Category Archives: Trump Administration

Kushner’s Chinese EB-5 Investment Ploy

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Exclusive: Jared Kushner’s White House connection still being used to lure Chinese investors

CNN: Jared Kushner’s status as a top aide to President Donald Trump was used to lure Chinese investors to his family’s New Jersey development, even after his family’s company apologized for mentioning his name during a sales pitch in May, CNN has found.

References to Kushner are part of online promotions by two businesses that are working with Kushner Companies to find Chinese investors willing to invest in the 1 Journal Square development in exchange for a US visa.
The promotions are posted in Chinese and refer to Kushner Companies as “real estate heavyweights,” going on to mention “the celebrity of the family is 30-something ‘Mr. Perfect’ Jared Kushner, who once served as CEO of Kushner Companies.”
One posted online in May by the company US Immigration Fund, a private business based in Florida, also contains a reference to Kushner’s appearance on the cover of December’s Forbes Magazine, under the headline “This guy got Trump elected.” The post was removed shortly after CNN contacted the company for comment.

For US Immigration Fund’s WeChat page: click here 

 The promotions are aimed at bringing in investors who pay at least $500,000 apiece and in exchange get US visas, and potentially green cards, for themselves and their families if the development meets certain criteria. The deals are part of a legal US government program called EB-5, which grants up to 10,000 immigrant visas per year.
One webpage posted in March by Chinese company Qiaowai that remains on the company’s page on the popular Chinese social media site WeChat mentions Trump and suggests he supports the program: “Even some members of Trump’s family have participated in the growth of the EB-5 program … the “Kushner 88″ panoramic New Jersey apartment project … The lead developer on the now-completed project was Kushner Companies which is linked to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.” It goes on to say, “Given this, in the Trump era, the EB-5 program is likely to receive support and be expanded.”

From Qiaowai WeChat page: click here

 A Kushner Companies spokesperson, in response to CNN’s questions about the webpages, said “Kushner Companies was not aware of these sites and has nothing to do with them. The company will be sending a cease and desist letter regarding the references to Jared Kushner.”
A former White House ethics expert tells CNN the EB-5 program already raises a potential government-backed quid pro quo — favorable immigration status in exchange for investment dollars. And he says any use of the President’s son-in-law as a marketing tool is ethically unacceptable.
“What is not authorized is any arrangement where someone gets preference for their visa if they give money to a company that is controlled by the family of a United States government official,” said Richard Painter, a former chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush.
“And unfortunately,” says Painter, “that implication was made in the selling efforts for this project.”
Painter is referring to an investment “road show” that Nicole Meyer attended in May in Beijing. Meyer, the sister of Jared Kushner, was speaking at an event in which she was trying to attract wealthy Chinese investors to the 1 Journal Square project.
During the presentation, Meyer reminded investors of her brother’s recent role in American politics: “In 2008, my brother Jared Kushner joined the family company as CEO,” Meyer told a crowd, adding he “recently moved to Washington to join the administration.”
The comments coincided with a visual display, which included a photograph of Trump.
Meyer’s comments led to strong criticism that the Kushner family was using Jared Kushner to attract investment dollars through the EB-5 program.
The company quickly apologized, and separately, Jared Kushner’s attorney released a statement saying Kushner had no knowledge of the promotion and was no longer involved financially in the 1 Journal Square project.
“As previously stated, he will recuse from particular matters concerning the EB-5 visa program,” Kushner’s attorney, Blake Roberts, said in a statement.
US Immigration Fund, a company based in Jupiter, Florida, seemed to blame others for the post, saying in a statement, “The post in question was originally posted by a 3rd party immigration consultancy firm on its company WeChat and was reposted to USIF’s WeChat by the company’s Chinese social media consultant. The post is several months old and hasn’t had any interaction by followers, however, it has since been removed from the company WeChat.”
Qiaowai, a Chinese immigration company that organized the events where Kushner’s sister spoke, did not respond to CNN’s request for comment. The webpage on its WeChat site that references Kushner remained online as of Wednesday afternoon.
EB-5 investment advisor Michael Gibson tells CNN it makes sense that the companies marketing the Kushner project in China have continued to use Kushner’s name to promote their project, because he says Chinese investors are drawn to developments they believe are backed by individuals with government connections: “They want to make sure they get the green card,” Gibson told CNN. “So if they see a public official associated with the project that gives them the impression that this project is safe enough for them to invest in.”
The EB-5 program has faced criticism for straying from its original intent. The program was designed by Congress in the 1990s to bring foreign money into rural and blighted urban areas to spark development and job growth.
After the economic recession of 2008, the program began expanding to become a low-interest source of income for developers who have used EB-5 investment money to fund high-end residential towers and retail projects in areas like Manhattan, Jersey City, New Jersey, and Miami.
Gary Friedland, a scholar in residence at New York University’s Stern School of Business who has studied the program, said developers have found ways to manipulate census tract data to place their projects within “targeted employment areas,” which legally reduces the amount investors must pay — down from $1 million to $500,000 — to qualify for EB-5 benefits.
Emails obtained by CNN from the New Jersey Department of Labor and Workforce Development show a representative for US Immigration Fund in January asked a New Jersey official to issue a letter certifying the Kushner’s 1 Journal Square as within an area with low employment.
After an official responded that the project did not qualify due to its location within a census tract with an unemployment rate below the national average, a consultant for another company asked that the state combine six census tracts together. Days later, the state approved the Kushner Companies’ project, documents show.
Friedland says practices like this allow luxury developers to take advantage of incentives meant to lure investments to lower-income areas: “The money flows to affluent areas, not the targeted areas Congress intended to benefit,” he said.
On June 1, three Democratic lawmakers wrote a letter to Kushner Companies current president Laurent Morali asking for an explanation on the company’s ongoing use of the EB-5 program and the nature of its relationships with Qiaowai and US Immigration Fund.
Kushner Companies has not yet responded to the letter, according to the office of Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont.

