mafia russia

=format lost=an 5 23 guessno lnxFBI raids Florida Trump Towers condo owned by Russian businessmen
David McAfeeand Raw StoryMay 14, 2023The luxury Trump Towers at Sunny Isles Beach in South Florida reportedly welcomed a different type of visitor on Thursday: the Federal Bureau of Investigation.The raid by the FBI on the property, for which former president Donald Trump has a licensing deal to use his name, was reported by Miami Herald."A squad of FBI special agents, assisted by local police, descended on Trump Tower III at 15811 Collins Ave. to carry out a search of unit 4102," the outlet reported. "It’s owned by a shell company, MIC-USA LLC, that is controlled by two Russian businessmen, Oleg Sergeyevich Patsulya and Agunda Konstantinovna Makeeva, according to state corporation records."
Miami Herald further reported:"On Friday, a spokesman for the FBI’s Miami field office said it 'was conducting court-ordered law enforcement activity in the vicinity of that location,' but provided no other information."The area is reportedly known as "Little Moscow.""Sunny Isles Beach has been dubbed 'Little Moscow' by locals because it’s home to many Russian expatriates," according to the report. "Some expressed concerns about a backlash against their affluent beachfront community after the Russian military invaded Ukraine last year and the U.S. government started pursuing sanctions against oligarchs who hide their wealth in real estate in South Florida and other parts of the country."
The shell company reportedly bought the three-bedroom, three-bath unit residence at Trump Tower III for $1.65 million 10 years ago."In 2020, BAC Florida Bank, which provided financing for the purchase, sued Patsulya and Makeeva, claiming they defaulted on their $975,000 mortgage," the article states. "The dispute was resolved later that year, though it’s not clear how from the court records. MIC-USA, controlled by the two Russians, continued to own the 41st-floor unit at Trump Tower III."
FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLESMAGA's ‘King of Toxic Masculinity’ faces police raid in Romania in human trafficking investigation ›'Because Biden didn't defy a subpoena!' Chuck Todd fact-checks Jim Jordan on Mar-a-Lago 'raid' ›'Bullying worked': Experts blast FBI after bombshell report reveals agents were 'afraid' to raid Mar-a-Lago ›RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEBWhat were FBI agents looking for in Trump's Mar-a-Lago? : NPR ›FBI agents and DOJ prosecutors argued over raid of Trump's Mar-a ... ›Trump FBI raid documents about Mar-a-Lago search unsealed ›=<a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/putinfellas-russia-putin-mafia/27713771.html">https://www.rferl.org/a/putinfellas-russia-putin-mafia/27713771.html</a>5/16as  deputy mayor of St. Petersburg in the 1990s, Vladimir Putin spent a lot of time with gangsters.He collaborated with the infamous Tambov and Malyshev organized crime groups to gain control of St. Petersburg's gambling industry.He used his office to help launder mafia money and to arrange foreign travel for known mobsters.And security for the Ozero dacha cooperative he co-founded with some of his former KGB pals was provided by a company run by the Tambov gang, whom Putin also helped secure a monopoly over the city's fuel distribution network.Putin was, in fact, an important liaison between the local government and the criminal underworld, Karen Dawisha writes in her highly acclaimed book <a class="wswa" href="http://books.simonandschuster.com/Putins-Kleptocracy/Karen-Dawisha/9781476795201" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 222, 224);">Putin's Kleptocracy</a>.And when he moved into the Kremlin, Putin put his old mafia contacts to use as key tools of Russian statecraft."A significant part of Russian organised crime is organised directly from the offices of the Kremlin," the International Business Times quoted <a class="wswa" href="http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/gangs-russia-ruthless-mafia-networks-extending-their-influence-1495644" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 222, 224);">Ben Emmerson</a>, a prominent British attorney who represents the family of slain Russian defector Aleksandr Litvinenko, as saying.Likewise, Russian organized crime expert Mark Galeotti noted<a class="wswa" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZSt_2RbiAA" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 222, 224);"> in a recent lecture</a> at the Hudson Institute that Putin's Russia is "not so much a mafia state as a state with a nationalized mafia."Putin's Kremlin has used organized crime to carry out the tasks it wants to keep its fingerprints off, be it arms smuggling, assassinations, raising funds for black ops, or stirring up trouble in the former Soviet space.Moscow relied heavily on local organized crime structures in its support for separatist movements in Transdniester, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Crimea, and the Donbas.In the conflict in eastern Ukraine, organized crime groups served as agents for the Kremlin, fomenting pro-Russia unrest and funneling arms to rebel groups.Putin's weaponization of the mafia stems from his political education in the gangsters' paradise that was St. Petersburg."In genealogical terms, Putin is the product of the KGB. But in sociological terms, he is the product of the new class that emerged in the Darwinian conditions of the 1990s: business-minded, ambitious, nationalistic, and coldly utilitarian about norms and rules," veteran Russia-watcher James Sherr of Chatham House <a class="wswa" href="http://www.clingendael.nl/sites/default/files/The_New_East-West_Discord_JSherr.pdf" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 222, 224);">wrote in a recent report</a>.But now, thanks to Spanish Judge Jose de la Mata, the mask is coming off Putin's mafia statecraft in a big way.Judge de la Mata has<a class="wswa" href="https://www.rferl.org/a/27713179.html" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 222, 224);"> issued international arrest warrants</a> for a dozen reputed Russian gangsters from the Tambov and Malyshev gangs, including current and former Russian government officials.On the wanted list are Interior Ministry official Nikolai Aulov, Vladislav Reznik, a member of the ruling United Russia party who is deputy head of the State Duma's Finance Committee, and former Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sobolevsky.Other officials linked to the gangs, but not subject to warrants, include two longtime Putin confidants: former Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov and current Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak.Also named are former Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and former Information Technology Minister Leonid Reiman.The charges -- which include complicity in assassinations, weapons trafficking, extortion, fraud, forgery, bribery, drug smuggling, and money laundering -- are based on a decade-long investigation and <a class="wswa" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-29/putin-allies-aided-russian-mafia-in-spain-prosecutors-say" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 222, 224);">stem from a 488-page complaint </a>filed by Spanish prosecutors Juan Carrau and Jose Grinda in May 2015.In 2010, Grinda <a class="wswa" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/01/wikileaks-cable-spain-russian-mafia" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 222, 224);">briefed U.S. officials in Madrid</a> about the investigation, informing them that the Kremlin used "organised crime groups to do whatever the government of Russia cannot acceptably do as a government."According to a classified <a class="wswa" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/247712" target="blank" style="box-sizing: inherit; touch-action: manipulation; text-decoration-line: none; overflow-wrap: break-word; word-break: break-word; padding-bottom: 0.05em; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(219, 222, 224);">cable from the U.S. embassy</a> that was published by Wikileaks, the prosecutor told the American officials that Putin's Russia was a "virtual mafia" state where it was impossible to distinguish between the government's activities and those of organized crime groups.In terms of countering the threat Putin's Russia poses to the West, the Spanish investigation is no less important than NATO's moves to rotate four brigades through the alliance's frontline states in Eastern Europe.The alliance's decision to beef up defenses on its eastern flank should create a credible deterrent to the kinetic threat from Moscow.But dealing with the more insidious non-kinetic threat, the one stemming from Moscow's weaponization of organized crime, is a job for law-enforcement.NOTE: This post has been updated to reflect correct and clarify information regarding the arrest warrants.