Category Archives: Panama Papers

Trump’s Pick for Sec. of Army, but Tillerson is Still a Problem

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For the most part, the team leading the auditions for Cabinet posts in the Trump administration are pretty good. It was announced on December 19, that Trump’s choice for Secretary of the Army is Vincent Viola. Viola is a billionaire and a West Point graduate. Formerly an air borne ranger, Viola is in fact a military patriot as he helped fund the ‘counter-terrorism’ center.

Hat tip on this choice.

Upon continued deeper dives however on Rex Tillerson, there is an iceberg ahead on this as his Russian ties are even more robust than previously reported.

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ExxonMobil helped defeat Russia sanctions bill

The company’s formidable lobbying operation cleared the way for outgoing CEO Rex Tillerson to help restore a program worth billions of dollars as secretary of state.

ExxonMobil successfully lobbied against a bill that would have made it harder for the next president to lift sanctions against Russia, clearing the way for the oil giant to restart a program worth billions of dollars if Donald Trump eases those restrictions as president.

The company’s effort could be helped by outgoing CEO Rex Tillerson, who, if confirmed as secretary of state, would be a key adviser on the decision.

The bill, known as the STAND for Ukraine Act, would have converted into law for five years President Barack Obama’s measures punishing Russia for annexing Crimea, making it more difficult for Trump to roll them back. The Senate left town on Monday without acting on the bill, making it easier for Trump to end the sanctions with a stroke of the pen.

The sanctions forced Exxon to step back from a drilling project in Russia’s Arctic, a loss that the company valued in a regulatory filing at as much as $1 billion. Exxon also lobbied the Senate Foreign Relations Committee against previous bills punishing Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, according to a person familiar with the company’s efforts on Capitol Hill.

Exxon’s intervention against the sanctions bill could add to concerns among senators — including Republicans John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio — that Tillerson is too chummy with Vladimir Putin. Exxon’s business partner in Russia is state-owned Rosneft, led by Igor Sechin, a close Putin ally who was sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2014. Tillerson and Putin personally concluded the joint venture in 2011.

In a statement, Exxon spokesman Alan Jeffers said the company “sought and provided information” about its activities in Russia and Ukraine and disclosed its lobbying as required. “Our contacts were reported per congressional requirements, but were mainly in the first half of 2014,” when the Russia sanctions were first imposed, he added. More detail here from Politico.

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Yes there is more:

Leak reveals Rex Tillerson was director of Bahamas-based US-Russian oil firm

Documents from tax haven will raise more questions over suitability of Donald Trump’s pick for US secretary of state

Rex Tillerson, the businessman nominated by Donald Trump to be the next US secretary of state, was the long-time director of a US-Russian oil firm based in the tax haven of the Bahamas, leaked documents show.

 Mediaite

Tillerson – the chief executive of ExxonMobil – became a director of the oil company’s Russian subsidiary, Exxon Neftegas, in 1998. His name – RW Tillerson – appears next to other officers who are based at Houston, Texas; Moscow; and Sakhalin, in Russia’s far east.

The leaked 2001 document comes from the corporate registry in the Bahamas. It was one of 1.3m files given to the Germany newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung by an anonymous source. The registry is public but details of individual directors are typically incomplete or missing entirely.

Though there is nothing untoward about this directorship, it has not been reported before and is likely to raise fresh questions over Tillerson’s relationship with Russia ahead of a potentially stormy confirmation hearing by the US senate foreign relations committee. Exxon said on Sunday that Tillerson was no longer a director after becoming the company’s CEO in 2006.

ExxonMobil’s use of offshore regimes – while legal – may also jar with Trump’s avowal to put “America first”.

Tillerson’s critics say he is too close to the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and that his appointment could raise potential conflicts of interest.

ExxonMobil is the world’s largest oil company and has for a long time been eyeing Russia’s vast oil and gas deposits. Tillerson currently has Exxon stock worth more than $200m.

