exceeded the maximum level to qualify for government-assisted housing. At least one tenant had roughly nearly $1 million in assets.
Now the department will reexamine tenant’s public housing needs in an effort to root out “over-income” tenants occupying low-income housing that is desperately needed by poorer families.
“Some of those families significantly exceeded the income limits,” HUD wrote in the Federal Register, warning that “scarce public resources must be provided to those most in need of affordable housing.”
Currently, federal law does not prohibit over-income families from continuing to live in low-income housing as long as they met the income requirements when they moved in.
Now HUD is grappling with whether to evict over-income tenants and how long to give them to find new homes.
“An increase in income is a good and welcomed event for families, and when a family’s income steadily rises, it may be an indication that the family is on its way to self-sufficiency,” HUD wrote.
“Any changes that would require the termination of tenancy for over-income families should be enacted with caution so as not to impede a family’s progress,” the agency continued.
The department will seek comment from the public on what to do about over-income families over the next 30 days.
The House is expected to vote Tuesday on an Amendment proposed by Rep. Vern Buchanan, Florida Republican, to tighten income asset verification requirements for public housing applicants.
“It is outrageous that taxpayers are footing the bill for millionaires’ housing,” Mr. Buchanan said in a statement. “This type of abuse hurts truly needy families and erodes faith in government. Holding HUD to the same standards used for other federal benefits will provide much-needed oversight on taxpayer funds and help create consistency across the vast array of assistance programs.”
*** HUD is corrupt and the Secretary of HUD, Julian Castro is just as corrupt. But as a sidebar, he is earnestly jockeying for sharing the presidential ticket with Hillary Clinton.
Julian Castro, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary and a rising star in the Democratic Party, was in Portland Monday morning for a private fundraiser for presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The event at the law offices of Preti Flaherty in downtown Portland included U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree and longtime Maine lobbyist and attorney Tony Buxton.
According to an invitation provided by Hillary for America, Castro’s visit was billed as “coffee and conversation.” It was closed to the public and to the media.
Castro arrived at the fundraiser with Pingree and his twin brother, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas. After the event, Julian Castro said the crowd was enthusiastic and looking forward to seeing Clinton win the nomination.
When asked if he would accept if Clinton wins the nomination and asks him to run for vice president, he would say only that he is focused on his work with HUD and campaigning for Clinton.
“Both Joaquin and I are happy to help her out,” he said.
Julian Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio, was tabbed by President Obama in 2014 to serve as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. His ethnic background – Mexican American – makes him a powerful surrogate for Clinton, who will likely need strong support from Hispanic voters, both in the Democratic primaries and in the general election, if she becomes the nominee.
During an interview Monday morning on the “Ken & Mike” show on WGAN, the Castro brothers said they have long supported Clinton, whom they described as a tenacious and strong leader.
When asked by the radio hosts if he would accept an invitation to be Clinton’s running mate if she wins the nomination, Julian Castro said he feels “it’s not going to happen.”
“That’s flattering, but I doubt that,” he said. “I fully expect a year from now to be back in Texas.”
Mayor Julian Castro of San Antonio, who will be giving the keynote address tonight, is, according to some, the next Obama. But while Obama’s radicalism may have escaped the notice of the DNC in 2004, Castro’s views are bit more transparent.
Indeed, he, along with his twin, Joaquin, currently running for Congress, learned their politics on their mother’s knee and in the streets of San Antonio. Their mother, Rosie helped found a radical, anti-white, socialist Chicano party called La Raza Unida (literally “The Race United”) that sought to create a separate country–Aztlan–in the Southwest.
Today she helps manage her sons’ political careers, after a storied career of her own as a community activist and a stint as San Antonio Housing Authority ombudsman.
Far from denouncing his mother’s controversial politics, Castro sees them as his inspiration. As a student at Stanford Castro penned an essay for Writing for Change: A Community Reader(1994) in which he praised his mother’s accomplishments and cited them as an inspiration for his own future political involvement.
“[My mother] sees political activism as an opportunity to change people’s lives for the better. Perhaps that is because of her outspoken nature or because Chicanos in the early 1970s (and, of course, for many years before) had no other option. To make themselves heard Chicanos needed the opportunity that the political system provided. In any event, my mother’s fervor for activism affected the first years of my life, as it touches it today.