<a href="https://warontherocks.com/2018/11/a-tangled-web-organized-crime-and-oligarchy-in-putins-russia/">https://warontherocks.com/2018/11/a-tangled-web-organized-crime-and-oligarchy-in-putins-russia/</a>mark Galeotti, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Vory-Russias-Super-Mafia/dp/0300186827" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-style: normal; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; cursor: pointer;">The Vory: Russia’s Super Mafia</a>. (Yale University Press, 2018).The vory, the professional elite of Russian organized crime, have roots that go far back into the days of the tsars. While many historians trace the origins of organized crime to the emergence of the mafia in Sicily in the mid-19th century, a new book by Mark Galeotti suggests that professional criminals were an important component of Russian society as much as a century before that. Like the Sicilian mafia, they developed customs and rituals, codes of conduct, and even their own language and song.The Russian criminal world, and the vory who presided over it, endured despite concerted efforts by the authoritarian tsarist state to wipe out the bandits. With these failures, professional criminals became entrenched in Russian life and society. As Galeotti points out, Joseph Stalin worked closely with professional criminals, both as a bank robber and a pirate, in the Caucasus region in the early 20th century — the final years of the Russian Empire. But Stalin was careful to cover up this past by physically eliminating his previous criminal associates. Notwithstanding the execution of Stalin’s fellow bandits, Russia’s professional criminals largely survived the Soviet revolution. Subsequently, however, many were rounded up and placed in labor camps, where many of them preyed on the political prisoners with whom they were often confined. Galeotti draws on the memoirs of survivors of long-term incarcerations, such as Varlam Shalamov, a great raconteur of the labor camp environment, who wrote after his release, “the criminals were not human.”During the Soviet era, true vory refused to cooperate with the state, ensuring that their children did not attend school or serve in the military. But as Galeotti explains, the political calculus of the criminal world changed in the final days of the Soviet Union, setting organized criminals on a trajectory that would lead them to assume political influence and wealth at the end of the Soviet period and in the tumultuous transitional period that followed. The Vory provides a fine framework to understand the strong links between crime and politics that characterized the end of the Soviet era.The book’s excellent historical analysis shines a light on Russian organized crime at the organizational and tactical level. It doesn’t tackle more contemporary strands of organized crime, such as the real-estate dealings linked to President Donald Trump or the links between Russian organized crime and the heights of Russian oligarchical power. However, the book effectively analyzes the vory in the protection business and the emerging economy of the early post-Soviet era, when state property was privatized. In this way, Galeotti lays the basis for understanding the shifting relationship between crime and politics in contemporary Russia, where wealth and power are highly concentrated around President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle.The links between Russian state power and organized crime persist today, impacting global economics and politics. Galeotti does not trace these relationships to the highest levels of American power.  Two recent books by <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Russia-Definitive-Seth-Hettena/dp/1612197396/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=" style="box-sizing: inherit; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: inherit; cursor: pointer;">Seth Hettena</a> and <a href="https://www.amazon.com/House-Trump-Putin-Untold-Russian/dp/152474350X" style="box-sizing: inherit; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: inherit; cursor: pointer;">Craig Unger</a>, on the other hand, explore in detail Trump’s ties with Russian professional criminals who have laundered their money into his properties and even conducted a high-level gambling operation out of Trump Tower. Between the two, Hettena more clearly documents these relationships and explores their important implications for democracy. Still, both books provide a useful supplement to Galeotti’s work, in many ways picking up where he leaves off to examine the more contemporary and transnational reverberations of modern Russian organized crime.In his chapter “New Times, New Vory,” Galeotti takes us through the dramatic transformation of Russian organized crime after the collapse of the Soviet Union. After the regime’s demise, many new states emerged, but the crime links of the Soviet period continued. Organized criminals were key actors in the waning years of Soviet power, and they emerged with great visibility and potency after the old government had fallen. Soviet authorities had stamped out private enterprise, but the entrepreneurial character of many vory, combined with their willingness to use extraordinary violence, positioned them to assume a vital economic role in the early post-Soviet period — what Galeotti calls a “gangsterisation of business.” The criminal world benefited greatly from the privatization of state property, and organized criminals became arbiters of disputes in the absence of a functioning state.The Vory accurately explains that post-Soviet organized crime was not based on the more common forms of transnational crime, but rather was much more a product of the privatization of former state property. Furthermore, these criminals were key sellers of security and protection services. But the purchase of these services was far from voluntary, as those who refused to pay for this “protection” found themselves driven out of business or exposed to brute and sometimes terrifying force.However, as the Russian state began to reassert its authority under Putin, members of organized crime became less important than the oligarchs whom they had helped ascend to wealth and power. Today, Putin controls the oligarchs, and together they control and exploit the criminal world to their mutual advantage.Galeotti’s work excels at providing an understanding of Russian criminality at its operational level. It focuses on the different types of personnel represented in the crime groups — the bosses, the lookouts, and the aspirants seeking to share in the excitement and the profit of the criminal world. In contrast to the greyness that characterized Soviet life, the world of the blatnye, as conveyed by Galeotti, was vibrant, not reined in by the constraints that dominated the Soviet era. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that the criminal world was so often romanticized in the Russian and Soviet imagination. One need think no farther than the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Odessa-Stories-Pushkin-Collection-Isaac/dp/178227166X" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-style: normal; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; cursor: pointer;">Odessa Tales</a> of the great author Isaak Babel, who, as Galeotti recalls, brought to life the crime-dominated Moldavanka neighborhood in the colorful port city on the Black Sea.A particular strength of the book is Galeotti’s ability to analyze the dynamics of the diverse criminal gangs that comprise the thieves’ world in different urban centers — such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Ekaterinburg. Many operated on a smaller scale in numerous other cities across Russia and Ukraine. Ethnic groups, particularly from the Caucasus, were key actors in the professional criminal world of the Soviet and post-Soviet era. The most prominent of these were the Chechens and the Georgians, both overrepresented in the highest ranks of the criminal world and both meriting their own chapter in The Vory.Galeotti ably describes President Leonid Brezhnev’s son-in-law, “the grossly over-promoted” Yuri Churbanov, Russia’s deputy interior minister, who had strong ties to Central Asian organized crime in Uzbekistan. The Central Asian mafia’s role in the Russian criminal world may seem like an obscure subplot. In fact, it has extraordinary relevance to the contemporary period. Hettena’s book discusses Central Asian crime bosses and their associates that have connections to contemporary American politics. Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov (a.k.a. Taivanchik), the fixer of an Olympics also discussed in Galeotti’s book, was identified as a key criminal behind a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/31/felix-sater-trump-russia-investigation" style="box-sizing: inherit; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: inherit; cursor: pointer;">large-scale gambling operation</a> in <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-the-russian-crime-organization-that-operated-in-trump-tower-1.5452362" style="box-sizing: inherit; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: inherit; cursor: pointer;">Trump Tower</a>. Both Hettena and Unger describe Tofik Arifov, a Kazakh business partner of Trump in Bayrock, a real-estate development firm, as having many Central Asian organized crime connections.Several important and distinctive elements of Russian organized crime are curiously absent from the The Vory: human trafficking, corporate raiding, and environmental crime. This is a book that focuses on traditional conceptions of organized crime — focusing neither on its new dimensions nor on its transnational money laundering into real-estate,  elements that both Hettena and Unger document in their books.After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian-speaking organized crime developed a market and global distribution system for “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Natashas-Inside-New-Global-Trade/dp/1559707356" style="box-sizing: inherit; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; cursor: pointer;">natashas</a>,” Slavic women trafficked into prostitution. The growing interest in and awareness of human trafficking resulted from the rapid and precipitous increase in Russian-speaking women forced into prostitution at home and around the world.  