Since his nomination, Tillerson’s Russia ties have become a source of bipartisan concern. In 2013, Putin awarded him the Russian Order of Friendship. Tillerson is close to Igor Sechin, the head of Russian state oil company Rosneft and the de facto second most powerful figure inside the Kremlin. A hardliner, Sechin is ex-KGB.

Tillerson’s award followed a 2011 deal between ExxonMobil and Rosneft to explore the Kara Sea, in Russia’s Arctic.

It was put on hold in 2014 after the Obama administration imposed wide-ranging sanctions against Russia. The sanctions were punishment for Putin’s Crimea annexation that spring and Russia’s undercover invasion of eastern Ukraine.

The ban covers the US sharing of sophisticated offshore and shale oil technology. Exxon was supposed to halt its drilling with Rosneft. The firm successfully pleaded with the US Treasury department to delay the ban by a few weeks, with the Kremlin threatening to seize its rig. In this brief window Exxon discovered a major Arctic field with some 750m barrels of new oil.

Tillerson has criticised the US government’s policy on Russia. In 2014 he told Exxon’s annual meeting that “we do not support sanctions”. He added: “We always encourage the people who are making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage of who they are really harming.”

It is widely assumed by investors that the new Trump administration will drop sanctions. This would allow the Kara joint venture to resume, boosting Exxon’s share price and yielding potential profits in the tens of billions of dollars. According to company records, Tillerson currently owns $218m of stock. His Exxon pension is worth about $70m. The complete summary is here from the Guardian.

 

If you Don’t Remember Thomas Pickering, Check this…

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Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat: Thomas Pickering and Russia’s Pipeline Sales to Iran…

  

CenterforSecurityPolicy: “Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat” is a hard-hitting investigative report from the Center for Security Policy, exposing the ties of former Ambassador Thomas Pickering to a Putin-linked Russian company that sold oil and gas pipelines to Iran and Syria when Pickering was on its Board of Directors. The report reveals Pickering’s overlapping roles: as Clinton’s Foreign Affairs Policy Advisor, as an Advisory Board member for two Iranian advocacy groups, as a paid Director for a Russian firm selling pipeline to Iran and Syria, as a paid consultant to Iranian aircraft contractor Boeing, and as a Senate committee hearing witness, all with a common goal of ending economic sanctions on Iran and reversing U.S. Iran policies.

As meticulously documented in “Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat,” Pickering was a paid Director for the Russian-owned company Trubnaya Metallurgicheskaya Kompaniya (TMK) from June 30, 2009 to June 26, 2012. TMK is majority-owned by Russian billionaire oligarch Dmitry Pumpyansky, a close Putin ally.

The investigation discovered extensive proof of TMK’s business dealings in Iran and Syria while Pickering was on the Board, including a financial offering disclosure, catalogs, marketing materials, websites, press releases, legal documents, reports from the steel industry press and Iranian customer websites. Sales of oil and gas pipelines to Iran were specifically prohibited under U.S. laws and executive orders.

According to TMK’s records, Pickering attended 143 of the 145 TMK Board meetings. Pickering is estimated to have been paid over half a million dollars for his service to TMK, based on TMK’s compensation rules.

“Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat” documents TMK’s relationships with three Iranian customers, all listed by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) as “Specially Designated Nationals” during the years Pickering served on the Board: the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Petropars, and Pars Oil and Gas Company.

The investigation also shows TMK’s relationships with three Syrian customers listed by OFAC as “Specially Designated Nationals” in 2011, while Pickering was on the Board: the Syrian Gas Company, the Syrian Petroleum Company, and the Al Furat Petroleum Company. U.S. persons are generally prohibited from conducting any kind of business with “Specially Designated Nationals.”

Thomas Pickering was appointed by Clinton as Chairman for the Benghazi Accountability Review Board three months after he left TMK. Starting in December 2011, he also served in official capacity on Clinton’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board. Emails released from Clinton’s private server show that Pickering was emailing and meeting with Clinton and her staff from the beginning of her time as Secretary of State, arguing for an end to economic sanctions on Iran, during the same years he was on TMK’s Board of Directors.