Castro wrote fondly of those early days and basked in the slogans of the day. “‘Viva La Raza!’ ‘Black and Brown United!’ ‘Accept me for who I am–Chicano.’ These and many other powerful slogans rang in my ears like war cries.” These war cries, Castro believes, advanced the interests of their political community. He sees her rabble-rousing as the cause for Latino successes, not the individual successes of those hard-working men and women who persevered despite some wrinkles in the American meritocracy.
[My mother] insisted that things were changing because of political activism, participation in the system. Maria del Rosario Castro has never held a political office. Her name is seldom mentioned in a San Antonio newspaper. However, today, years later, I read the newspapers, and I see that more Valdezes are sitting on school boards, that a greater number of Garcias are now doctors, lawyers, engineers, and, of course, teachers. And I look around me and see a few other brown faces in the crowd at [Stanford]. I also see in me a product of my mother’s diligence and her friends’ hard work. Twenty years ago I would not have been here…. My opportunities are not the gift of the majority; they are the result of a lifetime of struggle and commitment by adetermined minority. My mother is one of these persons. And each year I realize more and more how much easier my life has been made by the toil of past generations. I wonder what form my service will take, since I am expected by those who know my mother to continue the family tradition. [Emphasis Castro’s]
Edward Snowden did perform a duty and that was to expose the NSA programs and the associated intrusions. However, stealing documents and sharing them with roque nations and adversarial countries is best described as high crimes and misdemeanors. Would planning a rendition operation be altogether misguided?
TheNational: THE UK GOVERNMENT is facing demands to reveal the details of a secret flight through Scottish airspace which was at the centre of a plot to capture whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The plane, which passed above the Outer Hebrides, the Highlands and Aberdeenshire, was dispatched from the American east coast on June 24 2013, the day after Snowden left Hong Kong for Moscow. The craft was used in controversial US ‘rendition’ missions.
Reports by Scottish journalist Duncan Campbell claim the flight, travelling well above the standard aviation height at 45,000 feet and without a filed flight plan, was part of a mission to capture Snowden following his release of documents revealing mass surveillance by US and UK secret services.
That the flight passed over Scotland, airspace regulated by the UK, has raised questions over UK complicity in a covert mission to arrest Snowden and whether any police, aviation or political authorities in Scotland were made aware of the flight path.
Alex Salmond, the SNP foreign affairs spokesman and Scotland’s First Minister when the flight took place, has called for full transparency from the UK Government over the case.
He said: “As a matter of course and courtesy, any country, particularly an ally, should be open about the purposes of a flight and the use of foreign airspace or indeed airports.”
“What we need to know now is, was this information given to the UK Government at the time. If so, then why did they give permission? If not, then why not? As a minimum requirement, the UK authorities should not allow any activity in breach of international law in either its airspace or its airports.
“That is what an independent Scotland should insist on. Of course, since no rendition actually took place in this instance, it is a moot point as to whether intention can constitute a breach of human rights. However, we are entitled to ask what the UK Government knew and when did they know it.”
The flight took place after US federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Snowden on June 14. Regular meetings with the FBI and CIA, convened by US Homeland Security adviser Lisa Monaco, then planned Snowden’s arrest for alleged breaches of the Espionage Act, according to The Washington Post.
New documents, revealed by Danish media group Denfri, confirm that the N977GA plane was held at a Copenhagen airport for “state purposes of a non-commercial nature”. Two days later Danish authorities received an “urgent notification” from the US Department of Justice to cooperate in arresting Snowden.
N977GA was previously identified by Dave Willis in Air Force Monthly as an aircraft used for CIA rendition flights of US prisoners. This included the extradition of cleric Abu Hamza from the UK. Snowden accused the Danish Government of conspiring in his arrest. In response to flight reports, he said: “Remember when the Prime Minister Rasmussen said Denmark shouldn’t respect asylum law in my case? Turns out he had a secret.”
Snowden was behind the largest leak of classified information in history, revealing spying activities that were later deemed illegal on both sides of the Atlantic. He was elected rector at the University of Glasgow in February 2014, yet is unable to fully carry out his duties.