Their fate, and the key role that criminal gangs played in this global trade, are almost totally ignored in The Vory, which pays more attention to individual gangs, arms trading, and contract killings. The highly negative impact of Russian organized crime on women is almost entirely absent.Corporate raiding is a key element of the Russian economy, a significant deterrent to entrepreneurship, and a contributor to capital flight. Galeotti overlooks this phenomenon, even though organized crime has assumed a key role in the violence used to take over desirable properties owned by competitors or individuals with fewer political connections. <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2018/11/AppData/Downloads/Economy-Administrative-Entrepreneurship/dp/0815394667" style="box-sizing: inherit; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: transparent; line-height: inherit; cursor: pointer;">Hundreds of thousands of Russian businessmen</a> have been victims of corporate raids, and many have turned over their businesses to the predators after they and their families have been threatened or assaulted by organized crime. Others have sought to invest their gains in valuable properties abroad, hence the desire to purchase properties in Trump buildings. In this way, organized crime plays a key role in the consolidation of oligarchical fortunes and the predatory behavior of Putin’s powerful cronies.Russian organized crime has also profited greatly from the looting of natural resources — fish, timber, and wildlife. This is a particularly important revenue source for organized crime in Siberia and the Far East, though deforestation has also occurred on a massive scale in Karelia and Ukraine, thanks to the collusion of organized criminals and corrupt government officials. Russian criminals have been key actors in the massive illicit fish trade, establishing important linkages with the professional criminals of Japan, the <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520274907" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-style: normal; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: inherit; cursor: pointer;">yakuza</a>, who, like their Russian-speaking counterparts, assume key roles in the ports of their country. These Russian-Japanese crime connections are not limited to fish: The Aum Shinrikyu, a powerful and wealthy Japanese <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Cult-End-World-Terrifying-Doomsday/dp/0517705435" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: inherit; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; line-height: inherit; cursor: pointer;">doomsday sect</a> behind the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack, used their links with both corrupt officials and Russian criminals to seek nuclear materials for other acts of terrorism.Cybercrime gets short shrift as well, although Galeotti devotes a few pages to the “Virtual vor.” Technology may not be the strong suit of the traditional criminal world, but it is a key element of the next generation of organized crime in Russia, a tale that still needs to be told. This new form of organized crime, like its predecessors, is closely linked to the state and its political interests, as talented cyber-criminals are given an offer they cannot refuse — serve the state or go to jail.The evolution of Russian organized crime is a fascinating subject. Galeotti’s readable text and careful historical analysis provides a framework for understanding the centrality of the vory to the Russian and Soviet state. However, while professional criminals have maintained their role in Russian life, the nature of that role has shifted, as the once-weak Russian state has grown stronger under Putin. Read the book and you will understand that their endurance is a more serious problem than that posed by Tony Soprano and his family. At the same time, Hettena’s book in particular is important for grasping the global reach and the contemporary political impact of Russian organized crime. In its various iterations over the years, the vory have provided a useful — indeed, crucial — lens through which to understand Russia. Today, that lens is even more important as the economic and political activities of Russian organized criminals reverberate across the globe, especially to London, Spain, and the tangled world of the American president.Dr. Louise Shelley is the Omer L. and Nancy Hirst Endowed Chair and a University Professor at Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University. She founded and directs the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC). Her most recent books are: Dirty Entanglements: Corruption, Crime and Terrorism (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective (Cambridge 2010). Her latest book, Dark Commerce: How a New Illicit Economy is Threatening our Future (Princeton University Press), was written while an inaugural Andrew Carnegie fellow.<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/very-problematic-fbi-says-private-equity-and-hedge-funds-pose-huge-risk-for-money-laundering">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/very-problematic-fbi-says-private-equity-and-hedge-funds-pose-huge-risk-for-money-laundering</a>a leaked document reveals that the Federal Bureau of Investigation fears that the investment funds industry is a ripe target for money launderers, and could be a ticking time bomb in the private equity and the hedge fund sector.In the <a href="https://blueleaks.io/jric/files/DDF/200501%20LES%20FBI%20Intelligence%20Bulletin%20-%20Threat%20Actors%20Likely%20Use%20Private%20Investment%20Funds%20to%20Launder%20Money,%20Circumventing%20Regulatory%20Tripwires.pdf" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">leaked intelligence bulletin</a> published in May under the title “Threat Actors Likely Use Private Investment Funds To Launder Money, Circumventing Regulatory Tripwires,” the FBI wrote that it has “high confidence” that “threat actors” could use “the private placement of funds, including investments offered by hedge funds and private equity firms, to launder money, circumventing traditional anti-money laundering programs.” The term “threat actors” <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/bc-finreg-fbi-laundering-private-equity-idUSKCN24F1TP?utm_source=reddit.com" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">refers</a> to both hostile foreign powers and criminals attempting to make money.The FBI notes that government law enforcement and watchdog agencies aren’t up to the task to suss out money laundering through the finance system in this way. “AML [anti-money laundering] programs are not adequately designed to monitor and detect threat actors’ use of private investment funds to launder money,” the report notes.A hedge fund is a type of investment fund in which the managers trade in relatively liquid assets (or assets that can be bought and sold without a drastic change in their price) using various complicated techniques. Hedge fund <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/05/27/america-the-cruel-while-hedge-fund-managers-like-bob-mercer-pocket-windfalls-regardless-of-performance-kids-lacking-lunch-money-are-shamed/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">management tends to be lucrative</a>, regardless of whether an individual manager is actually successful, because the standard fee arrangement in the hedge fund industry is something known as “2 and 20.” Under that system, hedge fund managers take two percent of the money put up by an individual wealthy client, regardless of whether they successfully turn a profit off of those investments. When the investments are profitable, they then reap an additional 20 percent of those profits.private equities are another type of investment fund. Whereas hedge funds trade in relatively liquid assets, however, private equities purchase and restructure companies which are not being publicly traded through methods such as leveraged buyouts, mezzanine capital, growth capital, venture capital and distressed investments. Private equities are <a href="https://www.salon.com/2014/06/05/the_newest_threat_to_the_middle_class_why_private_equity_is_becoming_public_problem_partner/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" outline="outline" none="none" margin="margin" px="px" padding="padding" text-decoration-line="text-decoration-line" transition="transition" color="color" s="s" ease="ease" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer">controversial</a> because they often inflate fees and expenses charged to companies in which they hold stakes, which means private equities can hurt individuals whose pension plans are invested in them or whose jobs depend on them through fee arrangements that allow the managers to make billions at the investees’ expense.Hedge funds and private equity firms operate in a regulatory gray area, which makes them vulnerable to criminality, the FBI claimed: “Hedge funds and private equity firms receive funds from entities registered in nations that maintain laws conducive to masking underlying beneficial owners, thereby making it harder for US financial institutions and regulators to determine the source of funding.”The report added that “hedge funds and private equity firms have been used to facilitate transactions in support of fraud, transnational organized crime, and sanctions evasion.” It cited as specific alleged examples a former partner at a major American law firm who “assisted others in laundering more than $400 million from a fraudulent cryptocurrency investment scheme,” a representative from a hedge fund based in London and New York who “proposed investing in private placement funds and using a series of shell corporations to purchase and sell prohibited items from sanctioned countries to the United States,” a Mexican cartel operating in southern California which “recruited and paid individuals to open hedge fund accounts at private banking institutions” and “a New York-based private equity firm [which] received more than $100 million in wire transfers from an identified Russia-based company allegedly associated with Russian organized crime.”Hedge funds