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Scott Dworkin Retweeted Michael S. Schmidt
Buried in @nytimes story: Trump said to Comey that he should consider putting reporters in prison
so nice of him at least he doesn't want them killed like his butt buddy Putin
so there are recording devices in the Oval Office ....and they are Russian
it is always a good day when you have to call Putin to the stand to help with your defense
Putin Offers To Provide Congress Record of Trump Meeting
Russian Foreign Ministry
By Eric Tucker, Catherine Lucey and JULIE PACE, Published MAY 17, 2017 8:24 AM
0Views
WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia President Vladimir Putin offered Wednesday to turn over to Congress records of President Donald Trump’s discussions with Russian diplomats in which Trump is said to have disclosed classified information. His offer added a bizarre twist to the furor over Trump’s intelligence disclosures.
Putin’s remarks come as Washington was reeling over revelations late Tuesday that Trump personally appealed to FBI Director James Comey to abandon the bureau’s investigation into National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. The White House issued a furious denial after Comey’s notes detailing Trump’s request.
The White House has played down the importance and secrecy of the information Trump gave to the Russians, which had been supplied by Israel under an intelligence-sharing agreement. Trump himself said he had “an absolute right” as president to share “facts pertaining to terrorism” and airline safety with Russia. Yet U.S. allies and some members of Congress expressed concern bordering on alarm.
Putin told a news conference that he would be willing to turn over notes of Trump’s meeting with the Russian diplomats if the White House agreed. He dismissed outrage over Trump’s disclosures as U.S. politicians whipping up “anti-Russian sentiment.”
Asked what he thinks of Trump presidency, Putin said it’s up to the American people to judge but his performance can only be rated “only when he’s allowed to work at full capacity,” implying that someone is hampering Trump’s efforts.
As for Comey, whom Trump fired last week, the FBI director wrote in a memo after a February meeting at the White House that the new president had asked him to shut down the FBI’s investigation of Flynn and his Russian contacts, said a person who had read the memo. The Flynn investigation was part of a broader probe into Russian interference in last year’s presidential election.
Comey’s memo, an apparent effort to create a paper trail of his contacts with the White House, would be the clearest evidence to date that the president has tried to influence the investigation.
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Republican chairman of the House oversight committee, sent a letter to the FBI on Tuesday requesting that it turn over all documents and recordings that detail communications between Comey and Trump. He said he would give the FBI a week and then “if we need a subpoena, we’ll do it.”
The panel’s top Democrat, Elijah Cummings of Maryland, a constant Trump critic, called the allegation of Trump pressure on Comey “explosive” and said “it appears like a textbook case of criminal obstruction of justice.”
John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said late Tuesday that the developments had reached “Watergate size and scale.”
Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader of the Senate, said simply, “It would be helpful to have less drama emanating from the White House.”
The person who described the Comey memo to the AP was not authorized to discuss it by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. The existence of the memo was first reported Tuesday by The New York Times.
The White House vigorously denied it all. “While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” a White House statement said.
Trump fired Flynn on Feb. 13, on grounds that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about his contacts with Russians.
The intensifying drama comes as Trump is set to embark Friday on his first foreign trip, which had been optimistically viewed by some aides as an opportunity to reset an administration floundering under an inexperienced president.
When Trump fired Comey, he said he did so based on Comey’s very public handling of the Hillary Clinton email probe and how it affected his leadership of the FBI. But the White House has provided differing accounts of the firing. And lawmakers have alleged that the sudden ouster was an attempt to stifle the bureau’s investigation into Trump associates’ ties to Russia’s meddling in the campaign.
Mark Warner of Virginia, top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, said he would ask Comey for additional material as part of that panel’s investigation. “Memos, transcripts, tapes — the list keeps getting longer,” he said.
According to the Times, Comey wrote in the February memo that Trump told him Flynn had done nothing wrong. Comey said he replied that “I agree he is a good guy” but said nothing to Trump about limiting the investigation.
The newspaper said Comey was in the Oval Office that day with other national security officials for a terrorism threat briefing. When that ended, Trump asked everyone to leave except Comey, and he eventually turned the conversation to Flynn.
The administration spent the first half of Tuesday defending Trump’s disclosure of classified information to senior Russian officials. National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster said the president’s comments were “wholly appropriate.” He used that phrase nine times in his briefing to reporters.
The highly classified information about an Islamic State plot was collected by Israel, a crucial source of intelligence and close partner in the fight against some of the America’s fiercest threats in the Middle East. Trump’s disclosure of the information threatened to fray that partnership and piled pressure on the White House to explain the apparently on-the-spot decision to reveal the information to Russian diplomats in the Oval Office.
A U.S. official who confirmed the disclosure to The Associated Press said the revelation potentially put the source at risk.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/putin ... mp-meeting
ИДИОТ!
Trump Official: We ‘Let the Biggest Perpetrator of Fake News into the Oval Office’
Team Trump is “either in bed with the Russians or too stupid to understand the severity of this mistake,” an official fumed after Kremlin press got exclusive Oval Office access.
LACHLAN MARKAY
ASAWIN SUEBSAENG
05.11.17 4:19 PM ET
Senior members of the Trump administration are livid that the White House allowed the Russian government to steer the narrative of the president’s Wednesday meeting with top Russian diplomats by giving Kremlin-backed media exclusive access to the event.
The White House did not allow American press into the meeting between President Donald Trump, Russian foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Sergey Kislyak. But it did admit a photographer from TASS, a state-owned Russian news service. Its photos were subsequently posted on TASS’s website, giving that outlet a monopoly on publishable visuals of the meeting.
