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.

Category Archives: Panama Papers

Citizenship for Sale in U.S and EU, the Golden Ticket

Posted on by

In the United States, with a starting number such as $500,000, you can buy a passport and with just a little more you can advance to citizenship under the EB-5 visa program. Swell huh? It has been going on for years and even Senator Dianne Feinstein has an issue with it. So, where is President Trump on the matter? Crickets…..

In February of this year, Senator Grassley and Feinstein introduced legislation to stop the EB-5 abuse.

The EB-5 program is inherently flawed,” Feinstein said in a joint statement with Grassley on Friday. “It says that U.S. citizenship is for sale. It is wrong to have a special pathway to citizenship for the wealthy while millions wait in line for visas.”

Roughly 10,000 EB-5 visas are awarded each year, with more than 85 percent going to Chinese investors in 2014, according to a study by Savills Studley, a real estate services firm. The program, begun in 1990 to stimulate the economy, has turned into a convenient way for wealthy Chinese citizens to become permanent U.S. residents and later bring over their family members. More here.

The Chinese, the Ukrainians and the Russians, all oligarchs are the largest exploiters of the program and most of these oligarchs are corrupt, paying for speedy processes with dirty money.

We know there are multiple investigations going on inside the DC Beltway regarding Russian interference and rightly so. Both Democrats and Republicans have some complicity in foreign collaboration.

In March of this year, this site published an extensive summary of Russian relations with people in the Trump camp as well as with Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer. Few take a look at Secretary Wilbur Ross and his Cyprus connections. Cyprus is a location where abuse and corruption is as normal as breathing. One interesting person is Dmitry Rybolovlev, who happens to know Donald Trump as well as Wilbur Ross.

Beyond paying for a speedy process to obtain a passport or citizenship, there is also yet another method and that is money laundering illicit funds through U.S. real estate purchases where the buyer’s name is not listed if cash is paid. You dont say…..yup. This site published a summary of such activities in July of 2014.

So, while we have examined the issue in the United States and in Cyprus, it is the same for the European Union.

Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs suspected of corruption are among hundreds who have acquired EU passports under the “golden visa” program – a bourgeois shortcut to European citizenship in exchange for cash investments, the Guardian reported Sunday.

A list of recipients seen by The Guardian includes “prominent businesspeople and individuals with considerable political influence.”

The paper claims that Cyprus alone has made over $US 4 billion selling passports to international oligarchs, “granting them the right to live and work throughout Europe,” completely legally.

However, Cyprus is not alone. “The Golden Visa program for Spain, Portugal, Malta, Greece and Cyprus are the most prominent. Bulgaria and Hungary offer residency and citizenship by investment in Europe through government bonds,” the Golden Visa website states.

The BBC reported about this kind of purchasable citizenship three years ago.

“Just like you diversify an investment portfolio, you want to diversity your passport portfolio,” investment expert Christian Kalin, told the BBC.

The list of individuals who have received Cypriot citizenship includes Bashar al-Asad’s cousin, who was previously placed under American sanctions because of allegations he benefited from corruption. It also includes a former member of the Russian parliament and the founder of Ukraine’s largest bank.

According to Global Witness, an international NGO dedicated to exposing global corruption, global visas have the potential to give applicants fleeing persecution a “get out of jail for free card.”

Portuguese MEP, Ana Gomes, said golden visas are an immoral way to grant citizenship.

“I’m not against individual member states granting citizenship or residence to someone who would make a very special contribution to the country, be it in arts or science, or even in investment. But granting, not selling,” said Gomes.

Gomes also questioned the secrecy of obtaining golden visas. If they’re legal, why is it so hard to see who has them, asked Gomes.

The European Parliament will be debating the legality of golden visas in light of the leak, The Guardian reported.

So, for the leaders of respective countries, the definition of citizenship and the spirit of that loyalty means nothing when it comes to money, dirty money.

Perhaps we should be pushing harder for the Grassley/Feinstein legislation at a minimum….what say you?

