Category Archives: Treasury

WH and State Dept Slowed Walked Russian Sanctions

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While many are questioning Robert Mueller’s role into the Russian investigation, be sure to understand Russian operatives had an open door for at least 8 years and earlier than that there were clandestine Russian spy rings functioning across the country.

Much less there are dead Russians in the UK as well as in the United States, the risks are extraordinary.

Thanks to the Democrats and the greed of money where Russia was happy to comply for agreements to all their requests, the Russian probe goes beyond that common term of collusion.

The Obama administration launched the back channels for nuclear talks with Iran in 2009 in Oman. Obama needed the Russian vote, so all things concocted by the Kremlin were given a wink and nod by the Obama White House as well as the Hillary and John Kerry State Department.

So, we now have the Trump White House which has been slow and measured to take additional actions regarding Russia. The ‘why’ has a convoluted answer. There is/was Russian hacking. There were/are Russian trolls and bots in social media. There is Russian involvement in Silicon Valley known as Skolkovo. There is conflicted military airspace in Syria. There is Russian support of the Taliban. There are Russian operations in Cuba, Latin America, Libya, Iraq, Ukraine (…)

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Medvedev and Putin have a master plan and they are calculating and effective. One action results in unknown global consequences.

So, finally the Tillerson State Department provided approval of additional sanctions on Russia and Congress has the list. Is it enough or complete? Too early to know. However, the Magnitsky Act is gaining approval in countries allied to United States and Putin is seeking revenge by any means necessary including through Interpol.

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Read on:

WASHINGTON — The State Department gave Congress a list Thursday of 39 Russian individuals and entities it says support the Russian government’s intelligence and defense sectors. Early next year, anyone in the U.S. doing business with entities on that list will be hit with sanctions by the Trump administration.

“Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has authorized the department to issue guidance to the public specifying the persons or entities that are part of or operating on behalf of the defense or intelligence sectors of the government of the Russian Federation,” said State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert.

After President Trump signed sanctions legislation in August, the administration gave the State and Treasury Departments the authority to draw up a list of entities that enable Moscow’s intelligence and defense sectors. The State Department had a deadline of October 1 to send the list to Congress. Now, nearly a month late, State has done so.

There had been growing criticism that the administration was slow-walking the process. The State Department cited the complexity of the process when asked about the delay. Nauert also explained that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is “very hands-on in these types of things.”

Experts on Russia who reviewed the list, which was obtained by CBS News, say it covers most of the Russian defense sector.

“This seems to be a comprehensive list that broadly covers a significant portion of the Russian defense industry,” said Mark Simakovsky, a former Defense Department official and Atlantic Council fellow. “The administration likely took very seriously the review, required of the legislation, and has sought to abide by the terms.”

Five of the six Russian defense contractors listed on the State and Treasury list are among the 100 biggest defense companies worldwide.

Rosoboronexport OJSC, which is on the list, is one of Russia’s largest exporters of defense products. Its partner company, Rostec, promotes technology products in both the civil and defense sectors and is also on the list. On the intelligence side, the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) are included.

The State Department is making the entire list public in advance of actual sanctions implementation in order to alert U.S. stakeholders, primarily those who do business with these companies, early notice, so they can draw down those transactions. If they don’t, they, too, will face sanctions.

“These are the types of entities that they can no longer do business with,” State Department Spokeswoman Heather Nauert said. “So it helps them to at least make their business decisions and be able to decide on the best course of action going forward,” she said.”

Making the list public before sanctions go into effect is a departure from the usual State Department policy of waiting for the sanctions to be announced. Congressional aides acknowledged that this caveat, which essentially enables both U.S. companies and the Russian companies to prepare, was a concern as the legislation was nearing its final hours before passage. In the end, there was no major effort to change this.

Once the Senate passed its sanctions legislation with an overwhelming majority, it put pressure on the House to pass it as well. Democrats applied intense pressure not to change anything because they did not want to water down the bill.

