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Service Quality and Reputation
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Several Gulf countries announced isolating Qatar by recalling diplomatic personnel due to the al Thani dynasty funding and harboring terror organizations.
Ah, cool right? But the United States has a large footprint in Qatar least of which is the Al Udeid air base in Doha. The location is rather known as the Centcom of the Middle East with a minimum of 9000 U.S. military personnel and it comes with a swimming pool too.
The al Thani clan was a good friend of the West, well kinda sorta. The very day that Barack Obama swapped 5 Gitmo detainees for Beau Bergdahl, Obama was attending the West Point graduation ceremony where a son of al Thani himself was graduating. You read that right, a Qartari at West Point.
No, it is no secret that Qatar hosts an embassy for the Taliban. It is no secret that Russia provides weapons, intelligence and funding to the Taliban. Qatar also hosts the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. So, exactly why is the United States so tolerant of Qatar? Money.
Oh, Trump’s trip to Saudi Arabia and is beginning to have results with regard to Qatar. Not so fast.
Qatar has begun to expel Hamas leaders taking refuge within its borders, the Lebanese Al Mayadeen network reported over the weekend.
The report cited “diplomatic sources” as saying that on Saturday, Qatar gave Hamas a list of names of members required to leave the country. Al Mayadeen did not name the individuals forced to leave.
According to the report, a Qatari envoy met with prominent Hamas figures to deliver the list, which, the sources say, includes mainly those responsible for collaborating with the organization’s leadership in the Judea and Samaria region.
You see, Qatar plays a double game all the time, people are expelled while others rotate in.
It was also just a few days ago Qatar officials called Tehran to congratulate them on the recent elections and expressed continued understanding and alliance with Hezbollah and Hamas. As a result of all this, the Qatar New Agency was hacked and oh yeah, Qatar funds al Jazeera.
The region plays an important role for the US military in the fight against Daesh. Bahrain houses the US Navy’s Fifth fleet, which patrols the seas of the Middle East and Central Asia, while Qatar is home to the Al Udeid Airbase, from where the United States carries out airstrikes against militants in the region.
Tillerson urged the Gulf Cooperation Council nations to sort out their differences and said that the United States was willing to play a role in helping the countries address their differences.
Meanwhile, as President Trump attended the ceremony to open the counter-terrorism center in Saudi Arabia, that center is at least years old, the Saudi for the most part have expelled Qatar from participation in the center’s operations. Hummm, is that really smart given the terror operations being hosted in Qatar and being cut off? Messy isn’t it?
In recent years, evidence has mounted that Turkey under the rule of Erdogan is building a larger Islamist new version of the Ottoman Empire and has even aligned more so with Russia and Iran against the West and the efforts in Syria. So, how about that merging relationship with Qatar and Turkey? Here are some more details on that, which shows the relationship order in the Middle East is changing dramatically.
A Turkish military base to be deployed in Qatar will be headquartered in Doha and lead by Qatari-Turkish generals, top official has said after sessions at parliament’s Foreign Affairs Commission.
“Within the framework of the agreement, it is envisaged that a joint Turkish-Qatar divisional tactical headquarters should be established, that its place should be in Doha, that the commander of the unit is to be a major general and a Qatari, and that the commander assistant is to be a brigadier and Turkish,” said Defense Ministry Deputy Undersecretary Major Ihsan Bülbül.
Stating that the number of troops to be deployed will be 500 to 600, Bülbül said Qatar also requests the sending of units in Turkey with a flexible structure to allow them to be transferred to Qatar if needed. “We are sending troops to Qatar and setting up bases and Qatar pays for it. What is Turkey’s interest in this business? What is Qatar’s interest in it? We need to further investigate Turkey’s relations with Qatar, which we cannot pinpoint the strategic meaning of,” Salıcı said.
“In the introduction of the agreement, it refers to ‘other duties found appropriate.’ This expression within such an agreement is open-ended, as there is a transfer of soldiers and base development that will be paid for by the host country,” he added.
Salıcı also noted that Qatar’s current army presence is made up of 11,800 individuals. More here.
Our health care system continues to deteriorate under Obamacare. Americans are facing fewer choices, higher costs, and less access to the care they need. Just look at the news from last week:
Premiums have more than doubled under Obamacare. According to data from the previous Administration, millions of Americans are now paying twice as much—on average $3,000 more—for insurance on the individual marketplaces than they were in 2013.
25 more counties will have zero Obamacare insurance options. The last Obamacare insurer in parts of Missouri, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, announced its decision to withdraw from Obamacare’s individual marketplace in 2018. That leaves hundreds of thousands more Americans with few, if any, places to turn for coverage.
Describing the urgent need to repeal and replace Obamacare, economist Stephen Moore wrote in The Washington Times:
“If we stay with Obamacare, within a few years tens of millions will have no insurance at all that is even remotely affordable. Aetna, Humana, and other major insurers in just recent months have fled Obamacare. The Titanic has hit the iceberg and it is rapidly sinking … Here’s a prediction: by the end of the year we could have nearly half the country without insurers if this spiral continues.”
House Republicans took action to rescue the American people from this failing law by passing the American Health Care Act, which the Congressional Budget Office confirmed:
Lowers average premiums in the individual marketplace by 4 to 30 percent or more, depending on the state.
Delivers nearly $1 trillion of relief from Obamacare taxes.
Provides individuals and families freedom to choose a health care plan that is right for them.Obamacare keeps wreaking havoc across the country:
Major insurers continue to abandon the individual insurance market in different states, making it more difficult for Americans to access coverage.
Humana and Aetna announced they would withdraw from Obamacare’s individual exchanges entirely in 2018.
