An affordable price is probably the major benefit persuading people to buy drugs at www.americanbestpills.com. The cost of medications in Canadian drugstores is considerably lower than anywhere else simply because the medications here are oriented on international customers. In many cases, you will be able to cut your costs to a great extent and probably even save up a big fortune on your prescription drugs. What's more, pharmacies of Canada offer free-of-charge shipping, which is a convenient addition to all other benefits on offer. Cheap price is especially appealing to those users who are tight on a budget
Service Quality and Reputation
Although some believe that buying online is buying a pig in the poke, it is not. Canadian online pharmacies are excellent sources of information and are open for discussions. There one can read tons of users' feedback, where they share their experience of using a particular pharmacy, say what they like or do not like about the drugs and/or service. Reputable online pharmacy canadianrxon.com take this feedback into consideration and rely on it as a kind of expert advice, which helps them constantly improve they service and ensure that their clients buy safe and effective drugs. Last, but not least is their striving to attract professional doctors. As a result, users can directly contact a qualified doctor and ask whatever questions they have about a particular drug. Most likely, a doctor will ask several questions about the condition, for which the drug is going to be used. Based on this information, he or she will advise to use or not to use this medication.
Federal money laundering cases generally take place within the context of a larger racketeering case governed by the RICO Act. Money laundering is typically only one aspect of a pattern of organized crime which may be nationwide or international. That being the case, money laundering is often the lesser offense in a pattern of crimes that can result in lifetime imprisonment.
How politicians and their friends get rich off insider stock tips, land deals, and cronyism that would send the rest of us to prison.
(If you have not read the book, try it out. It lays the ground work not only for politicians but international civilians also use the same model by gaining diplomatic status of obscure countries with bribes)
Now for the rest of the story.
Federal money laundering laws are guided by the RICO Act and there are a handful of countries with criminals operating under shadow corporations that clean money via real estate investments. London, New York and Miami are the prime cities where billions are spent on luxury real estate and the actual owner is never known.
Money laundering has a wide range of criminals that include Mafia, drug cartel leaders, Russians, Cypriots, business owners and even Kazakhstanis.
Some investigative journalists have done a remarkable job at tracking this phenomenon and there was even a documentary produced in 2015. This condition is actually a global shadow economy that has an estimated value in the range of billions of dollars. The New York Times has somewhat of a collection of related cases that you may find interesting where even Malaysia is included.
The Miami Herald did a story in 2015 on how Miami is but one crown jewel for offshore dollars fueling the real estate boom there. Ever heard of Isaias 21 Property or Mateus 5 International Holding? No? You’re not supposed to know.
Miami has a long history of money laundering. Its financial institutions report more suspicious activity than any other major U.S. city besides New York City and Los Angeles, according to FinCen data. And a recent case of money laundering involving fancy condos and the violent Spanish drug gang Los Miami drew further scrutiny to South Florida.
Jack McCabe, an analyst who studies the booming local housing market, said it’s impossible to know how many homes are purchased with dirty money.
“But I think many people believe it could be a sizable portion of the new condominium market in Miami,” McCabe said. “Even though developers and real-estate professionals suspect many of these units are bought with illegal funds, they realize their projects may not be successful without that support.”
Much has been in the news recently about the Trump team and companies being involved with Russian officials and oligarchs. There is hard evidence and some cases have already been through the legal system. We certainly cannot dismiss Hillary and Bill Clinton when it comes to collusion with those inside the Kremlin either much less a handful of other countries through their foundations. It appears there is no ‘statute of limitations’ with regard to US Code law on RICO.
The Russians have been dirty for years and those inside the Russian Federation and oligarchs have been moving illicit millions to billions out of the home country. For example how about a certain prominent Russian as one of the named depositors is billionaire oligarch (and personal friend of Vladimir Putin) Gennady Timchenko, who was sanctioned by the United States in March 2014 for his role in providing “material or other support to” Russian government officials. (There’s a rumor that sometime in the 1990s, Putin and Timchenko, who holds Finnish citizenship, were arrested in Helsinki for drunk and disorderly conduct; a rap sheet is said to exist with the two men’s mug shots.)
Timchenko’s designation carried the blockbuster revelation that Gunvor, the Swiss commodities trader he co-founded, was itself a vehicle for Putin’s personal self-enrichment: “Putin has investments in Gunvor,” the U.S. Treasury notice stated, “and may have access to Gunvor funds.” Not long before the sanctions were announced, Timchenko, who is worth an estimated $14.1 billion, was said to have divested his stake in Gunvor. Then, in November 2014, it was announced that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, helped by the Justice Department, was investigating Timchenko for money laundering. In 2013, Reuters disclosed that Timchenko had hired lobby firm Patton Boggs to persuade the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the export credit agency of the U.S. government, to finance his purchase of up to 11 Gulfstream luxury jets—a deal that was eyebrow-raising at the time and is now rendered illegal by sanctions. The rest of the story is here regarding one well known bank HSBC.