 

Kushner Overlooked 77 Assets, But it Gets Worse

Posted on by

In part from Examiner: White House senior adviser Jared Kushner on Friday released a revised version of his personal financial disclosure that reveals his initial filing did not include 77 assets, according to a report Friday.

The Wall Street Journal reports that the new disclosure says 77 assets were “inadvertently omitted” from Kushner’s original form, released in March, and were added during the “ordinary review” process with the government ethics office.

In addition to information on Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, the new disclosure includes details of Ivanka Trump’s finances.

Ivanka Trump is the president’s daughter, a senior White House aide and Kushner’s wife.

The new financial forms show Kushner and Ivanka Trump collectively have between $206 million and $760 million in assets, the Journal said. Kushner’s initial disclosure valued their assets at between $240 million and $740 million. More here.

***

OCCRP

IN 2014, Prevezon Holdings Limited, was controlled by the son of a Russian political figure. The company had many interests in real estate, including an investment in a venture with a Soviet-born diamond and property magnate named Lev Leviev—who also happened to be one of the developers of 20 Pine.

Starting in late 2009, Prevezon began purchasing units in 20 Pine, acquiring five in total. The company later added three Manhattan commercial spaces to create a $24 million portfolio, which prosecutors sued to seize last year. “While New York is a world financial capital,” U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a press release announcing the action, “it is not a safe haven for criminals seeking to hide their loot.” The lawsuit is here.

Jared Kushner sealed Manhattan real estate deal with oligarch’s firm cited in money-laundering case

Guardian: Donald Trump’s son-in-law bought part of old New York Times building from Soviet-born tycoon, Guardian investigation into Russian money in NYC property market finds

Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of Donald Trump, who acts as his senior White House adviser, secured a multimillion-dollar Manhattan real estate deal with a Soviet-born oligarch whose company was cited in a major New York money laundering case now being probed by members of Congress.

A Guardian investigation has established a series of overlapping ties and relationships involving alleged Russian money laundering, New York real estate deals and members of Trump’s inner circle. They include a 2015 sale of part of the old New York Times building in Manhattan involving Kushner and a billionaire real estate tycoon and diamond mogul, Lev Leviev.

The ties between Trump family real estate deals and Russian money interests are attracting growing interest from the justice department’s special counsel, Robert Mueller, as he seeks to determine whether the Trump campaign collaborated with Russia to distort the outcome of the 2016 race. Mueller has reportedly expanded his inquiry to look at real estate deals involving the Trump Organization, as well as Kushner’s financing.

Kushner will go before the US Senate intelligence committee on Monday in a closed session of the panel’s inquiry into Russian interference in the election in what could be a pivotal hearing into the affair.

Leviev, a global tycoon known as the “king of diamonds”, was a business partner of the Russian-owned company Prevezon Holdings that was at the center of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit launched in New York. Under the leadership of US attorney Preet Bharara, who was fired by Trump in March, prosecutors pursued Prevezon for allegedly attempting to use Manhattan real estate deals to launder money stolen from the Russian treasury.

The scam had been uncovered by Sergei Magnitsky, an accountant who died in 2009 in a Moscow jail in suspicious circumstances. US sanctions against Russia imposed after Magnitsky’s death were a central topic of conversation at the notorious Trump Tower meeting last June between Kushner, Donald Trump Jr, Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort and a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin.

Don Jr and Manafort have been called to testify before the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, at which they are certain to face questions about the Trump Tower encounter.

Two days before it was due to open in court in May, the Prevezon case was settled for $6m with no admission of guilt on the part of the defendants. But since details of the Trump Tower meeting emerged, the abrupt settlement of the Prevezon case has come under renewed scrutiny from congressional investigators.

Four Russians attended the meeting, led by Natalia Veselnitskaya, a lawyer with known Kremlin connections who acted as legal counsel for Prevezon in the money laundering case and who called the $6m settlement so slight that “it seemed almost an apology from the government”. Sixteen Democratic members of the House judiciary committee have now written to the justice department in light of the Trump Tower meeting demanding to know whether there was any interference behind the decision to avoid trial.