Russian government Twitter accounts shared photos of the event shortly after its conclusion. They revealed Kislyak’s presence—a fact that was not even mentioned in the official White House readout of the meeting. Some U.S. officials suspect Kislyak, whose conversations with Trump’s former National Security Adviser have fed an FBI investigation of his campaign, is a Kremlin spy—or at least spy-adjacent.
Two senior administration officials, one an Obama holdover and the other a Trump appointee, told The Daily Beast that the resulting reliance of U.S. media on a propaganda arm of a foreign government let Russia set the public tone of the meeting and embarrassed the administration amid already contentious discussions with Russian diplomats.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity in order to candidly express their views. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This isn’t an ‘America First’ policy,” one of the officials fumed of the White House’s decision “to let the biggest perpetrator of fake news into the Oval Office.” Trump, the official added, is “either in bed with the Russians or too stupid to understand the severity of this mistake. Either way, the implications are truly terrifying.”
The hurt feelings inside the White House weren’t much sunnier.
“Yes, I admit the optics are bad—that was not intentional or anything,” one senior White House official told The Daily Beast. “I literally face-palmed with this one.”
The official noted that White House senior staff and press office were “sour” about the way this played out because top White House staff “somehow” did not foresee that the photos of Trump’s chummy, American-press-free meeting with Kislyak and Lavrov would be almost immediately published by TASS.
Administration officials also claimed on Thursday that they had been misled into believing that TASS was documenting the event internally, just as an official White House photographer on hand for the meeting was. “We were not informed by the Russians that their official photographer was dual-hatted and would be releasing the photographs on the state news agency,” an administration official told The Washington Post.
Furthermore, National Security Agency director Mike Rogers said Thursday that the NSA was not consulted ahead of time regarding the Russian-government visit to the Oval Office that produced what amounted to glam shots for Russian state-news and official social-media channels.
Following Wednesday’s meeting, members of the White House press corp were finally allowed into the Oval Office. But by that time, the ambassador and foreign minister had safely ducked out, and U.S. press found President Trump and Henry Kissinger, the highly controversial Nixon-era secretary of state, sitting side-by-side for a photo op.
What happened during Kissinger and Trump’s private discussion on Wednesday? The conversation quickly steered towards Russia as a regional power, a Trump administration official, who was briefed on the exchanges, confirmed to The Daily Beast. Kissinger advised President Trump on possible “avenues of cooperation” that could be negotiated between the two geopolitical adversaries, especially with regards to the fight against ISIS, and Islamist terror groups in Syria.
On Thursday morning, U.S. newspapers such as The New York Times were forced to credit the Russian Foreign Ministry for photos appearing in their publications. “It’s beyond insulting, it really is,” another senior administration official said of U.S. media’s reliance on the news service of an adversarial foreign government.
“It’s boneheaded on so many levels but it’s certainly insulting to the U.S. press to be forced to use TASS photos and to identify [Russian state media] as its source for a meeting between Lavrov and Trump,” the official said.
Asked about the White House’s explanation for TASS’s presence at the event, the official suggested that it knew or should have known the nature of the news service’s work—and that its photos would eventually be published. “Of course they knew what TASS was, everybody does,” the official said. “If they didn’t then it’s a pretty shameful admission, honestly.”
The embarrassment that officials described at TASS’s access to the event compounded frustration at Lavrov’s opportunistic trolling at the meeting. Peppered with press questions on his way to the event, Lavrov sarcastically feigned shock that Trump had the day before fired FBI director James Comey amid his investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
On Thursday, a spokesman for Lavrov was indignant at suggestions that TASS’s presence at the meeting might have left the Oval Office vulnerable to espionage activities such as wiretapping.
Those reports are "making our [TASS] correspondents feel like Jews in 1933," the spokesman said.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... val-office
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTh5cut5S6U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfyVsjQRMaM
Russian State-Run Bank Financed Deal Involving Trump Hotel Partner
Russian-Canadian developer put money into Toronto project after receiving hundreds of millions from deal involving VEB
The Moscow headquarters of Russian state-run bank Vnesheconombank, known as VEB. PHOTO: ANDREY RUDAKOV/BLOOMBERG NEWS
By Rob Barry, Christopher S. Stewart and Brett Forrest
Updated May 17, 2017 11:59 a.m. ET
VEB, a Russian state-run bank under scrutiny by U.S. investigators, financed a deal involving Donald Trump’s onetime partner in a Toronto hotel tower at a key moment for the project, according to people familiar with the transaction.
Alexander Shnaider, a Russian-Canadian developer who built the 65-story Trump International Hotel and Tower, put money into the project after receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from a separate asset sale that involved the Russian bank, whose full name is Vnesheconombank.
Mr. Shnaider sold his company’s share in a Ukrainian steelmaker for about $850 million in 2010, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. According to two people with knowledge of the deal, the buyer, which hasn’t been identified publicly, was an entity acting for the Russian government. VEB initiated the purchase and provided the money, these people say.
U.S. investigators are looking into any ties between Russian financial institutions, Mr. Trump and anyone in his orbit, according to a person familiar with the probe. As part of the investigation, they’re examining interactions between Mr. Trump, his associates and VEB, which is now subject to U.S. sanctions, said another person familiar with the matter. The Toronto deal adds a new element to the list of known connections between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.
Developer Alexander Shnaider, left, with Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump at the ribbon cutting for the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto in April 2012.
Developer Alexander Shnaider, left, with Donald Trump and Ivanka Trump at the ribbon cutting for the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto in April 2012. PHOTO: GEORGE PIMENTEL/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES
After Mr. Shnaider and his partner sold their stake in the steelmaker, Mr. Shnaider injected more money into the Trump Toronto project, which was financially troubled. Mr. Shnaider’s lawyer, Symon Zucker, said in an April interview that about $15 million from the asset sale went into the Trump Toronto project. A day later, he wrote in an email: “I am not able to confirm that any funds” from the deal “went into the Toronto project.”