Considering the work of the FBI, the DoJ and State’s Attorneys General, the work appears to have a beginning but no end for both Trump and Clinton. As an aside, we need to ask officials where the Clinton investigation is, it at all. But moving on. This summary is not meant to take any anti-Trump position at all, in fact, we need him to succeed for the sake of America’s future. This is meant to be somewhat of a public service with all the chatter and investigations.
If you want to know what members of congress know and what the FBI is doing, here is but one clue:
The net is closing around a duo of fugitive oligarchs and their kin accused of laundering Kazakh money in posh U.S. real estate — including Trump Organization properties.
In a complicated case with potential implications for President Donald Trump’s business empire and associates of the real-estate-developer-turned-president, Switzerland has revealed it is considering an extradition request from Ukraine to hand over the son of a former Kazakh energy minister — and both men are facing money-laundering allegations in the United States and charges in Kazakhstan.
It’s the latest development in a saga that is reaching into Bayrock Group, an international real estate and investment company that paid the Trump Organization a license fee for the use of its name and an 18 percent ownership stake in the New York hotel and condo project.
The Khrapunov family is accused in U.S. lawsuits of “cleaning” illicit money through the purchase and quick resale of U.S. luxury properties, including daughter Elvira Kudryashova’s purchase of three Trump-branded condos in New York and a 9,000-square-foot Studio City mansion flipped in months to pop singer Bruno Mars for $6.5 million.
An investigation by McClatchy and reporting partners, involving interviews with officials representing legal matters against the accused in four countries, reveals:
▪ Ukraine has recently asked Switzerland to extradite Ilyas Khrapunov, son of former Kazakh Energy Minister Viktor Khrapunov, for alleged computer hacking.
▪ Ilyas Khrapunov and his wife secured unusual diplomatic posts representing the Central African Republic in Geneva, a move that helped provide them with a means of travel.
▪ Court documents tie Felix Sater — a Trump associate, Bayrock partner and twice-convicted Russian émigré — to some of the Khrapunovs’ transactions.
▪ Kazakh authorities asked the United States for information on Bayrock as part of the ongoing attempt to recover funds.
▪ A New York court decision may further reveal details about the Kazakh family’s financial flows into condos in the Trump SoHo building, developed and sold by Bayrock. Bank records include large transfers from a now-sanctioned Cyprus lender.
Federal lawsuits brought in Los Angeles by the city of Almaty and former business partners in New York are advancing against Ilyas and Viktor, who is also a former mayor of Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city. Both Khrapunovs and Ilyas’ father-in-law, Mukhtar Ablyazov — an uber-wealthy fugitive banker who owned BTA Bank until it was seized by regulators in 2009 — face criminal charges in Kazakhstan. Authorities allege $10 billion went missing from the bank, Kazakhstan’s third largest, and that Ablyazov moved out at least $4 billion.
The trio say they are the victims of political persecution by President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled oil-rich Kazakhstan since 1990. The country ranks in the bottom quarter on transparency measures, and Nazarbayev’s family is accused of stashing money in offshore companies.
The gathering legal drama is shining light on Trump business associate Bayrock Group, which involves Kazakh partners who helped develop the Trump SoHo building in New York and projects in Arizona and South Florida. This at a time when Donald Trump’s Russian and foreign ties are under greater scrutiny.
Crucial to Trump and his businesses — and the ability of lawyers to establish whether the Trump Organization had any knowledge of or benefit from any illegal money flows — is whether the United States or Switzerland hears the lawsuits against the Khrapunovs. If prosecutors convince a California court to hear the case, lawyers will have much greater ability to dig for evidence through a process known as discovery; Switzerland’s rules are far more restrictive.
This New York City Department of Finance document shows Elvira Kudryashova as the manager of SoHo 3311 LLC, which bought a unit in the Trump SoHo building. She is the daughter of Viktor Khrapunov, a fugitive Kazakh politician facing money laundering charges abroad and two civil lawsuits in the United States.
TheUkrainian extradition request from March shows that Ilyas Khrapunov is sought there for allegedly orchestrating a computer hack of a law firm representing BTA Bank.