Constitutional experts are also demanding an official inquiry. “We need a full accounting by Trump’s justice department of the unexplained and frankly outrageous settlement that is likely to be just the tip of a vast financial iceberg,” said Laurence Tribe, Harvard University professor of constitutional law.

Separately, the focus of investigators on Trump family finances stem from the vast flow of Russian wealth that has been poured into New York real estate in recent years. As Donald Trump Jr put it in 2008, referring to the Trump Organization: “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Among the overlapping connections is the 2015 deal in which Kushner paid $295m to acquire several floors of the old New York Times building at 43rd street in Manhattan from the US branch of Leviev’s company, Africa Israel Investments (AFI), and its partner Five Mile Capital. The sale has been identified as of possible interest to the Mueller investigation as Kushner later went on to borrow $285m in refinancing from Deutsche Bank, the German financial house that itself has been embroiled in Russian money laundering scandals and whose loans to Trump are coming under intensifying scrutiny.

Court documents and company records show that AFI was cited in the Prevezon case as a business partner of the defendants. In 2008, Prevezon entered a partnership with AFI in which Prevezon bought for €3m, a 30% stake in four AFI subsidiaries in the Netherlands. Five years later, AFI tried to return the money to the Russian-owned company, but it was intercepted and frozen by Dutch authorities at the request of the US government as part of the Prevezon money-laundering probe.

In Manhattan, Leviev’s firm also sold condominiums to Prevezon Holdings from one of its landmark developments at 20 Pine Street, just a few blocks from Wall Street.

Real estate brochures describe the lavish interior decor of the condominiums, replete with bathrooms bedecked in stone and exotic woods, and boasting “the ultimate in pampering; a sybaritic recessed rain shower”. The 20 Pine Street apartments that Leviev sold to Prevezon were later frozen by US prosecutors seeking to block the flow of what they alleged to be money stolen from the Russian treasury and laundered through New York real estate.

Prevezon’s 20 Pine Street apartments and €3m in assets were all released as part of the settlement in May.

The Guardian contacted both Kushner and Leviev for comment, but they did not immediately respond.

The pursuit of Prevezon Holdings for alleged money laundering took on enormous political significance as it unfolded. For the prosecutors, it was a test case over suspicious Russian money flows designed to show the US was serious about going after money launderers. For the Russians, it was an opportunity to push back against stringent US sanctions that had long infuriated the Kremlin.

In court documents, US prosecutors accused Prevezon and its sole shareholder, Denis Katsyv, of participating in the laundering of proceeds of the vast tax fraud that stole $230m from the Russian treasury and moved it out of the country in chunks. Prevezon was alleged to have received some of the fraudulent spoils through a network of shell companies, hiding the money by investing in Manhattan real estate including the Leviev condominiums in 20 Pine Street.

Prevezon and Katsyv have consistently denied any involvement in money laundering and have dismissed the lawsuit as “ill-conceived”. In a statement released at the time of the settlement, they said they had “no involvement in or knowledge of any fraudulent activities”.

Magnitsky discovered the massive tax fraud, said to be one of the largest in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, in 2007. After he blew the whistle on the scam, he was arrested by the same officials whom he had accused of covering up the racket and imprisoned, dying in jail having been denied medical treatment.

Magnitsky’s death led to a political backlash in the US that in turn spawned tough sanctions on Russia, known as the Magnitsky Act. Russian individuals associated with the lawyer’s demise and other human rights abuses were banned entry to the US.

Veselnitskaya not only acted as Prevezon’s Russian counsel in the money-laundering case, she also was a leading lobbyist against the Magnitsky sanctions. She raised the subject prominently at the meeting in Trump Tower with Don Jr and Kushner, though according to Veselnitskaya the president’s son-in-law left after 10 minutes.