A spokesman for the Trump Organization, the family’s real-estate firm, said Mr. Trump had no involvement in any financial dealings with VEB and that the Trump company “merely licensed its brand and manages the hotel and residences.” VEB didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Trump has said he has no dealings with Russia. “To the best of my knowledge, no person that I deal with does,” he said in February. On Friday, Mr. Trump’s lawyers released a two-month-old letter stating that 10 years of his tax returns show little income, investments or debt from Russian sources beyond items already known to the public.
VEB has long been viewed by Russian analysts as a vehicle for the Russian government to fund politically important projects, including the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. A VEB executive in New York was sentenced to prison last year after pleading guilty to conspiring to act in the U.S. as a Russian agent without notifying U.S. authorities.
In the wake of U.S. intelligence agency findings that Russian government-directed hackers interfered in the 2016 election, several agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, are conducting a counterintelligence probe into whether Mr. Trump’s campaign staff had any contact with Russian officials. Committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate also are investigating the matter. Russian authorities have denied any interference.
At the time of Mr. Shnaider’s steelmaker deal, Russian President Vladimir Putin was chairman of VEB’s supervisory board, and major deals would have been approved by him, according to a former Russian government official and several Russian government and economic experts. The bank later was placed on the U.S. sanctions list after Russia’s intrusion into Ukraine and its annexation of Crimea in 2014. American entities are barred from financial involvement with the bank.
VEB made headlines when it emerged that its chairman met with Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner in December. A bank spokesperson has said VEB’s leaders met Mr. Kushner and numerous global financial executives as it developed a new strategy for the bank. White House press secretary Sean Spicer has said Mr. Kushner’s meeting was part of his role during the Trump transition as the “primary point of contact with foreign government officials.”
The Toronto project was billed in 2007 as a joint venture between Mr. Trump and Mr. Shnaider and was projected to cost about 500 million Canadian dollars. Mr. Trump said at the time he would manage the hotel’s operations and Mr. Shnaider planned to develop the tower, which also would include condominiums, through his company, Talon International Development Inc.
The project has been dogged by financial problems. In November, it entered insolvency proceedings, and a judge in March approved its sale.
Alan Garten, the Trump Organization’s general counsel, said the company “was not the owner, developer or seller” of the project. While The Wall Street Journal and others reported in 2011 and 2012 that Mr. Trump had a minor ownership stake in it, Mr. Garten now says Mr. Trump “did not hold” equity and had no involvement with the financing.
The Trump Toronto Hotel Management Corp. has received at least $611,000 in fees from the project since 2015, federal financial-disclosure forms filed last May show. The forms don’t disclose the company’s total income from the deal.
The Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto was dogged by financial problems. PHOTO: GEORGE PIMENTEL/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES
Shortly after the project broke ground in 2007, about 85% of the units were presold. During the financial crisis, some buyers pulled out and others were unable to get financing, receivership documents show. Midland Resources Holding Ltd., then owned by Mr. Shnaider and a partner, was on the hook for cost overruns, the documents show.
Midland Resources had acquired its stake in the Ukrainian steelmaker, called Zaporizhstal, for about $70 million after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The 2010 transaction to sell it was opaque. Midland transferred ownership of its portion of the steelmaker to the unnamed buyer through five offshore companies, according to Mr. Shnaider’s lawyer and court documents.
The idea for the deal was brought to a top VEB executive by a former Ukrainian government official, according to an investment banker familiar with what happened. Although the buyer wasn’t named, a steel trader with knowledge of the deal said VEB itself ended up with control of Midland’s share of the steelmaker. At the time, Russian entities saw gaining control of large industrial assets in Ukraine as having strategic value to Russian political interests in the future, said another investment banker with knowledge of the deal.
Mr. Zucker, Mr. Shnaider’s lawyer, said Midland Resources “has never had any relationship with VEB” and “does not dictate where their purchasers borrow funds.” He declined to identify the buyer, citing confidentiality provisions, other than to say it was a “Ukrainian industrial group.”
Mr. Shnaider’s companies continued to pump money into the Toronto tower as it struggled to stay afloat, according to his lawyer and later court documents. Later, Mr. Shnaider became embroiled in a legal battle with Mr. Trump’s companies over management issues. The Trump Organization declined to comment.
In November, a Canadian judge placed the tower into receivership. Mr. Trump’s company was owed C$116,165.72, and Mr. Shnaider’s company as much as C$105 million, court documents show.
Recently, a judge approved the sale of the building to a California-based investment firm for about $220 million.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-st ... 1495031708
Vladimir Putin personally signed off on Russian bank financing of Trump International Hotel and Tower
By Bill Palmer
Updated: 12:01 pm EDT Wed May 17, 2017 | 0
On a day when Donald Trump is fending off his exploding Russia scandal from all sides, the news just got much worse for him. Despite his ongoing insistence that he’s had virtually no business dealings with Russia, it’s now been exposed that the Trump International Hotel and Tower was secretly financed by a Russian government controlled bank – and that the deal was approved by Vladimir Putin himself.
That’s the word from the Wall Street Journal today, after it dug into the financial history of the Toronto based Trump-branded hotel (link). The newspaper has reported that Donald Trump owned a stake in the hotel at the time, a claim which he now denies. But his camp is acknowledging that the hotel is managed by the Trump Organization. Worse, the bank involved has direct ties to Vladimir Putin, Trump’s own family, and a Russian spy ring in New York.
VEB bank is so thoroughly controlled by the Russian government that at the time of the Trump hotel financing deal, Russian president Vladimir Putin was the chairman of its supervisory board and was personally approving on all major deals – meaning that Putin himself was the one who signed off on the Trump Toronto project. VEB is also the bank that Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner met with at Trump Tower in New York during the transition period.