Patrick Harvie, co-convener of the Scottish Green Party, echoed calls for an inquiry into the flight: “It will certainly raise suspicions that an aircraft previously identified as involved in rendition flew through UK airspace at that time. We have a right to know what UK and Scottish authorities knew about this flight given it is implicated in the US response to whistleblowing about global surveillance.”
ATTEMPTS to arrest Snowden have failed as Russian authorities refused to comply. However, pressure from US authorities made it dangerous for Snowden to travel from Russia to Latin America, where Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Venezuela have all offered him asylum.
The presidential plane of Bolivian leader Evo Morales was forced to ground in Vienna, after four EU nations refused airspace access on the mistaken belief that Snowden was hidden on board.
In 2013 Police Scotland launched an investigation into whether other US rendition flights – where prisoners were taken to blacklist torture sites – used Scottish airports or airspace.
In 2006 aviation expert Chris Yates said it was likely that a US rendition flight had passed through Scottish airspace to Syria, in a case where the prisoner, Maher Arar, said he was tortured.
In 2008 then foreign secretary David Miliband admitted that UK airports had been used for US rendition flights and apologised for previous government denials.
American politics lecturer John MacDonald, director of foreign policy group the Scottish Global Forum, said: “Given the constitutional arrangements, there are a number of areas in which the Scottish Government may well have interests or concerns but will be excluded because security arrangements with the US are deemed ‘out of bounds’ for Scotland.
“However, if you take serious the supposition that all responsible governments have a moral and legal obligation to raise questions about flights which may be involved in dubious security and intelligence activities, then the Scottish Government may well have an interest in – or even be obliged to –raise questions.
“Questions have already been raised about the nature of military and intelligence air traffic through Scotland and if this activity is raising concerns within Scottish civil society – and it seems to be – then it is surely incumbent upon the Scottish Government to raise the issue with London.”
National Air Traffic Control Systems (Nats), who control flight access to UK airspace, said rendition flights are an issue for the UK Government. In response to questions, the UK Government refused to provide details on attempts to arrest Snowden or on the passage of the N977GA flight.
The Scottish Government also avoided a direct statement on the case on legal grounds. A spokesman said: “There is already an ongoing Police Scotland investigation, directed by the Lord Advocate. This investigation will seek to gather all available evidence of rendition flights using Scottish airports. As this is a live investigation it would be inappropriate to comment further.”
During his two and a half years in Moscow, Snowden has caused diplomatic ruptures and a worldwide debate on privacy and state security. In October 2015 the European Parliament voted narrowly, in a non-binding motion, to drop charges against him in recognition of “his status as [a] whistle-blower and international human rights defender”.
ABCNews: A passenger plane bound for Djibouti was forced to make an emergency landing today, minutes after taking off from Mogadishu, due to a hole opening up in the plane after an apparent explosion, according to aviation experts.
On its Facebook page, Daallo Airlines, the national airline of Somalia, said in a statement that an Airbus 321 had “experienced an incident shortly after takeoff” from the airport in Mogadishu, Somalia.
“The aircraft landed safely and all our passengers were evacuated safely,” the statement said. “A thorough investigation is being conducted by Somalia Civil Aviation Authority.”
The hole in the plane’s fuselage reached from the ceiling to the floor, according to photos of the damage. The aircraft was carrying 74 passengers and crew, authorities said. A Somali aviation official said that two passengers had been slightly injured in the incident, according to the Associated Press.
The official, however, wouldn’t provide any other details regarding injuries and did not confirm reports that an explosion may have triggered the fire.
Passengers aboard the Airbus 321 said they heard a loud bang and then saw smoke. As the cabin depressurized, oxygen masks deployed. Some of the 74 passengers were forced to move to the back of the jetliner as the plane descended, according to the AP.
“I don’t know if it was a bomb or an electric shock — but we heard a bang inside the plane,” said passenger Mohamed Ali, according to the AP.
“The thing that’s most interesting to me is that if you look at the outside of the airplane, some force from within the airplane pushed the sides of the aircraft open. You can see how it’s peeled back and you can actually see the streaking from soot down the back side, which would suggest quite definitively that this was a bomb of some kind, probably something about a hand-grenade size that would have made this hole in the side of the airplane,” said ABC News aviation consultant ret. Col. Steve Ganyard.
