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SEE EPSTEIN 3

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Psy-Group and Black Cube

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Epstein’s crimes left a long money trail, and that trail winds back to Russia. Ranking Member of the Finance Committee Ron Wyden has doggedly sought the truth about Epstein’s transactions with Russian banks and eastern European entities. One Suspicious Activity Report filed by JP Morgan Chase after Epstein’s death shows that between 2003 and 2019, Epstein conducted 4,725 wire transactions totaling over $1 billion. And that’s just one bank. Epstein used multiple banks.

According to JP Morgan Chase, the wire activity was flagged for being “consistent with […] alleged sex trafficking of minors” and for involving “the high risk jurisdiction of the Russian Federation.” CNN notes that two accounts included in the Suspicious Activity Report were linked to now-sanctioned Russian banks Alfa Bank and Sberbank. Also named in the Suspicious Activity Reports: Maxwell, associated entities like Brunel’s MC2 Model Management, and various women and girls.

Let’s go back to the journalist Vicky Ward:

“[…] sources, who range from former arms dealers to former spies — and also Hoffenberg — suggest that Epstein, who lacked any sort of moral compass, decided to […] compromise influential people by recording them doing things they wouldn’t want made public.

“[…] And once he got out of jail, in the last 10 years of his life, Epstein bragged to various people, including journalists, that he was advising a whole assortment of foreign leaders who included Vladimir Putin, Mohammed bin Zayed, Mohammed Bin Salman, various African dictators, Israel, the British — and, of course, the Americans.

“He also told several of the same people that he was making a fortune out of arms, drugs, and diamonds.

“He was known in the intelligence world as a ‘hyper-fixer,’ somebody who can go between different cultures and networks.”

Epstein was known for his parties, which he insisted on hosting in his various mansions where he could completely control the environment. Many of Epstein’s victims have said they believe they were recorded. Virginia Giuffre wrote in her posthumous memoir that Epstein had a “huge library of videotapes” and a room in his New York home where monitors displayed real-time surveillance footage from his properties. “He explicitly talked about using me and what I’d been forced to do with certain men as a form of blackmail, so these men would owe him favors,” she wrote.

Another survivor said Epstein once walked her through his mansion, pointing out pin-sized cameras. He boasted that they were in every room.

According to Epstein’s emails, in 2014 he directed a staffer to procure hidden cameras, which were installed in tissue boxes. The New York Times obtained photos of the interior of Epstein’s New York mansion, which show a camera installed near the ceiling of the master bedroom and another along the molding of an adjoining room. The Times also spotted cameras near a suite of bathrooms on the same floor as Epstein’s bedroom. When police searched his Palm Beach home in 2005, they “located two covert (hidden) cameras.” Both cameras were located inside clocks, one by a desk and the other in the garage. It’s worth noting that Epstein often seemed to get tipped off in advance as to when the Palm Beach Police would be dropping by.

Epstein is said to have once told an ex-girlfriend, “I collect people, I own people, I can damage people.”

The disgraced financier Hoffenberg allegedly claimed to the National Enquirer in a final account before his death that, “Wherever Epstein was entertaining he [and Ghislaine] were taping.” That report was only released last summer, as Hoffenberg had asked the Enquirer not to publish his comments until three years after his death.

According to The Daily Beast, the former US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Alex Acosta, is once said to have claimed Epstein “belonged to intelligence” and that the decision to let him off easy in 2008 was made above his “pay grade.”

The Prime Minister of Poland, a country that has extensive experience with Russian intelligence operations, has opened an investigation into potential links between Epstein and Russian intelligence. Prime Minister Tusk said, “More and more leads, more and more information, and more and more commentary in the global press all relate to the suspicion that this unprecedented paedophilia scandal was co-organised by Russian intelligence services.”

According to alleged anonymous intelligence sources published in the British tabloid The Daily Mail last month, some believe “Jeffrey Epstein was running ‘the world’s largest honeytrap operation’ on behalf of the KGB when he procured women for his network of associates.”

I want to stress that we don’t have the answers. Epstein was an inveterate liar and criminal who often sought to exaggerate his power and influence, and the files need to be viewed through that lens. He could have been working with an intelligence agency, or several intelligence agencies. He could have just been what the Russians call a “useful idiot.” We may never know.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/06/how-john-durhams-probe-has-exposed-trumps-russia-con/

no lnx

How John Durham’s Probe Has Exposed Trump’s Russia Con

His three-year investigation has so far shown the only hoax was orchestrated by the former president.

DAVID CORN

Washington, DC, Bureau Chief

Special counsel John Durham leaves federal court in Washington last month.Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Donald Trump has bad timing. On Friday, he sent a letter to the Pulitzer Prize Board reiterating his demand that it rescind the awards given to the New York Times and the Washington Post in 2018 for their coverage of the Trump-Russia scandal. (That’s not what he called it.) He based this request on the prosecution of Democratic lawyer Michael Sussmann, who was indicted by special counsel John Durham for allegedly lying to the FBI during aSeptember 2016 meeting when he shared with the bureau computer data research that suggested there might be a connection between a Trump-related business and Alfa Bank, a large Russian financial entity. Trump claimed the Sussmann case showed the “Russia hoax was a dirty campaign trick promulgated by Crooked Hillary Clinton and her associates.” Five days later, the jury, after only several hours of deliberation, acquitted Sussmann. Oops.