And then there’s the Russian spy ring in New York, which included one spy whose cover was a day job at VEB bank. That spy ring was busted in part by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara – whom Donald Trump ended up firing after he took office.
http://www.palmerreport.com/politics/pu ... ssia/2898/
WSJ: Toronto Hotel Deal Now Part Of Probe Into Trump Ties To Russia
Joe O'Connal/CP
By ALLEGRA KIRKLAND Published MAY 17, 2017 1:04 PM
For the first time, President Donald Trump’s Canadian real estate dealings have been identified as another area of interest for U.S. federal investigators probing ties between Russia and Trump and his associates.
The connections between the Toronto deal and Russia are indirect and opaque but investigators appear to be zeroing in on the hundreds of millions of dollars Trump’s former business partner received from a Russian-state bank shortly before he put money into the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto, according to a Wednesday Wall Street Journal report.
The Journal reported that Russian-Canadian developer Alexander Shnaider received $850 million from Vnesheconombank in 2010 for selling his company’s share in a Ukrainian steelmaker. Russian President Vladimir Putin was chairman of the bank’s supervisory board at the time, and would have approved these sorts of high-level deals, according to the report.
According to the Journal:
After Mr. Shnaider and his partner sold their stake in the steelmaker, Mr. Shnaider injected more money into the Trump Toronto project, which was financially troubled. Mr. Shnaider’s lawyer, Symon Zucker, said in an April interview that about $15 million from the asset sale went into the Trump Toronto project. A day later, he wrote in an email: “I am not able to confirm that any funds” from the deal “went into the Toronto project.”
A Trump Organization spokesman told the Journal that Trump had no financial arrangement with the bank, and that the company “merely licensed its brand and manages the hotel and residences.”
The U.S. office of Vnesheconombank did not immediately return TPM’s request for comment.
A personal familiar with the U.S. probe told the Journal that federal investigators are looking at all interactions between Trump, his associates and Vnesheconombank.
Vnesheconombank is the same financial institution whose CEO met with Trump White House adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner in December. The bank and Kremlin said that Kushner spoke with CEO Sergey Gorkov in his capacity as head of Kushner Companies, his family’s real estate business, but the Trump administration said Kushner was acting as “the official primary point of contact” with foreign entities for the campaign and transition at the time.
Vnesheconombank was placed on the U.S. sanctions list in 2014 after Russian forces entered Ukraine and annexed Crimea, and the Journal reported that American entities are forbidden from any financial involvement with the bank.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/w ... estigators
seemslikeadream » Sat Feb 18, 2017 11:34 pm wrote:Does Trump Have Ties To The Mob?
Alex Shnaider, Trump's partner for Trump Tower Toronto, has ties to Sergei Mikhailov, leader of the SoInsteva Gang, a ruthless "Russian crime syndicate."
http://www.dailywire.com/news/3936/does ... on-bandlerDecember 2016
Also arrested was Sergei Mikhailov, described as a senior intelligence officer with the FSB, which is the successor to the KGB,
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/worl ... /97029796/Russia: Alleged Crime Figure Seemingly Rebrands Himself Under “Right to Forget” Law
Published: Thursday, 02 June 2016 16:23
Said to have been a key figure in an organized crime group, Sergei Mikhailov has seemingly been working to clean up his image by using a new law to remove information about his past from Russian search engines, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) reported.
Does Putin have a bad memory? I doubt itMikhailov, also known as Mikhas, moved to Israel in 1994 and was granted automatic citizenship because of his marriage to a Jewish woman. Last May, seven Israelis--including former employees of the Israeli Interior Ministry--were convicted of helping Mikhailov and other Russian mafia figures obtain citizenship by forging documents and arranging fictitious marriages.A New Breed of Gangster Is Globalizing Russian Crime
Corruption: Authorities say these wise guys work both sides of the law and rival the Mafia and drug cartels.
September 23, 1998|RICHARD C. PADDOCK | TIMES STAFF WRITER
GENEVA — To Swiss authorities, Sergei Mikhailov is a dangerous man who heads one of Russia's largest crime groups from the isolation of his Geneva jail cell. He has been locked up without trial since October 1996 and going to occasional court appearances in an armored Mercedes with a SWAT team escort.
Police arrested one of his Swiss lawyers, accusing him of smuggling Mikhailov's letters out of jail and passing them to an accomplice who faxed them to Moscow. And, fearing Mikhailov's long reach, the Swiss government took the extraordinary step of granting asylum to the main witness against him--a Russian police inspector.
But to Mikhailov and his defenders, the 40-year-old prisoner is a legitimate businessman who has been unfairly imprisoned simply because he is Russian. He is a dealer in the export of gas and oil, they say, a generous man who buys bells for churches in Russia and donates money to an orphanage.
"I haven't done anything illegal," Mikhailov protested to a panel of judges during a recent court hearing. "I am an honest person. If I did something wrong, show me concrete proof. Where is this alleged criminal organization?"
Russian crime--The caption for a photograph accompanying a Sept. 23 Times article on the globalization of Russian crime should have identified the man pictured as defense attorney Alec Reymond.
The answer, police say, is: all over the world. Although Mikhailov's accusers have been slow to bring their evidence to court, authorities allege that he is the boss of the notorious Solntsevo gang--reputed to be the largest Russian crime syndicate. If what they say is true, that would make him one of the most feared and powerful criminals anywhere.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the operations of ruthless, well-financed Russian crime groups have spread internationally with lightning speed. From Moscow to Geneva to Los Angeles, law enforcement officials say the Russian mob has become one of the world's biggest crime threats over the past six years, rivaling the Italian Mafia and the Colombian drug cartels in scope and power.