Heavy, in part: Al-Qaeda linked al-Shabaab recruits walk down a street on March 5, 2012 in the Deniile district of Somalian capital, Mogadishu, following their graduation. (Mohamed Abdiwahab/AFP/Getty Images)
Heavy, in part: Al-Shabaab has been identified as a terrorist group, and has claimed responsibility for several attacks since the Somali Council of Islamic Courts took over most of southern Somalia in 2006.
The group was likely responsible for a wave of five coordinated suicide car bombings in October 2008 that simultaneously hit targets in two cities in northern Somalia, killing at least 26 people.
The group also claimed credit for the 2013 attack on a Kenyan mall that killed 68 over the course of a two-day hostage crisis. Read more here.
Text messages, dinners, dropping documents and negotiations. Ever wonder who is tied to whom and what goes on in DC? Here is a peek while lawsuits are flying.
Bill Press hired by Bernie Sanders: Press put together two dinners for Sanders with about a dozen people at his house on Capitol Hill. One was in April, the other in November.
Among those who attended one or both: Susan McCue, a former chief of staff for Senate Democratic leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.); Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.); Brad Woodhouse, a former Democratic National Committee spokesman who now heads the liberal super PAC American Bridge 21st Century; Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.); and Alyssa Mastromonaco, former deputy chief of staff in the Obama White House who had answered phones in Sanders’s congressional office back when she was a college student in Vermont.
At the first dinner, “Bernie gave his ideas. We all kicked it around,” Press said. “The main thing that came out of the first meeting was there was a possibility and a need for somebody to raise those issues, but if he ran, he should definitely run as a Democrat.”
Devine led the discussion at the second dinner, and “basically laid out a plan of how to get from here to there,” Press said. “It was much more focused and much more real. Bernie took that, and off he goes. It was only a matter of when, not if, he announced.”
As Hillary advances in her bid for president: The opening months of her presidential campaign were a deluge of bad news for Clinton.
First came the revelation that she had been using a private email account, rather than a government one, for conducting business as secretary of state. Then a spate of stories about the finances of the Clinton Foundation and her six-figure speaking fees. Then came the news that Vice President Biden was considering a late entry into the race — in part because some Democrats worried that Clinton was starting to look like a weak general election candidate.
In October, it was coming to a head, with the added tests of the first Democratic debate and her grilling before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
The day before she was to testify, Clinton and her aides were holding a prep session at her dining room table in Washington when communications direction Jennifer Palmieri got a text message telling her to turn on CNN. Biden was heading for the Rose Garden, with President Obama in tow. That choice of venue could mean only one thing, they knew: Biden was not running. One crisis was averted.
Hillary get ready for a daily crisis: Clinton was preparing to leave home for Capitol Hill, she got a jarring call from longtime aide Cheryl Mills. With just an hour to go before the start of the hearing, the Republicans had just dropped a binder full of hundreds of documents they intended to use in their questioning — documents that Clinton had not prepared for.
Among them, Clinton aides say, was an email she had sent to her daughter, Chelsea, on the night of the attacks in which the secretary blamed “an Al Q[a]eda-like group.” GOP lawmakers saw it as a smoking gun, evidence that the Obama administration knew the attack had been terrorism even though officials initially said the incident had been sparked by an anti-Muslim video.
Hillary, ‘where is David’?: Clinton lawyer David Kendall had negotiated to prevent something that could have been more damaging: a plan by committee Republicans to have Clinton raise her right hand and be sworn in at the opening of the hearing, which would have produced an image that would be a GOP admaker’s dream. Instead, Clinton signed an oath before the hearing started.
NationalLawJournal: A government watchdog group is suing for emails and other communication between Hillary Clinton’s personal lawyer David Kendall and the U.S. Department of State about any confidential information stored on Clinton’s private email server.
Kendall, of counsel to Williams & Connolly, has served as the Clintons’ personal lawyer since the early 1990s. He is representing Hillary Clinton as she responds to demands for emails on the private server she used as secretary of State and for information about how the server was maintained.
In a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch on Jan. 29 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the group said it sent the State Department a request in September for all records of communications between Kendall and the State Department about confidential or potentially confidential information on Clinton’s server or any copies of the server.