“Clinton’s Shadow Diplomat” raises questions for the American public and policymakers about Thomas Pickering’s and Hillary Clinton’s priorities. Did they put America’s interests first, or those of Iran and Russia?

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Pickering was briefly the president of the Eurasia Foundation, a Washington-based organization that makes small grants and loans in the states of the former Soviet Union.

Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering agreed in May 2013 to be a director of Luxoft Holding Inc., which was incorporated by Mossack Fonseca in the British Virgin Islands. Former Ambassador Thomas Pickering agreed in May 2013 to be a director of Luxoft Holding Inc., which was incorporated by Mossack Fonseca in the British Virgin Islands. CHRIS USHER AP

WASHINGTON

As Russian software company Luxoft prepared to offer shares on the U.S. stock market, its executives turned to a well-known U.S. diplomat.

Thomas Pickering, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia who also served as undersecretary of state for political affairs under President Bill Clinton, agreed in May 2013 to be a director of Luxoft Holding Inc. a month before the company’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange. The relationship between Luxoft and Pickering, whose diplomatic career spans six presidents and four decades, is detailed in the massive Panama Papers leak and comes amid a global debate over the role of offshore companies. Luxoft is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. More here from McClatchy/MiamiHerald.

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Anyone find it curious that Luxoft just happened to be protected from the U.S. sanctions list due to the Russian invasion of Crimea and Ukraine? Barack Obama signed a couple of Executive Orders against Russia in 2014 as published here by the U.S. Department of Treasury and the U.S. State Department, but Luxoft was exempt.

Luxoft Gains in U.S. as Sales Shielded From Sanctions while this company has an intriguing business model:

Industries / areas:
Aerospace & Defense, Automotive, Banking and Financial Services, Education, Entertainment, Industrial, Insurance, Media, Publishing, Retail / Distribution, Science and Research, Software and Technology, Telecom, Transportation, Travel
Global headquarters: Moscow Russia
Worldwide office locations:
New York, Seattle United States US; Kiev, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk Ukraine UA; London United Kingdom GB; Bucharest Romania RO; Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam VN; Eschborn/Frankfurt Germany DE; Krakow Poland PL; Singapore Singapore SG
Russian office locations:
St. Petersburg Russia RU, Omsk Russia RU, Dubna Russia RU
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The United States last week experienced the largest intrusion of the internet affecting social media platforms and Internet Service Providers. The further investigations found that specific malware was used via the pathway of the ‘Internet of Things’. IoT is all those other appliances that are attached to the internet for communications.
So this slide is rather fascinating and may have some clues to domestic cyber threats and risks…

LUXOFT HORIZONTAL TECHNICAL EXCELLENCE – IOT PRACTICE

While it’s called the Internet of Things, it’s really about the data you gather from those connected “things” and the derived insights that help you make improvements to your business – new service offerings, transformed product lines, and improved time-to-market.

IOT can help you transform your business.

iot-luxoft

 Continue here to this link from the Luxoft Corporate presentation dated May 2016 and begin at slide 28.

 

Hillary’s Relationship with Russia is Approved Espionage

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Dealing with evil, the evil empire as President Reagan declared. Quite actually under the Barack Obama administration it is nothing more than groveling with the Kremlin.

The United States has an Open Skies Treaty. and one must question why. Further, the Russians have taken full advantage of it.

Then there was the red line threat by Obama where it was later dismissed and handed over to Putin to handle those chemical weapons in Syria for removal.

Then we heard about the Bill and Hillary deal with the Canadian operative on Uranium One giving over rights of U.S. uranium supply to Russia.

But now we have yet another operation concocted by the White House and the Hillary State Department and this one is a blockbuster as noted by going back in history through the original WikiLeaks cables.

It is highly suggested to read the full document below, as it summarizes how Hillary allowed trade secrets and professional Russian espionage within the United States.