Hezbollah Terror Cells in Lebanon and Latin America

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Kuwait expels Iranian diplomats over ‘terror’ cell: United Nations (United States) (AFP) – US Ambassador Nikki Haley on Wednesday accused Lebanon’s Hezbollah of amassing weapons and said the world must turn its attention to the actions of the powerful paramilitary organization.

  kataeb

Anyone ever ask or investigate the Hezbollah weapons inventory in Latin America?

 

No Latin American Country Has Branded Hezbollah a Terror Group Despite Ties to Major Attacks

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Latin American countries have failed to register Iranian proxy Hezbollah as a terrorist organization despite the threat it poses to the region, a Peruvian official revealed during a discussion on Capitol Hill.

The Shiite group is involved in various illicit activities in Latin America to generate money that some experts believe is used to fund terrorist activities in the Middle East.

During a discussion Wednesday on Capitol Hill hosted by the Center for a Secure Free Society (SFS), Moises Vega de la Cruz, a public prosecutor for the Peruvian government specializing in terrorism cases, revealed that “in Latin America, Hezbollah is not recognized as a terrorist organization.”

“I think Hezbollah is a threat to Latin America. Hezbollah is a terrorist organization that is advancing not only in Peru but in other Latin American countries as well,” he told Breitbart News.

Joseph Humire, an expert on Iranian activity in the Western Hemisphere and executive director of SFS, noted that no Latin American country has registered Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

The United States and the European Union have deemed Lebanon’s Shiite group Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

In the United States, Hezbollah’s main supporter Iran has been officially labeled a state sponsor of terror.

Peru recently adjudicated a case involving an alleged Hezbollah operative accused of explosives-related crimes in 2014. The individual avoided prosecution, but De La Cruz has appealed the decision.

“Most Latin Americans don’t view Islamist terrorism as a significant threat in their region and little public pressure has been placed on the establishment, reform, or improvement of weak or non-existent anti-terrorism laws across the region,” SFS pointed out in a statement. “Consequently, the Islamic State [ISIS/ISIL], Hezbollah, and other Jihadist networks and sympathizers are spreading throughout South America with impunity.”

The U.S. government has acknowledged the presence of both Shiite Hezbollah and Sunni ISIS in Latin America.

De la Cruz noted that Hezbollah maintains a presence in Peru, where it is reportedly converting people and trying to get involved politically.

The Peruvian Latina news agency reported last year that the Shiite group has registered as an official political party in Peru’s Abancay province, home to the largest concentration the country’s small Muslim community.

Hezbollah has established itself as an official political party in its main base of Lebanon.

Argentinian authorities have linked Hezbollah to fatal attacks against the South American country’s Jewish community, including the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA)—the deadliest terrorist attack in the Western Hemisphere before September 11, 2001.

The U.S. military and the Department of State have expressed concern about the group’s presence in Latin America.

According to the U.S. State Department, Venezuela has provided a “permissive environment” that has allowed Hezbollah to thrive in the region.

Last year Michael Braun, a former DEA operations chief, told American lawmakers that Hezbollah is generating hundreds of millions from a “cocaine money laundering scheme” in Latin America that “provides a never-ending source of funding” for its terrorist operations in Syria and elsewhere.