Senator Bob Corker, R-Tennessee, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the list a “good first step in responsibly implementing a very complex piece of legislation.” Senators Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, and John McCain, R-Arizona also welcomed the list as part of the effort to hold Russia accountable for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The two senators noted that questions remain about the implementation of the sanctions. Under the current plan, beginning Jan. 29, individuals involved in “significant” transactions with entities on the list will also be sanctioned. It’s still up to the State Department to determine how the sanctions are applied. McCain and Cardin are concerned about how the agency will come up with the staffing and resources to carry out the sanctions. In their statement they pointed out reports that say the sanctions office has been closed and “a number of its staff have resigned.” The policy planning staff, which doesn’t usually play a role in operations, is being tasked with implementing the sanctions.

Providing dedicated staffing and resources within the State Department will demonstrate the administration’s commitment to carrying out this vitally important law,” wrote McCain and Cardin.

The sanctions law signed by Mr. Trump in August targeted Iran and North Korea, in addition to Russia. It maintains and expands sanctions against the Russian government, Russian crude oil projects and also targets those who evade foreign sanctions and entities that abuse human rights. The legislation also prevents the president from unilaterally easing or lifting sanctions against Russia, a provision that came after Mr. Trump had consistently espoused the idea of a warming of relations with Russia, even in the face of the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia had meddled in the 2016 elections.

Uranium One Goes Back to ‘Senator’ Hillary Clinton

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The Clinton’s were masters at cunning operations for power, money and access. Along the way, they exploited people for help and threw others under the bus. The Clinton’s were crafty and cunning enough to ensure their fingerprints were never on the evidence and deferred to loyal lawyers due to the ability to apply attorney client privileges.

Going back in time and space with Hillary takes us to at least as far back as when she was a New York senator, the foundation and her craft in politics. Conspiracy and connivance were and are a daily action by Hillary. Not all the blame with Uranium One belongs to Hillary. There are her lawyers and powerbrokers globally that belong to this network.

Russia has intruded into all things America because at least Hillary and the Obama administration allowed them in.

There were several members of congress that had various depths of knowledge regarding selling uranium to Russia and expressed concerns including documents to Obama administration officials only to get nothing. Assigned FBI agents admitted being stonewalled due to ‘politics’ as well to the informant.

So, what did the media know and did they report? Yes, some of them for sure, yet there were so many scandals running concurrently, it was hardly noticed if at all. Even the New York Times reported.

As a refresher:

2015/The story involves a Canadian company called Uranium One, a Russian investor, the State Department, and The Clinton Foundation.

“As the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation,” The Times reports.

Here’s the high-level summary. There are more details below.

• Canadian company Uranium One owned uranium mines in the US and Kazakhstan.

• Uranium One’s mines account for 20% of the uranium mined in the US. Uranium is used for nuclear weapons, and it’s considered a strategic asset to the US.

• Russia’s state-owned atomic agency, Rosatom, bought a 17% stake in Uranium One in June 2009.

• The Russian atomic agency decided it wanted to own 51% of Uranium One in June 2010. To take a majority stake in Uranium One, it needed approval from a special committee that included the State Department, which Hillary Clinton led at the time.

• Investors in Uranium One gave money to the Clinton Foundation starting in 2005 and through 2011. On June 29, 2010, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to speak in Russia by an investment bank with ties to Russia’s government that had a buy rating on Uranium One’s stock.

• In January 2013, despite assurances to the contrary, a subsidiary of Rosatom took over 100% of the company and delisted it from the Toronto Stock Exchange.

• Clinton was required to disclose all of her foundation’s contributors before she became secretary of state, but the Clintons did not disclose millions of dollars donated by the chairman of Uranium One while the review of the deal was ongoing.

“Uranium One’s chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million,” The Times reports. “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 donors. Other people with ties to the company made donations as well.”

The Times’ revelations appear to have originated from reporting in “Clinton Cash,” a forthcoming book by conservative author Peter Schweizer, which was provided to the newspaper for advance reporting. The report said The Times “scrutinized his information and built upon it with its own reporting.”