The last remaining insurer in Iowa could exit the exchanges next year—leaving families in 94 out of 99 counties without a single insurer to turn to for their coverage.
Connecticut, Maryland, New York, Oregon, and Virginia have already projected double-digit premium rate increases for next year.
As Ways and Means Republicans explain, Obamacare’s latest failures underscore the urgent need for the American Health Care Act—legislation passed by the House to fix our broken health care system:
On Delivering Relief from Obamacare
Rep. Diane Black (R-TN), Budget Committee Chairman, in RealClearPolitics: “Obamacare is a disaster, and in Tennessee, its collapse is creating dire circumstances for our citizens. Massive premium increases are making insurance unaffordable for more and more Tennesseans and rising deductibles are making it harder to get health care, even for those who have insurance. Doing nothing is not an option. Congress has taken the first step to keep our promise of repealing and replacing Obamacare.”
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), Ways and Means Committee Chairman, in the Conroe Courier: “Although this is just the first step, it is a giant pivot in the right direction so that Americans no longer have to struggle under the $1 trillion in tax hikes brought on by Obamacare. Under the bill, Americans, especially small businesses, will no longer be forced to buy healthcare they do not want or cannot afford.”
Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN) in the South Bend Tribune: “Obamacare came with a lot of promises. But these promises were broken, and now many Hoosiers face higher premiums, fewer options, and a collapsing system … [AHCA] rescues Americans from the instability of Obamacare and begins a stable transition to a better system. It will lower premiums and strengthen markets so patients have real options they can actually afford. It will empower patients, not bureaucrats, to make health care decisions.”
On Protecting Patients with Pre-Existing Conditions
Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Nothing in this bill would allow an insurance company to deny someone coverage, including to those with a preexisting condition. Nothing would allow an insurance company to cancel someone’s insurance policy should they become sick. Despite claims from opponents, the bill does not classify sexual assault as a preexisting condition. For those who maintain continuous coverage, the bill does not allow insurance companies to charge an individual more simply because they have a preexisting condition. It’s also worth noting that this bill includes $138 billion to assist states in making sure everyone, including those with preexisting conditions, has access to high-quality, affordable health care.”
Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE) in the Grand Island Independent: “I firmly believe we can protect access to care for those with preexisting conditions while lowering costs for the millions of Americans currently facing premiums and deductibles they cannot afford. Passing the American Health Care Act in the House was the first step, and we will continue our work in Congress to revive the health care marketplace.”
Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN) in the South Bend Tribune: “This bill maintains critical protections for patients with pre-existing conditions. I have always said any replacement must protect these patients, and we make sure no one can be denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition. States can obtain a waiver of some individual and small group insurance regulations to help lower premiums or increase the number of people with coverage, as long as they implement plans—such as high risk pools—to ensure affordable coverage for those with costly medical conditions. Under these waivers, insurers can only charge high-risk patients more if they have a two-month lapse in coverage, and the bill dedicates $8 billion to help patients in such situations.”
On Putting the American People Back in Control of Their Care
Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) in the Miami Herald: “I made a promise that I would fight for better healthcare for our country, for a market-based system where Americans, not special interests, are in control and can make the best healthcare choices for themselves and their families. The legislation before Congress today gets us closer to such a system.”
Rep. Erik Paulsen (R-MN) in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: “[This debate] is about Nyla, a recently widowed mother of four who saw her premiums jump to $1,000 per month with a $13,000 deductible… this debate is about Taryn, who, after being diagnosed with a brain tumor, suddenly had her plan canceled when her insurer pulled out of the market … [AHCA] is aimed at addressing many of the shortcomings of the ACA by stabilizing insurance markets and beginning to bring down premiums. Rather than the one-size-fits-all Washington approach, we can empower states and consumers to take control of their own health care outcomes.”
CLICK HERE to read Ways and Means Committee Chairman Brady’s statement on the AHCA.
Federal money laundering cases generally take place within the context of a larger racketeering case governed by the RICO Act. Money laundering is typically only one aspect of a pattern of organized crime which may be nationwide or international. That being the case, money laundering is often the lesser offense in a pattern of crimes that can result in lifetime imprisonment.
How politicians and their friends get rich off insider stock tips, land deals, and cronyism that would send the rest of us to prison.
(If you have not read the book, try it out. It lays the ground work not only for politicians but international civilians also use the same model by gaining diplomatic status of obscure countries with bribes)
Now for the rest of the story.
Federal money laundering laws are guided by the RICO Act and there are a handful of countries with criminals operating under shadow corporations that clean money via real estate investments. London, New York and Miami are the prime cities where billions are spent on luxury real estate and the actual owner is never known.
Money laundering has a wide range of criminals that include Mafia, drug cartel leaders, Russians, Cypriots, business owners and even Kazakhstanis.
Some investigative journalists have done a remarkable job at tracking this phenomenon and there was even a documentary produced in 2015. This condition is actually a global shadow economy that has an estimated value in the range of billions of dollars. The New York Times has somewhat of a collection of related cases that you may find interesting where even Malaysia is included.
The Miami Herald did a story in 2015 on how Miami is but one crown jewel for offshore dollars fueling the real estate boom there. Ever heard of Isaias 21 Property or Mateus 5 International Holding? No? You’re not supposed to know.
Miami has a long history of money laundering. Its financial institutions report more suspicious activity than any other major U.S. city besides New York City and Los Angeles, according to FinCen data. And a recent case of money laundering involving fancy condos and the violent Spanish drug gang Los Miami drew further scrutiny to South Florida.
Jack McCabe, an analyst who studies the booming local housing market, said it’s impossible to know how many homes are purchased with dirty money.