"I look at the 1990s as the decade of the Russians," said Larry Langberg, who heads the FBI's Russian organized crime task force in Los Angeles. "We do have a big problem. This is a very active group."
Billions Smuggled From Homeland
Western countries that once worried about the Soviets' military might are now trying to combat the invasion of the brutal and disciplined Russian mafia. With the collapse of the Iron Curtain, Russian gangs have smuggled as much as $50 billion out of Russia and into other parts of Europe, Asia and the Americas, Interpol estimates.
Much of this newfound wealth has been laundered through banks in Switzerland, as well as Cyprus, the Caribbean and other offshore banking havens, officials say. Billions of dollars have gone to finance criminal operations ranging from prostitution and car theft rings to extortion and contract murder. Billions more have been used to buy into legitimate businesses and purchase real estate in locations from the Mediterranean to Manhattan.
Cunning survivors of one of the harshest regimes in history, Russian criminals have easily moved their operations into more than 50 countries, according to the FBI. In the process, they have struck up cooperative relations with powerful international mafia clans and drug cartels.
"What was once organized crime has become transnational crime," said Stephen Handelman, author of the book "Comrade Criminal" and an expert on the Russian mafia. "The Russians were better prepared than other crime groups to take part in the global economy. They have now emerged as a full-blown network, passing huge amounts of money around the world."
Russian gangs have roots deep in the Soviet past. Despite the Communists' efforts to destroy them, they formed a close-knit brotherhood with strict rules of behavior. Their training grounds were Soviet prison camps, and their operations were often run from behind bars by senior bosses.
During the final years of Soviet rule, the mafia grew increasingly stronger, forging alliances with corrupt Communist officials. The black market became one of the principal distributors of goods throughout the country--helping to keep the economy running and the Soviets in power.
When the Communist state collapsed at the end of 1991, the crime syndicates were in a perfect position to take advantage of privatization. Cooperating with corrupt officials, they took over government enterprises and factories and won a controlling stake in the country's economy. Then they stripped wealth from their homeland, shipped it abroad and went into business in the West.
Russian gangs have proved themselves to be a new breed, bringing together crime overlords, entrepreneurs, former KGB operatives and government bureaucrats and engaging in diversified activities on both sides of the law.
"As a former superpower, with intelligence links all over the world, they could take advantage of the channels of information for greed and profit," Handelman said. "Because of the global economy, you have transnational groups now doing legitimate and illegitimate business. It's hard to draw the line between what is illegal and what is legal."
Officials estimate that there are more than 6,000 mafia groups in Russia, many with international ties. More than 200 operate in the United States, according to the FBI.
Russian crime groups, having evolved in a totalitarian state, typically impose rigid discipline on their members and display a callous disregard for anyone outside their circle. While cruelty and contract murders are commonplace methods of doing business, the gangsters are also willing to negotiate profit-sharing agreements with potential rivals.
And in the day-to-day fight between law enforcement and organized crime, it appears that the Russian syndicates are winning. Authorities say crime groups are often better organized and better financed than police agencies. Their operations cross so many international boundaries that intergovernmental collaboration to curtail them can be awkward.
"They cooperate with each other much better than we do," said Gwen McClure, who heads Interpol's organized crime section at its headquarters in Lyons, France. "Unfortunately, organized crime groups have fewer laws, less bureaucracy. They share intelligence much better. They have much more money than we have. They can afford to get the best technology."
FBI Task Forces in Major U.S. Cities
In the United States, the Russian mafia found ready victims and a good base of operations in the communities of Russian Jews who immigrated during the Soviet era. Recognizing the mounting Russian crime threat in 1994, the FBI formed task forces in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago and New York to deal solely with the Russian mafia.
In 1996, the U.S. government scored its biggest success with the New York extortion conviction of Vyacheslav Ivankov, the top Russian crime boss in the U.S. and an alleged associate of Mikhailov.
In Los Angeles, the FBI says, the Russian mafia is involved in protection rackets within the Russian community and in frauds such as staged auto accidents and phony medical insurance claims. Russian criminals also engage in scams such as stealing credit card numbers or "phone cloning," in which they illegally obtain cellular telephone numbers from the airwaves and sell them.
Outside their homeland, Russian criminals are most active in the United States, Switzerland, Cyprus, Canada, the Caribbean and Israel, authorities say. In major European cities, Russian syndicates have built a thriving prostitution business, bringing in women from the former Soviet states as virtual slaves.
Money laundering is central to Russian criminals' operations as they try to legitimize their earnings. Russian syndicates have bought as many as two dozen banks, mainly in Cyprus and the Caribbean, to hide illegal money, according to Interpol. In Berlin, Russian mobsters launder money through more than 200 gambling parlors they own or control, police say.
In Israel, where Russians make up one-sixth of the population, the Russian mafia has brutally shoved aside Israeli criminals and taken over prostitution, gambling, money laundering and racketeering operations.
In one prominent Israeli case, Russian mobster Gregory Lerner pleaded guilty in March to defrauding banks of $48 million and trying to bribe officials, including members of parliament and Shimon Peres when he was prime minister. Lerner is serving eight years in prison and has become something of a cult figure. He placed fourth in a "most popular immigrant" poll conducted by a Russian-language newspaper.
Notorious Killer Slain in Greece
One of Russia's most notorious gangsters, Alexander Solonik, was found strangled last year in an Athens suburb. Solonik murdered four Russian police officers in 1995 and then escaped from prison. Police say he was dealing in arms and running a prostitution ring in Greece. The week he died, he was reportedly due to carry out a murder in Italy, where police say he kept an apartment stocked with weapons.