The Clinton campaign and its allies have aggressively dismissed the book as partisan conspiracy-mongering. In a statement to The Times, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said the State Department was only one of multiple US government bodies that approved the transaction.

“[No one] has produced a shred of evidence supporting the theory that Hillary Clinton ever took action as secretary of state to support the interests of donors to the Clinton Foundation,” Fallon told The Times. “To suggest the State Department, under then-Secretary Clinton, exerted undue influence in the US government’s review of the sale of Uranium One is utterly baseless.”

Here are some key points from the Times report:

  • According to The Times, Uranium One’s involvement with the Clintons stretches back to 2005, when former President Bill Clinton accompanied Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra to Kazakhstan, where they met with authoritarian president Nursultan Nazarbayev. Going against American foreign policy at the time, Bill Clinton expressed support for Nazarbayev’s bid to lead an international elections monitoring group.
  • Soon after, Giustra’s company, UrAsia Energy (the predecessor to Uranium One) won stakes in three uranium mines controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-run uranium agency. Months after the deal, Giustra reportedly donated $31.3 million to Clinton’s foundation.

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev greets former U.S. president Bill ClintonKazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev with former US President Bill Clinton in Almaty in 2005. Clinton traveled to the ex-Soviet Central Asian state to sign an agreement with the government, admitting Kazakhstan into the Clinton Foundation HIV/AIDS Initiative Procurement Consortium.REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov SZH/DH

  • After the legality of the Kazakhstan deal was called into question, Uranium One asked the American embassy in Kazakhstan for help. Uranium One’s executive vice president copied then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on a cable saying he wanted an official written confirmation that the company’s licenses in Kazakhstan were still valid, according to The Times. Soon after, the embassy’s energy officer met with Kazakh officials.
  • In June 2009 ARMZ, a subsidiary of Russia’s atomic energy agency Rosatom, finalized a deal for a 17% stake in Uranium One. In June 2010, the Russian government sought a 51% controlling stake in the company that would have to be approved by the American government. Rosatom also said that after that, the agency “did not plan to increase its stake in Uranium One or to take the company private,” The Times noted in a timeline of the events.
  • Investors with ties to Uranium One and UrAsia donated millions to the foundation in 2010 and 2011. These donations were disclosed. In addition to this, Bill Clinton was paid $500,000 to speak in Moscow in June 2010, the same month that the Russians closed the deal for the majority stake in Uranium One. The speaking fee was one of Clinton’s highest, according to The Times.
  • The US Committee on Foreign Investment, which includes the attorney general, the secretaries of the Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, Commerce and Energy, and the secretary of state, were charged with reviewing the deal that would give Rosatom a majority stake because uranium is “considered a strategic asset with implications for national security,” according to The Times.
  • The concern was American dependence on foreign uranium. The Times notes that while the US “gets one-fifth of its electrical power from nuclear plants, it produces only around 20% of the uranium it needs, and most plants have only 18 to 36 months of reserves.”
  • Four members of Congress signed a letter expressing concern over the deal, and two others drafted legislation to kill it. One senator contended that the deal “would give the Russian government control over a sizable portion of America’s uranium production capacity” as well as “a significant stake in uranium mines in Kazakhstan.” The Nuclear Regulatory Commission made assurances that the US uranium would be preserved for domestic use regardless of the deal.
  • Final say over the deal rested with the foreign investment committee, “including Mrs. Clinton — whose husband was collecting millions of dollars in donations from people associated with Uranium One,” The Times notes.
  • After the deal was approved in October 2010, Rosatom’s chief executive, Sergei Kiriyenko, said in an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin: “Few could have imagined in the past that we would own 20% of US reserves.”
    • A source with knowledge of the Clintons’ fundraising pointed out to The Times that people donate because they hope that money will buy influence. The source said: “Why do you think they are doing it — because they love them?”
    • Despite claims by Russia that the country didn’t intend to increase its stake in Uranium One or take the company private, ARMZ — the subsidiary of Russia’s atomic energy agency — took over 100% of the company and delisted it from the Toronto Stock Exchange in January 2013.