“But I think many people believe it could be a sizable portion of the new condominium market in Miami,” McCabe said. “Even though developers and real-estate professionals suspect many of these units are bought with illegal funds, they realize their projects may not be successful without that support.”
Much has been in the news recently about the Trump team and companies being involved with Russian officials and oligarchs. There is hard evidence and some cases have already been through the legal system. We certainly cannot dismiss Hillary and Bill Clinton when it comes to collusion with those inside the Kremlin either much less a handful of other countries through their foundations. It appears there is no ‘statute of limitations’ with regard to US Code law on RICO.
The Russians have been dirty for years and those inside the Russian Federation and oligarchs have been moving illicit millions to billions out of the home country. For example how about a certain prominent Russian as one of the named depositors is billionaire oligarch (and personal friend of Vladimir Putin) Gennady Timchenko, who was sanctioned by the United States in March 2014 for his role in providing “material or other support to” Russian government officials. (There’s a rumor that sometime in the 1990s, Putin and Timchenko, who holds Finnish citizenship, were arrested in Helsinki for drunk and disorderly conduct; a rap sheet is said to exist with the two men’s mug shots.)
Timchenko’s designation carried the blockbuster revelation that Gunvor, the Swiss commodities trader he co-founded, was itself a vehicle for Putin’s personal self-enrichment: “Putin has investments in Gunvor,” the U.S. Treasury notice stated, “and may have access to Gunvor funds.” Not long before the sanctions were announced, Timchenko, who is worth an estimated $14.1 billion, was said to have divested his stake in Gunvor. Then, in November 2014, it was announced that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, helped by the Justice Department, was investigating Timchenko for money laundering. In 2013, Reuters disclosed that Timchenko had hired lobby firm Patton Boggs to persuade the U.S. Export-Import Bank, the export credit agency of the U.S. government, to finance his purchase of up to 11 Gulfstream luxury jets—a deal that was eyebrow-raising at the time and is now rendered illegal by sanctions. The rest of the story is here regarding one well known bank HSBC.
Considering the work of the FBI, the DoJ and State’s Attorneys General, the work appears to have a beginning but no end for both Trump and Clinton. As an aside, we need to ask officials where the Clinton investigation is, it at all. But moving on. This summary is not meant to take any anti-Trump position at all, in fact, we need him to succeed for the sake of America’s future. This is meant to be somewhat of a public service with all the chatter and investigations.
If you want to know what members of congress know and what the FBI is doing, here is but one clue:
The net is closing around a duo of fugitive oligarchs and their kin accused of laundering Kazakh money in posh U.S. real estate — including Trump Organization properties.
In a complicated case with potential implications for President Donald Trump’s business empire and associates of the real-estate-developer-turned-president, Switzerland has revealed it is considering an extradition request from Ukraine to hand over the son of a former Kazakh energy minister — and both men are facing money-laundering allegations in the United States and charges in Kazakhstan.
It’s the latest development in a saga that is reaching into Bayrock Group, an international real estate and investment company that paid the Trump Organization a license fee for the use of its name and an 18 percent ownership stake in the New York hotel and condo project.
The Khrapunov family is accused in U.S. lawsuits of “cleaning” illicit money through the purchase and quick resale of U.S. luxury properties, including daughter Elvira Kudryashova’s purchase of three Trump-branded condos in New York and a 9,000-square-foot Studio City mansion flipped in months to pop singer Bruno Mars for $6.5 million.
An investigation by McClatchy and reporting partners, involving interviews with officials representing legal matters against the accused in four countries, reveals:
▪ Ukraine has recently asked Switzerland to extradite Ilyas Khrapunov, son of former Kazakh Energy Minister Viktor Khrapunov, for alleged computer hacking.
▪ Ilyas Khrapunov and his wife secured unusual diplomatic posts representing the Central African Republic in Geneva, a move that helped provide them with a means of travel.
▪ Court documents tie Felix Sater — a Trump associate, Bayrock partner and twice-convicted Russian émigré — to some of the Khrapunovs’ transactions.
▪ Kazakh authorities asked the United States for information on Bayrock as part of the ongoing attempt to recover funds.
▪ A New York court decision may further reveal details about the Kazakh family’s financial flows into condos in the Trump SoHo building, developed and sold by Bayrock. Bank records include large transfers from a now-sanctioned Cyprus lender.
Federal lawsuits brought in Los Angeles by the city of Almaty and former business partners in New York are advancing against Ilyas and Viktor, who is also a former mayor of Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city. Both Khrapunovs and Ilyas’ father-in-law, Mukhtar Ablyazov — an uber-wealthy fugitive banker who owned BTA Bank until it was seized by regulators in 2009 — face criminal charges in Kazakhstan. Authorities allege $10 billion went missing from the bank, Kazakhstan’s third largest, and that Ablyazov moved out at least $4 billion.
The trio say they are the victims of political persecution by President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has ruled oil-rich Kazakhstan since 1990. The country ranks in the bottom quarter on transparency measures, and Nazarbayev’s family is accused of stashing money in offshore companies.
The gathering legal drama is shining light on Trump business associate Bayrock Group, which involves Kazakh partners who helped develop the Trump SoHo building in New York and projects in Arizona and South Florida. This at a time when Donald Trump’s Russian and foreign ties are under greater scrutiny.
Crucial to Trump and his businesses — and the ability of lawyers to establish whether the Trump Organization had any knowledge of or benefit from any illegal money flows — is whether the United States or Switzerland hears the lawsuits against the Khrapunovs. If prosecutors convince a California court to hear the case, lawyers will have much greater ability to dig for evidence through a process known as discovery; Switzerland’s rules are far more restrictive.