The group filed suit after several months passed with no response besides a general acknowledgement that the State Department received the records request in October.
Kendall declined to comment Monday.
It’s not the first time that Kendall has been the subject of public-records requests related to the Clinton email controversy. In September, two lawsuits were filed in the D.C. federal district court—one by the James Madison Project and another by journalist David Brown—seeking records about the State Department’s decision to allow Kendall to keep a thumb drive in his office with copies of emails from Clinton’s server.
The James Madison Project, a government watchdog group, joined by journalist Shane Harris, explicitly asked for copies of communications between the State Department and Kendall about the thumb drive.
In both cases, the State Department told the court in December that it had identified thousands of pages of documents that might be responsive to the requests. The State Department was ordered to update the court on its progress by Feb. 12.
Kendall is also no stranger to Judicial Watch. Since the 1990s, court records show that he represented the Clintons as they defended against various lawsuits Judicial Watch filed.
The federal district court in Washington is handling dozens of public-records cases tied to Clinton’s email server. Some of the requests are for emails from the server, while others more broadly seek information about how Clinton and the State Department managed the server and the exchange of confidential information.
State Department officials have repeatedly told judges in these cases that they are understaffed and overwhelmed by the volume of requests, which has led to delays.
The State Department has been reviewing 55,000 pages of emails from Clinton’s server to release to the public under court order. The department was supposed to produce the last batch of emails—about 9,000 pages—by Jan. 29. The agency missed that deadline and instead produced 1,670 pages, according to news reports.
Documents obtained exclusively by LobeLog confirm that Argentine officials violated an agreement with the US Treasury Department by leaking sensitive financial information regarding deceased prosecutor Alberto Nisman. These leaks could complicate further US-Argentine cooperation in the controversial investigations surrounding Nisman’s death.
The leaks exposed a number of suspicious financial transactions involving a New York bank account maintained by Nisman since March 2002. Argentine authorities are currently investigating the possibility that the account was used for money laundering, while a separate inquiry attempts to determine the cause of Nisman’s death.
Argentine investigators have previously hypothesized that some of the deposits in Nisman’s New York account could be linked to a group of US investors, including some prominent funders of conservative political causes, who have been locked in a years-long legal battle with Argentina over the country’s debt.
And media reports have recently surfaced that appear to confirm that Nisman received questionable payments through a separate bank account in Uruguay from a company owned by US billionaire Sheldon Adelson, one of the most influential fund-raisers on the American conservative political scene.
Neither the money laundering investigation nor the inquiry into Nisman’s death has yet reached an official conclusion. But the information contained in the documents obtained by LobeLog, combined with a months-long investigation, sheds new light on a case that Argentine journalist Uki Goni wrote has “enough twists and turns to satisfy the most avid conspiracy theorist.”
Suicide or Murder?
When Nisman was found dead in his apartment on January 18, 2015, the news made headlines around the world. For more than a decade, the prosecutor had led the investigation into the 1994 bombing of the headquarters of the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association—AMIA, by its Spanish acronym—the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in Latin American history.
In 2006, Nisman formally charged several high-level Iranian officials with masterminding the bombing. Just days before he died, he had accused the administration of former Argentine President Cristina Kirchner of making a pact with the Iranians in 2013 to set aside their alleged involvement in the AMIA attack in exchange for closer economic ties between the two countries.
The day before Nisman was scheduled to testify about his allegations in an emergency session of congress, he was found dead in his bathroom with a single gunshot wound to his head.
Many observers have speculated that Nisman’s death relates in one way or another to his involvement in the AMIA case, especially given the nature and timing of the accusations he lodged against the Kirchner government. Kirchner herself has suggested that rogue elements of the country’s now-disbanded and reconstituted intelligence service murdered Nisman in order to destabilize her government.
On the other hand, Argentine journalist Facundo Pastor recently published a book suggesting that Nisman killed himself after realizing the weakness of the evidence for his allegations. “He spent two years confronting the government,” Pastor toldThe Independent, “but the day comes to present his case and Nisman realises that he has nothing.”
An Argentine federal judge dismissed Nisman’s charges against the Kirchner administration soon after the prosecutor’s death. The country’s recently inaugurated president Mauricio Macri has promised not to appeal a separate ruling by an Argentine court that declared the 2013 agreement with Iran unconstitutional.
