Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

Operacion Probirka” — or “Operation Test Tube”

Posted on by

Primer: 2025 – Russian use of chemical weapons against Ukraine ‘widespread’, Dutch defence minister says

Add in the U.S. State Department report in 2024

***

Posted in full and a big hat tip to Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (in full)

Key Findings
  • Maria Oleinikova and her children run businesses in Spain dedicated to Spanish cuisine, but they are also being investigated for supplying banned chemicals to Russia.
  • The investigation, called “Operation Test Tube,” has named nine suspects, including Oleinikova, her two children, and executives from a Spanish company called Scharlab. No charges have yet been brought in the case.
  • Separately, import data reviewed by reporters shows that a Russian company majority-owned by Oleinikova, Catrosa Reactiv, has received dozens of shipments of sanctioned chemicals from companies under investigation in Spain.
  • While it is not known what then happened to the chemicals, leaked transaction data shows Catrosa Reactiv’s clients include weapons developers, such as the state institute that created the nerve agent Novichok.
  • Customs systems struggle to deal with the EU’s broad sanctions on chemical exports to Russia, experts said, meaning that banned chemicals can easily slip out of the bloc and into Russia.

Operacion Probirka” — or “Operation Test Tube”

Cavina Vinoteca, a slick wine bar in Barcelona’s fashionable Poblenou neighborhood, has drawn rave reviews online since it opened its doors last year.

The restaurant is one of several gastronomic ventures run by the Oleinikova family, led by matriarch Maria, who was born in Russia but is now a Spanish citizen. Together with her son and daughter, she also runs a Spanish company that exports wine, beer, cider and liqueurs to Russia.

But OCCRP and partners have learned that this company did business beyond just beverages— it was also shipping chemicals to Russia in possible violation of European Union sanctions imposed following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Last year, Maria and her children Irina and Vyacheslav were arrested in a Spanish police raid dubbed “Operacion Probirka” — or “Operation Test Tube” — in which 13,000 kilograms of chemicals were seized at the Port of Barcelona.

Operation Test Tube was part of a Spanish investigation into the illegal supply of chemicals to Russia, Spain’s Interior Ministry said in a statement at the time, but since then the government has provided almost no details about the case. Although the statement referred to a Russian company that was importing the chemicals, police did not publicly name it or provide details of the shipments.

Credit: Policia Nacional

Spanish authorities during the “Operacion Probirka” investigation

A Spanish police source involved in the investigation said authorities suspect Oleinikova was an “intermediary” who arranged the shipments. (The officer was authorized to speak to the press, but not to be identified by name.)

But drawing on Russian import data, reporters found that Oleinikova doesn’t just operate in Spain — she also majority-owns a Russian chemical company called Catrosa Reactiv that received at least 36 shipments of sanctioned chemicals from Spain between 2022 and 2024— including one that came directly from Complexe Sancu, the Spanish wine-and-beer export company run by Oleinkova and her children.

Most of the other shipments were made by a Spanish company called Scharlab S.L., which is headquartered in Barcelona with subsidiaries in Italy and the Philippines, import data shows. Scharlab is majority-owned by Werner Scharlau, a German living in Spain who was among those arrested in February.

On its website, Catrosa Reactiv — which was founded in 2006 and taken over by Oleinikova’s husband two years later —  says that it “successfully operates in the Russian chemical reagents market” and supplies products to laboratories and raw materials to industry. The Russian company register shows that Oleinikova, who has a background in academic scientific research, became the company’s majority shareholder in 2015 and still holds a controlling stake in the firm.

Credit: Screenshot/catrosa.ru

Catrosa Reactiv’s website.

It is not known how the chemicals imported from Spain to Catrosa Reactiv were ultimately used. However, leaked transaction data obtained by reporters showed Catrosa Reactiv’s clients in Russia since 2022 have included at least six sanctioned entities linked to weapons production, the defense sector, and the Russian military.

They included the State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology, also known as GosNIIOKhT. It has been sanctioned by the EU and U.S. for its involvement in the development and production of chemical weapons including the toxic nerve agent Novichok, which has been used by Russian operatives for stealth assassinations abroad.