The quick not-guilty verdict was a sharp slap at Durham’s three-year-long investigation, which was launched by William Barr, when he was Trump’s loyalist attorney general, and which has come across as a political crusade mounted to undermine the various Trump-Russia investigations. Durham was tasked by Barr to investigate the origins of the FBI’s probe of the Russian attack on the 2016 election (which, according to multiple investigations, was waged to help Trump win) and the interactions between Trump associates and Russian operatives. Put simply, Durham’s job was to find that Trump had been set up by the bureau. When the Justice Department inspector general in late 2019 issued a report concluding the FBI had legitimate cause to investigate the Russian assault and the Trump campaign, Durham, in an unusual move, released a statement declaring, “we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.” A-ha, Trumpists exclaimed. Durham was on track to reveal that the FBI investigation was bogus from the get-go and Trump was right: It was all a hoax and a witch hunt.

Yet after years of toil, Durham has produced nothing to suggest the Russia investigation was a Deep State hit-job against Trump. He has brought three cases that have nothing to do with the origins of the investigation. One involved an FBI lawyer who altered an email used to obtain a search warrant after the investigation was started. (The attorney pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a year of probation.)

Another led to the indictment of Igor Danchenko, a source for the so-called Steele dossier, for allegedly lying to the FBI about his sources. His trial is scheduled to begin in October. This prosecution, too, has nothing to do with the origin or legitimacy of the FBI’s investigation, which was not triggered by the Steele reports. The third was the Sussmann case that just exploded in Durham’s face. It, too, was essentially unconnected to the FBI’s core investigation, given that the meeting in question happened months after the bureau began examining the Russian assault and that the FBI quickly dismissed the Trump-Alfa Bank tie. 

Despite declaring over two years ago that he had reason to question the FBI’s opening of the Russia investigation, Durham has failed to make good on his assertion. His investigation has yielded zilch in this regard. His prosecutions are all sideshows.

But Durham has done Trump and his cultists a great favor by providing material they can exploit for one of their favorite pastimes: deflection. 

For over five years, Trump and his minions have endeavored to beat back the Trump-Russia scandal with denial and distraction. They have done all they could to change the subject from the basics of the affair: the Kremlin attacked the 2016 election to help Trump; while this assault was underway, the Trump camp had troubling interactions with Russian operatives and was told the Kremlin intended to covertly assist Trump; Trump hid from the public his effort to land a major development deal in Moscow (for which he sought help from Vladimir Putin); the Trump campaign aided and abetted the Russian attack by denying and/or downplaying it; and, as president, Trump tried to impede the investigation. All of these are confirmed facts that make a damning case that Trump committed a grand act of betrayal to become president. Trump and his defenders, though, have tried to change the subject: the problematic Steele dossier, an improperly obtained search warrant, baseless conspiracy theories about the Democratic Party’s computer servers being whisked away to Ukraine, and, most recently, the Sussmann meeting. 

Look at Trump’s letter to the Pulitzer board. It dwells on details that came out during the Sussmann trial about the Clinton campaign promoting the Alfa Bank allegation. This case, Trump claims, shows that Clintonites were trying to spread opposition research about him, particularly iffy data about a purported computer server tie between his business and Alfa Bank. He declares he was the victim of “shameful smears” from the Clinton campaign—and these covert attacks were the basis for the FBI investigation. The Clinton crew, of course, was trying to disseminate negative information about Trump—especially worrisome material about a possible Trump-Russia connection. But this had nothing to do with the investigation already begun by the FBI, which was launched independently of the Clinton effort. 

Trump writes, “I again call on you to rescind the Prize you awarded based on blatantly fake, derogatory and defamatory news. If you choose not to do so, we will see you in court.” Putting aside whether Trump can sue a journalism awards committee for content it honors, he is yet again engaging in deflection. Nothing in the Sussmann case undercuts the investigations or the reporting related to the central elements of the scandal. Trump is trying to turn the thin gruel Durham has served up into a feast.

In the reality-based world, Durham actually has undermined Trump and his bogus narrative. He has failed to demonstrate that the Russia investigation was a witch hunt or hoax cooked up by Trump’s enemies. His small-beer cases do not challenge any of the main findings of the investigations, which justifiably taint Trump’s 2016 victory and presidency. Durham’s work (so far) shows that Trump’s attempts to distract from the scandal have been nothing but a big con. Trump shrieks about Sussmann, the Steele dossier, and other matters so the public doesn’t see what’s clearly there: a record of misdeeds, lies, and treachery. In a way, Durham has provided a valuable service. His inability to uncover evidence of a hoax confirms that Trump’s denials and diversions have been the real hoax all along.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfa-Bank

aLFA-BANK JSC (Alfa-Bank),[4] is the largest of the private banks in Russia.[5] It was founded in 1990 by Russian businessman Mikhail Fridman, who is still the controlling owner today. Headquartered in Moscow, it operates in seven countries, providing financial services to 22 million active corporate customers and over 1 million active retail clients as of 2021.[1] Alfa-Bank is particularly active in Russia and Ukraine, ranking among the top 10 largest banks in terms of capital in both countries.[6][7] 