By the time of the Trump Tower meeting, Veselnitskaya was already personally acquainted with Russia’s powerful prosecutor general, Yuri Chaika, and her lobbying against the Magnitsky sanctions had drawn significant attention in government circles.

“Natalia’s main role was coordinating, including regular coordination with Chaika, whom she knew personally,” said a source acquainted with the Prevezon case.

Veselnitskaya told the Guardian: “My meeting with Trump’s son was a private meeting; nobody in the government had anything to do with it.” She declined to answer a follow-up question about whether and how she knew Chaika.

Jamison Firestone, the founder of the Russian law firm that employed Magnitsky at the time that he exposed the fraud, said that Veselnitskaya clearly intended to use the Trump Tower meeting to lobby against the Magnitsky sanctions. “They really made it a state priority to get rid of these sanctions,” he said.

Bill Clinton, Trumps’ and Renaissance Capital

Posted on by

Primer: The 8th person at the Trump Jr. meeting was Ike Kaveladze. He currently serves as Vice President of the Crocus Group in Moscow. Mr Balber, the lawyer for Kaveladze, said he revealed the identity of the eighth participant after receiving a call from a representative of special counsel Robert Mueller – the first indication that the Justice Department investigator is looking into the meeting. Previously, Federal investigators say Kaveladze immediately began laundering money for Russians.

Kaveladze was the president of International Business Creations, a Delaware corporation. Between 1991 and 2000, IBC and sister corporation Euro-American moved $1.4 billion from Eastern Europe through U.S. banks and back to Europe, the Government Accountability Office found in 2000.

But let’s go back to Bill and Hillary shall we? We may determine just why President Trump backed off his campaign pledge and decided not to prosecute Hillary…

THE CLINTON FAMILY BUSINESS There may be no Clinton Foundation office in Moscow or St. Petersburg, but it is not for lack of trying. Bill Clinton received half a million dollars in 2010 for a speech he gave in Moscow, paid by a Russian firm, Renaissance Capital, that has ties to Russian intelligence. The Clinton Foundation took money from Russian officials and oligarchs, including Victor Kekselberg, a Putin confidant. The Foundation also received millions of dollars from Uranium One, which was sold to the Russian government in 2010, giving Russia control of 20% of the uranium deposits in the U.S. —  the sale required approval from Hillary Clinton’s State Department. What’s more, at least some of these donations weren’t disclosed. “Ian Telfer, the head of the Russian government’s uranium company, Uranium One, made four foreign donations totaling $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all such donors,” the Times has reported.

Stephen Jennings is the co-founder and CEO of Renaissance Capital and in 2010 he resided over the launch of Tatu City, a planned community for 60,000 northeast of Nairobi.

Before that Vladimir Dzhabarov was a member of the FSB’s Department “K,” or its financial counter-intelligence division . From 2006-09, he was also the First Vice President at Renaissance Capital, a Moscow-based investment firm, which the 36 year-old Magnitsky claimed was involved in a six-long-year long conspiracy by an organized crime syndicate and Russian government officials to defraud the nation’s taxpayers. Renaissance Capital denies it had any part in any tax frauds; in 2009, the bank’s deputy chief executive Hans Jochum Horn told the New York Times that any illegal transactions involving Renaissance subsidiary companies took place after those companies had been sold off to new owners.

Magnitsky claimed in 2008 that criminals tied to Renaissance Capital, who were allegedly working in lockstep with tax and law enforcement agents, stole some $470 million by orchestrating illegal and complex tax refund schemes. As part of his sweeping investigation, Magnitsky claimed that in 2001-2002, Igor Sagiryan, the former president of Renaissance Capital, had supposedly commissioned named a fellow named Dmitry Klyuev to arrange a series of tax refunds through the corrupt Russian court system. This seconding of a known mobster to a seemingly legitimate financial institution was confirmed by Yuri Sagaidak, a former KGB general who was at the time the vice president of Renaissance Capital, in Russian court testimony.