and private equities have been associated with a wide range of criminal behavior. Bernie Madoff, who was responsible for a $64.8 billion financial fraud that was exposed in 2008, ran a scam that involved <a href="https://www.salon.com/test2/2012/12/26/bernie_madoff_doesnt_like_what_he_sees_in_the_markets/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">feeder funds</a>, which sends money to hedge funds that make investment decisions. Hedge funds have been previously <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/01/26/why-arent-hedge-funds-required-to-fight-money-laundering_partner/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">criticized</a> for not being required to fight money laundering. As Clark Gascoigne, deputy director of the Financial Accountability and Corporate Transparency Coalition, told ProPublica last year: “You’ve got several trillion dollars, the management of which nobody is required to ask any questions about where that money is coming from. This is very problematic.”There are also occasions when hedge funds <a href="https://www.salon.com/2019/10/19/how-hedge-funds-profit-when-big-companies-like-thomas-cook-fail_partner/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">profit</a> from a company’s failure: Empty creditors, or people who can be made whole through or even profit from credit default swaps, frequently have a financial incentive to let companies like the global tour operator Thomas Cook crash and burn, rather than try to save them.Private equities are also rife with controversy. <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/06/16/trump-labor-department-quietly-offers-up-401k-plans-to-private-equity-vultures_partner/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Last month President Donald Trump’s administration</a> allowed large managers of 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts (IRAs) to put workers’ retirement savings into private equity investments. Eileen Appelbaum, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), warned that American workers have “socked away $6.2 trillion in 401(k) accounts and another $2.5 trillion in IRA accounts,” meaning that “if just 5 percent of the money in these retirement funds were available to private equity, it would be a windfall of $435 billion — real money even to private equity millionaires and billionaires.” Private equity firms have also been connected with the <a href="https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2020/1/6/21024740/private-equity-taylor-swift-toys-r-us-elizabeth-warren" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">downfall of companies</a> like Toys R’ Us, RadioShack, Deadspin, Shopko and Payless Shoe<div></div>unger, devega
<a href="https://www.alternet.org/investigative-reporter-explains-trumps-role-russian-asset-hes-had-contacts-russian-mafia-35-years">https://www.alternet.org/investigative-reporter-explains-trumps-role-russian-asset-hes-had-contacts-russian-mafia-35-years</a>... his new book “<a href="https://amzn.to/2EeQUNg" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia</a>,” veteran investigative journalist <a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/31705/craig-unger" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Craig Unger</a> presents a detailed and exhaustively researched account of how Donald Trump has for decades laundered billions of dollars for Russian organized crime figures and other oligarchs. This fits a larger pattern in which Trump and his inner circle have shown a great comfort with financial crimes and other forms of unethical or illegal behavior to personally enrich themselves at the expense of the American people.Ultimately, Trump’s involvement with Russia’s criminal underworld may have created an opening for Putin and his agents to manipulate and control the man who would later become president of the United States.My conversation with Craig Unger has been edited for clarity and length.Given all that is publicly known about Donald Trump and his suspicious connections to Russia — never mind his anti-democratic behavior — on a certain level it is surreal and almost unbelievable that he became president and has not yet been removed from office.It is astounding. When John Brennan lost his security clearance the contrast was so stark — there is no way in the world Donald Trump would have received a security clearance and he is president of the United States. Donald Trump has had contacts with the Russian mafia for 35 years. His properties have laundered money for them. The Russian mafia are connected to Russian intelligence. They’re living and have been working in Trump’s building. Trump has even partnered with them. There are so many ways in which he’s compromised. As you say, I think it’s all on the public record. The Republicans are also implicated. As I explain in my new book, the Russians didn’t just go after Donald Trump: They went after the entire Republican Party. There is Russian money going into the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, the NRA, and then to Republican officials and candidates directly....Why has the American news media been largely unable to effectively explain to the public the threat Trump embodies to the country and the world?
There are a great many different factors. The news media is so fractured and factionalized. Therefore there is no shared national narrative. For example, let’s say MSNBC gets it right at times. But that still leaves hundreds of millions of Americans who are not getting the message. The Trump-Russia story is also complicated but the news cycle is too fast. Plus, it is fragmented by social media. So it’s very hard for people to draw back and see the big picture. The news almost never offers the deep background into how this whole Trump-Russia scandal began.
Putin uses the Russian mafia as a weapon. This is part of the geopolitical conflict. This is many ways goes back to the ending of the Cold War. It wasn’t really over. Most Americans do not understand that fact. Yes, the Soviet Union crumbled but Russia didn’t give up. The KGB sat there and waited. They started various companies. You have at least four billionaires with those connections who ended up partnering with Donald Trump 25 years later.
I think one of the powerful unseen forces here is that at the end of the Soviet Union, you suddenly have trillions of dollars that have to be laundered. It opened the floodgates for the Russian mafia and for the oligarchs. A good way to launder that money is through real estate. Trump made it clear he was ready, willing and able to do that without asking any questions. Trump was $4 billion in debt after his casinos failed in Atlantic City. He came back thanks to the Russians.
Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia is not new. When they looked at Donald Trump back in the 1980s what did they see?

Report AdvertisementFirst of all, the Russians had a history of looking at influential businessmen. It appears that Russian intelligence also saw him as a presidential candidate. That surprised me. I was here in New York as a reporter in the 1980s, and I didn’t think of Trump as a presidential candidate. When Trump first visited Russia in 1987, he immediately came back and took out full page ads in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and Washington Post. These ads were very anti-NATO, anti-Western alliance, and that was exactly what the Russians want. It is so striking that Trump would do that over 30 years ago. It is almost as if Trump had been channeling those ideas and serving the KGB’s aims way back in 1988.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, Putin takes control. How does he develop a relationship with Donald Trump?
It did not occur in a personal way at first. Everything happens through proxies. They are enormously important. Going back to 1984 — this was when Putin was still in the KGB — Trump had started laundering money for the Russian mafia. In ‘92, the Russian mafia had people like Vyacheslav Kirillovich Ivankov, who was one of the key figures under the mob boss Mogilevich. The FBI was looking all over for him but he was actually in Trump Tower. A lot of the Russian mobsters were going to Trump Tower as well, presumably to launder money as well. So you saw this budding relationship. Trump was completely overextended in Atlantic City. He ended up $4 billion in debt. He had no future at all until the Russians came to his aid.
I think a lot of people get the chronology wrong and think Trump came back because of “The Apprentice.” But “The Apprentice” didn’t start until 2004. By 2002, a company called Bayrock Group LLC  had moved into the 24th floor of Trump Tower. They began partnering with him. They made Trump an offer that he could not refuse. It was a completely different paradigm from his old business relationships. Suddenly Trump started dealing with cash and he couldn’t get bank loans except some from Deutsche Bank. He was so bankrupt that almost no Western bank could loan him a dime.
These were ways of laundering money that Trump had. The financing of building projects that involved $400 million or $500 million to build a skyscraper. Once the building was built, they could sell the condos through the shell companies, limited liability corporations and so forth. This was done anonymously in all cash transactions with the Russian oligarchs and other people affiliated with the Russian mafia. They owned Trump before he ever met Putin. Trump became close with the oligarchs who were in turn close to Putin. Of course, there are all the allegations regarding sexual activities and Donald Trump and Russia. They too go back to the early 1980s.
What do the Russians want from Donald Trump? He would not have been given all of those huge sums of money without some expectations, either implied or explicit.