Argentine government investigators still have not determined whether Nisman’s death was a suicide or a murder, but members of Nisman’s family have questioned several aspects of the government’s inquiry so far. And adding yet another twist to an already convoluted story, the late prosecutor’s ex-wife, Sandra Arroyo Salgado, who serves as a federal judge in Argentina, has maintained that Nisman was assassinated for “economic motives.”
Money Laundering
Arroyo Salgado revealed the existence of Nisman’s New York bank account to Argentine authorities in March 2015. Nisman’s mother, Sara Garfunkel, and his sister, Sandra Nisman, were listed as signatories on the account, as was Diego Lagomarsino—the technology expert who worked in Nisman’s office and admitted to giving the late prosecutor the gun that apparently killed him.
Shortly after Arroyo Salgado’s revelation, the Financial Information Unit (UIF) of the Argentine Justice and Human Rights Ministry asked for money laundering charges to be brought against Lagomarsino, who had reportedly sent half his monthly salary to the New York account. Soon after Lagomarsino was charged, Garfunkel and Sandra Nisman were also indicted for their alleged involvement in laundering funds through the account.
In April, the federal judge then in charge of the case, Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, requested information on the alleged money laundering from US authorities. According to the documents obtained by LobeLog, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) “shared sensitive financial information with the UIF on Argentinian [sic] subjects associated with the deceased prosecutor and their joint investment account at Merrill Lynch in New York, and other accounts in Uruguay and other countries.”
“Since the [Argentine] courts’ requests for information from the US Department of Justice (DOJ) were taking too long,” the document continues, the head of the UIF, Jose Alberto Sbatella, “was asked by Argentine Federal Judge Canicoba Corral to ask for FinCEN’s permission to incorporate FinCEN’s relevant report in the case file so that it could be used as evidence in court.”
On July 7, Argentine news outlet Infobae reported that it had gained exclusive access to documents related to the money laundering case. A few days later, on July 16, Infobaereported that Sbatella had turned over the FinCEN report to Canicoba Corral, and that the judge was seeking to incorporate it as evidence in the proceedings. (This request was granted in September.)
Then, on July 27, the Buenos Aires-based news outlet Pagina/12 published an article titled “Nisman and his incredible financial relations,” which revealed previously unknown details about suspicious transactions involving Nisman’s New York account.
Several other media reports followed that contained information apparently provided by FinCEN to the UIF, which had in turn handed it over to Canicoba Corral, who was removed from the case in November after making prejudicial statements to various media outlets about the defendants’ alleged guilt.
Anatomy of a Leak
A US State Department employee sent an email with an English translation of the Pagina/12 article to colleagues at the Treasury Department on August 6, captioning it with the message, “It now appears indisputable that Argentine authorities, in violation of their agreement with Treasury, have leaked information about Alberto Nisman.”
On August 24, a State Department employee sent another email to colleagues at the Treasury Department with links to both above-mentioned articles.
“[I] wanted to make sure you or you successor at Treasury saw that the story below made the front page of Perfil this weekend and was picked up by the [Buenos Aires] Herald today,” the message reads in part. The author then asks, “Is this just rehashing of an old story or something new?”
The documents—obtained by LobeLog from the Treasury Department via a freedom of information request—are almost entirely redacted, making it impossible to tell what, if any, response Treasury employees provided to the State Department emails.
The Treasury Department and the State Department declined to comment for this story, as did the US Department of Justice. The latter claimed through a spokesperson that the “investigation is a matter of Argentine jurisdiction and, therefore, any inquiries should be directed to Argentine authorities.” LobeLog sought comment from the Argentine Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, but did not receive a response.
Unexplained Transactions
The August 23 article from Perfil, based on information reportedly provided by US financial investigators to their Argentine counterparts, detailed nearly $600,000 in suspicious deposits made to Nisman’s New York bank account between 2012 and 2014.
Officials from the UIF had previously speculated that some of that deposits could have originated from the “holdouts,” a group of investors who have refused Argentina’s debt restructuring offers, and who stand to make billions of dollars if they prevail in the related legal dispute that is currently playing out in U.S. courts. One of the most prominent “holdouts” is NML Capital, owned by billionaire hedge fund manager and Republican Party power broker Paul Singer.