The Klyuev Group, which U.S. Senator John McCain in 2012 urged President Obama to use an executive order to sanction wholesale as a “dangerous transnational criminal organization,”concocted its first nine-figure refund scheme in 2006, according to Magnitsky and others. The conspirators allegedly included the heads of Moscow Tax Offices 28 and 25, Olga Stepanova and Elena Khimina, respectively; Klyuev’s own attorney, Andrey Pavlov; and an Interior Ministry official, Major Pavel Karpov, who had previously investigated Klyuev for attempting to steal $1.6 billion worth of shares of a profitable Russian iron ore company. (Klyuev received a two-year suspended sentence in that case.)Read more here.

It has now emerged that the US Department of Justice has traced proceeds of the fraud to a bank account in Bournemouth held by Renaissance Capital Investment Management Ltd.

A chart produced by the US Department of Justice shows funds flowing through a series of foreign companies before being channelled into three main firms, including Prevezon, against which the DoJ is taking legal action to seize assets allegedly linked to the money, and the Bournemouth Renaissance account.

Renaissance Capital is a Moscow-based investment bank now controlled by billionaire oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov. Igor Sushchin, until recently the organisation’s head of IT security, was one of two FSB operatives accused by the FBI last month of hacking 500 million Yahoo email accounts. An indictment said it was “unknown” whether the firm “knew of his FSB affiliation”. Read more here for details and to help with the confusion.

*** In case you are wondering what Robert Mueller, the special investigator is looking at with this team, hold on this is going to get worse.

Magnitsky tracked money and found it all over the globe before he was murdered in a Russian prison, where the FSB arrested him for whistle-blowing.

According to records obtained by OCCRP, between Moscow and Geneva the money traveled all over the world in a veritable chain of shell companies set up by GT Group — a company that was connected to the sale of arms from N. Korea to Iran as well as laundering money for the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel.
The couple used the same Credit Suisse accounts to purchase two apartments valued at US$2 million each at Dubai’s Kempinksi resort for tax office deputies Elena Anisimova and Olga Tsareva. According to bank records, the apartments were purchased using the same bank account Stepanova used.
US$3 million arrived in the accounts on January 3, 2008 via Bristoll Export, a company which had been registered by GT Group in New Zealand. In February, companies incorporated in Cyprus, Moldova, and the United Kingdom sent US$9 million to the Credit Suisse accounts. See detailed information on one of the companies, NOMIREX, which processed US$8 million in its accounts while filing as “inactive” in a separate story.
In May and June 2008, the accounts held by Stepanov and Stepanova sent US$10 million to a shell company called Arivust holding. Records obtained by OCCRP show that through a series of agreements, Stepanov is named as the beneficial owner of the company.
The records also show that Stepanov is the beneficial owner of another company, Aikate Properties, which sent US$2 million to his Swiss account.
Hermitage acquired copies of the Credit Suisse transactions and used them to file a complaint with the bank and the Swiss federal attorney general this spring.
Stepanova remains employed by the Russian government. She resigned from the tax ministry but now works for a new defense agency established by Medvedev that oversees procurement and allocation of police and military equipment to the country’s law enforcement and military agencies.
So do Lieutenant Colonel Artyom Kuznetsov, whose assets were estimated at US$3 million although his official annual salary is about US$10,000; and Russian Interior Ministry Pavel Karpov, whose assets were estimated at US$1.5 million while his yearly pay was only US$10,000. Transparency International ranks Russia as the most corrupt large nation on earth, and the large country most likely to bribe abroad. They also estimate that bribery alone costs Russia US$300 billion annually, the total GDP of Denmark.  Bribery “is not even half of the problem,” according to a US House of Representatives Staffer who did not want to be identified because of his frequent work with Russian officials on policy issues including the Magnitsky case. Yep…more here.