Hezbollah is fighting on behalf of Iran on the side of the Russian-backed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.

In an annual report to Congress issued earlier this year, U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) noted that “Hezbollah members, facilitators, and supporters engage in licit and illicit activities in support of the organization, moving weapons, cash, and other contraband to raise funds and build Hezbollah’s infrastructure in the region.”

SOUTHCOM is charged with overseeing American military activity in most of Latin America.

The group is believed to be operating throughout the Western Hemisphere.

Iran ‘foremost state sponsor of terrorism in 2016’: US state department

The department’s annual report on global terrorism accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force — which is responsible for operations outside the country — along with Iranian partners, allies, and proxies, of ‘playing a destabilising role in military conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen’

Iran was the “foremost state sponsor of terrorism in 2016”, the US state department said on Wednesday in its annual report on terrorism worldwide.

The 2016 Country Reports on Terrorism — the first released by the state department since US president Donald Trump assumed office — also highlighted Hizbollah’s increasing reach in Syria, Iraq and Yemen and an increase in “its long-term attack capabilities”.

Although the report said there had been a 9 per cent drop in global terror attacks last year from 2015, as well as a 13 per cent drop in terror-related fatalities, it stressed that “the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) remained the most potent terrorist threat to global security” in 2016.

Al Qaeda and its regional affiliates also “remained a threat to the US homeland and our interests abroad despite counter-terrorism pressure by US partners”, the report said.

On Iranian sponsorship of terrorism, the report accused the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force — which is responsible for operations outside the country — along with Iranian partners, allies, and proxies, of “playing a destabilising role in military conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen”. It also said “Iran continued to recruit fighters from across the region to join Iranian-affiliated Shia militia forces engaged in conflicts in Syria and Iraq, and has even offered a path to citizenship for those who heed this call”.

The 2016 report put more emphasis on the threat from Hizbollah than in previous years. It described the Lebanese political party and militia as “playing a major role in supporting the Syria government’s efforts to maintain control and territory, and providing training and a range of other support for Iranian-aligned fighters” in these conflict zones.

The state department said “there are reportedly about 7,000 Hizbollah fighters in Syria”, though it also highlighted that the group had lost “several senior military commanders and hundreds of fighters” in fighting there last year.

The report also highlighted Hizbollah’s continued efforts to “develop its long-term attack capabilities and infrastructure around the world”.

Justin Siberell, the state department’s acting coordinator for counter-terrorism, told The National on Wednesday that “Hizbollah maintains a sophisticated operation with [a] broad network group around the world”.

Mr Siberllel said it was unclear, however, if the Syrian conflict had boosted Hizbollah’s standing. On the one hand, the group had gained military expertise in Syria, he said, while on the other, it had suffered large number of casualties.

“It’s a mixed picture,” he said.

On Bahrain, the report said that “during 2016 the Bahraini government continued to make gains in detecting, neutralising, and containing terrorist threats from violent Shia militants and ISIS sympathisers”. It also referenced improved counter-terror co-operation with the UAE, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries.

The report voiced concerns over Al Qaeda exploiting the ongoing war in Yemen to make gains. It said that “despite leadership losses, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) remained a significant threat to Yemen, the region, and the United States, as ongoing conflict in Yemen hindered US efforts to counter the group”. It was a similar situation with Al Qaeda’s former affiliate in Syria, the report said.

“Al Nusra Front continued to exploit ongoing armed conflict to maintain a territorial safe haven in select parts of northwestern Syria,” the report said, referring to the group that now calls itself Jabhat Fatah Al Sham.

When it came to the Emirates, the report said that in 2016 “the UAE government maintained a robust counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism (CVE) partnership with the United States through its collaboration with US law enforcement; support of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS; and counter‑messaging initiatives, such as the Sawab and Hedayah Centers.”

The report made reference to the UAE’s deployment of forces to Yemen “to counter the spread of AQAP and ISIS” there, highlighting that, “along with its Yemeni partners, the UAE military successfully ejected AQAP from the port city of Mukalla in April — depriving AQAP from millions [of dollars] in monthly income — and from the coastal towns of Balhaf and Bir Ali in December”.

The report also highlighted wins for UAE border security.

“UAE government security apparatus continued monitoring suspected terrorists in the UAE, and successfully foiled terrorist attacks within its borders,” it said, adding: “UAE customs, police, and other security agencies improved border security and worked together with financial authorities to counter terrorist finance.”

Opioid Crisis Then and Now

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The Opioid Crisis Is Dire. Why We Need a National Conversation About It Separate From Obamacare.