“The allegations against me are preposterous,” Ilyas Khrapunov said in an interview, dismissing as “political” the accusations that he used malware in an email to gain access to and publish contents from a hard drive.
The Swiss are weighing the matter.
“In the Khrapunov case, an international assistance procedure and a national procedure for money laundering are currently underway at the Geneva Public Prosecutor’s Office,” said Henri Della Casa, a spokesman, confirming two Swiss probes. “We are making no further comments.”
Ablyazov, who uses his Facebook page as a protest site, was arrested by French police disguised as gardeners outside his home in Cannes in 2013. He was freed last December after France dropped an extradition order, determining he could not receive a fair trial, and he remains there.
California connection
The net tightening began here. According to allegations in the California lawsuit, Viktor Khrapunov arranged for rigged auctions of state property during his term as mayor of Almaty from 1997 to 2004. He and his wife, Leila, allegedly purchased property at substantially below-market rates using shell companies they controlled, then sold off the properties for a profit estimated at $300 million.
“Many observers are puzzled as to how Khrapunov, who is known to be quite corrupt . . . has managed to stay in government,” Kevin Milas, the U.S. embassy’s second in command, wrote back to agency headquarters in a Jan. 17, 2007, confidential memo about a political reshuffling.
The internal note cited an industrialist who had complained of being hit up for a bribe by Khrapunov.
The family fled to Switzerland in early 2008, where Ilyas already lived, seeking political asylum a few years later.
Viktor Khrapunov faced an Interpol detention request beginning in 2012, yet the family was able to buy the property in Los Angeles and the three Trump SoHo condos in New York. Ilyas Khrapunov was put under the same request in 2014.
“Switzerland has refused twice to extradite Viktor Khrapunov on the grounds that he would not have an equitable trial in Kazakhstan,” said Ilyas Khrapunov. “Switzerland proposed instead to have the trial delegated to them but Kazakhstan refused, fearing that the truth would come out.”
Friends in low places
The investigation by McClatchy and partners also found that Ilyas Khrapunov and his wife, Madina, Ablyazov’s daughter, were appointed to unusual diplomatic posts representing the Central African Republic at the U.N. Mission in Geneva.
A source tied to the Central African Republic, granted anonymity, said the couple had been appointed by former ruler Francois Bozizé before he was toppled and fled his troubled nation in 2013. Through a land acquisition the couple obtained dual citizenship in the Caribbean haven of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
“Due to refusal of Kazakhstan to renew passports of the family, we were forced to apply through legal process to obtain secondary citizenships in order to exercise our rights to travel,” said Ilyas Khrapunov.
The diplomatic appointments and the recent extradition request are just chapters what’s been a complex, decade-long legal battle that is slowly providing more detail on Trump Organization associate Bayrock Group.
Trump’s associate
Bayrock is an international real estate and investment firm that worked with Trump on at least three known joint projects, and involves Kazakh businessmen.
Trump personally dealt with Bayrock, giving the developer a one-year exclusive right to build a Trump International Hotel and Tower in Moscow. In exchange he’d get a 20-25 percent stake in it.
“I am delighted at having the opportunity to partner with Bayrock Group LLC on yet another world-class development,” Trump wrote in a Jan. 1, 2005, letter to Tevfik Arif, a Kazakh partner of Bayrock, that was entered into evidence in a New Jersey lawsuit. “Moscow is one of the fastest growing cities in the world and offers the best location for a Signature Donald J. Trump development.”
At the time it entered the condo-branding deal with Trump, Bayrock was co-run by a twice-convicted Russian émigré and Trump associate named Felix Sater.
Court documents in New York involving the Khrapunovs tie Sater to multiple transactions by an investment firm in Luxembourg called Triadou SPV S.A., which invested in the United States and elsewhere. People close to the transactions, speaking privately because of ongoing businesses, say Sater had access to Trump and bragged about his Trump connections, even calling him “Mr T.”
“If he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like,” Trump said under oath as witness in a Florida lawsuit against Bayrock Group.
A prospectus shows Triadou was fully owned by SDG Capital S.A., a company on Lake Geneva that operates as Swiss Development Group, founded at the time the Khrapunovs fled to Switzerland. They say, in court documents, that it was sold in March 2013 to a Swiss businessman, who retained Ilyas Khrapunov through 2015.
Former Triadou Director Nicolas Bourg testified under oath last year that his company belonged to the Khrapunovs, who ordered him to sell assets and move money out of the United States after the California lawsuit was filed in 2014. The Khrapunovs say that is not true and that they’ve kept Swiss authorities informed of their purchases.