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The full document is here.

FROM RUSSIA WITH Money

Hillary Clinton, the Russian Reset, and Cronyism

NYPost: Key players in a main component of the reset — a Moscow-based, Silicon Valley-styled campus for developing biomed, space, nuclear and IT technologies called “Skolkovo” — poured tens of millions of dollars into the Clinton Foundation, the report by journalist Peter Schweizer alleges.

As the Obama administration’s top diplomat, Hillary Clinton was at the center of US efforts on the reset in general and Skolkovo in particular, Schweizer argues.

Yet, “Of the 28 US, European and Russian companies that participated in Skolkovo, 17 of them were Clinton Foundation donors” or sponsored speeches by former President Bill Clinton, Schweizer told The Post.

“It raises the question — do you need to pay money to sit at the table?”

In one example cited by Schweizer, Skolkovo Foundation member and then-Cisco CEO John Chambers donated between $1 million and $5 million in personal and corporate cash to the Clinton Foundation, the report says.

But Skolkovo wound up making America less safe, Schweizer argues, because it shared advanced US technology that Russia can develop for both civilian and military applications, a concern raised already by Army and FBI officials.

Many of Skolkovo’s research projects involved “dual-use” technologies, meaning they would have both civilian and military uses, the report said, citing one in particular — a hybrid airship called an “Atlant” developed at the Skolkovo Aeronautical Center.

“Particularly noteworthy is Atlant’s ability to deliver military cargoes,” including “radar surveillance, air and missile defense and delivery of airborne troops,” the Skolkovo Foundation bragged in a document Schweizer cites.

Hillary Clinton personally launched the State Department’s efforts toward a Russian reset, presenting her Russian then-counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, with a prop reset button in Geneva in 2009.

The reset petered out by the end of 2011, when Russian President Vladimir Putin accused Hillary of fomenting Russian protests over suspicions of fraud in that year’s parliamentary elections.

But by then, the damage had already been done, Schweizer feels.

“I think the idea that you’re going to help develop a Russian version of Silicon Valley, which, by the way, will be controlled by the Russian government, and then not to expect that the technology will be siphoned off for military uses, is incredibly naive,” Schweizer said.

As early as 2010, cybersecurity experts also expressed deep concerns about Russia using Skolkovo to develop hacking capabilities.

Russia’s FSB spy agency — the successor to the KGB — reportedly keeps two of its information warfare “security centers” at Skolkovo, the report says.

“There certainly is an irony that as we are now concerned about Russian cyber-attacks on the US, that the reset played a role in enhancing their cyber-capabilities,” Schweizer said.

In this latest report, as in his book, “Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich,” Schweizer concedes he found no “smoking gun” evidence that any of the donors who poured cash into the Clinton coffers actually were promised, or received, any State Department favors in return.

“We don’t have an email or a pirated voice mail message saying, ‘We’ll give you money if you help us with Skokovo,’” Schweizer told The Post. “But what we do have is a pattern that shows a high percentage of participants in Skolkovo who happen to be Clinton Foundation donors.

“I think that everybody at the Russian reset table seems to walk away with something,” he added.

“The Clintons, they get their donations and speaking fees in the millions of dollars. The Russians get access to advanced US technology. The tech companies [that participated in the reset, including Cisco, Intel, Microsoft] get special access to the Russian market and workforce.

“But the American people get nothing. In fact, we get a rival — Russia — with enhanced technological capabilities. At best, that makes them a tougher competitor [in legitimate commerce],” Schweizer said.

“At worst, they get a more robust military, with technologies that we helped develop, and that can be sold to our enemies.”

The Clinton Foundation is sure to be a sore spot in Hillary’s campaign for the presidency, Schweizer predicted — tainted as it is, despite its laudable philanthropy.

“At the entire Democratic convention, they did not mention the Clinton Foundation once,” he said. “And it’s been the Clintons’ life work for 16-plus years.”