Since 2022, Catrosa Reactiv has also received payments from:

  • The All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics, an agency that developed weapons in the Soviet era, including the first Soviet atomic bomb, before shifting toward building and managing Russia’s most advanced supercomputers
  • The Scientific Research Institute of Applied Acoustics, which was sanctioned by the U.S. for allegedly “carrying out research and development of military products.” The U.S. also said it had been “involved in the procurement and inventory of chemicals that could be used in the production of chemical weapons agents.”
  • Explosives manufacturer SKTB Technolog, a contractor for the Russian Ministry of Defense
  • The 18th Central Research Institute, known as Military Unit 11135, which is part of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service

Reporters did not identify any chemicals specifically associated with chemical weapons in Catrosa Reactiv’s import data. However, Miguel Ángel Sierra, a professor of organic chemistry at the Complutense University of Madrid and former member of the scientific advisory board of the international Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said the chemicals it imported from Europe were sanctioned because they had multiple potential uses, including creating explosives.

“These have been banned by the European Union because they are industrial products,” he explained. “For example, there are many processes you can’t carry out, including the preparation of explosives, the preparation of pharmaceuticals, and the preparation of many other things, without having some of these products.”

Spain’s Audiencia Nacional — a court that deals with terrorism and major crimes — confirmed to OCCRP that Oleinikova and her two children are among nine suspects currently under investigation for “smuggling banned substances.” All nine suspects have been released while the investigation continues, and no one has been charged with a crime, the press department for the court said.

Oleinikova declined to comment for this story because the case is still under investigation by the Audiencia Nacional.  

How Reporters Identified Catrosa Reactiv’s Imports

Reporters reviewed extensive Russian import records for Catrosa Reactiv on the ImportGenius commercial database, filtering them to include only shipments received after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, to detect possible sanctioned chemicals.

Some of the shipments from Spain included the “HS Codes” – international product identification categories under which genres of exports are grouped for customs.

In some cases, reporters discovered product descriptions for individual chemicals within the import data, but not always.

Where they could find descriptions of individual chemicals, they cross-referenced them with EU sanctions lists, which are updated every four months, to work out which chemicals were illegally being shipped out of Spain despite a ban.

While OCCRP and its partners were able to establish that Catrosa Reactiv had made 36 imports of at least 15 banned products from Spain since 2022, the actual figures may be higher as the commercial database may be incomplete and the product descriptions for some shipments were imprecise.

Russian Firm Imported Sanctioned Chemicals in Dozens of Shipments

Official press releases following the October 2024 raid on the Barcelona port didn’t name the specific chemicals that were confiscated, but police told OCCRP they had seized 13,000 kilograms of the solvent N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP), which is widely used in electronics, pharmaceuticals, and coating. Investigators also found smaller amounts of other chemicals that could be used in weapons production.

Some shipments of chemicals — including nitric acid and acetone, both used in the manufacture of explosives, and diethylamine, a chemical involved in the manufacturing of the nerve agent VX — had already left Spain for Russia, police said.

In an effort to form a complete picture of the types of chemicals Catrosa Reactive had been importing from the EU, reporters reviewed Russian import records in a commercial database.

Credit: Policia Nacional

Spanish police at the Barcelona port during the seizure of 13,000 kilograms of the solvent N-Methyl-2-pyrrolidone (NMP).

The 32 shipments Catrosa Reactiv received from Scharlab contained 14 chemicals worth $15,000, all subject to EU export bans from April 2022 to June 2023 due to their potential contribution to the enhancement of Russia’s defence, security, and industrial sectors. They included $8,200 worth of NMP, the same solvent discovered at the Barcelona port, plus $5,800 worth of isopropanol and $2,550 of hydrogen peroxide.

The shipment made to Catrosa Reactiv from Complexe Sancu, the Spanish wine export company run by Maria Oleinikova’s children, contained around $3,650 worth of sodium hydrogen carbonate — also known as sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda. But despite its benign uses, the chemical was prohibited for export from the EU to Russia in April 2022 under the category of “goods which could contribute to the enhancement of Russian industrial capacities.”