Bourg further testified that the Khrapunovs and Ablyazov co-mingled investments and used offshore shell companies to camouflage the purchase and sale of properties in the United States and elsewhere.
Another Triadou associate, New York developer Joseph Chetrit, settled with lawyers for the city of Almaty in 2015 and pledged to support their effort to recover what the city calls more than $300 million in stolen funds.
Sater was named in a lawsuit against a Triadou-owned company that was settled in December 2013. He is also being sued by one former Bayrock partner, Jody Kriss. And according to a recent story by The Wall Street Journal, Sater has issued veiled threats to dish on other Kazakhs because of a dispute he has over legal fees with another Bayrock partner of Kazakh origin, Tevfik Arif.
Arif gained international notoriety when he was arrested in 2010 while throwing what Turkish authorities called a lavish sex party on a luxury yacht involving teenage girls. The charges were later dropped.
Leila Khrapunov briefly did business with Arif and Bayrock in a joint venture called KazBay, which was going to invest in Kazakh natural resources but never got off the ground, in part because of revelations in a New York Times story in late 2007 that Bayrock’s Sater had a checkered past.
Kazakh authorities have alleged in their criminal case that Viktor Khrapunov’s stolen money was deposited at Eurasian Bank in Almaty and then transferred to Switzerland. That bank is owned by Alexander Mashkevich, a strategic partner in Bayrock and someone who, according to a report by McClatchy last month, is linked in sealed British court documents to organized crime groups. Mashkevich is not named in the U.S. lawsuits against Khrapunov, and the Khrapunovs banked with several lenders.
U.S. vs. Switzerland
The battle over which court should hear the high-stakes California lawsuit could determine whether the plaintiff’s lawyers establish any involvement in alleged money laundering by Trump associates.
I am convinced that Switzerland could become a model for countries that have recently embarked on the path of democracy.
Viktor Khrapunov on his website
“Switzerland is a perfectly adequate venue for my client,” said John Kenney, Khrapunov’s legal counsel in New York with the firm Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney.
A federal court in California agreed in July 2015, but that decision was overturned this past March 30 on appeal by lawyers for the city of Almaty, allowing the case in Los Angeles to proceed.
“The city of Almaty is confident that when the court reviews the evidence, it will find that Viktor Khrapunov unjustly enriched himself to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by abusing his position as mayor, and with the assistance of his son Ilyas and others, laundered it throughout the world,” said Matthew L. Schwartz, a lawyer with Boies, Schiller & Flexner, which is representing Almaty in the New York case.
The Khrapunovs have until later in June to decide whether to appeal, but for more than two years they’ve avoided sitting for depositions in the U.S. cases.
“The defendants have sought to delay the case at every turn,” said David Schindler, a lawyer who represents Almaty in the California case. “Nevertheless our client remains committed to holding the Khrapunovs accountable for the money they stole from the people of Almaty.”
Trump’s licensing deals on properties typically involved payment of a fee for the use of his name and a Trump property management firm on-site, and Trump often got a small percentage from the first-time sales of condos too.
Depositions could shed light on whether and how the Trump Organization, through Bayrock Group and its Kazakh investors, benefited in any flow of illicit money.
One court document in a related British case shows Kazakh authorities filed a legal assistance request in 2013 to the U.S. government seeking details on the corporate structure of 15 companies it said were tied to the Khrapunovs, including Bayrock Group Inc. and Bayrock Group LLC.
Thus far, Ilyas Khrapunov has resisted providing evidence, but we look forward to the opportunity to question him about his role in his family’s crimes.
Matthew Schwartz, lawyer for the city of Almaty
The Financial Times reported last October that it had seen documents showing Sater had worked closely with Elvira Kudryashova in 2012, a year before she signed the documents for the three Trump SoHo condos. Kudryashova and Ilyas Khrapunov bought the condos so they could vacation in New York, with the properties offered as hotel rooms when they were not there.
Condos in the Trump SoHo building were developed and sold by Bayrock, which also vetted buyers.
Alan Garten, executive vice president and chief legal officer of the Trump Organization said it “was not responsible for the sale of units at Trump SoHo.”
The condos were bought by three companies that were registered in April 2013 within days of each other with the New York Division of Corporations: Soho 3310 LLC, Soho 3311 LLC and Soho 3203 LLC. They were dissolved the following year after the properties sold.
Court records show Kudryashova transferred a total of $3.1 million from a Wells Fargo account for the condo purchases. Bank documents also show her receiving large sums from an offshore company that used the Cyprus lender Federal Bank of the Middle East, which was headquartered in Tanzania. The Treasury Department blacklisted that bank as a “Primary Money Laundering Concern” on July 22, 2014.