    “Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown,” The Times concluded. “But the episode underscores the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation, headed by a former president who relied heavily on foreign cash to accumulate $250 million in assets even as his wife helped steer American foreign policy as secretary of state, presiding over decisions with the potential to benefit the foundation’s donors.”

    Now that Hillary Clinton formally announced a presidential run, her foundation has come under increasing scrutiny.

    Her family’s charities are refiling at least five tax returns after Reuters found errors in how the foundations reported donations from governments, the news wire reported this week.

 

 

Trump Names New IRS Comish, DoJ Settles Targeting Case

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DC: President Trump made it official on Thursday that embattled IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will be out of a job next month.

Trump tapped David Kautter, the Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for tax policy, to serve as interim IRS commissioner, beginning Nov. 13.

Koskinen’s term ends on Nov. 12. He was eligible for reappointment, but Koskinen is fiercely opposed by congressional Republicans. Members of the House Freedom Caucus attempted but failed to impeach Koskinen last year, largely over his handling of the scandal involving former IRS official Lois Lerner.

Prior to Koskinen’s tenure, Lerner was accused targeting conservative groups who applied for non-profit status. Koskinen was accused of stonewalling congressional investigators looking into Lerner’s activities as well as of covering up for the Obama administration.

Trump had faced pressure from many Republicans to fire Koskinen, who was appointed to head the IRS by President Obama in 2013.

Kautter, Koskinen’s intended replacement, was appointed to his role at Treasury in August. He worked as a tax attorney at the firm Ernst & Young for more than three decades.

Kautter will still perform his Treasury Department duties while overseeing the IRS, according to Treasury Sec. Steven Mnuchin.

“David will provide important leadership while we wait to confirm a permanent commissioner,” Mnuchin said in a statement, according to Bloomberg.

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In part:

There are still some parts to the cases outstanding.

Mr. Greim and his team managed to depose former senior IRS executive Lois G. Lerner during the four years his case ran, but those transcripts remain sealed along with records of the deposition of another employee, Holly Paz. The two women have told a judge they fear for their safety if their testimony is released.

But on Wednesday the Cincinnati Enquirer asked the court to make those records public, as well as unredacted court documents that refer to the testimony.

The settlements end two separate lawsuits covering more than 450 groups identified by the IRS as having been snared in the targeting.

The vast majority of them are conservative-leaning groups which began to see long delays, intrusive questioning and other illegal scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status as either 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(4) organizations beginning in 2009.

In the new filings the singled out Ms. Lerner for particular blame in the scheme, saying she “failed” to stop the targeting going on by her employees, and further failed to alert higher-ups at headquarters in Washington — where she also worked — of the problems.

That’s a major shift from before, where the Justice Department — far from blaming Ms. Lerner — actually credited her with being a hero, saying she tried to stop the targeting when she became aware of it.

A lawyer for Ms. Lerner didn’t return an email for comment sent late Wednesday.

Tom Zawistowski, head of the Portage County TEA Party in Ohio, said Ms. Lerner should have faced criminal charges for her role, which court documents filed earlier in the case show involved her trying to shield the activity by changing names, but overall approving and in fact intensifying the scrutiny the conservative groups were given.

He said he still wants to see a special counsel appointed at the Justice Department to pursue the case and get to the bottom of the motive behind the targeting.

Despite initial claims by some Republicans, no evidence has ever traced the targeting back to Mr. Obama or his top political aides.

But emails released this year show the IRS was made aware by its own agents that it was singling out groups based on their politics, not on questions about their tax behavior.

“These cases are held back primarily because of their political party affiliation rather than specifically any political activities,” Elizabeth C. Kastenberg, an official in the agency’s Exempt Organizations division, wrote in an April 1, 2011, email to other IRS employees, including her supervisor.