This is why I think you have to look at the geopolitics and the history of the entire operation. If you go back to the Cold War, Americans simply thought we won. The Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union folded. Well, it’s not that simple. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, one Eastern bloc nation after another began tilting towards the West and joining NATO. When Putin came to power, he wanted to fight back, to regain some of that ground. Putin wanted to do battle with the Western alliance. With Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin found one of the few Americans who wants to destroy the Western alliance. He has been quite consistent on this point of view. But somehow he and the rest of the Republicans have taken it to heart and that is the direction they’re moving in as well. It’s been great for Putin and I think that’s exactly what he wanted.
Is Donald Trump advancing Vladimir Putin and Russia’s interests because he is afraid? With all of the talk regarding the Steele dossier, the salacious and damning contents of which have been partly verified, is Donald Trump being blackmailed in some way?
I cannot answer that question fully because I really can’t get inside Trump’s head. All I can do is trace what Donald Trump has done and what he has said. I talked to Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who directed counterintelligence for the KGB. Kalugin had actually been Putin’s boss at one point in time. Kalugin told me he believed that Trump was sexually compromised from that first trip to Russia in 1987.
You are a very accomplished reporter. During Vietnam a brave insider leaked the Pentagon Papers so that the American people and world would know the extent to which they had been lied to about the war. Where is the brave person willing to share similar information in the public interest about Donald Trump and the Russia scandal? Someone who is privy to some of this damning intelligence information about Donald Trump and Russia?  
Well, if it’s about releasing classified materials, I think someone will ultimately face legal jeopardy for doing that kind of thing. At the same time, you’ve had people like John Brennan speaking out, Michael Hayden, James Clapper and so on, who have been quite forceful and articulate. The degree to which the United States intelligence community has spoken out very strongly against Trump is very unusual and unprecedented.
What do we know about Paul Manafort and the other people in Trump’s orbit who are closely connected with the Russian mafia, Vladimir Putin and the oligarchs? 
Manafort is especially important. Trump, of course, tried to minimize his relationship with Manafort. Trump said, “Oh he only worked for me for a very short time in a very limited way.” That is ridiculous. They first met and started working together in 1980. Manafort helped him deal with some of the issues he was having with his real estate projects, later moving into gambling in Atlantic City. Manafort actually had a home in Trump Tower. But Manafort and Roger Stone were known as the obvious choice for tyrants all over the world.
When Manafort started working for Putin in Ukraine, he was in essence working for Putin. He helped elect Viktor Yanukovych, very much a Putin puppet, as the president of Ukraine. In many ways, I see that as a dry run for what Manafort did 10 years later in 2016 in helping elect Donald Trump as president of the United States. Donald Trump is Putin’s puppet. If you look at how Manafort was paid, he was paid nothing by Trump. He was getting money from the Russians.
I have described Donald Trump’s White House as the “Kremlin on the Potomac.” Do you think that is accurate?
It’s so much darker than anything I could imagine. When I grew up, one of the great movies was “The Manchurian Candidate.” It was about a conspiracy to install a brainwashed communist as president of the United States. What has happened with Trump rivals “The Manchurian Candidate.” It is actually hard to imagine, but this is where the United States and the world are right now. I’ve always been reluctant to use words like “treason” or “fascism” to discuss Donald Trump. But I think we’ve entered a very dark period in American history. We can’t turn this around and save the country from Donald Trump and his allies unless the Democrats win Congress in the midterms.
When Mueller’s report is released what do you think will and should happen? I am concerned that of course Trump’s supporters will say it exonerates him, no matter how damning the evidence is. Trump’s opposition will see Mueller’s report as confirming their worst fears. There will be no closure, only more discord and perhaps even potential violence and large-scale civil unrest.
I won’t speculate on the contents of Mueller’s final report. But I will say that we need to have a shared national spectacle. Everyone needs to see the same thing. That’s not happening right now. A couple of weeks ago, there was one of these spectacular news days surrounding the Russia investigation, and in all, it was a horrible day for President Trump. I wanted to see how Fox News was covering it. They had an item on whether a giraffe is actually a mutant horse. Huge parts of the country are in the dark. Fox News has been incredibly successful in dumbing down a large part of the American electorate. That is something we’re going to have to change.
How would you explain to the average American why Donald Trump’s relationship with Vladimir Putin and other Russian interests is so important?
This goes to the heart of whether or not we’re a democracy. I believe that Vladimir Putin selected and chose the president of the United States to do his bidding. That is an existential crisis for the United States. Americans better wake up, because our democracy is at risk.
Is Donald Trump a “useful idiot” or is he something else?
I believe that Donald Trump is a Russian asset. The difference between an “asset” and a Russian “agent” is whether or not he’s knowledgeable. When it comes to laundering money, for example, I give a very specific example in my book where Trump is given $6 million in cash and doesn’t ask any questions. At that moment, I can’t tell you what’s going on in Trump’s mind. But I can tell you that that kind of transaction happens at least 1,300 times with Trump properties. That is, the sale of Trump-branded properties to anonymous shell companies and all-cash transactions. I think a good prosecutor could use this kind of information and say, “Look, there’s a concept in the law known as willful ignorance or willful blindness.”
It’s one thing to argue that he accidentally stumbled into these lucrative relationships four or five times or even 10 or 20 times. But if he did this 1,300 times then one might say that’s a pattern; he knew what he was doing. It’s hard to believe that Trump didn’t really know how much he was getting from the Russians.<span style="" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">key argument requires many qualifiers in the final summation (possibly after the intervention of libel lawyers): “Mogilevich and the Russian mafia’s compromising of Trump had begun by possibly using Trump real estate to launder their money,” he writes. “They had ensnared him with some form of <em style="" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">kompromat<span style="" guardian="Guardian" text="Text" egyptian="Egyptian" web="Web" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" font-variant-ligatures="font-variant-ligatures" common-ligatures="common-ligatures" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb">, most likely, though exactly what form is unclear.”<a href="https://www.amazon.com/House-Trump-Putin-Untold-Russian/dp/152474350X">https://www.amazon.com/House-Trump-Putin-Untold-Russian/dp/152474350X</a>sater italian mafia  brightonbeach; trump kids moscowputin judo coach, partners now oligarchsco-opted, invest jrnl and pol oppoennts killed;david bogatin launderunger  House of Trump, House of Putin<a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-august-23-2018/">https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-august-23-2018/</a>---wapo revOutlook ReviewSigns of Trump-Putin collaboration, starting years before the campaign?