This New York City Department of Finance document shows Elvira Kudryashova as the manager of SoHo 3311 LLC, which bought a unit in the Trump SoHo building. She is the daughter of Viktor Khrapunov, a fugitive Kazakh politician facing money laundering charges abroad and two civil lawsuits in the United States.
TheUkrainian extradition request from March shows that Ilyas Khrapunov is sought there for allegedly orchestrating a computer hack of a law firm representing BTA Bank.
“The allegations against me are preposterous,” Ilyas Khrapunov said in an interview, dismissing as “political” the accusations that he used malware in an email to gain access to and publish contents from a hard drive.
The Swiss are weighing the matter.
“In the Khrapunov case, an international assistance procedure and a national procedure for money laundering are currently underway at the Geneva Public Prosecutor’s Office,” said Henri Della Casa, a spokesman, confirming two Swiss probes. “We are making no further comments.”
Ablyazov, who uses his Facebook page as a protest site, was arrested by French police disguised as gardeners outside his home in Cannes in 2013. He was freed last December after France dropped an extradition order, determining he could not receive a fair trial, and he remains there.
California connection
The net tightening began here. According to allegations in the California lawsuit, Viktor Khrapunov arranged for rigged auctions of state property during his term as mayor of Almaty from 1997 to 2004. He and his wife, Leila, allegedly purchased property at substantially below-market rates using shell companies they controlled, then sold off the properties for a profit estimated at $300 million.
“Many observers are puzzled as to how Khrapunov, who is known to be quite corrupt . . . has managed to stay in government,” Kevin Milas, the U.S. embassy’s second in command, wrote back to agency headquarters in a Jan. 17, 2007, confidential memo about a political reshuffling.
The internal note cited an industrialist who had complained of being hit up for a bribe by Khrapunov.
The family fled to Switzerland in early 2008, where Ilyas already lived, seeking political asylum a few years later.
Viktor Khrapunov faced an Interpol detention request beginning in 2012, yet the family was able to buy the property in Los Angeles and the three Trump SoHo condos in New York. Ilyas Khrapunov was put under the same request in 2014.
“Switzerland has refused twice to extradite Viktor Khrapunov on the grounds that he would not have an equitable trial in Kazakhstan,” said Ilyas Khrapunov. “Switzerland proposed instead to have the trial delegated to them but Kazakhstan refused, fearing that the truth would come out.”
Friends in low places
The investigation by McClatchy and partners also found that Ilyas Khrapunov and his wife, Madina, Ablyazov’s daughter, were appointed to unusual diplomatic posts representing the Central African Republic at the U.N. Mission in Geneva.
A source tied to the Central African Republic, granted anonymity, said the couple had been appointed by former ruler Francois Bozizé before he was toppled and fled his troubled nation in 2013. Through a land acquisition the couple obtained dual citizenship in the Caribbean haven of St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
“Due to refusal of Kazakhstan to renew passports of the family, we were forced to apply through legal process to obtain secondary citizenships in order to exercise our rights to travel,” said Ilyas Khrapunov.
The diplomatic appointments and the recent extradition request are just chapters what’s been a complex, decade-long legal battle that is slowly providing more detail on Trump Organization associate Bayrock Group.
Trump’s associate
Bayrock is an international real estate and investment firm that worked with Trump on at least three known joint projects, and involves Kazakh businessmen.
Trump personally dealt with Bayrock, giving the developer a one-year exclusive right to build a Trump International Hotel and Tower in Moscow. In exchange he’d get a 20-25 percent stake in it.
“I am delighted at having the opportunity to partner with Bayrock Group LLC on yet another world-class development,” Trump wrote in a Jan. 1, 2005, letter to Tevfik Arif, a Kazakh partner of Bayrock, that was entered into evidence in a New Jersey lawsuit. “Moscow is one of the fastest growing cities in the world and offers the best location for a Signature Donald J. Trump development.”
At the time it entered the condo-branding deal with Trump, Bayrock was co-run by a twice-convicted Russian émigré and Trump associate named Felix Sater.
Court documents in New York involving the Khrapunovs tie Sater to multiple transactions by an investment firm in Luxembourg called Triadou SPV S.A., which invested in the United States and elsewhere. People close to the transactions, speaking privately because of ongoing businesses, say Sater had access to Trump and bragged about his Trump connections, even calling him “Mr T.”
“If he were sitting in the room right now, I really wouldn’t know what he looked like,” Trump said under oath as witness in a Florida lawsuit against Bayrock Group.
A prospectus shows Triadou was fully owned by SDG Capital S.A., a company on Lake Geneva that operates as Swiss Development Group, founded at the time the Khrapunovs fled to Switzerland. They say, in court documents, that it was sold in March 2013 to a Swiss businessman, who retained Ilyas Khrapunov through 2015.
Former Triadou Director Nicolas Bourg testified under oath last year that his company belonged to the Khrapunovs, who ordered him to sell assets and move money out of the United States after the California lawsuit was filed in 2014. The Khrapunovs say that is not true and that they’ve kept Swiss authorities informed of their purchases.
Bourg further testified that the Khrapunovs and Ablyazov co-mingled investments and used offshore shell companies to camouflage the purchase and sale of properties in the United States and elsewhere.
Another Triadou associate, New York developer Joseph Chetrit, settled with lawyers for the city of Almaty in 2015 and pledged to support their effort to recover what the city calls more than $300 million in stolen funds.