‘Europeans Don’t Have the Infrastructure to Check’

Experts say that the EU’s customs systems are insufficient to deal with the bloc’s extremely broad sanctions on chemical exports to Russia, making it easy for shipments like the ones from Spain to slip through the net.

In international shipping, exporters label their goods using broad group identifiers known as HS Codes, which can cover a wide range of products including both banned and permitted substances. This means that it is possible to export a chemical under an HS Code that does not identify the presence of a specific banned substance.

Elina Ribakova, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., said that HS Codes including sanctioned products are supposed to be flagged as high risk and checked more closely by customs officials.

But in practice, she said, this doesn’t always happen: “The question is whether the product is correctly classified under its appropriate HS Code and whether it is actually being checked.”

Even though the EU and Spain have created additional code numbers designed to add further detail to the international HS Code categories, Ribakova said it’s still “very hard to pin down a product” as they tend to be grouped.

“Europeans don’t have the infrastructure to check more holistically something that is not a nuclear or very specialized weapon,” she told OCCRP, adding that these limitations make it “relatively easy” to export sanctioned products.

In the case under investigation in Spain, exporters mixed batches of sanctioned chemicals inside larger shipments of legal substances, or listed false destinations on customs paperwork, such as Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, to disguise the fact that shipments were headed for Russia, investigators told OCCRP.

Credit: Policia Nacional

Chemicals seized by Spanish police during “Operacion Probirka.”

One of the investigators working on the case told OCCRP that evidence obtained so far shows the shipments did not in fact pass through those countries, and that the companies listed as recipients were fronts.

Instead they went overland to Russia via other countries, including Poland and Belarus, he claimed. It’s not clear which, if any, of the people or companies under investigation made use of these tactics. But import records for Catrosa Reactiv reviewed by OCCRP and its partners show that it received one shipment of the sanctioned chemical NMP in 2023 that originated in Spain, but was routed via a Kyrgyz company, NK Muras LLC.

The data shows that shipment was manufactured by one of the companies under investigation by Spanish authorities for illegally exporting sanctioned chemicals in the case involving Oleinikova.

According to the import records the supplier acting on the “order” of NK Muras was Vlate Logistik LLC, a Belarusian transport and storage company sanctioned by the EU in December 2024 for its proximity to the Moscow-aligned regime of President Aleksandr Lukashenko.

In 2024, Complexe Sancu, the Spanish export company managed by Maria Oleinikova’s children, sent at least one shipment of NMP to NK Muras. Available records do not show whether that shipment ultimately ended up with Catrosa Reactiv.

Separate transaction data obtained by reporters indicate that Catrosa Reactiv paid NK Muras more than $240,000 in 2023 for three shipments of unspecified pharmaceutical ingredients.

Neither NK Muras nor Vlate Logistik responded to requests for comment.

9/11 24 Years Later, New Details Emerge

Posted on by

One has to understand the FBI had serious domestic cases during the tenure of then Director Louis Freeh. No one was paying enough attention to counter-terrorism cases  and the same could be said for the CIA. This link from a Penn State investigator and summarized by Reuters takes us back to the cases that consumed the Bureau and hence Saudi operatives were not on the priority mission set.

The 9/11 survivors and families are still in the fight to resolve the matter of complicity of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. What does that look like yu ask? A big hat tip to investigative journalist Catherine Herridge for her work on interviews and documents, newly discovered that the 9/11 Commission either ignored or missed.

We are at a time where after 24 years, nothing should be redacted or embargoed.

Herridge reports: JUST IN: We have confirmed that the @FBI is aware of our new investigation that challenges the timeline of events surrounding the 9/11 attacks. We understand that our reporting today on the Saudi “Advance Team” will be reviewed for leads and the Bureau welcomes tips and information from 9/11 families.

 

The new information includes that some hijackers entered the United States as early as 13 months prior to 9/11 as advanced teams. Additionally, two other nodes of operations include Missouri and Oklahoma.