In Geneva, the case of Mikhailov has demonstrated the difficulty of prosecuting an alleged mafia chief who has conducted his activities around the globe.
A waiter in Moscow during Soviet times, Mikhailov was first schooled in the world of crime when he was 26 and spent six months in jail for falsely reporting his motorcycle stolen to claim the insurance. After his release, he allegedly began organizing the Solntsevo gang, named after a district in southwest Moscow. The gang grew to dominate much of the city after winning a series of bloody turf battles with rival gangs.
In 1989, he was arrested on extortion charges but released after the main witness refused to testify. In 1993, he was detained in the killing of a casino operator, but the case fell apart for lack of evidence. At one point, he had one ID saying he was a CNN correspondent and another saying he was a member of the Kremlin security detail, according to "Who's Who in the Russian Criminal World" by Alexander Maximov.
Mikhailov, also known as Mikhas, moved to Israel in 1994 and was granted automatic citizenship because of his marriage to a Jewish woman. Last May, seven Israelis--including former employees of the Israeli Interior Ministry--were convicted of helping Mikhailov and other Russian mafia figures obtain citizenship by forging documents and arranging fictitious marriages.
While the nature of his business activities is unclear, Mikhailov has built a far-flung empire with dealings in the United States, South America, Israel, Austria, Belgium, Hungary and other parts of Europe. His attorneys say he was involved in negotiating gas and oil deals with Russia. Press reports say he was building a five-star hotel in the Hungarian capital, Budapest, and exporting bananas from Costa Rica. Authorities say he was involved in arms dealing, drug trafficking, blackmail and money laundering.
Russian crime--The caption for a photograph accompanying a Sept. 23 Times article on the globalization of Russian crime should have identified the man pictured as defense attorney Alec Reymond.
He moved to the village of Borex outside Geneva, where he traveled around in a blue Rolls-Royce. He allegedly bought a villa there through a Swiss intermediary.
Costa Rica made him an honorary consul and gave him a diplomatic passport--although Russia refused to recognize his appointment. He was carrying the Costa Rican passport--along with Russian and Israeli passports--when the Swiss police arrested him on his arrival at the Geneva airport in 1996.
Mikhailov is charged with being a member of a criminal organization, laundering money, falsifying evidence and buying real estate illegally. The police froze $4 million in his Swiss bank accounts.
"This is not preventive detention," said Swiss Atty. Gen. Carla del Ponte, who has been personally involved in the case. "He is kept in jail so he doesn't flee and so he doesn't tamper with evidence."
But Mikhailov's Swiss defense team protests that the government has kept him behind bars for nearly two years without enough evidence to go to trial.
"I have to emphasize that Mikhailov did not commit any crimes on Swiss soil," attorney Alec Reymond said. "In Russia, he is not accused of anything either. I think the prosecution doesn't know what to do with him, and that's why they are keeping him in jail for so long."
During Mikhailov's recent court hearing, armed guards were posted throughout the courtroom, and police officers with machine guns stood watch outside. Mikhailov seemed frustrated and weary from his long detention.
"If Russian authorities have concrete proof, let them show it," he told the court. "I haven't been to Russia in four years. All the evidence the Swiss supposedly have is false. Why does Switzerland treat an innocent man this way? I don't feel guilty."
Times staff writers Rebecca Trounson in Jerusalem and Richard Boudreaux in Rome, Times researcher Christian Retzlaff in Berlin and special correspondent Maria Petrakis in Athens contributed to this report.
http://articles.latimes.com/1998/sep/23/news/mn-25630Donald Trump Russian Connection Surfaces in Trump Tower Bankruptcy
In Deep With Billionaire Vladimir Putin Pal
By Keith Girard, November 4th, 2016
Donald Trump and his Russian business partner are snarled in lawsuits over another real estate deal gone bad, The Trump International Hotel & Tower in Toronto, Canada. (Photo: Toronto Star)
Donald Trump’s ties to Russian businessmen extend to more than “selling a few condos,” as he’s claimed. The Trump International Hotel & Tower in Toronto went bankrupt this week, revealing Trump’s partner–a Russian billionaire business mogul with ties to Vladimir Putin.
Trump was a minority investor in the 65-story tower with Russian billionaire Alex Shnaider.
Shnaider is co-founder with Ukrainian billionaire Eduard Shifrin of the Midland Group, an international trading and investment holding company.
The company owns a number of subsidiaries located in Russia and Eastern Europe that are deep into agriculture, manufacturing, real estate, shipping and steel.
Last month (Oct 26), Putin granted Russian citizenship by decree to Shifrin and his daughter, who was surprised by Justin Bieber at her 16th birthday party.
JCF Capital ULC, which had purchased the construction loan on the building, said last month it planned to put the tower–mired in more than $301 million in debt–into receivership.
The Ontario Superior Court of Justice approved the request today (Nov. 4), just four days before the U.S. presidential election.
Because no U.S. bank will loan money to Trump or the Trump Organization in the wake of four bankruptcies, the Republican presidential candidate has turned to overseas sources for financing or partnerships.
That’s raised concerns that Trump will be beholden to foreign financiers with close ties to Putin, or at the very least faces serious conflict-of- interest questions.
Trump has refused to release his tax returns unlike presidents going back to 1976, which might shed some light on his finances.
Trump has also denied substantial ties to Russian businessmen. But the Toronto tower illustrates his deep involvement in a multi-million dollar deal.
Shnaider put up the money and bought a license to use Trump’s name. The Trump Organization retained the management contract, according to news reports and bankruptcy court papers.
Trump and children Eric, Donald Jr. and Ivanka led the ribbon-cutting ceremony when the tower opened in 2012, although it’s still unfinished to this day, according to local press reports.