Sater was named in a lawsuit against a Triadou-owned company that was settled in December 2013. He is also being sued by one former Bayrock partner, Jody Kriss. And according to a recent story by The Wall Street Journal, Sater has issued veiled threats to dish on other Kazakhs because of a dispute he has over legal fees with another Bayrock partner of Kazakh origin, Tevfik Arif.
Arif gained international notoriety when he was arrested in 2010 while throwing what Turkish authorities called a lavish sex party on a luxury yacht involving teenage girls. The charges were later dropped.
Leila Khrapunov briefly did business with Arif and Bayrock in a joint venture called KazBay, which was going to invest in Kazakh natural resources but never got off the ground, in part because of revelations in a New York Times story in late 2007 that Bayrock’s Sater had a checkered past.
Kazakh authorities have alleged in their criminal case that Viktor Khrapunov’s stolen money was deposited at Eurasian Bank in Almaty and then transferred to Switzerland. That bank is owned by Alexander Mashkevich, a strategic partner in Bayrock and someone who, according to a report by McClatchy last month, is linked in sealed British court documents to organized crime groups. Mashkevich is not named in the U.S. lawsuits against Khrapunov, and the Khrapunovs banked with several lenders.
U.S. vs. Switzerland
The battle over which court should hear the high-stakes California lawsuit could determine whether the plaintiff’s lawyers establish any involvement in alleged money laundering by Trump associates.
I am convinced that Switzerland could become a model for countries that have recently embarked on the path of democracy.
Viktor Khrapunov on his website
“Switzerland is a perfectly adequate venue for my client,” said John Kenney, Khrapunov’s legal counsel in New York with the firm Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney.
A federal court in California agreed in July 2015, but that decision was overturned this past March 30 on appeal by lawyers for the city of Almaty, allowing the case in Los Angeles to proceed.
“The city of Almaty is confident that when the court reviews the evidence, it will find that Viktor Khrapunov unjustly enriched himself to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by abusing his position as mayor, and with the assistance of his son Ilyas and others, laundered it throughout the world,” said Matthew L. Schwartz, a lawyer with Boies, Schiller & Flexner, which is representing Almaty in the New York case.
The Khrapunovs have until later in June to decide whether to appeal, but for more than two years they’ve avoided sitting for depositions in the U.S. cases.
“The defendants have sought to delay the case at every turn,” said David Schindler, a lawyer who represents Almaty in the California case. “Nevertheless our client remains committed to holding the Khrapunovs accountable for the money they stole from the people of Almaty.”
Trump’s licensing deals on properties typically involved payment of a fee for the use of his name and a Trump property management firm on-site, and Trump often got a small percentage from the first-time sales of condos too.
Depositions could shed light on whether and how the Trump Organization, through Bayrock Group and its Kazakh investors, benefited in any flow of illicit money.
One court document in a related British case shows Kazakh authorities filed a legal assistance request in 2013 to the U.S. government seeking details on the corporate structure of 15 companies it said were tied to the Khrapunovs, including Bayrock Group Inc. and Bayrock Group LLC.
Thus far, Ilyas Khrapunov has resisted providing evidence, but we look forward to the opportunity to question him about his role in his family’s crimes.
Matthew Schwartz, lawyer for the city of Almaty
The Financial Times reported last October that it had seen documents showing Sater had worked closely with Elvira Kudryashova in 2012, a year before she signed the documents for the three Trump SoHo condos. Kudryashova and Ilyas Khrapunov bought the condos so they could vacation in New York, with the properties offered as hotel rooms when they were not there.
Condos in the Trump SoHo building were developed and sold by Bayrock, which also vetted buyers.
Alan Garten, executive vice president and chief legal officer of the Trump Organization said it “was not responsible for the sale of units at Trump SoHo.”
The condos were bought by three companies that were registered in April 2013 within days of each other with the New York Division of Corporations: Soho 3310 LLC, Soho 3311 LLC and Soho 3203 LLC. They were dissolved the following year after the properties sold.
Court records show Kudryashova transferred a total of $3.1 million from a Wells Fargo account for the condo purchases. Bank documents also show her receiving large sums from an offshore company that used the Cyprus lender Federal Bank of the Middle East, which was headquartered in Tanzania. The Treasury Department blacklisted that bank as a “Primary Money Laundering Concern” on July 22, 2014.
A New York court decision in early May granted Almaty access to certain Khrapunovs-related bank transfers from abroad, and that could provide more details about the flow of their money into luxury properties that were held for short periods.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, cautioned that “these efforts have a long way to go before the federal government has the tools it needs to stop money laundering through shady real estate deals and anonymous shell companies.”
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article gave the wrong law firm for John Kenney, who is with Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney.
This story involved collaboration between McClatchy and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global journalism network that investigates transnational corruption.
Of course you don’t, one had to be quite the investigator of journalism to know it much less remember it.
So….why you ask? Hold on….there is a pattern and story here.
2010: The White House National Security Council recently directed U.S. spy agencies to lower the priority placed on intelligence collection for China, amid opposition to the policy change from senior intelligence leaders who feared it would hamper efforts to obtain secrets about Beijing’s military and its cyber-attacks.
The downgrading of intelligence gathering on China was challenged by Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair and CIA Director Leon E. Panetta after it was first proposed in interagency memorandums in October, current and former intelligence officials said.
The decision downgrades China from “Priority 1” status, alongside Iran and North Korea, to “Priority 2,” which covers specific events such as the humanitarian crisis after the Haitian earthquake or tensions between India and Pakistan.
The National Security Council staff, in response, pressed ahead with the change and sought to assure Mr. Blair and other intelligence chiefs that the change would not affect the allocation of resources for spying on China or the urgency of focusing on Chinese spying targets, the officials told The Washington Times.