A New York court decision in early May granted Almaty access to certain Khrapunovs-related bank transfers from abroad, and that could provide more details about the flow of their money into luxury properties that were held for short periods.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, cautioned that “these efforts have a long way to go before the federal government has the tools it needs to stop money laundering through shady real estate deals and anonymous shell companies.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article gave the wrong law firm for John Kenney, who is with Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney.
This story involved collaboration between McClatchy and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global journalism network that investigates transnational corruption.
There is no denying Russia is using cyber warfare against the West. Little is ever mentioned about China’s industrial espionage, something this site attempts to publish as often as possible. Further, the owner of this site participated in two key hearings today in Congress, one with former CIA Director John Brennan and the other included ODNI Dan Coats and DIA Director General Stewart.
Clearly both hearings revealed just how pervasive and common cyber warfare is at the hands of China and Russia. Here is just another example.
China’s theft of IBM’s intellectual property
A former employee of IBM pleaded guilty to theft of source code on behalf of China
And you think the FBI has easy work? Further, we are trusting China to deal with North Korea’s nuclear program and missile systems aimed against Western interests.
CSO: China continues to view the theft of intellectual property as a viable means of technology transfer. Global private sector entities are finding their insiders are being used by China to purloin the proprietary information for use by Chinese state-owned-enterprises or national entities with ever increasing regularity.
On 19 May 2017, Xu Jiaqiang, a PRC national, pleaded guilty to economic espionage and trade secret theft. Xu stole source code from his employer, IBM, and attempted to share it with the National Health and Family Planning Commission in the PRC. According to the Department of Justice, Xu pleaded guilty to all six of the counts included in his indictment.
A review of Xu’s Linked-In profile shows only his employment with IBM from November 2010 through July 2014 (date is different from that which is contained in the indictment) as a “General Parallel File System Developer at IBM”
Xu was a trusted insider within IBM. According to the DOJ advisory, which contained content from both the criminal complaint and superseding indictment, Xu worked for IBM from 2010-14, with unencumbered access to the “proprietary source code.” DOJ advises, Xu voluntarily resigned from IBM in May 2014.
In late 2014, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was informed (source unidentified) that Xu claimed to have access (unauthorized) to the source code and was using the source code in various business ventures. Undercover law enforcement officers subsequently contacted Xu to affirm Xu’s possession of the source code
The criminal complaint describes undercover officers posing as investors engaged in a multi-month email exchanges with Xu which culminated in his sharing portions of the source code as bonafides of his knowledge of “operating systems and parallel file systems.” At that time, the victim company, IBM, identified the shared code as identical to their proprietary source code.
In late-2015, Xu had a face-to-face meeting with undercover law enforcement officers. At the meeting, Xu noted the code was his former employer’ s(IBM) code. Xu also confirmed to his interlocutors how he had purloined the code prior to his May 2014 employment separation and had made modification so as to obscure the point of origin, IBM.
In June 2016, Xu was indicted and charged with three counts of economic espionage, one count each of theft of trade secrets, possession of trade secrets, and distribution of trade secrets. He will be sentenced in October 2017.
Though IBM has declined comment to media regarding this theft of their intellectual property, reading between the lines, it would appear IBM had deduced (correctly) that Xu absconded with a copy of their GPFS proprietary source code, and was attempting to use it commercially. They then brought the theft to the attention of the FBI.
Illicit technology transfer
China has not slowed down in their acquisition of technology utilizing the access afforded to trusted insiders. The US Director of National Intelligence made it clear in his May 2017 presentation to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the worldwide threat to the United States as to the threat posed by China.
From the FBI perspective, this was the perfect economic espionage case. Theft of proprietary information for provision to a foreign government. The theft was from a company with an insider threat program in place and who was cooperative (providing technical expertise during the investigation), and of sufficient size to withstand any blow-back from China which may occur.
There is no need to be xenophobic. Multinational companies employee individuals from a great variety of nationalities. The reality is, few employees break trust with their employer.
That said, having your paper trail on agreements which safeguard intellectual property is mandatory. As is a review of all activities of all departing employees for break from pattern, be it a voluntary separation or for cause. If a deeper dive into the employees activities is warranted, make sure to look for any sudden increase in 403 errors – or similar (caused by attempts to access unauthorized data). Verify the complete inventory of all storage devices which the employee may have accessed, and have each returned and or data on the devices destroyed, and review email and uploads for any inappropriate usage.