Since Nisman’s death, lobbying groups with ties to the “holdouts” have funded efforts to promote his work on the AMIA case. While the prosecutor was alive, these organizations spent millions of dollars on a campaign to “do whatever we can to get our government and media’s attention focused on what a bad actor Argentina is,” in the words of one group’s executive director.
An independent investigation by LobeLog did not reveal any definite links between the “holdouts” and the depositors identified by various news reports. However, the timing of some of the transactions does appear to coincide with important developments related to the debt dispute.
One example is that of “Joseph Gestetner,” who deposited $10,000 in Nisman’s account on September 13, 2012. Perfilreported that his name “does not appear in official records.” When contacted for comment, New York-based public relations professional and Orthodox Jewish community activist Yossi Gestetner—sometimes known as Joseph—denied that the documents obtained by Perfil referred to him.
Public records searches similarly turned up little information about “Daniel Benayon,” who transferred $15,000 to Nisman’s account on the same day as the transfer from Gestetner. A Facebook profile indicates that a man named Daniel Benayon lived in Argentina and worked for a Buenos Aires-based Orthodox Jewish organization, but messages seeking comment from this individual did not receive a response.
One of the largest single deposits revealed by Perfil came from “RODFA Limited,” which transferred $134,975 to Nisman’s New York account on September 14, 2012—the day after the deposits from Gestetner and Benayon.
Public records research uncovered that the company was incorporated in March 2012 in Hong Kong, listing “Rodrigo Martin Ferreiros” and “Facundo Pla” as signatories on the incorporation documents. (The name RODFA appears to derive from the first several letters of the two individuals’ names.)
A document filed with the Hong Kong Companies Registry notes that Pla ceased to act as director of RODFA on September 1, 2012—roughly two weeks before the deposit to Nisman’s account. A separate document indicates that Ferreiros assumed the position of director in March 2013. According to RODFA’s most recent annual filing, Ferreiros, who listed a Buenos Aires address in the document, continued to serve as director of RODFA as of March 2015.
Infobae reporter Andres Ballesteros revealed that the Argentine Senate briefly employed an individual named Rodrigo Martin Ferreiros from September to December 2013. However, efforts to uncover more detailed information about Ferreiros and Pla, as well as attempts to contact them for comment, were unsuccessful.
The series of deposits from September 13 and 14, 2012—totaling roughly $160,000—occurred at the same time that an important discussion of the Argentine debt situation was unfolding at a meeting of the “Paris Club,” an informal group of financial officials from various countries tasked with helping resolve disputes between creditors and debtor nations. The deposits also coincided with mass anti-government protests in Argentina against the administration of then-president Cristina Kirchner.
More Mysterious Deposits
In addition to the transfers described above, Perfil also revealed a $50,000 deposit to Nisman’s account from “Guillermo N. Salemi” [sic] on August 21, 2014, as well as another deposit of $50,000 made the same day from a firm called “Las Tierras USA.” An individual named Guillermo N. Salimei [sic] is listed as the registered agent of three active companies incorporated in the Miami area in 2013, including Las Tierras USA.
When contacted for comment, the registered president of Las Tierras, Agustin Misson, confirmed that he was a “friend” of Salimei, but claimed that he did not know how to get in touch with him. Misson also said he knew nothing about the bank transfers. Further attempts to reach Salimei for comment were not successful.
On August 21, 2014, the same day as the transfers from Salimi and Las Tierras, a $10,000 deposit was made to Nisman’s account by an entity referred to as “Iungelson (from Israel).” Perfilreported that “Iungelson” may refer to a member of Nisman’s extended family, but LobeLog was unable to determine whether the name refers to an individual or an organization.
On August 22, 2014—the day after the Salimei, Las Tierras and Iungelson transfers—Nisman’s account received a $50,000 deposit from “Vivaterra SA,” whose name matches that of a South American travel agency based in Brazil. LobeLog made initial contact with a representative of the firm’s Argentina office, but repeated requests for comment went unanswered.
This series of deposits—also totaling $160,000—were made less than two weeks after the Kirchner administration announced that it would sue the United States in the International Court of Justice over a ruling by US judge Thomas Griesa that ordered US banks not to process any of Argentina’s payments to its debt-holders until the country also agreed to pay the “holdouts.” The bulk of these payments came on August 21—the same day that Griesa ruled against a proposal by the Argentine government intended as a workaround to his previous decision.