White House National Security Council officials declined to comment on the intelligence issue. Mike Birmingham, a spokesman for Mr. Blair, declined to comment. A CIA spokesman also declined to comment.
*** Cyberwarzone
Directors of CIA in that time frame:
Leon Panetta 2010
Mike Morrell (acting) 2011
David Petraeus 2011
Mike Morrell (acting) 2012
John Brennan 2013
Mike Pompeo, current director
***
Killing C.I.A. Informants, China Crippled U.S. Spying Operations
NYT/WASHINGTON — The Chinese government systematically dismantled C.I.A. spying operations in the country starting in 2010, killing or imprisoning more than a dozen sources over two years and crippling intelligence gathering there for years afterward.
Current and former American officials described the intelligence breach as one of the worst in decades. It set off a scramble in Washington’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies to contain the fallout, but investigators were bitterly divided over the cause. Some were convinced that a mole within the C.I.A. had betrayed the United States. Others believed that the Chinese had hacked the covert system the C.I.A. used to communicate with its foreign sources. Years later, that debate remains unresolved.
But there was no disagreement about the damage. From the final weeks of 2010 through the end of 2012, according to former American officials, the Chinese killed at least a dozen of the C.I.A.’s sources. According to three of the officials, one was shot in front of his colleagues in the courtyard of a government building — a message to others who might have been working for the C.I.A.
Still others were put in jail. All told, the Chinese killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 of the C.I.A.’s sources in China, according to two former senior American officials, effectively unraveling a network that had taken years to build.
Assessing the fallout from an exposed spy operation can be difficult, but the episode was considered particularly damaging. The number of American assets lost in China, officials said, rivaled those lost in the Soviet Union and Russia during the betrayals of both Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, formerly of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I., who divulged intelligence operations to Moscow for years.
The previously unreported episode shows how successful the Chinese were in disrupting American spying efforts and stealing secrets years before a well-publicized breach in 2015 gave Beijing access to thousands of government personnel records, including intelligence contractors. The C.I.A. considers spying in China one of its top priorities, but the country’s extensive security apparatus makes it exceptionally hard for Western spy services to develop sources there.
At a time when the C.I.A. is trying to figure out how some of its most sensitive documents were leaked onto the internet two months ago by WikiLeaks, and the F.B.I. investigates possible ties between President Trump’s campaign and Russia, the unsettled nature of the China investigation demonstrates the difficulty of conducting counterespionage investigations into sophisticated spy services like those in Russia and China.
The C.I.A. and the F.B.I. both declined to comment.
Details about the investigation have been tightly held. Ten current and former American officials described the investigation on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing the information.
Investigators still disagree how it happened, but the unsettled nature of the China investigation demonstrates the difficulty of conducting counterespionage investigations into sophisticated spy services. Credit Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press..Photo by: Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press..
The first signs of trouble emerged in 2010. At the time, the quality of the C.I.A.’s information about the inner workings of the Chinese government was the best it had been for years, the result of recruiting sources deep inside the bureaucracy in Beijing, four former officials said. Some were Chinese nationals who the C.I.A. believed had become disillusioned with the Chinese government’s corruption.
But by the end of the year, the flow of information began to dry up. By early 2011, senior agency officers realized they had a problem: Assets in China, one of their most precious resources, were disappearing.
The F.B.I. and the C.I.A. opened a joint investigation run by top counterintelligence officials at both agencies. Working out of a secret office in Northern Virginia, they began analyzing every operation being run in Beijing. One former senior American official said the investigation had been code-named Honey Badger.
As more and more sources vanished, the operation took on increased urgency. Nearly every employee at the American Embassy was scrutinized, no matter how high ranking. Some investigators believed the Chinese had cracked the encrypted method that the C.I.A. used to communicate with its assets. Others suspected a traitor in the C.I.A., a theory that agency officials were at first reluctant to embrace — and that some in both agencies still do not believe.
Their debates were punctuated with macabre phone calls — “We lost another one” — and urgent questions from the Obama administration wondering why intelligence about the Chinese had slowed.
The mole hunt eventually zeroed in on a former agency operative who had worked in the C.I.A.’s division overseeing China, believing he was most likely responsible for the crippling disclosures. But efforts to gather enough evidence to arrest him failed, and he is now living in another Asian country, current and former officials said.
There was good reason to suspect an insider, some former officials say. Around that time, Chinese spies compromised National Security Agency surveillance in Taiwan — an island Beijing claims is part of China — by infiltrating Taiwanese intelligence, an American partner, according to two former officials. And the C.I.A. had discovered Chinese operatives in the agency’s hiring pipeline, according to officials and court documents.
But the C.I.A.’s top spy hunter, Mark Kelton, resisted the mole theory, at least initially, former officials say. Mr. Kelton had been close friends with Brian J. Kelley, a C.I.A. officer who in the 1990s was wrongly suspected by the F.B.I. of being a Russian spy. The real traitor, it turned out, was Mr. Hanssen. Mr. Kelton often mentioned Mr. Kelley’s mistreatment in meetings during the China episode, former colleagues say, and said he would not accuse someone without ironclad evidence.
Those who rejected the mole theory attributed the losses to sloppy American tradecraft at a time when the Chinese were becoming better at monitoring American espionage activities in the country. Some F.B.I. agents became convinced that C.I.A. handlers in Beijing too often traveled the same routes to the same meeting points, which would have helped China’s vast surveillance network identify the spies in its midst.
Some officers met their sources at a restaurant where Chinese agents had planted listening devices, former officials said, and even the waiters worked for Chinese intelligence.