Remember, though it is the FBI and DOJ success which brought Xu to our collective attention, it was not the FBI who initially discovered Xu’s intellectual property theft. The FBI pursued the lead brought to them by an unidentified third party (presumably IBM).
You are your company’s first line of defense in the protection of intellectual property, not the FBI.
Sessions ends Obama-era leniency on sentencing, infuriating civil rights groups
FNC: Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced Friday that he has told prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges possible against criminal suspects – a stunning reversal of Obama-era policies, and a move that infuriated civil rights groups.
“We will enforce the laws passed by Congress pure and simple,” he said at an awards ceremony in Washington D.C, adding that prosecutors deserved to be “unhandcuffed and not micro-managed from Washington.”
“This is a key part of President Trump’s promise to keep America safe,” Sessions said. “We’re seeing an increase in violent crime in our cities – in Baltimore, Chicago, Memphis, Milwaukee, St. Louis and many others. The murder rate has surged 10 percent nationwide – the largest increase since 1968.”
In a letter to 94 U.S. attorneys Thursday night, Sessions called it a “core principle” that prosecutors charge and pursue “the most serious and readily provable offense.” Sessions defined the most serious offenses as those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence.
Sessions noted that “there will be circumstances in which good judgment would lead a prosecutor to conclude that a strict application” of the policy is not warranted, but that any exceptions must first be approved by a U.S. attorney, assistant attorney general, or a designated supervisor.
The move, which will send more criminals to jail and for longer terms by triggering mandatory minimum sentences, explicitly reverses policies set in motion by President Obama’s former Attorney General Eric Holder – who implemented the “Smart on Crime” drug sentencing policy that focused on not incarcerating people who committed low level, non-violent crimes. DOJ officials call it a “false narrative” and say unless a gun is involved, most of those cases aren’t charged period.
Officials say Holder’s “Smart on Crime” policy “convoluted the process,” and left prosecutors applying the law unevenly, which they said “is not Justice.”
But civil rights groups blasted the process, with the American Civil Liberties Union describing the move as a move that will “reverse progress” and repeat the War on Drugs, which it called a “failed experiment.”
“With overall crime rates at historic lows, it is clear that this type of one-dimensional criminal justice system that directs prosecutors to give unnecessarily long and unfairly harsh sentences to people whose behavior does not call for it did not work,” Udi Ofer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Campaign for Smart Justice.
The policy was also criticized by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who said mandatory minimums have “unfairly and disproportionately incarcerated too many minorities for too long.”
“Attorney General Sessions new policy will accentuate that injustice. Instead we should treat our nation’s drug epidemic as a health crisis and less as a lock ‘em up and throw away the key problem,” he said.
However, the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys backed the move, saying it would make the public safer and give prosecutors to “tools that Congress intended” to lock up drug dealers and dismantle gangs.
Wait for it…nah never mind…former DOJ AG, Eric Holder has already responded.
Former Attorney General Eric Holder blasted a new Justice Department policy on prosecutions and sentencing, calling it “dumb on crime.”
“The policy announced today is not tough on crime. It is dumb on crime. It is an ideologically motivated, cookie-cutter approach that has only been proven to generate unfairly long sentences that are often applied indiscriminately and do little to achieve long-term public safety,” Holder said in a statement Friday shortly after the new department memo.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions released a memo early Friday directing prosecutors to “charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offense” in all cases going forward.
The Sessions memo reverses one issued by Holder in 2013 that encouraged federal prosecutors to seek the most harsh punishment for only “serious, high-level, or violent drug traffickers” instead of lower-level offenders.
Holder cited department data showing that since the implementation of his memo — the Smart on Crime directive — prosecutors have been able to successfully focus more resources on higher level drug offenders such as kingpins and cartel leaders.
“The data showed that while they brought fewer indictments carrying a mandatory minimum sentence, the prosecutions of high-level drug defendants had risen and that cooperation and plea rates remained effectively the same,” Holder said. “These reversals will be both substantively and financially ruinous, setting the Department back on track to again spending one-third of its budget on incarcerating people, rather than preventing, detecting, or investigating crime.”
Bipartisan Senate Group Unveils New Bill to Speed Up VA Firing, Bonus Recoupment
The new bill comes just days after a federal appeals court ruled Congress’ previous attempt at hastening VA’s disciplinary process — through the 2014 Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act — was unconstitutional. The measure stripped Senior Executive Service employees of their right to a second-level appeal before the Merit Systems Protection Board’s presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed panel. VA had already stopped using the new authority after its constitutionality was questioned in court and the Obama administration declined to defend it.