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Alfa-Bank has been named Russia's best bank on numerous occasions by financial publications, and was placed 270th in the 2009 edition of The Banker magazine's Top 1000 World Banks.[8] The bank is known internationally for its Alfa Fellowship Program,[9] which gives emerging young leaders from around the world the opportunity to gain professional experience in various fields. Alfa-Bank is also well-known in Russia for its social and cultural initiatives, ranging from charity projects to educational programmes, exhibitions, concerts and music festivals. On March 1, 2022, Mikhail Fridman and Pyotr Aven left the bank's board of directors[10] after coming under EU sanctions imposed in response to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.

History

Timeline:[11][12]

1990s

2000s

Alfa Bank branch inOdessa, Ukraine (2012)

2010s

Since 2004, Alfa-Bank has been assisting "Life Line", a charity programme for aiding seriously ill children. Alfa-Bank was the first company to organise a collection of private donations to the foundation.[45] Since September 2008, bank customers have the opportunity to transfer cash donations to help children with the help of the Alfa-Click Internet Bank or a conventional bank transfer without a bank commission.[46][47] The bank also cooperates with WWF,[48] supports most of its initiatives, and also invites its clients to provide financial support to the fund.[49]

The bank operates a volunteer organization called "Give Kindness". The bank collects humanitarian aid for orphanages, boarding schools and social shelters, and also attracts employees as volunteers. Every year, the bank organizes charity events called "Children's Day", "Help Me Get Ready for School", and "Christmas Miracle".[50]

Education

Since 1995, the bank has run the "Alfa-Chance" student scholarship programme, which gives school graduates from various regions of Russia the opportunity to receive higher education at leading universities in the country. Since 2008, Alfa-Bank, in cooperation with HSE, has run a programme to provide nominal scholarships to first-year students from Russian regions (except Moscow and St. Petersburg) who have won prizes at All-Russian School Olympiads and the HSE Multi-Profile Olympiad.[51] In total, the "Alfa-Chance" program involves about 17 higher education institutions. The bank operates the Alfa Fellowship Program, which enables young specialists from the United States, Great Britain and Germany to undergo an internship in Russia.[52]

Culture

Alfa-Bank plays an active role in developing cultural and educational activities, primarily aimed at supporting national art. On 7 June 2000, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and Alfa-Bank signed a cooperation agreement, under which the participants agreed to work together to organise joint cultural events and creative projects. Every year, exhibitions and concerts are held with the support of a bank in Russia. In addition, Alfa-Bank participates in the organisation of exhibitions and concerts by Russian cultural figures abroad. For example, on 18 February 2000, a concert by the Moscow Virtuosos Symphony Orchestra conducted by maestro Vladimir Spivakov was held in London. It was the orchestra's first performance in London for 10 years. The presentation was sponsored by Alfa-Bank. Alfa-Bank, together with the Moscow Literary Fund, runs a scholarship support programme for writers, aimed at motivating authors to create new works of literature: prose, poetry, drama, translations, and books for children.[53]

The bank is also one of the co-founders of the "Big Book" National Literary Award.

Alfa-Bank periodically sponsors or participates in the organisation of concerts by foreign stars in Russia, including Bono(2010), Elton John (1995, 2001 and 2007), Aerosmith (2007), Sting (1996, 2001 and 2006), Whitney Houston (2004), and Paul McCartney (2003 and 2004). Some of the singers invited were performing in Russia for the first time.[54][55][56][57] Alfa-Bank also organises an electronic music and technology festival called Alfa Future People. Headliners have included stars of the world electronic scene such as Paul Oakenfold, Avicii, Skrillex, Pompeya, Tesla Boy, and Infected Mushroom, among others.[58][59]

In July 2014, Alfa-Bank announced the launch of the City Tours with Alfa social project. The Bank provides financial and organisational support to the country's best museums, as well as tour bureaus supporting the development of city tours in Russia.[60]

In early 2021, Alfa-Bank hired the Russian rapper Morgenshtern as a "youth director". This was preceded by the appearance of a scandalous video in which the Federal Antimonopoly Service found violations of Russian advertising law. The singer's task was to attract 100,000 young new clients. Some experts see this venture as a reputational risk.[61] After an administrative case was initiated against Morgenshtern in April 2021 for drug propaganda, Alfa-Bank disavowed previous messages and called them an "advertising stunt".[62]

Technology

Protection of business reputation

On 21 January 2014, Alfa-Bank and Mikhail Fridman filed a lawsuit for the protection of their business reputation against the chairman of the Yabloko Party, Sergei Mitrokhin, the editorial staff of the Izvestia newspaper and a correspondent from the newspaper. They considered that statements made by Mitrokhin and Izvestia that "**Aleksei Navalny**is carrying out political orders from the Alfa Group" did not correspond to reality and discredited their business reputation.[68] However, the court refused to satisfy the company's claim against Mitrokhin.[69]

Jones Day

In the United States, the Jones Day law firm represents numerous Russian entities, including Alfa-Bank and Alfa Group.[40]

Sanctions

Main article: 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

On February 23, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the beginning of military operations in Ukraine, launching an invasion. This prompted countries to impose severe economic sanctions on Russian individuals, companies, and banks in addition to those placed on Russia in response to the 2021-2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis.