Of all the allegations contained in the “Steele dossier,” the urtext of President Trump’s possible ties to Russia, one has long stood out as the most compromising, because it would be evidence of a political and business relationship between Trump and Russia that predated his campaign for the White House.“An intelligence exchange,” former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele writes, “had been running between” Trump’s team and the Kremlin, with the direct knowledge of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Within this context Putin’s priority requirement had been for intelligence on the activities, business and otherwise, in the US of leading Russian oligarchs and their families. Trump and his associates duly had obtained and supplied the Kremlin with this information.”The precise nature and location of that “intelligence exchange” have never been fully explained. But journalist Craig Unger thinks he may have found it, running out of the offices of Bayrock Group, a real estate development company that operated in Trump Tower in Manhattan in the early 2000s and partnered with the Trump Organization.Based on his own reporting and the investigative work of a former federal prosecutor, Unger posits that through Bayrock, Trump was “indirectly providing Putin with a regular flow of intelligence on what the oligarchs were doing with their money in the U.S.”As the theory goes, Putin wanted to keep tabs on the billionaires — some of them former mobsters — who had made their post-Cold War fortunes on the backs of industries once owned by the state. The oligarchs, as well as other new-moneyed elites, were stashing their money in foreign real estate, including Trump properties, presumably beyond Putin’s reach.Trump, knowingly or otherwise, may have struck a side deal with the Kremlin, Unger argues: He would secretly rat out his customers to Putin, who would allow them to keep buying Trump properties. Trump got rich. Putin got eyes on where the oligarchs had hidden their wealth. Everybody won.Thus Trump succeeded in business with Russia by what could most charitably be described as willful ignorance. Take the money. Don’t ask too many questions.And he’d had a lot of practice at that, Unger writes. Trump’s burgeoning real estate empire was fueled in the 1980s by another privileged class, Russian gangsters who appear to have used Trump properties to launder their ill-gotten gains, Unger alleges.It is this nexus between Trump, Putin, and wealthy mobsters and oligarchs — often the same people — that is Unger’s fixation in his latest book, “House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia.”That subtitle is a bit misleading. There is much in Unger’s thoroughly researched narrative that has been told, including in the pages of The Washington Post. Close followers of the byzantine Trump-Russia saga will recognize many of the names and events that fill the pages of Unger’s book.And yet the story Unger weaves with those earlier accounts and his original reporting is fresh, illuminating and more alarming than the intelligence channel described in the Steele dossier.Unger believes that Trump was compromised by Russia as early as the 1980s, when the Russian money laundering through his properties probably began. “It’s hard to imagine Donald Trump had no knowledge whatsoever about what was going on,” Unger writes, as hundreds of millions in Russian investment flowed into Trump’s coffers. Trump evinced an “eagerness to turn a blind eye to practices that allowed the Russian mob to launder money,” Unger continues.There’s never been a proven allegation that Trump was involved in or knew of money laundering through his businesses. But remember, Unger implores, Trump worked at the upper end of Manhattan real estate development. That’s not to say he engaged in organized crime, but he certainly knew what it looked like.The richer Trump got, the deeper he sank into the Russian criminal underworld, which after the fall of the Soviet Union rose up to form the ruling class, now under Putin’s control.Unger spends much of his story connecting the dots between Trump and individual alleged Russian mobsters, such as David Bogatin, the pioneer of a gas tax scam, who bought five apartments in Trump Tower in 1984 for $6 million.Not all the connections run so directly. One famous gangster, Semion Mogilevich, who was renowned for his talent of making dirty money look clean, looms over the entire narrative like an orchestra conductor. Mogilevich, whom FBI agents have called the “boss of bosses,” directed the expansion of the Russian mob into the United States in the early 1990s. And although there is no definitive evidence connecting him directly to Trump, according to Unger, a mountain of facts places him in Trump’s corner of the real estate business.As Unger tells it, Trump can’t be totally unaware of the criminality surrounding him, and even if he were, that ignorance is no defense. Trump allowed himself to become compromised by Russia, years before he seriously entertained running for public office.The men who used Trump for their illicit purposes ensnared him. “They had ensured that he was beholden to Russia’s money, and its power,” Unger writes. “All largely unseen. With deniability.”There is abundant evidence in Unger’s book that Trump made his business infrastructure — his condos, his developments, his very name — available to criminals and oligarchs trying to hide their ill-gotten gains, whether from tax collectors, investigators or the president of Russia. And that’s a form of collusion, too.Unger sees the Kremlin’s intervention in the 2016 presidential election, which U.S. intelligence officials have said was ordered by Putin himself, as the latest manipulation of Trump by Russia, and the most consequential. Again, readers will find no evidence that Trump knew of or participated in the Russian campaign, which every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded aimed to help Trump win.But Unger is convinced that the Russians succeeded in their goal because they had a willing target, who seized on false news stories, propaganda and unflattering Democratic emails that Russia disseminated. Trump weaponized Russian disinformation without ever questioning its provenance. He even asked for more when he publicly told Russia to “find” Hillary Clinton’s personal emails.“Given Trump’s narrow victory in states such as Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan — states that were predicted to vote Democratic but were won by Trump with a margin of less than 1 percent, and which put him over the top in the electoral college, it is more than likely that the Russian interference made the difference,” Unger writes.If that’s true, then Trump the politician has replicated his business model with profound results: Both he and Putin have come out winners.
HOUSE OF TRUMP, HOUSE OF PUTINThe Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian MafiaBy Craig Unger
Shane HarrisShane Harris covers intelligence and national security for the Post. He has been a writer at the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and other publications. He also has written two books, The Watchers and @War=AN,,.Nobody who has followed Donald Trump's career, dating back many years before he entered politics, should be surprised by these events. Nor should anyone be surprised that Trump would express "regret" over the fall of Manafort for his many crimes against the United States. As Craig Unger explains in his new book, House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia, the developer/casino magnate/reality TV star has cultivated connections with the underworld for decades. He built Trump Tower with illegal immigrant labor and concrete supplied by the Mafia — and gave an apartment there to the girlfriend of a mobbed-up Teamster boss. Millions of dollars have been poured into Trump properties from gangsters around the world in massive money-laundering operations.He has always felt most comfortable with unsavory figures like Manafort, who should have been indicted and sent to prison for blatant influence peddling during the Housing and Urban Development scandal back in the Ronald Reagan era, and Cohen, who has long done business with crooks in the taxi and real estate sectors in New York City. His infamous attorney Roy Cohn was a mob lawyer indicted three times, who was lucky to escape imprisonment for tax evasion and many other alleged crimes.The Trump outfit is going down in the time-honored style that marked the decline of La Cosa Nostra. A tough guy like Michael Cohen folds up and squeals exactly the same as Sammy the Bull. And a smart guy like Manafort, who has gotten away with everything and thought he always would, is put away exactly the same as Al Capone, convicted of tax evasion on the testimony of an accountant.No doubt Trump and his choir will remind us that none of these charges touch on campaign collusion with the Russians, but that is a feeble rejoinder. Special counsel Robert Mueller has already filed preliminary indictments on that aspect of his investigation, of which there will be more to come. Meanwhile, the special counsel will present evidence concerning Trump's Nixonian attempts to obstruct his investigation.But regardless of what Mueller eventually reveals about the president, the Cohen deal has placed Trump in grave jeopardy. In pleading guilty to felony violations of federal campaign finance statutes, Cohen has said that he paid off Stormy Daniels and another woman in a criminal conspiracy with Trump.Remember, that plea deal was reached not with Mueller but with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, headed by Trump appointee Geoffrey Berman, and the Department of Justice, headed by Trump appointee Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. While his aides whisper to Fox News that "the president cannot be indicted," Americans will soon realize that the man in the Oval Office is an unindicted co-conspirator — just like Nixon.The question that faces every member of Congress, and for that matter, every voter, is what to do about it.To find out more about Joe Conason and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at <a href="https://www.creators.com/" rel="noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">www.creators.com</a>.<div>=</div><a href="https://www.occrp.org/en/laundromat/">https://www.occrp.org/en/laundromat/</a>