This carelessness, coupled with the possibility that the Chinese had hacked the covert communications channel, would explain many, if not all, of the disappearances and deaths, some former officials said. Some in the agency, particularly those who had helped build the spy network, resisted this theory and believed they had been caught in the middle of a turf war within the C.I.A.
Still, the Chinese picked off more and more of the agency’s spies, continuing through 2011 and into 2012. As investigators narrowed the list of suspects with access to the information, they started focusing on a Chinese-American who had left the C.I.A. shortly before the intelligence losses began. Some investigators believed he had become disgruntled and had begun spying for China. One official said the man had access to the identities of C.I.A. informants and fit all the indicators on a matrix used to identify espionage threats.
After leaving the C.I.A., the man decided to remain in Asia with his family and pursue a business opportunity, which some officials suspect that Chinese intelligence agents had arranged.
Officials said the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. lured the man back to the United States around 2012 with a ruse about a possible contract with the agency, an arrangement common among former officers. Agents questioned the man, asking why he had decided to stay in Asia, concerned that he possessed a number of secrets that would be valuable to the Chinese. It’s not clear whether agents confronted the man about whether he had spied for China.
The man defended his reasons for living in Asia and did not admit any wrongdoing, an official said. He then returned to Asia.
By 2013, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. concluded that China’s success in identifying C.I.A. agents had been blunted — it is not clear how — but the damage had been done.
The C.I.A. has tried to rebuild its network of spies in China, officials said, an expensive and time-consuming effort led at one time by the former chief of the East Asia Division. A former intelligence official said the former chief was particularly bitter because he had worked with the suspected mole and recruited some of the spies in China who were ultimately executed.
China has been particularly aggressive in its espionage in recent years, beyond the breach of the Office of Personnel Management records in 2015, American officials said. Last year, an F.B.I. employee pleaded guilty to acting as a Chinese agent for years, passing sensitive technology information to Beijing in exchange for cash, lavish hotel rooms during foreign travel and prostitutes.
In March, prosecutors announced the arrest of a longtime State Department employee, Candace Marie Claiborne, accused of lying to investigators about her contacts with Chinese officials. According to the criminal complaint against Ms. Claiborne, who pleaded not guilty, Chinese agents wired cash into her bank account and showered her with gifts that included an iPhone, a laptop and tuition at a Chinese fashion school. In addition, according to the complaint, she received a fully furnished apartment and a stipend.
*** Just to be sure China had a real handle on all CIA operatives in country, what came next? The OPM hack, remember that one?
Enter China’s Unit 61398
The program used by China:
In part from Wired: The US-CERT team moved into OPM’s sub-basement and among the first moves was to analyze the malware that Saulsbury had found attached to mcutil.dll. The program turned out to be one they knew well: a variant of PlugX, a remote-access tool commonly deployed by Chinese-speaking hacking units. The tool has also shown up on computers used by foes of China’s government, including activists in Hong Kong and Tibet. The malware’s code is always slightly tweaked between attacks so firewalls can’t recognize it.
By Tuesday the 21st, having churned through a string of nearly sleepless days and nights, the investigators felt satisfied that they’d done their due diligence. Their scans had identified over 2,000 individual pieces of malware that were unrelated to the attack in question (everything from routine adware to dormant viruses). The PlugX variant they were seeking to annihilate was present on fewer than 10 OPM machines; unfortunately, some of those machines were pivotal to the entire network. “The big one was what we call the jumpbox,” Mejeur says. “That’s the administrative server that’s used to log in to all the other servers. And it’s got malware on it. That is an ‘Oh feces’ moment.”
By controlling the jumpbox, the attackers had gained access to every nook and cranny of OPM’s digital terrain. The investigators wondered whether the APT had pulled off that impressive feat with the aid of the system blueprints stolen in the breach discovered in March 2014. If that were the case, then the hackers had devoted months to laying the groundwork for this attack.
Leaping forward in details:
Once established on the agency’s network, they used trial and error to find the credentials necessary to seed the jumpbox with their PlugX variant. Then, during the long Fourth of July weekend in 2014, when staffing was sure to be light, the hackers began to run a series of commands meant to prepare data for exfiltration. Bundles of records were copied, moved onto drives from which they could be snatched, and chopped up into .zip or .rar files to avoid causing suspicious traffic spikes. The records that the attackers targeted were some of the most sensitive imaginable.
The hackers had first pillaged a massive trove of background-check data. As part of its human resources mission, OPM processes over 2 million background investigations per year, involving everyone from contractors to federal judges. OPM’s digital archives contain roughly 18 million copies of Standard Form 86, a 127-page questionnaire for federal security clearance that includes probing questions about an applicant’s personal finances, past substance abuse, and psychiatric care. The agency also warehouses the data that is gathered on applicants for some of the government’s most secretive jobs. That data can include everything from lie detector results to notes about whether an applicant engages in risky sexual behavior.
The hackers next delved into the complete personnel files of 4.2 million employees, past and present. Then, just weeks before OPM booted them out, they grabbed approximately 5.6 million digital images of government employee fingerprints.
Then comes, a little too late and thin on substance in February 2015:
Is all this fix yet? Hah…not even close. Then we need to ask why are we trusting China with North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile program? Do we have spies in Iran? North Korea? Any new operatives in China?
The FBI is the primary agency for exposing and investigating health care fraud, with jurisdiction over both federal and private insurance programs. Health care fraud investigations are considered a high priority within the Complex Financial Crime Program, and each of the FBI’s 56 field offices has personnel assigned specifically to investigate health care fraud matters. Our field offices proactively target fraud through coordinated initiatives, task forces and strike teams, and undercover operations.