Let’s be honest—the opioid crisis in America is huge, it is severe, and it is devastating. But this partisan-fought legislation just isn’t the place to put that funding. And it would likely do little to help stem and reverse the opioid crisis.

First, it’s not as though funding for opioid treatment and recovery has been absent from the federal budget. As recently as last month, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, was touting signed legislation that spent more than $1 billion to fund recovery programs.

This money was authorized separately from the debate over Obamacare in two pieces of legislation known as the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act and the 21st Century Cures Act.

We know that prevention programs have worked in the past, whether they pertain to forest fires or drunk driving or, for that matter, the massive reduction in drug use we witnessed in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Such a prevention program for the opioid crisis must start with leadership from the White House in leading these conversations and highlighting the devastation of substance abuse initiation.

It requires detailing what is driving the opioid epidemic—namely, illegal fentanyl, heroin, and other illegal drug use and diversion. It requires more law enforcement—from border and customs policies and cracking down on cartels to international initiatives. And it requires messaging to our youth. More here.

Socrata

This Isn’t the First U.S. Opiate-Addiction Crisis

Doctors overprescribed painkillers in the 19th century. Eventually, they stopped.

Problem and solution. Source: Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago/Getty Images

Bloomberg: The U.S. is in the throes of an “unprecedented opioid epidemic,” reports the Centers for Disease Control. The crisis has spurred calls for action to halt the rising death toll, which has devastated many rural communities.

It’s true that there’s an opioid epidemic, a public health disaster. It’s not true that it’s unprecedented. A remarkably similar epidemic beset the U.S. some 150 years ago. The story of that earlier catastrophe offers some sobering lessons as to how to address the problem.

Opioids are a broad class of drugs that relieve pain by acting directly on the central nervous system. They include substances such as morphine and its close cousin, heroin, both derived from the opium poppy. There are also synthetic versions, such as fentanyl, and medications that are derived from a mix of natural and synthetic sources, such as oxycodone.

Opioid addiction can take many forms, but the current crisis began with the use and abuse of legal painkillers in the 1990s, and has since metastasized into a larger epidemic, with heroin playing an especially outsized role.

All of this is depressingly familiar. The first great U.S. opiate-addiction epidemic began much the same way, with medications handed out by well-meaning doctors who embraced a wondrous new class of drugs as the answer to a wide range of aches and pains.

The pharmacologist Nathaniel Chapman, writing in 1817, held up opium as the most useful drug in the physician’s arsenal, arguing that there was “scarcely one morbid affection or disordered condition” that would fail to respond to its wonder-working powers. That same year, chemists devised a process for isolating a key alkaloid compound from raw opium: morphine.

Though there’s some evidence that opiate dependency had become a problem as early as the 1840s, it wasn’t until the 1860s and 1870s that addiction became a widespread phenomenon. The key, according to historian David Courtwright, was the widespread adoption of the hypodermic needle in the 1870s.

Prior to this innovation, physicians administered opiates orally. During the Civil War, for example, doctors on the Union side administered 10 million opium pills and nearly three million ounces of opium powders and tinctures. Though some soldiers undoubtedly became junkies in the process, oral administration had all manner of unpleasant gastric side effects, limiting the appeal to potential addicts.

Hypodermic needles by contrast, delivered morphine directly into a patient’s veins with no side effects, yielding immediate results. As Courtwright notes: “For the first time in the entire history of medicine near-instantaneous, symptomatic relief for a wide range of diseases was possible. A syringe of morphine was, in a very real sense, a magic wand.”

An enthusiastic medical profession began injecting morphine on a vast scale for all manner of aches and pains, much the way that a more recent generation of doctors began prescribing Oxycontin and other legal drugs in a reaction against widespread undertreatment of pain. Wounded veterans became addicts, but so, too, did people suffering from arthritis. Women also became addicts en masse, thanks to the practice of treating menstrual cramps – or for that matter, any female complaint of pain – with injections of morphine.

Skeptics in the medical profession warned about the dangers of administering too much morphine. Yet these warnings generally fell on deaf ears. Some of the problem lay with the doctors themselves. One well-regarded doctor put it this way: “Opium is often the lazy physician’s remedy.”

But distance played a role, too. Doctors traveling dirt roads on horseback couldn’t always follow up with patients in pain, and so they left their charges with vials of morphine. Well-meaning doctors who might otherwise resist administering morphine also faced pressure from patients and families to do so. If they refused, it was easy to find a doctor who would comply.

In the end, though, the medical profession largely solved the problem on its own. As awareness of physicians’ role in fostering addiction spread, medical schools taught aspiring doctors to avoid prescribing morphine except under carefully controlled circumstances. The growing availability of milder analgesics – salicylates like aspirin – made the job easier, offering a less powerful, but far safer, alternative to morphine.