That contradicts the IRS’s long-stated position that Ms. Lerner and others involved in the targeting were worried in the wake of a 2010 Supreme Court decision about a surge of groups going beyond the usual rules of politics. More here.

Proven Obama Justice Dept Slush Fund

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Ah, yes the newly elected left coast California Senator, Kamala Harris has a brother in law, Tony West.

Remember him? He was part of the Obama/Holder inner circle and in charge of billions of dollars located at the Holder/Lynch Justice Department slush fund.

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Sheesh….BILLIONS

Hat tip to the House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte for holding up the smoking gun.

He introduced legislation to stop the nefarious nonsense and it passed the House.

Tony by the way is the President of the PepisCo Foundation and he helped repeal DOMA, Defense of Marriage Act. You know those big cases where Justice sued Wall Street banks and won huge settlements? See this link here as a reminder.

Sidebar: There is also a victims fund which is also has very subjective payout activities. It is managed by the Department of Justice and is discretionary.

Sidebar: The real anger and the fraudulent part of the case is the 2 for 1 dollars if the corporations paid the money directly at the behest of the DoJ, meaning insurance and tax fraud and also means that it would not be subject to Congressional oversight. WHAT?

Okay now for the slush fund story at the Justice Department:

Forbes: Internal U.S. Department of Justice documents confirm the existence of a department “slush fund” under the Obama Administration and that DOJ officials “went out of their way” to exclude conservative groups, the head of the House Judiciary Committee told fellow lawmakers Tuesday.

House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-VA, made the claim just ahead of a vote by the U.S. House of Representatives on a bill that would prohibit government officials, most notably the DOJ, from entering into or enforcing a settlement agreement on behalf of the United States that provides for a payment or a loan to any person or entity other than the United States, with some exceptions.

The Stop Settlements Slush Funds Act of 2017, or H.R. 732, was introduced in January.

On Tuesday evening — after hours of discussion — the House voted mostly along party lines, 238-183 in favor of the bill. Of the “yes” votes, 231 were Republican and seven were Democrat. Democrats made up all 183 “no” votes. Eleven members did not vote.

U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-GA, who introduced the Sunshine for Regulations and Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act of 2017, or H.R. 469, in January, said during debate Tuesday that it is simply unacceptable to “shortchange victims.”

Similarly to Goodlatte’s legislation, the sunshine bill inhibits the ability of federal agencies to participate in back-door sue-and-settle arrangements with special interest groups, which circumvent established regulatory processes.

“It’s a problem we’ve seen grow,” Collins said of the settlement agreements, adding that it’s a “scenario that should concern everyone.”

But U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-FL, told fellow lawmakers both bills were “deficient in process and substance.”

Hastings criticized Republicans for putting forth such “pointless and partisan” legislation, given that Barack Obama is no longer in office and that other, more important issues demand the attention of federal lawmakers.

He also argued that a House Judiciary Committee investigation “yielded no credible evidence.”

But Goodlatte, who introduced H.R. 732, said new internal DOJ documents “tell a different story.”

Goodlatte has said the need for the legislation arose after an extended judiciary committee investigation found that the DOJ had engaged in a pattern or practice of systematically subverting Congress’ budget authority by using settlements from financial institutions to funnel money to what he describes as “left-wing activist groups.”

The House Judiciary Committee held two hearings, in February 2015 and May 2015, to question DOJ officials regarding the settlement practices.

Both the House Judiciary and Financial Services committees also sent multiple oversight letters, including two to the DOJ, seeking documents and answers.

The probe by the two committees revealed that, in approximately the last two years, the DOJ used mandatory donations to direct nearly $1 billion to such groups.

In January, the judiciary panel also sent a letter to the DOJ requesting it preserve all documents related to the department’s settlement practices.

“It is not every day in Congressional investigations that we find a smoking gun,” Goodlatte told fellow lawmakers Tuesday, pointing to the documents. “Here, we have it.”