The Clinton campaign did not respond to requests from The Post for comment on the report.

“All I ask is that people look at the money. Who made the deals, who benefited from the deals,” Schweizer said. “We can’t get inside people’s heads as to why they did something, but we should follow the money.”

 

Does the Kremlin Really Have Hillary’s Emails?

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Wouldn’t you love to read the most recent and current emails between Sidney and Hillary right now?

Putin’s Army Of Internet Trolls Is Influencing The Hillary Clinton Email Scandal

Paul Roderick Gregory/Forbes

The Hillary Clinton email scandal broke more than three years ago—on March 19, 2013—with the Russian news service RT’s publication of Sidney Blumenthal’s emails to the then-Secretary of State. What most American journalists don’t realize is that Putin’s internet army continues to influence the evolution of the story.

 

My article on the Blumenthal emails, published on the same day, attracted 361,000 viewers, meaning the story was not a secret. The mainstream press ignored the story, only to see it burst upon the 2016 election scene where it occupies daily headlines. As I pointed out in my more recent piece entitled “What if Vladimir Putin Has Hillary’s Emails,” the Clinton campaign and the country could be sorely damaged if Hillary’s emails (including those she deemed “personal”) are in Kremlin hands. Even if they are not, Putin can gain leverage simply from the suspicion that he has them.

Despite the New York Times’ weak assurances that there is “no evidence of hacking,” experts agree, including a former defense secretary and head of the CIA, that Kremlin cyber forces most likely hacked Hillary’s emails, which we now know include a number of top secret documents.

I have been following the Russian and English language blogosphere using Google searches like “Does Putin/the Kremlin have Hillary’s emails?” Included are rumor-mills such as Sovershenno sekretno.ru (“Completely secret”) and kompromat.ru (“Compromising material”). In a country that thrives on gossip and rumors, even on delicate matters such as the murder of Boris Nemtsov, the Russian search yields absolute silence. The Kremlin is holding information about any possession of Hillary’s emails as close to the vest as possible.

Not that the Kremlin is not enjoying Hillary’s discomfort. The FBI investigation, the testimony of the hacker Guccifer, and the release of the state-department Inspector General report are covered daily and with glee. My own Forbes articles are prominently featured. Russia’s information technologists have elevated me from a moronic paid Forbes hack to a distinguished scholar writing for a respected publication. My words seem to count when I suggest that Putin has outsmarted Hillary Clinton.

Contrary to the Russian media silence, the U.S. media began buzzing with the May 6 publication on an obscure conspiracy-oriented website (whatdoesitmean.com) entitled “Kremlin War Erupts over Release of Top Secret Hillary Clinton Emails.” The article, written under the exotic pseudonym of Sorcha Faal, claims that a faction within the Kremlin wants Hillary’s email cache released. Fox News pundits (Sean Hannity and Judge Anthony Napolitano) cited the article as evidence that Putin has the Clinton emails. Their comments were triumphantly and derisively panned by Media Matters, who pointed out that the same website published articles on British jets fighting UFOs and a new planet threatening existence on earth.

Both Fox News and Media Matters, in my view, are both unwitting victims of a classic Putin troll attack. Whereas Washington works on the basis of leaks, Kremlin information technologists first plant their narrative in an obscure blog (like whatdoesitmean.com) and then use its blogosphere network to cascade the story until it reaches more mainstream outlets. In this case, they struck gold with references by major figures on Fox News. With the Kremlin’s psychological operations, no one knows fact from fiction (Is this just some crackpot or the Kremlin?) and first impressions tend to stick, even if the story is proven false.

There are good reasons to believe that a Putin troll attack is at work here.

First, it spins an alternate-world narrative that serves Kremlin interests in a number of ways. The Sorcha Faal article explains to the world that, yes, the Kremlin does have Hillary’s emails, thanks to Russia’s vigilant cyber forces, who obtained them in a perfectly legitimate way. After they detected hacker Guccifer’s attempted hacking of their own RT, they claim to have followed him as he attacked Hillary’s server and ended up coincidently with the cache of Hillary’s emails. The lesson: Russia has good cyber security; the incompetent U.S. does not.