The senators have been working on their new bill for weeks, but they said the court ruling reinforced the need for reform. “This legislation would improve on the law we enacted in 2014,” Rubio said.
The bill would allow the department’s secretary to fire, suspend or demote an employee with only 15 days notice. Affected workers would then have seven days to issue a response before a final decision is made. Any employee facing removal, suspension of at least 14 days or a demotion would have 10 days to appeal the action to the Merit Systems Protection Board. MSPB would then have 180 days to issue a decision, a much longer period than the 45-day timeline set up in the House bill. Employees would maintain the right to appeal an MSPB decision to federal court.
Employees covered by a collective bargaining agreement would also maintain the right to appeal a negative personnel action through the grievance process, though it would have to be resolved within 21 days. Read more here.
Meanwhile, there is that blasted union problem at the VA:
An estimated 346 employees in the Department of Veterans Affairs do no actual work for taxpayers. Instead, they spend all of their time doing work on behalf of their union while drawing a federal salary, a practice known as “official time.”
That’s according to a report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. But exactly what those VA workers are doing and why so many are doing it is not clear. The VA doesn’t track that, and the GAO report offers no clue.
Rep. Jody Arrington, R-Texas, a member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, thinks the number on 100 percent official time may be much higher. He also notes that the 346 workers don’t include those who spend most, not all, of their time doing union work.
“The lack of accountability at the VA when it comes to monitoring official time suggests it might be worse,” said Arrington, who has introduced legislation that would require the department to track the use of official time, among other reforms.
Pointing to the waiting list scandals at the department, Arrington said the official time situation is reflective of the “broken culture at the heart of the VA” and adds, “I haven’t heard one good, acceptable reason why the practice has continued.”
The VA was not eager to discuss the matter with the Washington Examiner. After several days of inquiries, it responded with the following statement: “VA believes that the appropriate use of official time can be beneficial and in the public interest as stated in the Federal Service Labor-Relations Statute, which governs how executive branch agencies treat official time. VA takes the position that labor and management have a shared responsibility to ensure that official time is authorized and used appropriately. VA practices are in compliance with the Federal Service Labor-Relations Statute.”
Official time is allowed under the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. The idea behind it is to ensure that a federal employee who is also a union official won’t be penalized for being away from work if he or she is negotiating a contract or addressing a worker grievance, for example. It is essentially a trade-off for the limitations put on federal unions, such as prohibitions on striking.
At least 700 federal workers do nothing but work on official time, according to the GAO and data obtained from various Freedom of Information Act requests. The VA uses official time far more than any other agency.
“Employees spent approximately 1,057,00 hours on official time for union representation activities … In addition, the data show that 346 employees spent 100 percent of their time on official time,” the GAO found in a January report.
It is possible that even those figures are conservative. The GAO said the said the VA’s poor monitoring meant the data was “inconsistent and not reliable.”
The GAO didn’t know what the employees are doing with all of that time. “We just didn’t get into that in that particular study,” said Cindy Barnes, the GAO’s director of education, workforce and income security issues and author of the report.
Part of the explanation is that the VA is one of the largest federal agencies with 373,000 workers, making it second only to the Pentagon in the sheer size of its workforce. About 250,000 VA workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements, according to the GAO, citing 2012 data. Arrington puts the covered figure at 285,000.
By comparison, the Department of Homeland Security has 240,000 workers and the Department of Commerce has just under 44,000 workers. But those departments get by with proportionately far fewer people working exclusively on official time. DHS has 39, while Commerce has just four.
Another factor is that the VA’s workforce is represented by no less than five unions: The American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Government Employees, National Nurses United, the National Federation of Federal Employees and the Service Employees International Union.
National Nurses United representative Irma Westmoreland was the only union official willing to talk about the practice with the Washington Examiner. She is one of five nurses union members who work exclusively on union time at the VA. The union has another nine who spent 80 percent of their time at the VA on official time, she said.
Westmoreland said her work was necessary because nurses can’t simply stop taking care of a patient to do something like address a worker grievance. People such as her do the union work and make it possible for the other nurses to focus on providing care.
“I have to travel across the country working with 23 VA facilities in four time zones,” she said. “The management teams want somebody at 100 percent official time so they don’t have to pull somebody out of care.”
But not everyone at the VA is involved in care. So what are the other 341 exclusive official time workers doing? Westmoreland had no insight.
“I don’t know how the other people do it,” she said.
American Federation of Government Employees President J. David Cox told Arrington’s subcommittee in February that official time involved activities such as “designing and delivering joint training of employees on work-related subjects and introduction of new programs and work methods that are initiated by the agency or by the union.”