The internal documents show that a deputy for former Associate Attorney General Tony West — who now serves as executive vice president of government affairs, general counsel and corporate secretary for PepsiCo Inc. — asked colleagues about settlements in negotiation.

“Can you explain to Tony the best way to allocate some money to an organization of our choosing?” the deputy wrote in a November 2013 email.

West’s team also went out of its way to exclude conservative groups, the internal DOJ documents show.

In a July 2014 email, a senior official explained that the DOJ reworded a draft mandatory donation provision to achieve the aim of “not allowing Citi to pick a statewide intermediary like the Pacific Legal Foundation [PLF],” which the official explained “does conservative property-rights free legal services.”

The documents also show outside groups lobbied the DOJ directly to obtain such incentives.

In particular, activist leaders met with a senior official from West’s office in March 2014 to “make the case” that, in settling mortgage-lending cases, the DOJ should make donations “mandatory in all future settlements.”

This follows a letter requesting that the DOJ offer banks “enhanced credit” for making donations.

A few months later, the department announced major bank settlements requiring mandatory donations to community groups and offering enhanced credit for these donations.

In an August 2014 email, recipient organizations then discuss how they can “thank” West for the money.

One organization, in the correspondence released, suggested a resolution and a formal plaque — and even threw out the idea of having a statue of West built so they could “bow down to this statue each day after we get our $200,000+.”

The documents are contrary to the DOJ’s sworn testimony.

Geoffrey Graber, former deputy associate attorney general and director of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities, or RMBS, Working Group at the DOJ, had told Congress in February 2015 that the department “did not want to be in the business of picking and choosing which organization may or may not receive any funding under the agreement.”

Graber now serves as a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll PLLC and is a member of the firm’s consumer protection practice group.

“This legislation, however, remains necessary because history shows that we cannot rely on the current DOJ policy remaining in place,” Goodlatte said.

His bill provides exceptions to allow payments or loans that: (1) remedy actual harm (including to the environment) caused by the party making the payment or loan, or (2) constitute a payment for services rendered in connection with the case or a payment that a court may order for restitution to victims in certain criminal cases or other persons in plea agreements.

Under H.R. 732, government officials or agents who violate this prohibition may be removed from office or required to forfeit to the government any money they hold for such purposes “to which they may otherwise be entitled.”

Also under the bill, federal agencies must report annually for seven years to the Congressional Budget Office about the parties, funding sources and distribution of funds for their settlement agreements permitted by the exceptions in this bill.

In addition, agency inspectors general must report annually to Congress about any of their agency’s settlement agreements that violate this bill.

The legislation previously passed the House Judiciary Committee by a vote of 17-8.

An identical bill — the Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act, or H.R. 5063 — passed the House in the last Congress by a vote of 241-174, but then stalled.

In June, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued a memo to all DOJ components and 94 U.S. Attorney’s Offices prohibiting them from entering into any third party settlements.

“When the federal government settles a case against a corporate wrongdoer, any settlement funds should go first to the victims and then to the American people — not to bankroll third-party special interest groups or the political friends of whoever is in power,” Sessions said. “Unfortunately, in recent years the Department of Justice has sometimes required or encouraged defendants to make these payments to third parties as a condition of settlement.

“With this directive, we are ending this practice and ensuring that settlement funds are only used to compensate victims, redress harm, and punish and deter unlawful conduct.”

Goodlatte praised Sessions for his decision.

“The practice is wrong no matter which party is in power,” he said at the time. “Attorney General Session’s integrity stands in stark contrast to the behavior of Obama Administration officials who used their position to funnel billions of settlement dollars to their political allies.”

He echoed that statement following his bill’s passage Tuesday.

“Regardless of which party is in the White House, subverting Congress to funnel money to outside organizations is unacceptable and unconstitutional,” Goodlatte said.

“I applaud the passage of this bipartisan bill that bans settlement payments to non-victim third parties permanently for future administrations. There should be no excuse or justification for this banned behavior, and I urge my colleagues in the Senate to defend Congress’s constitutional interests and support H.R. 732.”