On February 24, 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden announced sanctions on several Russian banks, including Alfa-Bank; the restrictions include "dealings in new debt of greater than 14 days maturity and new equity".[70] Alfa-Bank's press service made a statement in the Russian press that these sanctions would not affect the bank's operations.[71]

See also

Notes

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omg

https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/unbelievably-unqualified-democratic-senator-warns-trump-appointed-doj-lawyer-tied

'Unbelievably Unqualified': Democratic Senator Warns Trump-Appointed DOJ Lawyer Tied to a Russian Bank Might Interfere in Mueller's Probe

"He will have visibility into the Mueller investigation."

By Cody Fenwick / AlterNet July 11, 2018, 2:41 PM GMT

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) issued a serious warning Wednesday about Brian Benczkowski, a lawyer confirmed earlier in the day to run the criminal division of the Department of Justice.

Whitehouse discussed the confirmation with CNN's Erin Burnett, who noted that Benczkowski raised questions because he previously worked for Alfa Bank, the largest bank in Russia which has close ties to President Vladimir Putin — a fact he initially failed to disclose to the Senate on a questionnaire.

"This actually does run up my temperature a bit," Sheldon said, noting that Benczkowski is "unbelievably unqualified" for the role he is taking on.

"As the chief of the criminal division, he will have visibility into the Mueller investigationwhenever that investigation needs the requisite approvals from the criminal division for various investigative and prosecutive steps that they must take. And he has the ability to delay or deny the approvals. So he's in a position not just to peer into the Mueller investigation, but also to interfere with it," Whitehouse said.

"It's pretty hard to swallow. I think we've got to watch this like a hawk," Whitehouse said. "I think there's a significant chance that he's there to be a clandestine backchannel, either to the recused attorney general, for whom he worked for years, or to the Trump team."

Watch the clip below:

"This does run up my temperature a bit ... he will have visibility into the Mueller investigation." - @SenWhitehouse explains why he has major concerns with Brian Benczkowski, a DOJ nominee with ties to a Vladamir Putin-linked Russian bank https://t.co/PWL73nDiXg pic.twitter.com/8olhGMqs9s

— OutFrontCNN (@OutFrontCNN) July 11, 2018

Cody Fenwick is a reporter and editor. Follow him on Twitter @codytfenwick.

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/steele-dossier-says-information-went-both-ways-between-trump-and-russia

no lnx

Associated Press has compiled a list of the information provided in the list of memos authored by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, and compared it with what has been revealed through court filings and public statements. And while the AP finds what they believe to be “snippets of fiction” in the pages, they also find that a great deal of what Steele produced is proving to have a basis in fact.

What has turned out to be true is the primary narrative thread that runs through all the memos — The Russian government set up an “elaborate operation” to damage Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election through social media, propaganda, and by stealing Democratic information and providing it to Trump. And the Russian government sought to aid Donald Trump, whose campaign responded eagerly to Russian offers of help.

The Kremlin set out to harm Clinton and help Trump. Trump jumped on the opportunity. That makes Trump a colluder, conspirator, and any other c-word that comes to mind.

Steele’s memos were also accurate in many details, such as laying out Carter Page’s meeting with Russian officials at a time when it wasn’t otherwise known, possibly even to the FBI who had been watching Page for years. But there’s another key area of the memos that often gets obscured by the focus on some of the more sensational … yellow elements.

One of the primary claims of the Steele memos is not just that Russia sought to help Trump, but that the flow of information went both ways. Part of the price for Putin’s help, according to Steele’s sources, was that Trump help Putin in ways that he could address even if he didn’t win—by providing the Kremlin with information on wealthy Russians in the United States. It’s not clear whether this information from Trump to Russia has been substantiated. Those portions of the investigations in the House and Senate that have been exposed to the public don’t even seem to have ventured into this territory,

The idea that Donald Trump was providing something to Vladimir Putin in exchange for his assistance months before the elections is certainly intriguing. Trump’s habit of selling property to Russians and other former Soviets would position him to provide this information if asked. So far there doesn’t seem to be anything to indicate that this part of the memos has been verified … but if it were, that would seem to put the final nail in any idea that Trump was not fully on board with efforts to cooperate with Russia.

The AP also notes that the memos have some critics who are not currently in the US House of Representatives — a group of Russian “businessmen” who have sued Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS who hired him to research Trump, and the news site BuzzFeed which first published some of Steele’s information, The Russians in question are owners of a Moscow holding company called Alfa Group, The four men involved are named in a pair of Steele’s memos that don’t seem to be very connected with other memos, and which are primarily focused on internal issues within Russia. Which brings up the possibility that one of Steele’s Russian sources was trying to use the opportunity to attack rivals.