So many conspiracies continue to float about how GW Bush shares guilt and split loyalties. The information Herridge covers actually should place guilt and split loyalties with then President Clinton and then FBI Director Louis Freeh and his lack of leadership but one must also look at Congress because the FBI had gone through a time of a hiring freeze.

The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission on ...

The consequences of unreleased documents, lack of re-examining the evidence of work of the 9/11 Commission and more interviews is still a requirement. While almost 3000 died due to the attacks of that horrible day…more have perished since due to illnesses caused by working ground zero.

9/11 Families United have the following on their website which remain open questions and unresolved today.

The Next New York city Mayor is Mamdani or Vera, or Both

Posted on by

If NYC chooses Zohran Mamdani as the next mayor, the collapse of the city is assured…but you can bet this will have real consequences for other cities and states across the country….there will be a real exodus of people and business…so read on for why this is simply dangerous.

In part from FNC:

NYIC has close ties to and has taken money from the Vera Institute for Justice, a group that received a significant amount of support in the form of contracts from the Biden administration to assist illegal immigrants in avoiding deportations. Additionally, NYIC has taken in $175,000 from the sprawling George Soros nonprofit network.

Soros is also tied to another key Mamdani advisor, Patrick Gaspard, who has served in several high-profile political positions, including advising former President Barack Obama’s historic 2008 campaign, serving as the Democratic National Committee’s executive director, and was tapped as the Center for American Progress (CAP) president in 2021.

Gaspard, who Fox News Digital previously reported made millions of dollars serving as president of Soros’s Open Society Foundations between 2017 and 2020, has been a staunch defender of Soros, saying earlier this year that he was “inspired by the selection of my friend George Soros, who is one of our leading defenders of inclusive and accountable democracy and vibrant civil society,” after then-President Joe Biden announced he would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

“His accomplishments, in the face of distortions and threats from extremists, will be lauded well into the future,” he continued. In a long 2023 X thread, Gaspard also attempted to deflect blame away from Soros amid reports that Soros and his network were pouring millions of dollars into the campaign coffers of radical DAs and far-left groups that emphasized social justice programs and gave lenient sentences to violent criminals.

So, just for a sampling of who Mamdani really is…he is Vera and Vera is Mamdani…Since 1961, there has been a real mission to reform the criminal justice system..initially it was under the experiment titled the Manhattan Bail Project which began by two people, Herb Sturz and Louis Schweitzer. Sturz, now dead, was the force behind closing Rikers Island prison, which is actually slated to close by 2027. Most of his work was funded by the Open Society Institute. Schweitzer, Russian born and also dead, was a huge supporter and even a donor to the United Nations where he advocated for a resolution of ‘juvenile disarmament’ meaning prohibiting toy guns and even water pistols as the early first step to full arms control.

Today, the CEO for the Vera Institute is Damien Dwin. he continues to forcefully advocate for bail reform and changing up the whole experience for inmates. He has arranged for Vera offices to be in at least 40 states by focusing on the racial component behind bars, the misuse of jails, the transformation of confinement, legal services for immigrants…and you can see or guess at the rest.

So how powerful is Vera? Well just a sampling of the donors include: members of the NBA, yes professional basketball; Khalil Gibran Muhammed – an academic at Harvard and a Ford Foundation professor of history on race and public policy; The Tides Foundation; Bank of America; Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; The California Endowment; Covington & Burling, LLP; the Ford Foundation; ‘Inspire the Change’ via the NFL Foundation; the Joyce Foundation; J.B. and M.K. Pritzker Family Foundation (yes governor of Illinois); Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory ( government agency); Prudential Financial; MasterCard…ah but there are hundreds more.

The Vera website includes work for ending girl’s incarceration, equitable housing access, redefining public safety, which actually is rebuilding policing to community centered public safety ecosystems for social needs and a additional layer of the 911 call center system for mental health and even redefining what traffic stops are.

Now you can see what is to come for not only New York but others cities across the country including Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland even Boulder, Colorado.

Should DOGE include the E for Espionage Also?