The building ran into trouble almost immediately. The Trump Organization failed to sell condos as promised; nearly two-thirds still remain vacant.
Investors, many middle-class, claimed the were induced into buying time-share hotel units based on inflated projections regarding the performance of the hotel-portion of the project.
Trump promised “worst case scenario” occupancy rates of at least 55 percent, but rates never exceeded 45 percent and fell as low as 15 percent, according to court papers. Hotel rooms have been renting at $100 below market.
Trump and Shnaider, who owns the property through a subsidiary known as Talon International, are also locked in litigation, over management issues, according to Politico.
Small investors, who were misled by a investment prospectus and other “deceptive documents,” were granted the right to sue Trump and Talon, after a judge called the offering “a trap to these unsurprisingly unwary purchasers.”
The city of Toronto has pleaded with the hotel to change its name. Over the past year union workers, women’s groups and Muslim groups have staged protests at the property. Trump, meanwhile, is widely disliked in Canada, because of his misogyny, racism and sexism.
As things now stand, the building is heading for an auction to satisfy creditors. The Trump Organization, however, could still retain its long-term deal to manage the property, although allegations of mismanagement and fraud are at the root of a number of lawsuits.
But don’t count on the next owner to keep the building’s tarnished name.
http://www.theimproper.com/144178/donal ... ankruptcy/Security analysts link arrested Russian computer expert to crime websites
Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting of his Security Council in Moscow on Thursday, Feb. 9, 2017.
BY TIM JOHNSON
One of the key figures in a cyber-treason scandal shaking Russia and possibly related to Russian efforts to influence the U.S. presidential election has been linked to underground criminal forums on the web, something cybersecurity analysts say shows the overlap between Russia’s security services and the criminal underworld.
Dmitry Dokuchaev, a major in Russia’s FSB security service and its Information Security Center, the nation’s premier unit investigating cybercrime, used the screen name “Forb” when he mingled with the large underground community of Russian-speaking criminals who use the so-called dark web to trade tools for defrauding consumers in the West.
Dokuchaev’s activities have potential significance to congressional inquiries into President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. Prosecutors under President Vladimir Putin have charged Dokuchaev and his boss with treason, accusing them of collaborating with the CIA just weeks after the Obama administration made public its conclusions that Russia had meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
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Trump addresses Russia accusations, business dealings in post-election press conference
President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday delivered his first press conference since the November presidential election. Trump addressed his relationship with Russia and how he will handle his business once taking office.
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“If you look at his history, he did lots of general cybercrime stuff. He did lots of account takeovers. He did lots of stuff with carding – credit card fraud,” said Vitali Kremez, senior intelligence analyst at Flashpoint, a New York-based firm that provides services to confront cyber threats.
Whether Dokuchaev or his boss, Sergei Mikhailov, had direct ties with the CIA is not known publicly. But Dokuchaev’s activities open a window onto how Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as the FSB – the successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB spy agency – has deep links to the murky world of cybercrime and uses criminals to help reach state objectives.
“The Russian intelligence services are notorious for using criminal groups to create backstopping or moonlighting for their own benefit,” said Leo Taddeo, who until 2015 headed the cyber division of the FBI’s New York City office. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, “there was a great melding of criminal activity and intelligence gathering activity on the part of the FSB.”
Dokuchaev’s arrest sometime before the turn of the year made less news than that of Mikhailov, a colonel who was deputy director of the Information Security Center. According to Russian media closely linked to Putin, Mikhailov was led from a room in the nine-story FSB headquarters in Moscow with a sack over his head.
THE WHOLE STRING OF ARRESTS IS UNPRECEDENTED.
Vitali Kremez, senior intelligence analyst at Flashpoint
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Trump administration eases Russian sanctions to allow U.S. tech exports
Press Secretary Sean Spicer during a press conference on Thursday said the Treasury Department amended recent sanctions imposed by the Obama administration that prevented U.S. companies from exporting electronic products to Russia.
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“The whole string of arrests is unprecedented,” Kremez said, noting that two other men outside of government who are known for advanced hacking and computer skills also were arrested.
Treason charges brought an intense spotlight to the two FSB officers.
“Treason is a particularly unique charge, and it sends a message. It wouldn’t have been brought without very high-level deliberation in the Putin regime,” Taddeo said.
The treason scandal broke in late January, a month after then-President Barack Obama expelled 35 Russians identified as intelligence operatives in retaliation for what the White House called “very disturbing Russian threats to U.S. national security” in connection with hacking during the U.S. election campaign.
In a follow-up 25-page declassified report Jan. 6, the U.S. intelligence community blamed Russia for hacking aimed at helping Trump win the vote.
“Russia’s intelligence services conducted cyber operations against targets associated with the 2016 U.S. presidential election, including targets associated with both major political parties,” the assessment said.
U.S. officials accused Russian military intelligence and the FSB of what the U.S. officials called “malicious cyber activity.”
The FSB has many roles in the cyber sphere domestically and abroad, but is not the only agency involved in regulating and investigating the digital realm. The Russian Interior Ministry also has a dedicated unit, known as Division K (K is for Kiber, or Cyber in Russian).
The FSB conducts counterespionage efforts in the cyber sphere and works with law enforcement in investigations. It also has a commercial function, licensing some products for consumer use, a potential source of corruption.
Before the treason charges were levied, Russian media had sought to portray Mikhailov as corrupt.
“LifeNews.ru, a news outlet that is often linked to the FSB, reports that the FSB found $12 million in cash in a search of his apartment and dacha,” said a U.S. investigator based in Western Europe who closely follows Russian cyber policy and criminal groups but fears retaliation and asked to remain anonymous.