Americans for Limited Government, a Fairfax, VA-based conservative nonprofit, commended Goodlatte for his release of the internal DOJ documents.

“The Justice Department emails released by Goodlatte show that only approved left-wing groups were eligible for the banks to make payouts to as part of their settlements, overtly excluding deemed to be too conservative,” President Rick Manning said in a statement. “What’s worse, is that the settlements often gave the banks double credit if they gave money to the left-wing groups rather than paying the government. Meaning, every $10 million to left-wing groups was counted the same as $20 million to the government.

Manning said Goodlatte was right to seek to defund such third-party settlements, calling them “nothing more than political payola” to radical, left-wing groups.

“Goodlatte’s disclosures show once again that there wasn’t single area of government that Obama did not corrupt into being a part of a left-wing funding machine,” he said. “Obama’s Justice Department effectively appropriated federal funds to these third-party groups without Congressional approval, violating Article I of the Constitution as this was a revenue stream to the government that was then illegally diverted to political ends.

“The actors who signed off on those political allocations should be subjected to the full weight of the law, including loss of pension and at the very least significant fines.”

Anyone From the U.S. Mentioning this to China’s President Xi?

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Remarkable site and well on top of this issue, for the summary go here.

Primer:

Out of a list of 57 companies accused by U.N. investigators of aiding North Korea, 43 of them haven’t been sanctioned by Treasury.

One of them is Glocom, a firm also known as Pan Systems Pyongyang Branch, a North Korean company based in Malaysia that investigators say uses a series of front companies and agents to procure components and sell communications systems in violation of U.N. sanctions. Pan Systems and another associated firm, Wonbang Trading Co., are operated by North Korea’s intelligence service, the Reconnaissance General Bureau, the U.N. says. Wonbang has also been one of the largest shippers of North Korea coal and Glocom has been investigated for arms shipments. Glocom, which maintains a website, didn’t respond to repeated requests for comment on the allegations.

Another network cited by the U.N. is a transport firm named Vast Win Trading, whose ship, the Jie Shun, was seized in Egypt last year with 30,000 rocket-propelled grenades. The owner of that ship, Chinese national Sun Sidong, has business ties to a network owned by Chinese national Chi Yupeng through a shared email address in China’s business registry, according to the nonprofit group, C4ADS, that monitors global threats. U.S. Attorneys and Treasury have already targeted the Chi Yupeng network with sanctions and seized funds. Mr. Sun’s network of companies has remained so far untouched. In August, Mr. Sun sold his $1.3 million home in Great Neck, N.Y., for cash, according to his real-estate agent. Mr. Sun couldn’t be reached through his U.S.- and U.K.-based companies or through an individual identified as his lawyer in New York property records.

One of his companies, Dandong Dongyuan Industrial Co. Ltd., is the largest exporter of what’s called “dual use” equipment that can include navigation systems and guidance devices that can be used for ballistic missiles, according to C4ADS. Mr. Sun is also the CEO of Dongyuan Enterprise, a Flushing, N.Y., firm.

U.N. investigators named several banks in North Korea that were established, managed or owned by Chinese firms. First Eastern Bank in Rason, North Korea, owned by Unaforte Hong Kong, was set up to provide loans to Chinese individuals and companies, for example. More here.

DoJ: On Aug. 3, 2016, a U.S. Magistrate Judge Joseph A. Dickson of the District of New Jersey signed a criminal complaint charging Ma Xiaohong (Ma) and her company, Dandong Hongxiang Industrial Development Co. Ltd. (DHID), and three of DHID’s top executives, general manager Zhou Jianshu (Zhou), deputy general manager Hong Jinhua (Hong) and financial manager Luo Chuanxu (Luo), with conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) and to defraud the United States; violating IEEPA; and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments.

Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) also imposed sanctions on DHID, Ma, Zhou, Hong and Luo for their ties to the government of North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction proliferation efforts.