The even more important message is that the CIA, knowing that the Kremlin has damaging secrets (such as the truth of Benghazi), launched a false Panama Papers operation to discredit Putin’s inner circle. The Panama Papers gambit was fabricated as a threat to prevent Russia from revealing the contents of Hillary’s emails. Thus, revelations about financial misdeeds of Putin’s inner circle can be written off as a CIA disinformation counter attack.

The story’s lightning-fast spread through the blogosphere is a second reason for believing in an organized troll attack. Faal’s crazy headline stories that Media Matters derides do not spread through the blogosphere.  Granted that the Clinton email story is hot, its cascading through the internet smells of a planned operation by Putin’s troll army.

In the case of the Clinton emails, the Kremlin appears to be using its classic “Madeline Albright declaration” approach. In the Albright case, an obscure and unidentified blogger, “Natalia 1001,” made the unsubstantiated claim that then Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, had declared that Siberia, with its rich resources, should belong to the United States, not to Russia. This false claim was repeated by multiple sources (including an FSB mind reader) until it has become an integral part of the Putin doctrine that the U.S. is an aggressive power intent on Russia’s demise.

We are no closer to proof of whether Putin has Hillary’s emails or not. What we have is a troll attack that lays out a Kremlin narrative linking the Clinton emails to the Panama Papers. We expect the Kremlin to build on this narrative as time passes. In either case, Putin is sitting in the catbird seat. The mere suspicion that he has the email cache gives him leverage over the U.S. election. Those who argue that Clinton’s use of an insecure private server is a minor dereliction do not understand the consequences of having the Secretary of State’s correspondence in the hands of a hostile nation.

We can expect the Kremlin to use Hillary’s email scandal to its advantage. It is up to Putin to determine the timing, which will be most likely related to the U.S. election cycle. Let’s hope that Donald Trump uses this lesson to retract his favorable comments about Vladimir Putin.

Psst, Another Scandal, Thomas Pickering/Panama Papers

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Who is Tom Pickering? He is the fella that Hillary tapped to do the Accountability Review Board Report on Benghazi. And, thanks to my buddy Clare Lopez, former CIA, she authored a white paper on ol’ Thomas and his pro-Iran lobby.

Pickering was also part of a secret group to lobby the lifting of sanctions on Iran. The White House lobby operation for Iran was huge, well funded and full of collusion.

Well, there is more to Mr. Pickering.

Panama Papers detail how ex-ambassador helped Russian company

McClatchy:  WASHINGTON ~ MarisaTaylor: As Russian software company Luxoft prepared to offer shares on the U.S. stock market, its executives turned to a well-known U.S. diplomat.

Thomas Pickering, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia who also served as undersecretary of state for political affairs under President Bill Clinton, agreed in May 2013 to be a director of Luxoft Holding Inc. a month before the company’s debut on the New York Stock Exchange.

 

The relationship between Luxoft and Pickering, whose diplomatic career spans six presidents and four decades, is detailed in the massive Panama Papers leak and comes amid a global debate over the role of offshore companies. Luxoft is incorporated in the British Virgin Islands.

Pickering is the highest-level former U.S. official to be identified as involved in a Panama Papers offshore company so far. The papers, which were leaked from the Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca to an international group of reporters, including the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists and McClatchy, have already revealed that former and current world leaders had offshore companies and have led to criminal inquiries around the globe, including in the United States.

However, nothing appears illegal or unethical about Pickering’s role, experts said. Pickering said in an interview that he had disclosed his role on Luxoft’s board to the State Department as required under government ethics rules.

“I disclosed about 150 interests, including that I was on this board,” he said. “It is a Russian company and – obviously for tax reasons or otherwise – incorporated itself in Tortola, the British Virgin Islands. That I knew. And I didn’t see any problem with that.”