Donald Trump Jr. had a meeting with 8 people in the room at Trump Tower in June of 2016. The meeting included Natalia Vesealnitskaya who was hired by and worked closely with Petr Katsyv who is/was the legal owner of Prevezon Holdings. The U.S. Justice Department for the Southern District of New York was prosecuting a money laundering case against Prevezon Holdings and it was settled too quickly directly after Jeff Sessions fired Phreet Bharara. Katsyv is also the vice president of Russian Railways, a state run rail operation run by Vladimir Yakunin and a close confidant of Vladimir Putin. Still confused and overwhelmed? Well there is more here.

Sorry there is yet another name, Sergei Roldugin. This particular Sergei is hardly a money launderer of the garden variety, in fact he is a cellist. But..he is at the center of a global scheme that moved $2.0 billion through Russian state banks, Swiss and Panamanian law firms all tied to Vladimir Putin via the investigation and release of the Panama Papers. Kinda wonder how a cellist is worth $100 million, right? Good question but money mess began at the Bank Rossiya, a top go-to bank for Putin and his inner circle. Oh yeah, Sergei Roldugin the the godfather to Putin’s oldest daughter, Maria.

In September of 2016, Roldugin announced before reporters at the Kremlin that Donadl Trump will be the next U.S. president.

 

Natalia Veselnitskaya, Prevezon, Brooklyn, NY and Money Laundering

Posted on by

Natalia Veselnitskaya had clients to defend in New York. Those clients were Denis Katsyv, Alexander Litvak, and Timofey Krit. Natalia had expensive choices in accommodations in New York where the U.S taxpayer paid the bill.

Prevezon Holdings was part of a money laundering prosecution case in Southern District of New York that for the most part was settled in May of 2017. Prevezon is/was owned by Denis Katsyv and has a principal by the name of Timofey Krit. The Prevezon office was located in Brooklyn, New York. The registered agent for Prevezon is Gabriella Volshteyn.

Gabriella Volshteyn is a founder and a managing attorney of Volshteyn & Associates. The lawfirm boasts the following on the website:

In our Real Estate practice, we have participated in over $1 billion of transactions in commercial and residential real estate involving both the US-based and international corporate entities and individuals.

In our  Business and Contract Law practice, we have represented a full range of clients from individuals and small business owners to large multinational holding companies. We have drafted contracts ranging from simple corporate agreements to complex contractual agreements related to large-scale international events, such as Sochi Olympic Games.

In our Global Corporate and Tax practice, we have considerable expertise in structuring complex corporate, banking and investment accounts for foreign investors and the establishment of offshore trusts in tax-favored jurisdictions, such as the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, the Netherlands, Antilles, the Channel Islands, Panama, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Madeira.

Our Surrogacy Law practice is an area of passion for this firm as we have been fortunate to help many families from all over the world with bringing a child in their lives.  With the help of our firm, surrogacy has made the dream of having children possible for those who are infertile, unable to become pregnant, or unable to carry a child to term.

(of note, the countries listed above are those that are known to be quite common in use by front companies to hide money, evade taxes and park laundered funds)

*** While Donald Trump Jr. had a meeting on June 6, 2016 with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the meeting allegedly had several objectives including opposition intelligence on Hillary Clinton, getting waivers or removal of sanctions from the Magnitsky Act and later Russian adoption. Donald Jr. included Jared Kuschner and Paul Manafort in the meeting without vetting Natalia or on background the sanctions. Natalia also does have ties to former top members of GRU and FSB. As a normal practice, the Kremlin always dispatches operatives that are at least one layer removed from listed official positions of the Russian government.