Posted on by

ProPublica is not one of my ‘go-to’ sites but they get a hat tip for this one.… the enemy foreign and domestic has burrowed in…anyone really paying enough attention? One could argue CISA has failed as has  the NSA and Microsoft…..

Microsoft is using engineers in China to help maintain the Defense Department’s computer systems — with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel — leaving some of the nation’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary, a ProPublica investigation has found.

The arrangement, which was critical to Microsoft winning the federal government’s cloud computing business a decade ago, relies on U.S. citizens with security clearances to oversee the work and serve as a barrier against espionage and sabotage.

But these workers, known as “digital escorts,” often lack the technical expertise to police foreign engineers with far more advanced skills, ProPublica found. Some are former military personnel with little coding experience who are paid barely more than minimum wage for the work.

“We’re trusting that what they’re doing isn’t malicious, but we really can’t tell,” said one current escort who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, fearing professional repercussions.

The system has been in place for nearly a decade, though its existence is being reported publicly here for the first time.

Microsoft told ProPublica that it has disclosed details about the escort model to the federal government. But former government officials said in interviews that they had never heard of digital escorts. The program appears to be so low-profile that even the Defense Department’s IT agency had difficulty finding someone familiar with it. “Literally no one seems to know anything about this, so I don’t know where to go from here,” said Deven King, spokesperson for the Defense Information Systems Agency.Biden review board blames Microsoft for China hack that targeted US ... source

National security and cybersecurity experts contacted by ProPublica were also surprised to learn that such an arrangement was in place, especially at a time when the U.S. intelligence community and leading members of Congress and the Trump administration view China’s digital prowess as a top threat to the country.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has called China the “most active and persistent cyber threat to U.S. Government, private-sector, and critical infrastructure networks.” One of the most prominent examples of that threat came in 2023, when Chinese hackers infiltrated the cloud-based mailboxes of senior U.S. government officials, stealing data and emails from the commerce secretary, the U.S. ambassador to China and others working on national security matters. The intruders downloaded about 60,000 emails from the State Department alone.

With President Donald Trump and his allies concerned about spying, the State Department announced plans in May to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students” — a pledge that the president seems to have walked back. The administration is also trying to arrange the sale of the popular social media platform TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company that some lawmakers believe could hand over sensitive U.S. user data to Beijing and fuel misinformation with its content recommendations. But experts told ProPublica that digital escorting poses a far greater threat to national security than either of those issues and is a natural opportunity for spies.

“If I were an operative, I would look at that as an avenue for extremely valuable access. We need to be very concerned about that,” said Harry Coker, who was a senior executive at the CIA and the National Security Agency. Coker, who also was national cyber director during the Biden administration, added that he and his former intelligence community colleagues “would love to have had access like that.”

It is difficult to know whether engineers overseen by digital escorts have ever carried out a cyberattack against the U.S. government. But Coker wondered whether it “could be part of an explanation for a lot of the challenges we have faced over the years.”

Microsoft uses the escort system to handle the government’s most sensitive information that falls below “classified.” According to the government, this “high impact level” category includes “data that involves the protection of life and financial ruin.” The “loss of confidentiality, integrity, or availability” of this information “could be expected to have a severe or catastrophic adverse effect” on operations, assets and individuals, the government has said. In the Defense Department, the data is categorized as “Impact Level” 4 and 5 and includes materials that directly support military operations.

John Sherman, who was chief information officer for the Department of Defense during the Biden administration, said he was surprised and concerned to learn of ProPublica’s findings. “I probably should have known about this,” he said. He told the news organization that the situation warrants a “thorough review by DISA, Cyber Command and other stakeholders that are involved in this.”

In an emailed statement, the Defense Information Systems Agency said that cloud service providers “are required to establish and maintain controls for vetting and using qualified specialists,” but the agency did not respond to ProPublica’s questions regarding the digital escorts’ qualifications.

It’s unclear whether other cloud providers to the federal government use digital escorts as part of their tech support. Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud declined to comment on the record for this article. Oracle did not respond to requests for comment.