In addition, the department filed a civil forfeiture action for all funds contained in 25 Chinese bank accounts that allegedly belong to DHID and its front companies. The department has also requested tha the federal court in the District of New Jersey issue a restraining order for all of the funds named in the civil forfeiture action, based upon the allegation that the funds represent property involved in money laundering, which makes them forfeitable to the United States. There are no allegations of wrongdoing by the U.S. correspondent banks or foreign banks that maintain these accounts.

“The charges and forfeiture action announced today allege that defendants in China established and used shell companies around the world, surreptitiously moved money through the United States and violated the sanctions imposed on North Korea in response to, among other things, its nuclear weapons program,” said Assistant Attorney General Caldwell. “The actions reflect our efforts to protect the integrity of the U.S. banking system and hold accountable those who seek to evade U.S. sanctions laws.”

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For context:

Hong Kong (CNN)Easey Commercial Building is an unassuming mid-rise office tower on Hennessy Road, an artery that runs through Hong Kong’s busy Wan Chai district. The structure sits among scenery that’s classic Hong Kong: bright lights, tall buildings, people rushing about.

But camouflaged in the normalcy is a business that seemingly exists in name only.
Take the elevator to the Easey building’s 21st floor, and in room 2103 is the registered office of Unaforte Limited Hong Kong. It’s a company accused by the United Nations of violating sanctions on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea’s official name) for helping the country make money internationally, funding everything from its nuclear weapons program to the lavish lifestyles of North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un and Pyongyang’s most important players.
At least, Unaforte is supposed to be there. That is the address listed on its publicly available corporate filings provided to the Hong Kong government. When CNN visited the office, it found neither Unaforte nor its listed company secretary, Prolive Consultants Limited.
Instead, room 2103 was home to a seemingly unrelated company: Cheerful Best Company Services. Only one man was there when CNN stopped by, and he said a representative for Prolive Consultants only comes by every so often to pick up mail. He had not heard of Unaforte.
The United Nations Panel of Experts on North Korea — the body charged with monitoring sanctions enforcement on the hermit nation — said in two recent reports that Unaforte opened and owned a bank in the North Korean city of Rason. That is likely a violation of the latest UN Security Council resolution banning joint international ventures with North Korea, according to Christopher Wall, a lawyer who specializes in international trade law and a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in Washington, DC.
North Korea is believed to use these types of practices to cover up much of its trade, from selling coal and fuel to exporting weapons.
“The (North Korean) regime accesses the international financial system through front companies and other deceptive financial practices in order to buy goods and services abroad,” Sigal Mandelker, the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the US Department of the Treasury, said in Senate testimony on September 28.
Hong Kong is one of two business jurisdictions (along with the British Virgin Islands) where the UN Panel of Experts on North Korea has seen the largest share of North Korean-controlled front companies operating, said Hugh Griffiths, the panel’s coordinator.
When Unaforte’s company particulars show up in Hong Kong’s publicly available corporate records, the name of just one individual appears. He holds a passport from the small Caribbean island of Dominica. A passport number is there, but not a phone number.
Those details shed light on Hong Kong’s incorporation requirements. To start a company in Hong Kong, one needs at least one director (has to be an actual person) and a company secretary (which can either be a person or another company, but must be based in Hong Kong), according to the Companies Registry website.
Companies that are sanctioned in most cases cannot easily conduct transactions in the dollar, as US banks have to back those deals and would filter and flag sanctioned entities, Anthony Ruggiero, an expert in the use of targeted financial measures at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, told CNN.
The DHID charges revealed that to get around US prying eyes, North Korea uses a complex ledger and credit scheme to hide North Korea’s involvement in dollar transactions, Ruggiero explained to Congress in September.
Thirteen of DHID’s front companies were located in Hong Kong. Eleven shared the same registered address in Wan Chai, less than a kilometer away from the Easey Commercial Building, the indictment said. Read more here from CNN.