However … the four men involved in these suits have definite Kremlin-connections. And the comments made in the memos seem a lot less ludicrous now than when Steele first handed them over in 2016.

The Gubarev memo said his business “had been using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data” in an operation against Democratic Party leaders.

It’s clear that Russian operatives in 2016 (and today) did use botnets. It’s clear they did use malware to gain entry into Democratic systems and steal data. The only question would be whether or not Steele’s sources fingered the right company when they pointed to Alfa Group.

And if that’s all that Steele got wrong … Donald Trump should be extremely worried about the possibility of other memos being confirmed. For all the attempts Republicans in the House have made to discredit Steele’s work, and to suggest that the whole Russia investigation was tainted by association with these memos, Steele seems to have been far more right than he was wrong.

As for nailing down Trump, forget the pee tape. Find the evidence that Donald Trump was feeding information back to Putin.

ref

https://apnews.com/55b8a55d5a7545b99d0f915affb7d852

Some questions in Trump-Russia dossier now finding answers

No one has painted a more vivid or lurid portrait of a purported alliance between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia than a quiet, nondescript former British spy named Christopher Steele.

Steele’s once-confidential campaign memos were published just before Trump’s inauguration, unleashing tales of cavorting prostitutes and conniving campaign aides on secret sorties with agents of the Kremlin.

Ever since, the credibility of these Democratic-funded memos — the so-called Steele dossier — has remained the subject of both official investigation and political sniping.

In the 18 months since the dossier’s release, government investigations and reports, criminal cases, and authoritative news articles have begun to resolve at least some of the questions surrounding the memos.

As a whole, the Steele dossier now appears to be a murky mixture of authentic revelations and repurposed history, likely interspersed with snippets of fiction or disinformation, an Associated Press review finds.

MIXING FACT AND FICTION?

At the vortex of all the arguments is Steele, often described as a buttoned-down, earnest defender of Western interests, who spied on Russia for the British government and later founded a business intelligence firm built on his network of confidential informants.

Steele’s 17 memos laid out an extraordinarily detailed narrative of how the Russian government supposedly collaborated with the Trump campaign in an elaborate operation to tilt the 2016 presidential race in his favor.

Some of the dossier’s broad threads have now been independently corroborated. U.S. intelligence agencies and the special counsel’s investigation into Russian election interference did eventually find that Kremlin-linked operatives ran an elaborate operation to promote Trump and hurt Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, as the dossier says in its main narrative.

The dossier first told of a clandestine partnership between the Trump campaign and Russian officials in a memo dated June 2016, the month before the FBI began investigating that very possibility.

Steele laid out details of a secret Moscow meeting between the Russians and Trump adviser Carter Page months before FBI suspicions about Page and news reports about just such a meeting forced him to leave the campaign.

The dossier’s portrait of a cooperative campaign also has been bolstered by developments it did not specifically foretell: Legal cases and authoritative reporting have exposed Trump’s son Donald Jr. and another aide as receptive to Russian overtures to supply dirt on Clinton.

However, the dossier makes other sensational, unverified claims. It reports that Trump provided intelligence to the Kremlin on wealthy Russians in the U.S. The Russian government, in return, was said to supply Trump with secrets about his political rivals while collecting compromising information on him, including recording him with prostitutes who supposedly urinated on a bed in a Moscow hotel.

It remains unclear if the Trump campaign, in the end, secretly acquired Russian information, and if so, whether Trump himself was aware and involved.

For his part, Trump has dismissed the memos as “fake news” and turned “no collusion” into the Twitter tagline of his presidency.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied his government meddled in the election.

DEFAMATION CLAIMS

Four wealthy Russians take more specific exception to the dossier: They say they were libeled.

In four separate lawsuits filed as recently as April, the Russians sued Steele and BuzzFeed, the online news outlet that published the memos in January 2017. Three of the Russians — all owners of a Moscow-based financial-industrial conglomerate called Alfa Group — also have sued Fusion GPS, the research company that enlisted Steele under a contract with a law firm connected to the Democrats.

Russian tech entrepreneur Aleksej Gubarev and the Alfa Group’s owners — Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan — all say they had nothing to do with the events described in the dossier. In cases playing out in state, federal and British courts, they say they took unfair hits to their reputations.

The four men are named in two separate Steele memos, both of which are seemingly out of alignment with the rest of the dossier, as their legal teams have stressed in court filings.

Their questionable relevance raises the possibility that they were motivated by someone with a different agenda who perhaps fed false information to the former spy. Indeed, Gubarev’s lawyer has repeatedly suggested his client might have been framed by a competitor or someone looking for a scapegoat in the computer business.

In the Alfa Group memo, the billionaire owners were said to perform unspecified political favors for Putin. Fridman and Aven allegedly sent “large amounts of illicit cash” to Putin in the 1990s when he was still a city official in St. Petersburg.

The Gubarev memo said his business “had been using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data” in an operation against Democratic Party leaders. He was purported to have been recruited under duress by Russian security agents.

Any actions ascribed to the four Russians have never been independently confirmed by official investigations or authoritative news reports.