The Bureau seeks to identify and pursue investigations against the most egregious offenders involved in health care fraud through investigative partnerships with other federal agencies, such as Health and Human Services-Office of Inspector General (HHS-OIG), Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), Office of Personnel Management-Office of Inspector General (OPM-OIG), and Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI), along with various state Medicaid Fraud Control Units and other state and local agencies. On the private side, the FBI is actively involved in the Healthcare Fraud Prevention Partnership, an effort to exchange facts and information between the public and private sectors in order to reduce the prevalence of health care fraud. The Bureau also maintains significant liaison with private insurance national groups, such as the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, the National Insurance Crime Bureau, and private insurance investigative units.
The Justice Department has accused insurance giant UnitedHealth Group of overcharging the federal government by more than $1 billion through its Medicare Advantage plans.
In a 79-page lawsuit filed late Tuesday in Los Angeles, the Justice Department alleged that the insurer made patients appear sicker than they actually were in order to collect higher Medicare payments than the company deserved. The government said it had “conservatively estimated” that the company “knowingly and improperly avoided repaying Medicare” for more than a billion dollars over the course of the alleged decade-long scheme.
“To ensure that the program remains viable for all beneficiaries, the Justice Department remains tireless in its pursuit of Medicare fraud perpetrated by health care providers and insurers,” said acting U.S. Attorney Sandra R. Brown for the Central District of California, in a statement announcing the suit. “The primary goal of publicly funded healthcare programs like Medicare is to provide high-quality medical services to those in need — not to line the pockets of participants willing to abuse the system.”
UnitedHealth denied the allegations.
Tuesday’s filing marks the second time that the Justice Department has intervened to support a whistleblower suing UnitedHealth under the federal False Claims Act. Earlier this month, the government joined a similar case brought by California whistleblower James Swoben in 2009. Swoben, a medical data consultant, also alleges that UnitedHealth overbilled Medicare.
The case that the feds effectively joined on Tuesday was first filed in 2011 by Benjamin Poehling, a former finance director for the UnitedHealth division that oversees Medicare Advantage Plans. Under the False Claims Act, private parties can sue on behalf of the federal government and receive a share of any money recovered.
UnitedHealth is the nation’s biggest operator of Medicare Advantage plans, covering about 3.6 million patients in 2016, when Medicare paid the company $56 billion, according to the complaint.
Medicare Advantage plans are private insurance plans offered as an alternative to Medicare’s traditional fee-for-service option.
Medicare pays the private health plans using a complex formula called a risk score, which is supposed to pay higher rates for sicker patients than for those in good health. But waste and overspending tied to inflated risk scores has repeatedly been cited by government auditors, including the Government Accountability Office. A series of articles published in 2014 by the Center for Public Integrity concluded that improper payments linked to jacked-up risk scores have cost taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.
Tuesday’s court filing argues that UnitedHealth repeatedly ignored findings from its own auditors that risk scores were often inflated, as well as warnings by officials from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that the firm was responsible for ensuring the billings it submitted were accurate.
UnitedHealth argued that it had done nothing wrong, and said it would aggressively contest the case.
“We are confident our company and our employees complied with the government’s Medicare Advantage program rules, and we have been transparent with CMS about our approach under its unclear policies,” UnitedHealth spokesman Matt Burns said in a statement.
Burns went on to say that the Justice Department “fundamentally misunderstands or is deliberately ignoring how the Medicare Advantage program works. We reject these claims and will contest them vigorously.”
A spokesman for CMS, which has recently faced congressional criticism for lax oversight of the program, declined comment.
Central to the government’s case is UnitedHealth’s aggressive effort, starting in 2005, to review millions of patient records to search for missed revenue. These reviews often uncovered payment errors, sometimes too much and sometimes too little. The Justice Department contends that UnitedHealth typically notified Medicare only when it was owed money.
UnitedHealth “turned a blind eye to the negative results of those reviews showing hundreds of thousands of unsupported diagnoses that it had previously submitted to Medicare,” according to the suit.
Justice lawyers also argue that UnitedHealth executives knew as far back as 2007 that they could not produce medical records to validate about one in three medical conditions Medicare paid UnitedHealth’s California plans to cover. In 2009, federal auditors found about half the diagnoses were invalid at one of its plans.
The lawsuit cites more than a dozen examples of undocumented medical conditions, from chronic hepatitis to spinal cord injuries. At one medical group, auditors reviewed records of 126 patients diagnosed with spinal injuries. Only two were verified, according to the complaint.
The Justice Department contends that invalid diagnoses can cause huge losses to Medicare. For instance, UnitedHealth allegedly failed to notify the government of at least 100,000 diagnoses it knew were unsupported based on reviews in 2011 and 2012. Those cases alone generated $190 million in overpayments, according to the suit.
While Medicare Advantage has grown in popularity and now treats nearly 1 in 3 elderly and disabled Medicare patients, its inner workings have remained largely opaque.
CMS officials for years have refused to make public financial audits of Medicare Advantage insurers, even as they have released similar reviews of payments made to doctors, hospitals and other medical suppliers participating in traditional Medicare.
But Medicare Advantage audits obtained by the Center for Public Integrity through a court order in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show that payment errors — typically overpayments — are common.
All but two of 37 Medicare Advantage plans examined in a 2007 audit were overpaid — often by thousands of dollars per patient. Overall, just 60 percent of the medical conditions health plans were paid to cover could be verified. The 2007 audits are the only ones that have been made public.
CMS officials are conducting more of these audits, called Risk Adjustment Data Validation, or RADV. But results are years overdue.
UNODC
Interfima
Cyberwarzone