While the younger generation of doctors stigmatized morphine, the problem was increasingly linked to older, poorly trained doctors who had come of age in an era when the hypodermic needle was touted as a cure-all. A study in 1919, for example, found that 90 percent of opiate prescriptions in Pennsylvania came from only a third of the state’s doctors, most of whom were over 50 years old.

As the medical profession started to police its ranks, shaming those who enabled addiction, the epidemic began to burn itself out. “Old addicts died off faster than new ones were created,” writes Courtwright. The smaller group of addicts who became the face of opiate addition tended to be poorer “pleasure users” who picked up the habit in the criminal underworld.

Today’s opioid epidemic is similar to the one that came and went over a century ago. While there is plenty of room for government assistance in funding treatment for addicts, never mind regulation of drugs, history suggests that the medical profession will ultimately play the most important role.

There are some promising signs. The number of opioid prescriptions written by doctors has dropped by small amounts over the past few years, though some of the evidence suggests that the decline has more to do with patients anxious about the potential for addiction.

Still, it took decades during the 19th century for doctors to shy away from injecting patients with morphine for the slightest complaint. It may take just as long before doctors kick the habit of prescribing powerful pain pills.

State Dept to Close War Crimes Division, Bad Decision

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  USAToday

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is shuttering the department’s two-decades-old war crimes office, Foreign Policy reported Monday.

The Office of Global Criminal Justice advises the Secretary of State on issues surrounding war crimes and genocide and helps form policy to address those atrocities.

According to FP, Tillerson’s office has told Todd Buchwald, the special coordinator of the OGCJ, he is being reassigned to the State Department’s office of legal affairs.

Remaining staff might be shifted to the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, FP reported.

According to FP, the closure decision comes at a time when Tillerson has been trying to reorganize the department to concentrate on pursuing economic opportunities for American businesses and strengthening U.S. military prowess.

“There’s no mistaking it — this move will be a huge loss for accountability,” Richard Dicker, the director of Human Rights Watch’s international justice program, told FP. A State Department spokesman told FP in a statement it is “currently undergoing an employee-led redesign initiative, and there are no predetermined outcomes. We are not going to get ahead of any outcomes.” More here.

*** Consider the murderers in countries such as North Korea, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Iraq, Sudan, Nigeria, Afghanistan and more….

Iraq: Execution Site Near Mosul’s Old City

Investigate, Punish Those Responsible for Any War Crimes

Satellite imagery from July 12 showing the building and Tigris riverbank seen in a video posted of soldiers throwing a detainee off a cliff in west Mosul as well as military vehicles in the vicinity.