Microsoft declined to make executives available for interviews for this article. In response to emailed questions, the company provided a statement saying its personnel and contractors operate in a manner “consistent with US Government requirements and processes.”

Global workers “have no direct access to customer data or customer systems,” the statement said. Escorts “with the appropriate clearances and training provide direct support. These personnel are provided specific training on protecting sensitive data, preventing harm, and use of the specific commands/controls within the environment.” In addition, Microsoft said it has an internal review process known as “Lockbox” to “make sure the request is deemed safe or has any cause for concern.” A company spokesperson declined to provide specifics about how it works but said it’s built into the system and involves review by a Microsoft employee in the U.S.

Over the years, various people involved in the work, including a Microsoft cybersecurity leader, warned the company that the arrangement is inherently risky, those people told ProPublica. Despite the presence of an escort, foreign engineers are privy to granular details about the federal cloud — the kind of information hackers could exploit. Moreover, the U.S. escorts overseeing these workers are ill equipped to spot suspicious activity, two of the people said.

Even those who helped develop the escort system acknowledge the people doing the work may not be able to detect problems.

“If someone ran a script called ‘fix_servers.sh’ but it actually did something malicious then [escorts] would have no idea,” Matthew Erickson, a former Microsoft engineer who worked on the escort system, told ProPublica in an email. That said, he maintained that the “scope of systems they could disrupt” is limited.

Little Sisters of the Poor Lose in Court Again

Posted on by

For 150 years, the Little Sisters of the Poor have been faithful to the religious doctrine, that is until the Obama administration sued them in 2014. The Obama Department of Justice forced the healthcare plan of the Little Sisters of the Poor to use subsidized drugs for contraception and abortion.

How the Little Sisters of the Poor Offer a Spiritual Haven in the ...

And so it goes even today…another appeal is underway…

A federal court has ruled against the Little Sisters of the Poor in their long-running legal dispute over government contraception mandates, dealing a blow to the religious order of sisters even after multiple court victories, including at the Supreme Court.

The legal advocacy group Becket said on Aug. 13 that the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania ruled in favor of both New Jersey and Pennsylvania in finding that the federal government had not followed protocol when issuing exemptions to contraceptive requirements, including for the Little Sisters.

The district court said that a set of religious exemptions granted by the federal government during the first Trump administration were “arbitrary [and] capricious” and failed to adhere to the requirements of the federal Administrative Procedure Act.

The court has vacated those exemptions “in their entirety,” the Aug. 13 ruling said.

Diana Thomson, a senior attorney with Becket, told CNA that the case is the same one that saw the Little Sisters win a victory at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020 when a majority of the court’s justices said the exemptions to the contraceptive mandate were legal.

She described the procedural questions in the Aug. 13 ruling as “cutting-floor arguments” that the states had largely ignored several years ago.

“Instead of dropping the case, Pennsylvania and New Jersey revitalized their cutting-floor arguments that they chose not to pursue at the Supreme Court last time and brought them in the district court,” she said.

The district court accepted those arguments “even though the Supreme Court already blessed the rules,” Thomson said.

The court is “trying to find a loophole” to the 2020 Supreme Court ruling, she said.

New Jersey and Pennsylvania had brought the lawsuit against multiple federal agencies and officials, though the Little Sisters of the Poor were attached to the lawsuit as “defendant-intervenors.”

The sisters will appeal the ruling, Thomson said.

“I assume the Trump administration will appeal also,” she said. “But the Little Sisters’ appeal is already on file.”

“We will appeal all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to,” she said.

In a separate statement, Mark Rienzi, the president of Becket and the lead attorney for the Little Sisters, said it was “bad enough that the district court issued a nationwide ruling invalidating federal religious conscience rules.”

“But even worse is that the district court simply ducked the glaring constitutional issues in this case after waiting five years and not even holding a hearing,” he argued.

“It is absurd to think the Little Sisters might need yet another trip to the Supreme Court to end what has now been more than a dozen years of litigation over the same issue,” he said, adding: “We will fight as far as we need to fight to protect the Little Sisters’ right to care for the elderly in peace.”