<a href="https://www.alternet.org/russian-mob-made-its-move-trump-2002-when-he-was-hole-after-series-bankruptcies-documentary">https://www.alternet.org/russian-mob-made-its-move-trump-2002-when-he-was-hole-after-series-bankruptcies-documentary</a>documentary filmmaker appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Thursday to talk about what he’s found while researching “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8135494/" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Active Measures</a>,” his new movie about Russian connections with President Donald Trump.Specifically, filmmaker Jack Bryan told the program that Trump didn’t really start getting involved with members of the Russian mob until around 2002, when he claims they started “entering the Trump Organization.”<div style="">Bryan then claimed that Trump had to resort to taking Russian money after a “series of bankruptcies” at Trump properties throughout the 1990s that made it harder for him to raise capital from large American banks.  The Russian mob saw this, Bryan said, and “made their move.”When MSNBC’s Willie Geist asked Bryan to clarify what he meant by the mob “making its move” on Trump, the filmmaker elaborated about all the shady money that started pouring into Trump properties after Trump had been cut off by major banks.“Starting in 2002, whereas before you’re seeing incidents of money laundering… you’re seeing particularly in buildings like the Trump Soho, the Toronto tower, the Panama tower to an extent, as well, and several others in development where the there is… what certainly appears to be Russian or post-Soviet mafia money going into it,” he explained.Bryan went on to say that the money was coming “particularly from the Ukraine-Russia gas trade, which is an incredibly mobbed up operation” and that “it’s been going in there to basically start the building process.”Watch the video below.</div>

dn 7/20 unger trump twt $ flight $https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/20/married_to_the_mob_investigative_journalist
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https://www.propublica.org/article/fighting-russian-mafia-networks-in-spain
 ...The GangstersKey characters in Spain’s struggle with the Russian mob.Gennady Petrov: A boss in the Tambovskaya mob, he was arrested in 2008. A former boxer, he had acquired properties and companies worth $50 million. Prosecutors say he oversaw an international empire of criminal rackets and legitimate business while building alliances with the Russian political and economic elite. Petrov denied the charges and then absconded to Russia.Alexander Malyshev: A former wrestler who led the Malyshevskaya mob of Saint Petersburg. In the late 1990’s, he moved to Malaga, where he partnered with Petrov, a former rival, in various operations. Arrested in 2008, he denied the charges and also fled to Russia.Zakhar Kalashov: One of the most powerful gangsters from the former Soviet Union to be jailed in the West. The Georgian allegedly oversaw gambling and drug rackets, while also helping Russian intelligence run guns to Kurdish rebels in Turkey. Convicted on money laundering charges in Spain, he served seven years in prison.Vitaly Izguilov: A flashy, Maserati-driving gangster known as “the Beast.” Spanish authorities prosecuted him in 2005 and 2008, finally convicting him in 2015 of money laundering, criminal conspiracy and arms possession....---https://newrepublic.com/article/143586/trumps-russian-laundromat-trump-tower-luxury-high-rises-dirty-money-international-crime-syndicate In 1984, a Russian émigré named David Bogatin went shopping for apartments in New York City. The 38-year-old had arrived in America seven years before, with just $3 in his pocket. But for a former pilot in the Soviet Army—his specialty had been shooting down Americans over North Vietnam—he had clearly done quite well for himself. Bogatin wasn’t hunting for a place in Brighton Beach, the Brooklyn enclave known as “Little Odessa” for its large population of immigrants from the Soviet Union. Instead, he was fixated on the glitziest apartment building on Fifth Avenue, a gaudy, 58-story edifice with gold-plated fixtures and a pink-marble atrium: Trump Tower.

 A monument to celebrity and conspicuous consumption, the tower was home to the likes of Johnny Carson, Steven Spielberg, and Sophia Loren. Its brash, 38-year-old developer was something of a tabloid celebrity himself. Donald Trump was just coming into his own as a serious player in Manhattan real estate, and Trump Tower was the crown jewel of his growing empire. From the day it opened, the building was a hit—all but a few dozen of its 263 units had sold in the first few months. But Bogatin wasn’t deterred by the limited availability or the sky-high prices. The Russian plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury condos. The big check apparently caught the attention of the owner. According to Wayne Barrett, who investigated the deal for the Village Voice, Trump personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin. If the transaction seemed suspicious—multiple apartments for a single buyer who appeared to have no legitimate way to put his hands on that much money—there may have been a reason. At the time, Russian mobsters were beginning to invest in high-end real estate, which offered an ideal vehicle to launder money from their criminal enterprises. “During the ’80s and ’90s, we in the U.S. government repeatedly saw a pattern by which criminals would use condos and high-rises to launder money,” says Jonathan Winer, a deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement in the Clinton administration. “It didn’t matter that you paid too much, because the real estate values would rise, and it was a way of turning dirty money into clean money. It was done very systematically, and it explained why there are so many high-rises where the units were sold but no one is living in them.” When Trump Tower was built, as David Cay Johnston reports in The Making of Donald Trump, it was only the second high-rise in New York that accepted anonymous buyers. In 1987, just three years after he attended the closing with Trump, Bogatin pleaded guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. After he fled the country, the government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, saying that he had purchased them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.”
 A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York. His family ties, in fact, led straight to the top: His brother ran a $150 million stock scam with none other than Semion Mogilevich, whom the FBI considers the “boss of bosses” of the Russian mafia. At the time, Mogilevich—feared even by his fellow gangsters as “the most powerful mobster in the world”—was expanding his multibillion-dollar international criminal syndicate into America. In 1987, on his first trip to Russia, Trump visited the Winter Palace with Ivana. The Soviets flew him to Moscow—all expenses paid—to discuss building a luxury hotel across from the Kremlin.Maxim Blokhin/TASS Since Trump’s election as president, his ties to Russia have become the focus of intense scrutiny, most of which has centered on whether his inner circle colluded with Russia to subvert the U.S. election. A growing chorus in Congress is also asking pointed questions about how the president built his business empire. Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has called for a deeper inquiry into “Russian investment in Trump’s businesses and properties.” The very nature of Trump’s businesses—all of which are privately held, with few reporting requirements—makes it difficult to root out the truth about his financial deals. And the world of Russian oligarchs and organized crime, by design, is shadowy and labyrinthine. For the past three decades, state and federal investigators, as well as some of America’s best investigative journalists, have sifted through mountains of real estate records, tax filings, civil lawsuits, criminal cases, and FBI and Interpol reports, unearthing ties between Trump and Russian mobsters like Mogilevich. To date, no one has documented that Trump was even aware of any suspicious entanglements in his far-flung businesses, let alone that he was directly compromised by the Russian mafia or the corrupt oligarchs who are closely allied with the Kremlin. 