Satellite imagery from July 12 showing the building and Tigris riverbank seen in a video posted of soldiers throwing a detainee off a cliff in west Mosul as well as military vehicles in the vicinity.  © 2017 DigitalGlobe
(Beirut) – International observers have discovered an execution site in west Mosul, Human Rights Watch said today. That report, combined with new statements about executions in and around Mosul’s Old City and persistent documentation about Iraqi forces extrajudicially killing men fleeing Mosul in the final phase of the battle against the Islamic State (also known as ISIS), are an urgent call to action by the Iraqi government.
Despite repeated promises to investigate wrongdoing by security forces, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has yet to demonstrate that Iraqi authorities have held a single soldier accountable for murdering, torturing, and abusing Iraqis in this conflict.
“As Prime Minister Abadi enjoys victory in Mosul, he is ignoring the flood of evidence of his soldiers committing vicious war crimes in the very city he’s promised to liberate,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Abadi’s victory will collapse unless he takes concrete steps to end the grotesque abuses by his own security forces.”
International observers, whose evidence has proven reliable in the past, told Human Rights Watch that on July 17, 2017, at about 3:30 p.m., a shopkeeper in a neighborhood directly west of the Old City that was retaken in April from ISIS took them into an empty building and showed them a row of 17 male corpses, barefoot but in civilian dress, surrounded by pools of blood. They said many appeared to have been blindfolded and with their hands tied behind their back.
They said the shopkeeper told them that he had seen the Iraqi Security Forces’ 16th Division, identifiable by their badges and vehicles, in the neighborhood four nights earlier, and that night had heard multiple gunshots coming from the area of the empty building. The next morning, when armed forces had left the area, he told them, he went into the building and saw the bodies lying in positions that suggested they were shot there and had not been moved. He said he did not recognize any of those killed.
The international observers also saw soldiers from the elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) in the area. They contacted Human Rights Watch by phone from the site and later shared five photos they took of the bodies.
On July 17, another international observer told Human Rights Watch they spoke to a senior government official in Mosul who told them he was comfortable with the execution of suspected ISIS-affiliates “as long as there was no torture.” The observer said a commander showed their group a video taken a few days earlier of a group of CTS soldiers holding two detainees in the Old City. They said the commander told them that the forces had executed the men right after the video was taken.
Salah al-Imara, an Iraqi citizen who regularly publishes information regarding security and military activities in and around Mosul, published four videos allegedly filmed in west Mosul on Facebook on July 11 and 12. One video, posted on July 11, appears to show Iraqi soldiers beating a detainee, then throwing him off a cliff and shooting at him and at the body of another man already lying at the bottom of the cliff. Human Rights Watch had verified the location of the first video based on satellite imagery. Other videos showed Iraqi soldiers kicking and beating a bleeding man, federal police forces beating at least three men, and Iraqi soldiers kicking a man on the ground in their custody.
A third international observer told Human Rights Watch on July 18 that they witnessed CTS soldiers bring an ISIS suspect to their base in a neighborhood southwest of the Old City on July 11. The observer did not see what happened to the suspect next, but said that a soldier later showed them a video of himself and a group of other soldiers brutally beating the man, and a second video of the man dead, with a bullet to his head.
“Some Iraqi soldiers seem to have so little fear that they will face any consequence for murdering and torturing suspects in Mosul that they are freely sharing evidence of what look like very cruel exploits in videos and photographs,” Whitson said. “Excusing such celebratory revenge killings will haunt Iraq for generations to come.”
A fourth international observer told Human Rights Watch on July 11 that the day before they had witnessed a group of CTS soldiers push a man whose hands were tied behind his back into a destroyed shop near the main road in the west to the Old City. They said they heard several gunshots, went into the shop after the soldiers had left, and found the man’s body with several bullet holes in the back of his head. They shared the photo of the body.
On July 10, the same observer said they saw Iraqi Security Forces just outside the Old City holding about 12 men with their hands tied behind their backs. They said an officer told them that the military’s 9th Division had detained these men inside the Old City on suspicion of ISIS affiliation. They said they saw the soldiers lead the detained men just out of sight, then heard shots ring out from their direction. The observer was unable to verify what happened.
On July 7, two additional international observers told Human Rights Watch that on different occasions in late June, they witnessed soldiers bring at least five suspected ISIS affiliates out of the Old City to the west, strapped to the hoods of Humvees, when temperatures in the city often reached 48 degrees Celsius, or 118 degrees Fahrenheit.
The nongovernmental organization Mosul Eye has been documenting abuses by all sides in Mosul since 2014, and has posted numerous videos and witness statements about executions on its Twitter feed since July 14, with one reading: “Mass Executions ‘Speicher Style’ [a reference to an ISIS massacre in 2014] for the last survivors of the old city. ISF is killing and throwing bodies of everyone it finds to the river.”
As of July 10, the Iraqi military has prevented access to west Mosul for most journalists, limiting coverage of recent events inside the Old City. Iraqi forces should allow journalists access to west Mosul to report on the conflict and any alleged abuses, Human Rights Watch said.
Throughout the operation to retake Mosul, Human Rights Watch has documented Iraqi forces detaining and holding at least 1,200 men and boys in inhumane conditions without charge, and in some cases torturing and executing them, under the guise of screening them for ISIS-affiliation. In the final weeks of the Mosul operation, Human Rights Watch has reported on executions of suspected ISIS-affiliates in and around Mosul’s Old City.
An Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs representative told Human Rights Watch on July 19 that he would request a government investigation into the allegations. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly raised concerns about allegations of ill-treatment, torture, and executions in meetings with Iraqi officials in Baghdad as well as with representatives from United States-led coalition member countries. Human Rights Watch does not know of a single transparent investigation into abuses by Iraqi armed forces, any instances of commanders being held accountable for abuse, or any victims of abuse receiving compensation.
Iraqi criminal justice authorities should investigate all alleged crimes, including unlawful killings and mutilation of corpses, by any party in the conflict in a prompt, transparent, and effective manner, up to the highest levels of responsibility. Those found criminally responsible should be appropriately prosecuted. Extrajudicial executions and torture during an armed conflict are war crimes.
“Relentless reports, videos, and photographs of unlawful executions and beatings by Iraqi soldiers should be enough to raise serious concerns among the highest ranks in Baghdad and the international coalition combatting ISIS,” Whitson said. “As we well know in Iraq, if the government doesn’t provide an accounting for these murders, the Iraqi people may take matters into their own hands.”