A pro-Kremlin television network, Tsargrad TV, which is controlled by Konstantin Malofeev, a billionaire favored by Putin, reported in late January that Mikhailov had passed to U.S. agents the information that allowed Washington to issue the intelligence report blaming Moscow for election-related hacking.
Cybercriminals from Russia and Russian-speaking Eastern Europe and Central Asia buy and sell malicious tools, services, stolen personal data and passwords in forums on what is known as the dark web, an area of the internet that can be visited only with a Tor browser that guarantees anonymity.
At the RSA Cybersecurity conference here this week, researchers said Russian cyber-criminal techniques were expanding rapidly. Researchers in 2016 identified 62 new families of ransomware, or code used to encrypt a victim’s data until a ransom is paid. Of those, 47 are associated with Russian groups, said Anton Ivanov, senior malware analyst at Kaspersky Lab, a Moscow-based company that sells anti-virus and other cybersecurity products.
Such ransomware is deployed all over the world, he said, attacking a victim every 20 seconds.
How deeply Dokuchaev may have been involved in forums is not known.
Kremez, who was born in Belarus, a former Soviet republic, said he didn’t believe Dokuchaev had acted alone in visiting dark web criminal forums or without FSB knowledge.
“He was a high-level FSB agent,” Kremez said. “There must be more than one individual. It’s a safe assumption.”
Details of the case against Dokuchaev and Mikhailov are secret.
TREASON CASES ARE CLASSIFIED . . . SO GETTING DIRECT, VERIFIED INFORMATION MAY BE HARD.
U.S. investigator of Russian cyber activities
“Treason cases are classified . . . so getting direct, verified information may be hard,” said the investigator.
Russian media, principally the Novaya Gazeta newspaper, also suggest a link between the two detained officers with a hacking group known as Shaltai Boltai, which means Humpty Dumpty in Russian, and which has leaked emails hacked from high-level Russian politicians and shaken down others to avert publishing their stolen information, the investigator said.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation- ... rylink=cpyThe Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports:
“Erovinkin was a key aide to Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister. He has been described as a key liaison between Sechin and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now head of the state-owned oil company Rosneft, Sechin is repeatedly named in the so-called Trump dossier… [Christopher] Steele wrote in the dossier, which was dated July 19, 2016, that much of the information it contained was provided by a source close to Sechin. That source was Erovinkin, according to Russia expert Christo Grozev of Risk Management Lab, a think-tank based in Bulgaria.”
Through their mutual love of petrochemicals and profits, Igor Sechin and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil are pals, and in fact Sechin complained that US sanctions against Russia kept him from coming to America to “ride the roads…on motorcycles with Tillerson.”
http://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.768228
mmm.... now when was that Flynn phone call? 19.5 here 19.5 there 19.5 everywhere
In December, Russia announced the sale of a 19.5 percent share of Rosneft, that massive government oil company run by Igor Sechin. He and Putin appeared on television to announce the deal, and Reuters reported that Putin “called it a sign of international faith in Russia, despite US and EU financial sanctions on Russian firms including Rosneft.”
........
mentions that Carter Page, a member of Trump’s foreign policy team during his campaign, had a secret meeting with Sechin in Moscow in July 2016, in which the two reportedly discussed the possible lifting [of] US sanctions against Russia, in exchange for a 19 percent stake in Rosneft (It is not clear from the memo who would get the stake, but apparently it would have been the Trump campaign)” [Italics mine. mw]. She speculates that this, too, may have been another leak by the now-deceased Oleg Erovinkin.
http://www.salon.com/2017/02/14/for-ame ... ussia-now/U.S. inquiries into Russian election hacking include three FBI probes
By Joseph Menn | SAN FRANCISCO
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation is pursuing at least three separate probes relating to alleged Russian hacking of the U.S. presidential elections, according to five current and former government officials with direct knowledge of the situation.
While the fact that the FBI is investigating had been reported previously by the New York Times and other media, these officials shed new light on both the precise number of inquires and their focus.
The FBI's Pittsburgh field office, which runs many cyber security investigations, is trying to identify the people behind breaches of the Democratic National Committee's computer systems, the officials said. Those breaches, in 2015 and the first half of 2016, exposed the internal communications of party officials as the Democratic nominating convention got underway and helped undermine support for Hillary Clinton.
The Pittsburgh case has progressed furthest, but Justice Department officials in Washington believe there is not enough clear evidence yet for an indictment, two of the sources said.
Meanwhile the bureau’s San Francisco office is trying to identify the people who called themselves “Guccifer 2” and posted emails stolen from Clinton campaign manager John Podesta’s account, the sources said. Those emails contained details about fundraising by the Clinton Foundation and other topics.
Beyond the two FBI field offices, FBI counterintelligence agents based in Washington are pursuing leads from informants and foreign communications intercepts, two of the people said.
This counterintelligence inquiry includes but is not limited to examination of financial transactions by Russian individuals and companies who are believed to have links to Trump associates. The transactions under scrutiny involve investments by Russians in overseas entities that appear to have been undertaken through middlemen and front companies, two people briefed on the probe said.
Reuters could not confirm which entities and individuals were under scrutiny.
Scott Smith, the FBI's new assistant director for cyber crime, declined to comment this week on which FBI offices were doing what or how far they had progressed.
The White House had no comment on Friday on the Russian hacking investigations. A spokesman pointed to a comment Trump made during the campaign, in which he said: "As far as hacking, I think it was Russia, but I think we also get hacked by other countries and other people."
During a news conference Thursday, President Donald Trump said he had no business connections to Russia.
The people who spoke to Reuters also corroborated a Tuesday New York Times report that Americans with ties to Trump or his campaign had repeated contacts with current and former Russian intelligence officers before the November election. Those alleged contacts are among the topics of the FBI counterintelligence investigation.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-t ... SKBN15X0OE