The Alfa Group owners do have ties to the Kremlin. Aven is a former Russian foreign trade minister, and Fridman has been said to be close to Putin. Like Fridman, Khan is Ukrainian-born and one of the original founders of the Alfa Group. However, their financial and industrial empire has also waged bare-fisted battles with other powerful Russian interests, leaving adversaries who might want to take them down.

Gubarev, who lives in Cyprus, also is a possible target for scapegoating as the owner of a Luxembourg-based digital services business with thousands of customers, subsidiaries around the world, and business relationships in Russia, the U.S. and elsewhere.

Unlike the other memos, Steele’s Alfa Group write-up concentrates on internal Russian affairs, with no direct connection to the U.S. election. The only tie is an unsupported inference in the memo’s heading that it somehow involves the topic of “Russia/US Presidential Election.”

“Mr. Fridman, Mr. Aven and Mr. Khan have absolutely nothing to do, in any way, with the issue that is the theme of the dossier — alleged collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign,” the trio’s lawyer, Alan Lewis, said in an interview.

Oddly, the memo about Gubarev is dated five weeks after the election.

“Why the heck did he even bother to continue writing this stuff?” Gubarev’s lawyer, Valentin Gurvits, asked in an interview.

Steele has said the Gubarev memo came from unsolicited details that continued to trickle in after Trump’s election, and his lawyers have acknowledged that the memo “needed to be analyzed and further investigated/verified.”

BuzzFeed has issued an apology for publishing Gubarev’s name and redacted it in response to his complaints.

Representatives for both Steele and Fusion GPS chief executive Glenn Simpson declined to comment for this story.

POSSIBLE MISTAKES

In a filing in the Alfa Group owners’ lawsuit, Steele’s lawyers say that memo “came from a network of vetted sources known to Mr. Steele ... and resources developed over a lifetime of Russian intelligence work in public and private service.”

However, testifying to Congress, Simpson quoted Steele as saying that any intelligence, especially from Russia, is bound to carry intentional disinformation, but that Steele believes his dossier is “largely not disinformation.”

Both men deny giving the documents to BuzzFeed.

BuzzFeed’s legal arguments don’t rely primarily on the truth of the memos. Instead, they cast the dossier as something that was under review by multiple layers of government and thus subject to news coverage as an official document, whether true or not. Judges have decided to allow that argument.

BuzzFeed News spokesman Matt Mittenthal said “the fact that these allegations were being taken seriously at the highest levels of government was in itself a real story here.”

BuzzFeed’s lawyers have acknowledged that Gubarev’s involvement could have been tangential, simply “turning a blind eye” to wrongdoing by websites he hosted.

GUBAREV’S WORLD

Even before the Steele dossier, a 2014 lawsuit filed against Gubarev’s company in Florida opened a window on how readily associates can become adversaries in the post-Soviet business world.

The suit, dismissed last year, was filed by Depicto Commercial Ltd., a little-known company registered in the British Virgin Islands. The company contended that it lent $627,000 to Gubarev’s business and that he failed to repay as agreed; Gubarev’s side contended it repaid what was owed.

The lawsuit identifies Depicto Commercial’s principal figure as Victor Lukashenko, a Belarusian digital services businessman.

Lukashenko spent time in prison in 2010-2012 in that former Soviet republic, according to his lawyer, Rolandas Tilindis. He said Lukashenko, who is now in hiding, was accused of improperly exchanging cryptocurrency for real money as a service to customers, not realizing the currency was the product of fraud.

Gurvitz, Gubarev’s lawyer, said his client “had absolutely no relationship” with Lukashenko beyond the loan.

The Depicto Commercial lawsuit gives little detail about that company. However, a company with that name has been identified in previously leaked corporate documents from the Bahamas, with a director named Emilios Hadjivangeli. Hadjivangeli runs a corporate services business in Cyprus, Gubarev’s home and a haven for well-to-do Russians and their money.

Hadjivangeli has been listed as an official for hundreds of companies. Many appear to be so-called shell companies, where wealthy Russians and others often list intermediary strawmen as executives to hide the actual ownership.

Hadjivangeli did not respond to messages seeking comment.

Gurvitz said that his client has never heard of Hadjivangeli and that there is no reason to believe that he or Lukashenko was involved in any way with the Steele dossier.

Dossier timeline: https://interactives.ap.org/steele-dossier-timeline/

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https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/heres-everything-you-need-know-about-right-wing-theory-fbi-planted-spy-trump

Here's Everything You Need to Know About Right-Wing Theory That FBI Planted Spy in Trump Campaign

The claim relies upon the testimony of a co-founder of Fusion GPS.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/is-muellers-eye-on-some-russian-oligarchs

Famously discreet special counsel Robert Mueller, as he shows interest in the connections between Russia’s government and Donald Trump, often leaves clues behind for those trying to follow him, rather like a hunter blazing a trail—or perhaps like the boy who recently fell into the Los Angeles sewer system. They’re not obvious, just a handprint here or there, but they’re right in front of anyone who cares to look.