Further Twists and Turns
The name of yet another mysterious figure has also surfaced in connection with Nisman’s New York account: Claudio Picon, the owner of the Argentine packaging business Palermopack. Picon’s brother and business partner Fabian Picon is the son-in-law of Hugo Anzorreguy, the former head of Argentina’s intelligence service who is now on trial for his alleged role in facilitating a bribe to a key witness in the AMIA case.
Perfilreported last June that Claudio Picon deposited $200,000 in Nisman’s account in July 2012, around the time of crucial hearings in the US court system related to the debt dispute between Argentina and the holdouts.
In the August 23 expose, Perfil also documented transfers by Picon to Nisman’s New York account totaling $72,000 between January 2013 and March 2014—a time period during which the controversy over the debt dispute and the agreement between Argentina and Iran regarding the AMIA case reached a peak.
In addition, the Picon brothers’ company owned an Audi Q5 sport utility vehicle commonly driven by Nisman, which Claudio Picon has said he lent to the late prosecutor for free on account of their close friendship. Representatives for the Picons could not be reached for comment.
One of the most enigmatic figures mentioned in the documents obtained by Perfil is Damian Stefanini, an Argentine businessman who deposited $150,000 in Nisman’s account on October 23, 2012—less than a week before Griesa issued another ruling against Argentina in the debt dispute.
Perfil journalist Emilia Delfino reported that according to “judicial sources” Stefanini and Claudio Picon had traveled together to Sao Paulo around the time of that deposit, and that they had also traveled together to other countries, including Paraguay, Uruguay, the United States and China.
On October 17, 2014—just three months before Nisman’s death—Stefanini vanished. His car was later found abandoned near his accountant’s office in Buenos Aires, blocks away from the address listed by Ferreiros as director of RODFA.
Argentine authorities are investigating Stefanini’s disappearance as a kidnapping, but they have not yet identified any suspects. The international law enforcement organization Interpol has issued the equivalent of a worldwide missing person notice for Stefanini.
Arroyo Salgado, Nisman’s ex-wife, had been in charge of the investigation into Stefanini’s disappearance until she was recused from the case in October due to her potential for bias following the revelation of the financial link between the missing entrepreneur and her late ex-husband. Arroyo Salgado has indicated that she will appeal that decision.
Murky Outlook
The leak of information provided in confidence by US authorities to their Argentine counterparts could complicate further cooperation between the United States and Argentina regarding the investigations into Nisman’s death and the money laundering that allegedly occurred using his New York bank account.
At the same time, the recent election of Mauricio Macri as Argentina’s president could help improve the country’s often-strained relations with the United States. Following Macri’s victory, US congressional Representatives Ed Royce (R-CA) and Eliot Engel (D-NY) called for the US to “prioritize” its relationship with Argentina, saying the two nations “should be natural partners.”
When Macri announced his intention not to appeal the decision voiding the 2013 Argentine-Iranian agreement, the Twitter account of the foreign affairs committee of the House of Representatives posted a message signed by Royce that read, “Glad to see #Argentina has scrapped this disturbing pact w/ #Iran.”
It remains to be seen, however, whether an improvement in overall US-Argentine relations would also include a deepening of cooperation on the Nisman case, especially given the previous breach of trust.
In fact, the US Department of Justice recently declined a request to turn over Nisman’s electronic communication records to Argentine prosecutor Viviana Fein, who was leading the investigation into the late prosecutor’s death. Judge Fabiana Palmaghini has since replaced Fein as head of the investigation, and has made it clear that she intends to closely examine the possibility that Nisman may have been murdered.
As several observers and commentators have previously noted, Nisman is only the latest in a long line of high-profile Argentine figures who died suddenly under mysterious circumstances. Controversy continues to surround many of these previous cases years after the investigations ended. And even the AMIA case itself remains unsolved, despite the passage of more than two decades since the attack.
This history suggests that a full accounting of Nisman’s death—whether it was tied to his work on the bombing or to the suspicious deposits, or whether those two threads of the story relate to one another—will not be forthcoming any time soon.