Manafort to Testify, Financial Fraud Exposure?

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The Senate Judiciary Committee intends to call Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort to testify next week on a panel about foreign influence in elections.

The panel is also scheduled to include Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of the firm that commissioned the salacious dossier on President Donald Trump’s connections to Russia.

Should he attend the July 26 hearing, Trump Jr. is certain to be asked about his role in arranging a meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with officials connected to the Russian government, which he says he had hoped would result in the delivery of incriminating information about Hillary Clinton. More from Politico.

*** SuissNews

Manafort Was in Debt to Pro-Russia Interests, Cyprus Records Show

NYT’s: Financial records filed last year in the secretive tax haven of Cyprus, where Paul J. Manafort kept bank accounts during his years working in Ukraine and investing with a Russian oligarch, indicate that he had been in debt to pro-Russia interests by as much as $17 million before he joined Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign in March 2016.

The money appears to have been owed by shell companies connected to Mr. Manafort’s business activities in Ukraine when he worked as a consultant to the pro-Russia Party of Regions. The Cyprus documents obtained by The New York Times include audited financial statements for the companies, which were part of a complex web of more than a dozen entities that transferred millions of dollars among them in the form of loans, payments and fees.

President Vladimir V. Putin with the Russian oligarch Oleg V. Deripaska in 2013. In a 2015 court complaint, Mr. Deripaska claimed that Mr. Manafort and his partners owed him $19 million related to a failed investment in a Ukrainian cable television business. Sergei Karpukhin/Reuters

The records, which include details for numerous loans, were certified as accurate by an accounting firm as of December 2015, several months before Mr. Manafort joined the Trump campaign, and were filed with Cyprus government authorities in 2016. The notion of indebtedness on the part of Mr. Manafort also aligns with assertions made in a court complaint filed in Virginia in 2015 by the Russian oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska, who claimed Mr. Manafort and his partners owed him $19 million related to a failed investment in a Ukrainian cable television business.

After The Times shared some of the documents with representatives of Mr. Manafort, a spokesman, Jason Maloni, did not address whether the debts might have existed at one time. But he maintained that the Cyprus records were “stale and do not purport to reflect any current financial arrangements.”

A financial statement for a Cyprus shell company, Lucicle Consultants, showing a $9.9 million loan to a Delaware company connected to Mr. Manafort.

“Manafort is not indebted to Mr. Deripaska or the Party of Regions, nor was he at the time he began working for the Trump campaign,” Mr. Maloni said. “The broader point, which Mr. Manafort has maintained from the beginning, is that he did not collude with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.” (Mr. Manafort resigned as campaign manager last August amid questions about his past work in Ukraine.)

Still, the Cyprus documents offer the most detailed view yet into the murky financial world inhabited by Mr. Manafort in the years before he joined the Trump campaign.

Mr. Manafort’s political consulting operation was run out of a first-floor office on Sofiivska Street in Kiev, Ukraine. Joseph Sywenkyj for The New York Times

Mr. Manafort is one of several former Trump associates known to be the focus of inquiries into Russian meddling in the presidential election. He was among those in attendance at a meeting in June 2016 at which Donald Trump Jr. was told they would receive compromising information on Hillary Clinton from a Russian lawyer connected to the Kremlin.

Mr. Manafort’s Cyprus-related business activities are under scrutiny by investigators looking into his finances during and after his years as a consultant to the Party of Regions in Ukraine. He recently filed a long-overdue report with the Justice Department disclosing his lobbying efforts in Ukraine through early 2014, when his main client, President Viktor F. Yanukovych of Ukraine, was ousted in a popular uprising and fled to Russia.

LOAV Advisers, a Cyprus company linked to Mr. Manafort, reported a $7.8 million loan from an entity associated with Mr. Deripaska.

The Cyprus documents detail transactions that occurred in 2012 and 2013, during the peak of Mr. Manafort’s decade-long tenure as a political consultant and investor in the former Soviet republic, where his past work remains a source of controversy. Last year, his name surfaced in a handwritten ledger showing $12.7 million designated for him by the Party of Regions, and documents recovered from his former office in Kiev suggest some of that money was routed through offshore shell companies and disguised as payment for computer hardware.

The byzantine nature of the transactions reflected in the Cyprus records obscures the reasons that money flowed among the various parties, and it is possible they were characterized as loans for another purpose, like avoiding taxes that would otherwise be owed on income or equity investments.