A particular group of note for which Veselnitskaya was involved and is a large lobby operation in Washington DC is HRAGI, a front operation on human rights known as Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative Foundation. Those involved in the lobby operation on behalf of HRAGI and Prevezon include:

A. Rinat Akhmetshin – Russian national living in Washington D.C.
B. Robert Arakelian
C. Chris Cooper – CEO Potomac Square Group
D. Glenn Simpson – SNS Global and Fusion GPS
E. Mark Cymrot – Partner, Baker Hostetler
F. Ron Dellums – Former Republican Congressman (correction, Dellums is Democrat of operative status)
G. Howard Schweitzer – Managing Partner of Cozen O’Connor Public
Strategies

In more detail as published by Senator Grassley’s office:

The Russian Government also has a vested interested in ensuring that Prevezon
Holdings Limited and its affiliated companies successfully defend asset forfeiture
proceedings brought against them by the United States Government in New
York, in which Prevezon is accused of laundering proceeds of the $230 million
fraud.
Prevezon is owned by Denis Katsyv, the son of a Russian government official,
Piotr Katsyv. Denis Katsyv currently has $7million frozen by the Swiss General
Prosecutor, pursuant to a criminal investigation by the Swiss authorities into the
laundering of proceeds from the $230 million fraud. More here.

***

Another issue is Jared Kushner.

HRAGI’s other clients include Vladimir Lelyukh, a top executive at Sberbank Capital, a subsidiary of the state-owned Russian bank involved in the real estate, energy, transportation, and automotive sectors. Sberbank Capital’s CEO, Ashot Khachaturyants, is a former senior official in Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and its Ministry of Economic Development and Trade.
State-owned Russian financial institutions are common conduits for surreptitious intelligence work in the country. Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has faced scrutiny over a January meeting a top executive at another bank with ties to Russian intelligence, Moscow-based Vnesheconombank. For context and validation, go here.

Vnesheconombank was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in 2014 due to Russian annexation of Crimea and Ukraine.

Vnesheconombank also known as VEB bank has the following officers:

 

Trump in that Miss Universe Music Video and Agalarov

Posted on by

Primer:   Russian ‘Gun-For-Hire’ Lurks In Shadows Of Washington’s Lobbying World

Rinat Akhmetshin, the man at the back of the room who for nearly 20 years has worked the shadowy corners of the Washington lobbying scene on behalf of businessman and politicians from around the former Soviet Union. In an e-mail response to RFE/RL, Akhmetshin denied that he ever worked for Soviet military intelligence, something he would have had to declare when he applied for U.S. citizenship.

Akhmetshin has paid at least one visit to Congress in connection with new human rights legislation that builds on the earlier Magnitsky Act. Along with Ron Dellums, a former U.S. congressman from California and longtime Washington lobbyist, Akhmetshin visited House member offices on May 17 to meet with Dana Rohrabacher, another California congressman viewed as one of the most sympathetic U.S. officials to Russian causes. Read the full story here for context and timeline.

According to The Daily Beast, the two told congressional officials said they were lobbying on behalf of Prevezon. But Dellums told RFE/RL that his involvement focused on resuming Russian adoptions by U.S. parents.

Senator Grassley was advised in 2016 on the moving parts of foreign agents, the mission to lift sanctions or scale back the Magnitsky Act and other connections.

Aras Agalarov

Real Time Net Worth — as of 7/10/17
$1.92 B
Forbes: Billionaire developer Aras Agalarov and his pop star son, Emin, have close ties to US president Donald Trump. In 2013, the Agalarovs brought Trump’s Miss Universe pageant to Moscow, and, they say, later planned to construct a Trump Tower in Russia. Those ambitions fell apart when The Donald ran for office. Aras began his career in the technology industry, but saw greater business potential in trade fairs. In 1989 he established development firm Crocus, which became one of the country’s largest trade-fair operators. His holdings have since expanded into an array of luxe buildings and shopping malls, including the expansive Crocus City Mall in Moscow. Emin, who once featured Trump in a music video, was previously married to the daughter of Azerbaijan president Ilkham Aliyev. He retains close ties to the Trump family and brand. More here on Aras Agalarov and real estate.

Trump with Agalarov at the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, on Nov. 9, 2013.