He added that “in no way did the [February GAO] report suggest that the use of official time presents problems for the department.” The report sought only to quantify the amount of time used.
Arrington argues that the practice has to change if the VA is ever to be truly reformed. He has sponsored the Veterans, Employees and Taxpayer Protection Act, which would require the VA to track the use of official time. It also would prohibit employees involved with direct patient care from spending more than a quarter of their work hours on union activities and bar any VA employee from spending more than half of their time on official time.
The legislation would effectively put VA employees under right-to-work protection. The VA would be prohibited from agreeing to union contracts that force workers to join or otherwise support a union as a condition of employment.
Westmoreland said she has no trouble with better tracking the use of official time but warns against putting any limitations on its use.
“It makes it very difficult if you cannot have set official time,” she said.
Read the text here. The ‘voting rights’ division at the Justice Department may just have an issue with this, but the commission should happen along with a technology fix going into the future. We cannot forget that DHS contacted several states prior to the voting season last Fall concerning registration databases and voting machines. Some states cooperated while others frankly did not only not trust government intrusion but DHS.
Trump signs executive order launching voter fraud commission
President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to launch a commission to review alleged voter fraud, a White House official confirmed to Fox News, after months of claiming voter fraud in the 2016 presidential election.
The order, titled “Presidential Commission on Election Integrity,” would establish a bipartisan commission, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence, to review alleged voter fraud and suppression. Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has investigated voter fraud in Kansas, will serve as vice chair.
“The commission will also include individuals with knowledge and experience in election management and voter integrity,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders said on Thursday at the White House daily press briefing. “The commission will review policies and practices that enhance or undermine confidence in elections and identify system vulnerabilities.”
Huckabee-Sanders announced five members to the commission on Thursday: Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson (R), New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner (D), Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap (D), Christie McCormick, commissioner of the election assistance commission, and former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell(R).
The White House said the commission will review practices that affect the integrity of federal elections–spanning improper registrations, improper voting, fraudulent registrations, fraudulent voting and voting suppression.
“We expect the report to be complete by 2018,” Huckabee-Sanders said. “The experts will follow the facts where they lead–we’ll share updates as we have them.”
Trump originally vowed to create such a commission in January. Days after his inauguration, Trump took to Twitter calling for a “major investigation into VOTER FRAUD,” saying that depending on the results of the investigation, “we will strengthen up voting procedures!” He cited “illegal” voters and “those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time)” which he claimed cost him the popular vote, which Hillary Clinton won by 3 million votes.
But on Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., slammed the commission.
“Putting an extremist like Mr. Kobach at the helm of this commission is akin to putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department,” Schumer said. “President Trump has decided to waste taxpayer dollars chasing a unicorn and perpetuating the dangerous myth that widespread voter fraud exists.”
Voting experts and many lawmakers have said they haven’t seen anything to suggest that millions of people voted illegally, including House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz. The Utah Republican said his committee won’t be investigating voter fraud.
In a lunch meeting with senators in February, Trump said that he and former Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte would have won in New Hampshire if not for voters bused in from out of state. New Hampshire officials have said there was no evidence of major voter fraud in the state.
In a February interview with Bill O’Reilly, Trump said the main issue of voter fraud was registration, and vowed to look at the situation “very, very carefully.”
“When you look at the registration and you see dead people that have voted, when you see people that are registered in two states, that have voted in two states, when you see other things, when you see illegals, people that are not citizens and they are on registration roles,” Trump said. “We can be babies, but you take a look at registration, you have illegals, you have dead people, you have this, it’s a really bad situation, it’s really bad.”
The decision to revisit the voter fraud issue comes during a tumultuous week, after Trump on Tuesday fired FBI Director James Comey. The administration cited Comey’s handling of the Clinton email probe, but Democrats also question what role his bureau investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 race played.
In a House Intelligence Committee hearing on Russian election tampering in March, voter fraud became a topic of questioning — Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., asked Comey if the FBI had any evidence that votes were changed in states like Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, and Ohio, to which Comey answered “No.”
After winning the election, Trump singled out several states and claimed fraud in their voting system, but officials in those states insisted that his claims were unfounded.
UNODC
Interfima
This New York City Department of Finance document shows Elvira Kudryashova as the manager of SoHo 3311 LLC, which bought a unit in the Trump SoHo building. She is the daughter of Viktor Khrapunov, a fugitive Kazakh politician facing money laundering charges abroad and two civil lawsuits in the United States.
And you think the FBI has easy work? Further, we are trusting China to deal with North Korea’s nuclear program and missile systems aimed against Western interests.