Ivan Fursin, a Party of Regions lawmaker, appears to have ties to Lucicle Consultants. UNIAN (Ukrainian Independent News and Information Agency)

One of the Manafort-related debts listed in the Cyprus records, totaling $7.8 million, was owed to Oguster Management Limited, a company in the British Virgin Islands connected to Mr. Deripaska. The debtor was a Cyprus company, LOAV Advisers, that the Deripaska court complaint says was set up by Mr. Manafort to make investments with Mr. Deripaska, a billionaire close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. The loan is unsecured, bears 2 percent interest and has “no specified repayment date,” according to a financial statement for LOAV.

The other debt, for $9.9 million, was owed to Lucicle Consultants, a Cyprus company that appears to have ties to a Party of Regions member of Parliament, Ivan Fursin. Lucicle, whose precise ownership is unclear, is linked to Mr. Fursin through another offshore entity, Mistaro Ventures, which is registered in St. Kitts and Nevis and listed on a government financial disclosure form that Mr. Fursin filed in Ukraine. Mistaro transferred millions to Lucicle in February 2012 shortly before Lucicle made the $9.9 million loan to Jesand L.L.C., a Delaware company that Mr. Manafort previously used to buy real estate in New York. The loan to Jesand was unsecured, with a 3.5 percent interest rate, and payable on demand.

There is no indication from the financial statements that the loans had been repaid as of the time they were filed in December 2015. The statements contain a note saying that as of January 2014, the debts and assets for Lucicle and LOAV had been assigned to “a related party,” which is not identified. The records define related parties as entities that are under common control, suggesting that the assignment did not affect the ultimate debtors and creditors. The statements also said there had been no other changes after the financial reporting period covered by them, which was for the 2013 calendar year.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Deripaska declined to comment. Mr. Deripaska appears to have stopped pursuing his court action against Mr. Manafort and his former investment partners, Rick Gates and Rick Davis, in late 2015. In addition to the $19 million he said he had invested with Mr. Manafort, Mr. Deripaska claimed he paid Mr. Manafort an additional $7.3 million in management fees.

Mr. Manafort has previously said any payments he received for his Ukraine activities were aboveboard and made via wire transfers to an American bank. The Cyprus records suggest that at least some transactions originated with shell companies in tax havens like the Seychelles and the British Virgin Islands, and passed through financial institutions on Cyprus, including Hellenic Bank and Cyprus Popular Bank.

Mr. Manafort’s name does not show up in the Cyprus records. However, hints of his dealings in Ukraine appear throughout.

A 23-page financial statement for a Cyprus shell, Black Sea View Limited, lists transactions that include one with Pericles Capital Partners. Both Black Sea View and Pericles Capital are identified in court papers filed by Mr. Deripaska in the Cayman Islands as part of the corporate structure that Mr. Manafort put together to invest in a Ukrainian telecommunications business, Black Sea Cable. The same statement also reports what are described as $9.2 million in loans received in 2012 from four other entities, including one controlled by two Seychelles companies, Intrahold A.G. and Monohold A.G., which Ukrainian authorities have asserted were involved in the looting of public assets by allies of the Yanukovych government. The Black Sea Cable business was controlled at one point by Monohold and Intrahold.

Similarly, Manafort-connected entities appear in the financial records for Lucicle Consultants, the Cyprus shell that received financing from a company associated with Mr. Fursin, the Party of Regions politician in Ukraine. Mr. Fursin did not respond to a request for comment. Lucicle received money from Black Sea View and PEM Advisers Limited, another firm identified in court papers as controlled by Mr. Manafort. It also made the $9.9 million loan to Jesand L.L.C.

Jesand appears to be a conflation of Jessica and Andrea, the names of Mr. Manafort’s two daughters. In hacked text messages belonging to Andrea Manafort that were posted last year on a website used by Ukrainian hackers, Jesand is mentioned in the context of financial dealings involving the Manaforts. Jesand was used by Mr. Manafort and his daughter Andrea in 2007 to buy a Manhattan condominium for $2.5 million.

The condo was one of several expensive pieces of real estate that Mr. Manafort bought, often with cash, during and after his time in Ukraine. He also invested millions with his son-in-law, Jeffrey Yohai, who set up a business to buy and redevelop luxury properties in the Los Angeles area. The business failed amid accusations of fraud by another former investor, who claimed Mr. Yohai had exploited his connection to Mr. Manafort to raise funds.

Last year, while trying to salvage his investments with Mr. Yohai, Mr. Manafort embarked on a borrowing spree in the United States, obtaining mortgages totaling more than $20 million on properties controlled by him and his wife. The F.B.I. and the New York attorney general’s office are investigating some of Mr. Manafort’s real estate dealings, including the loans he obtained last year.