He also said he’d donated his compensation from the company to charity.

Luxoft declined to comment. “As a public company we do not respond to unsolicited enquiries of this nature,” Natasha Ziabkina, general counsel of Luxoft Group, wrote in an email to McClatchy. “Any material information about our company is disclosed through our publicly available securities filings.”

Pickering said he’d also disclosed his role and had donated compensation when he served until about four years ago on the board of TMK, a Russian manufacturer and exporter of steel pipes for the oil and gas industry.

 

“I’ve been very careful in my dealings with the boards,” Pickering said.

Pickering said he had been approached to be on Luxoft’s board years before the company went public on the British and American stock exchanges, by a Luxoft executive he’d known while he was senior vice president of international relations for Boeing Co. from 2000 to 2006. Boeing was a client of Luxoft.

“I got to know them and I got to know the man who ran Luxoft,” Pickering said. “Years ago, he said if we go on the London market or on the U.S. would I join their board. I said in principle I would.”

 

After the company went public in London, Pickering said, he looked into the company and decided to join the board. He also serves on Luxoft’s audit committee.

Pickering was appointed director of Luxoft Holding at a time when the company still had ties to one of Russia’s biggest banks, VTB Bank. Rus Lux Limited, the VTB-linked company, had a 10.2 percent stake in Luxoft.

Luxoft has generally performed well since its formation. It was among the best-performing major Russian companies on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. And earlier this month it reported that its fourth-quarter revenue had increased 23.2 percent over the previous year.

In the Mossack Fonseca documents, Luxoft reassures the law firm in December 2015 that Rus Lux had sold its shares before the U.S government sanctioned VTB in July 2014. The U.S. Treasury Department issued the sanctions against VTB and other Russian banks in response to Russia’s role in the Ukrainian conflict.

“Rus Lux Limited was a minority shareholder a long time ago,” wrote Ziabkina, general counsel of Luxoft Group. “They fully divested and sold their shares in Luxoft Holding in November 2013 before the sanctions took effect.”

New York University law professor Stephen Gillers said he didn’t see any ethical problem with Pickering’s relationship with Luxoft.

“What else is new?” asked Gillers. “Yes, people sometimes use their former government experience to do exactly this.”

Jay Ritter, a University of Florida business professor, said Luxoft’s inclusion of Pickering on its board was not unusual for foreign companies gearing up for an initial public stock offering in the U.S.

“When you’re dealing with a company in Russia – whether they’ve got to set it up in the British Virgin Islands or not, there’s a required leap of faith for investors,” said Ritter, an expert on IPOs. “Appointing someone like Pickering to the board gives a certain amount of credibility because he’s got his personal reputation at stake. Presumably, he doesn’t want to get involved with something that’s obviously sleazy.”

Pickering has served as the U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria and Jordan, and to the United Nations.

Luxoft also disclosed his role in its public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The company has its operating headquarters in Switzerland.

State Department spokesman John Kirby declined to comment on the Panama Papers.

Kirby said Pickering was required to file financial disclosure forms with the State Department because he served as one of 25 members of the first Foreign Affairs Policy Board.

The board was launched in December 2011 to provide the secretary of state and senior department officials with independent advice on U.S. foreign policy.

Pickering served a two-year term on the board from December 2011 to December 2013. He returned to the board in 2014 and remains a member. Members of the Foreign Affairs Policy Board do not work full time as members of the board, but in an advisory capacity.

The former ambassador also chaired the Accountability Review Board, which investigated the 2012 fatal attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including an ambassador. The panel concluded in its December 2012 report that security at the facility in Benghazi was “grossly inadequate,” leading to the suspension of four State Department officials. They were reinstated by Secretary of State John Kerry in August 2013.

Pickering continued to offer advice to the Obama administration, according to emails that the State Department released during a controversy over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s emails.

Pickering wasn’t compensated for any position, Kirby said.