Photographer: Victor Boyko/Getty Images

The last time Donald Trump made an appearance in Moscow was November 2013 for the Miss Universe contest he famously owned. It was a glittering event filled with carefully choreographed photographs and parties. Then another, more private, invitation arrived: Come to Nobu to meet more than a dozen of Russia’s top businessmen, including Herman Gref, the chief executive officer of state-controlled Sberbank PJSC, Russia’s biggest bank.

Gref, who was President Vladimir Putin’s economy minister from 2000 to 2007, organized the meeting together with Aras Agalarov, the founder of Crocus Group, one of the country’s largest real-estate companies, which was hosting the beauty pageant at one of its concert halls.

“There was a good feeling from the meeting,” Gref said in an interview. “He’s a sensible person, very lively in his responses, with a positive energy and a good attitude toward Russia.”

Trump’s two-hour gathering at Nobu, a 15-minute walk from the Kremlin, suggests that the president-elect’s circle of contacts in Russia is wider than previously reported and includes a close confidant of Putin’s. More here from Bloomberg.

Facebook check-ins can be damming.

Rob Goldstone, the man who says he connected Donald Trump Jr. with a Russian lawyer who claimed to have damaging information about Hillary Clinton, is a British-born music producer with ties to a Russian billionaire through his pop star son.Trump Jr. confirmed in a statement that he and other Trump campaign officials met with Natalia Veselnitskaya in June 2016. The person who asked Trump Jr. to attend the meeting was Goldstone, a music producer with ties to a Russian pop star named Emin Agalarov, according to The Washington Post.

The New York Times broke the story that Trump Jr., Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort had attended the meeting, although Trump Jr. says Veselnitskaya never produced information negative to Clinton.

A special prosecutor is investigating whether members of the Trump campaign colluded with Russian interference into the 2016 presidential election. Goldstone is a colorful addition to the cast of characters in the Trump/Russia controversies. More here from Heavy.

US President Donald Trump was “not aware of and did not attend” a 2016 meeting between his son Donald Trump Jr and a Kremlin-connected lawyer who was offering damaging information on then Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, his lawyers say.

Mr Trump’s then-campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner also attended the meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower on June 9 last year, two weeks after Mr Trump won the Republican nomination, the New York Times reported, citing three advisers to the White House.

Donald Trump Jr acknowledged the meeting, but said Ms Veselnitskaya had “no meaningful information”.

*** So who is Natalia Veselnitskaya?

By her own account, the Russian lawyer that managed to slide her way into Trump Tower last year and meet with President Donald Trump’s eldest son, his campaign manager and son-in-law is a former Moscow prosecutor who had been denied a visa to enter the United States.

Natalia Veselnitskaya filed an affidavit in a federal case in New York describing how she managed to get special permission to enter the United States after the visa denial to help represent a Russian company called Prevezon Holdings owned by the Russian businessman Denis Katsyv in a case brought against it by U.S. prosecutors.

“I represent victims in many criminal cases involving economic crimes. I have been retained by Denis Katsyv and the defendants in this action to assist their attorneys in the United States, Baker & Hostetler LLP to prepare their defense,” she wrote in the January 2016 affidavit filed in court in New York City.

“As counsel to Defendants, it is important that I be able to participate in the defense of this action by traveling to the United States. For that reason, I applied for a visa to enter the United States, but was denied,” she added. “I also applied for entry visas for my children, so that they could be together with me over the Christmas holiday while I was working in New York on this lawsuit, but this was also denied. However, the United States did issue a parole letter for me to enter the United States in order to help defend this lawsuit.”

It was apparently during the time she was in the United States on that parole entry that she arranged to meet with Donald Trump Jr., Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner and former campaign manager Paul Manafort on June 9, 2016 at Trump Tower.

During the meeting Veselnitskaya raised the issue of restoring U.S. adoptions inside Russia if the United States would repeal the Magnitsky Act, a law passed in 2012 punishing Moscow for human rights violations in connection with the death of a lawyer who had discovered a massive money laundering scheme inside the country. More here from Circa.