One of the most tantalizing of those clues may appear in Mueller’s memorandum to the court prior to the sentencing Tuesday of Alex van der Zwaan, a 33-year-old Dutch lawyer who pleaded guilty in February to charges that he lied to Mueller’s investigators. In the March 27 memo, Mueller sketched reasons for van der Zwaan to do at least a little jail time, citing a “scarcity of mitigating factors and several aggravating circumstances”(PDF).

On its face, the interest in van der Zwaan relates to his work with former Trump campaign managers Paul Manafort and Rick Gates in Ukraine. Van der Zwaan doubtless knows a lot about what the two were up to there, including their allegedly extensive illicit financial dealings and connections with a former agent of Russian military intelligence, the GRU, referred to as “Person A” in Mueller’s memorandum. It’s van der Zwaan’s lies about that latter connection, along with his refusal to cooperate with prosecutors, that landed him with a 30-day sentence.

But the Mueller team may have had another purpose in going after van der Zwaan: He is the son-in-law of Russian oligarch German Khan, a member of the powerful Russian Alfa Group consortium, about which many sensational allegations have been made over the years, some of them of great potential interest to the Mueller investigation looking at possible complicity between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Khan and the other Alfa principals were noticeably absent from the list of Russiansand Russian entities sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury on Friday. But that does not mean that they are off Mueller's radar, and at least one of their longtime associates is on the list.

...

no lnx

Zaslavskiy, head of research at the Free Russia Foundation, noted that Mueller would have “multiple reasons” for a close look at the group, including its mention in the Steele dossier and the allegations (which Alfa denied) that it had secret internet communications with the Trump organization during the presidential campaign.

Mueller makes a direct reference to Khan in the van der Zwaan sentencing memorandum which, by itself, just might suggest Khan has caught his eye: “Van der Zwaan is a person of ample financial means—both personally and through his father-in-law, a prominent Russian oligarch, who has paid substantial sums to the defendant and his wife [that is, Khan’s daughter]. He [van der Zwaan] can pay any fine imposed.”

But the handprint on the sewer wall could be the court document cited as a reference for this statement, which actually has nothing to do directly with van der Zwaan, or with German Khan’s personal payments to his daughter and his son-in-law. The document (PDF) is in fact the complaint filed by Khan and his partners in the Alfa Group, fellow oligarchs Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, against Glenn Simpson and his company, Fusion GPS, for commissioning and disseminating the so-called Trump Dossier compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele.

The lawyers for van der Zwaan were wise to this ploy, with one telling the judge: “Frankly, I was stunned to see the gratuitous reference to his father-in-law in their papers as an oligarch, as if that has some bearing, or what their characterization is has some bearing on Mr. van der Zwaan. And a cite to a civil case involving his father-in-law; another gratuitous citation involving his father-in-law, a case that has nothing whatsoever to do with Alex.”

The judge responded, “I have no intention of sentencing his father-in-law.”

But Mueller would seem to be much more interested.

One of the 17 memos in “The Dossier” (not the one about urinating sex workers in the Moscow Ritz Carlton) makes allegations about the Alfa Group and its principals that could be of great interest to Mueller. But Mueller is careful to make no reference of his own to Steele’s handiwork. The alleged Justice Department reliance on “The Dossier,” or not, was the focus of dueling memos by the contentious members of the House Intelligence Committee a few weeks ago. No need to open that fetid debate again.

By citing the Alfa Group complaint, filed last October, Mueller lets the lawyers for Khan, Aven, and Fridman tell you what was alleged against them, which they say repeatedly is false and defamatory. Indeed, they claim “the Plaintiffs and Alfa are collateral damage in a U.S. political operation… that has nothing do with the the Plaintiffs.”

Steele’s memo labeled “Company Intelligence Report” or CIR 112, according to the Alfa complaint against Simpson, “specifically discusses the Plaintiffs. Its title, by itself, is defamatory: ‘RUSSIA/US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: KREMIN-ALPHA [sic] GROUP CO-OPERATION.’ CIR 112 suggests that Alfa and its executives, including the Plaintiffs, ‘cooperated’ in an alleged Kremlin-orchestrated campaign to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

The Alfa complaint goes on to cite CIR 112 alleging the “‘current closeness’ of an ‘Alpha Group/PUTIN relationship,’ including that ‘[s]ignificant favors continue to be done in both directions’ and that ‘FRIDMAN and AVEN [are] still giving informal advice to PUTIN, especially on the US.’”

The Dossier, as cited in the Alfa complaint, then went on to allege that in the 1990s a former employee of the group who now works closely with Putin got his start by delivering “large amounts of illicit cash to the Russian president, at that time deputy Mayor of St. Petersburg” and by 2016 was serving as an intermediary between Alfa and Putin.

“The allegations are false,” says the Alfa complaint. “And their defamatory nature is clear: CIR 112 alleges that, in the 1990s, Alfa (a member of ‘Alpha Group’) and three of its largest beneficial owners purportedly engaged in actions of criminal bribery of Vladimir Putin, a public official, to secure favorable business treatment.”

In fact, the alleged purveyor of cash to Putin, Oleg Govorun, did not join Alfa officially until after Putin left the St. Petersburg mayor’s office. But, interestingly, Govorun, currently head of Putin's directorate for social and economic cooperation with the Commonwealth of Independent States, is on the new sanctions list from the Treasury.

Why would Mueller include a reference to the complaint against Fusion GPS in the van der Zwaan sentencing memo?

Khan, who ranked number 11 on the 2017 Forbes list of Russian billionaires, makes an interesting contrast with the bookish, wholesome-looking van der Zwaan, who, according to his lawyers, is desperate to get home to his pregnant wife in Britain. A 2008 U.S. embassy memo from Moscow published by WikiLeaks provided a description of Khan, known as one of Russia’s most ruthless businessmen, by a British oil executive named Tim Summers, who went on a hunting trip with him:

“Khan had shown up for the trip with not just his girl friend (Khan is married) but also with six prostitutes. They had flown out to Khan’s hunting lodge, which Summers said was like a Four Seasons hotel in the middle of nowhere. At dinner that evening, Khan had told a stunned Summers that The Godfather was his favorite movie, that he watched it every few months, and that he considered it a ‘manual for life.’ Khan had also come to dinner armed with a chrome-plated pistol.”

Khan and Mikhail Fridman, both originally from Ukraine, created the Alfa Group in 1989, along with Alexei Kuzmichev, and were later joined by Petr Aven. The group included Alfa Bank, one of the largest private banks in Russia with branches worldwide, a 50 percent stake in the oil giant TNK-BP and Alfa-Eko, which exported oil and was headed by Khan. According to a report from the research firm Stratfor in 2007, available on WikiLeaks, Aven was known to be an especially close personal friend of Rosneft chief Igor Sechin, a key Putin ally (PDF).

And the Alfa Group and Sechin have worked closely in the oil business. In 2013, Rosneft purchased Alfa’s stake in TNK-BP for $27.7 billion, and Alfa invested the proceeds in a new consortium, LetterOne, an international investment business, focusing on energy, technology, and health.

Despite their well-established ties to Putin—Aven’s friendship with Putin, as he openly acknowledges, goes back to the early 1990s—the Alfa Group billionaires have thus far avoided Western sanctions by maintaining a careful balance between meeting Kremlin requirements and maintaining a favorable public image in the West. Alfa Bank notably pulled out of Crimea after Russia’s 2014 annexation of the region, which it publicly opposed, and it was the only large Russian bank to be exempted from sanctions.

When asked at a 2015 congressional hearing whether Fridman was a potential target for U.S. sanctions, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland emphasized that the measures were aimed at “Russian public government assets and entities. Mr. Fridman runs one of the few remaining private companies in Russia, and, as such, has had his own strong views as a private citizen about appropriate Russian-European relations.”

The Alfa Group has huge business interests around the world and runs an ambitious PR campaign to bolster its directors’ images as philanthropists and friends of the West. During the period 2004-2015, Alfa Bank reportedly paid the U.S. lobbying firm BGR close to $6 million to lobby on behalf of “bilateral US-Russian relations.” Aven, for one, received an award for corporate citizenship in 2015 from the Kennan Institute of the Wilson Center, which sponsors research on Russia. (That same year Putin bestowed a Kremlin award on Aven.) Aven also is a major funder and board member of Moscow’s New Economic School, which hosts many Western scholars. Aven’s daughter and son both attended Yale, as did Fridman’s daughter.

But the Alfa Group allegedly has a dark side, some of which emerged here in the United States during a civil suit filed by Fridman, Aven, and Alfa Bank in 2000 against the Center for Public Integrity, which had published a piece about the Alfa Group that they claimed was defamatory. The piece in question discussed allegations of organized crime and drug activities involving the group that had been made public in Russia. In a September 2005 opinion in favor of the defendants, Judge John Bates, citing reams of media articles about Alfa, as well as a Russian state security (FSB) report on the group, observed: “Aven and Fridman have been dogged by allegations of corruption and illegal conduct. Russian newspapers have published repeated claims that Aven and Fridman have rigged the auction of state assets through government connections, threatened the lives of government officials, ordered the assassination of a mobster and engaged in narcotics trafficking and money laundering.”

Although the allegations mentioned in 2005 decision were repeatedly and vehemently denied, it’s easy to see what Mueller would be interested in whether there’s any fire behind all that smoke.

It’s also of interest that after Manafort and Gates emerged to run the Trump campaign in March 2016, further connections to the Alfa Group’s shadowy influence crept in. On April 27, Richard Burt, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany, helped to craft Trump’s first major foreign policy speech. At the time Burt was a nonexecutive director of the Alfa Group’s LetterOne and a member of its 10-person supervisory board. In May 2010 and May 2011, Burt had accompanied Mikhail Fridman on a visit to the White House. And Burt’s lobbying firm, McLarty Associates, was hired in 2016 by LetterOne to promote the group’s business interests, in particular, its plans to get into the U.S. health care industry. Trump’s conciliatory tone toward Russia in his speech was evident: “I believe an easing of tensions and improved relations with Russia… Common sense says this cycle of hostility must end.”