So far, when it comes to Trump’s ties to Russia, there is no smoking gun.  But even without an investigation by Congress or a special prosecutor, there is much we already know about the president’s debt to Russia. A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part. Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s. It’s entirely possible that Trump was never more than a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters, with his casinos and condos providing easy pass-throughs for their illicit riches. At the very least, with his constant need for new infusions of cash and his well-documented troubles with creditors, Trump made an easy “mark” for anyone looking to launder money. But whatever his knowledge about the source of his wealth, the public record makes clear that Trump built his business empire in no small part with a lot of dirty money from a lot of dirty Russians—including the dirtiest and most feared of them all. Trump made his first trip to Russia in 1987, only a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union. Invited by Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin, Trump was flown to Moscow and Leningrad—all expenses paid—to talk business with high-ups in the Soviet command. In The Art of the Deal, Trump recounted the lunch meeting with Dubinin that led to the trip. “One thing led to another,” he wrote, “and now I’m talking about building a large luxury hotel, across the street from the Kremlin, in partnership with the Soviet government.” Over the years, Trump and his sons would try and fail five times to build a new Trump Tower in Moscow. But for Trump, what mattered most were the lucrative connections he had begun to make with the Kremlin—and with the wealthy Russians who would buy so many of his properties in the years to come. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. boasted at a real estate conference in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” The money, illicit and otherwise, began to rain in earnest after the Soviet Union fell in 1991. President Boris Yeltsin’s shift to a market economy was so abrupt that cash-rich gangsters and corrupt government officials were able to privatize and loot state-held assets in oil, coal, minerals, and banking. Yeltsin himself, in fact, would later describe Russia as “the biggest mafia state in the world.” After Vladimir Putin succeeded Yeltsin as president, Russian intelligence effectively joined forces with the country’s mobsters and oligarchs, allowing them to operate freely as long as they strengthen Putin’s power and serve his personal financial interests. According to James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinsey & Company who consulted on the Panama Papers, some $1.3 trillion in illicit capital has poured out of Russia since the 1990s. Semion Mogilevich. At the top of the sprawling criminal enterprise was Semion Mogilevich. Beginning in the early 1980s, according to the FBI, the short, squat Ukrainian was the key money-laundering contact for the Solntsevskaya Bratva, or Brotherhood, one of the richest criminal syndicates in the world. Before long, he was running a multibillion-dollar worldwide racket of his own. Mogilevich wasn’t feared because he was the most violent gangster, but because he was reputedly the smartest. The FBI has credited the “brainy don,” who holds a degree in economics from Lviv University, with a staggering range of crimes. He ran drug trafficking and prostitution rings on an international scale; in one characteristic deal, he bought a bankrupt airline to ship heroin from Southeast Asia into Europe. He used a jewelry business in Moscow and Budapest as a front for art that Russian gangsters stole from museums, churches, and synagogues all over Europe. He has also been accused of selling some $20 million in stolen weapons, including ground-to-air missiles and armored troop carriers, to Iran. “He uses this wealth and power to not only further his criminal enterprises,” the FBI says, “but to influence governments and their economies.” In Russia, Mogilevich’s influence reportedly reaches all the way to the top. In 2005, Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian intelligence agent who defected to London, recorded an interview with investigators detailing his inside knowledge of the Kremlin’s ties to organized crime. “Mogilevich,” he said in broken English, “have good relationship with Putin since 1994 or 1993.” A year later Litvinenko was dead, apparently poisoned by agents of the Kremlin. Vyachelsav Ivankov.Sergey Ponomarev/AP Mogilevich’s greatest talent, the one that places him at the top of the Russian mob, is finding creative ways to cleanse dirty cash. According to the FBI, he has laundered money through more than 100 front companies around the world, and held bank accounts in at least 27 countries. And in 1991, he made a move that led directly to Trump Tower. That year, the FBI says, Mogilevich paid a Russian judge to spring a fellow mob boss, Vyachelsav Kirillovich Ivankov, from a Siberian gulag. If Mogilevich was the brains, Ivankov was the enforcer—a vor v zakone, or “made man,” infamous for torturing his victims and boasting about the murders he had arranged. Sprung by Mogilevich, Ivankov made the most of his freedom. In 1992, a year after he was released from prison, he headed to New York on an illegal business visa and proceeded to set up shop in Brighton Beach. In Red Mafiya, his book about the rise of the Russian mob in America, investigative reporter Robert I. Friedman documented how Ivankov organized a lurid and violent underworld of tattooed gangsters. When Ivankov touched down at JFK, Friedman reported, he was met by a fellow vor, who handed him a suitcase with $1.5 million in cash. Over the next three years, Ivankov oversaw the mob’s growth from a local extortion racket to a multibillion-dollar criminal enterprise. According to the FBI, he recruited two “combat brigades” of Special Forces veterans from the Soviet war in Afghanistan to run the mafia’s protection racket and kill his enemies. Like Mogilevich, Ivankov had a lot of dirty money he needed to clean up. He bought a Rolls-Royce dealership that was used, according to The New York Times, “as a front to launder criminal proceeds.” The FBI concluded that one of Ivankov’s partners in the operation was Felix Komarov, an upscale art dealer who lived in Trump Plaza on Third Avenue. Komarov, who was not charged in the case, called the allegations baseless. He acknowledged that he had frequent phone conversations with Ivankov, but insisted the exchanges were innocent. “I had no reason not to call him,” Komarov told a reporter. Trump Taj Mahal paid the largest fine ever levied against a casino for having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering rules. The feds wanted to arrest Ivankov, but he kept vanishing. “He was like a ghost to the FBI,” one agent recalls. Agents spotted him meeting with other Russian crime figures in Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, and Toronto. They also found he made frequent visits to Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which mobsters routinely used to launder huge sums of money. In 2015, the Taj Mahal was fined $10 million—the highest penalty ever levied by the feds against a casino—and admitted to having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering regulations for years. The FBI also struggled to figure out where Ivankov lived. “We were looking around, looking around, looking around,” James Moody, chief of the bureau’s organized crime section, told Friedman. “We had to go out and really beat the bushes. And then we found out that he was living in a luxury condo in Trump Tower.” There is no evidence that Trump knew Ivankov personally, even if they were neighbors. But the fact that a top Russian mafia boss lived and worked in Trump’s own building indicates just how much high-level Russian mobsters came to view the future president’s properties as a home away from home. In 2009, after being extradited to Russia to face murder charges, Ivankov was gunned down in a sniper attack on the streets of Moscow. According to The Moscow Times, his funeral was a media spectacle in Russia, attracting “1,000 people wearing black leather jackets, sunglasses, and gold chains,” along with dozens of giant wreaths from the various brotherhoods. Throughout the 1990s, untold millions from the former Soviet Union flowed into Trump’s luxury developments and Atlantic City casinos. But all the money wasn’t enough to save Trump from his own failings as a businessman. He owed $4 billion to more than 70 banks, with a mind-boggling $800 million of it personally guaranteed. He spent much of the decade mired in litigation, filing for multiple bankruptcies and scrambling to survive. For most developers, the situation would have spelled financial ruin. But fortunately for Trump, his own economic crisis coincided with one in Russia. In 1998, Russia defaulted on $40 billion in debt, causing the ruble to plummet and Russian banks to close. The ensuing financial panic sent the country’s oligarchs and mobsters scrambling to find a safe place to put their money. That October, just two months after the Russian economy went into a tailspin, Trump broke ground on his biggest project yet. Rising to 72 stories in midtown Manhattan, Trump World Tower would be the tallest residential building on the planet. Construction got underway in 1999—just as Trump was preparing his first run for the presidency on the Reform Party ticket— and concluded in 2001. As Bloomberg Businessweek reported earlier this year, it wasn’t long before one-third of the units on the tower’s priciest floors had been snatched up—either by individual buyers from the former Soviet Union, or by limited liability companies connected to Russia. “We had big buyers from Russia and Ukraine and Kazakhstan,” sales agent Debra Stotts told Bloomberg. Sunny Isles, Florida, became known as “Little Moscow,” thanks to Trump’s high-rises.Rhona Wise/AFP/Getty] Among the new tenants was Eduard Nektalov, a diamond dealer from Uzbekistan. Nektalov, who was being investigated by a Treasury Department task force for mob-connected money laundering, bought a condo on the seventy-ninth floor, directly below Trump’s future campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway. A month later he sold his unit for a $500,000 profit. The following year, after rumors circulated that Nektalov was cooperating with federal investigators, he was shot down on Sixth Avenue. Trump had found his market. After Trump World Tower opened, Sotheby’s International Realty teamed up with a Russian real estate company to make a big sales push for the property in Russia. The “tower full of oligarchs,” as Bloomberg called it, became a model for Trump’s projects going forward. All he needed to do, it seemed, was slap the Trump name on a big building, and high-dollar customers from Russia and the former Soviet republics were guaranteed to come rushing in. Dolly Lenz, a New York real estate broker, told USA Today that she sold some 65 units in Trump World Tower to Russians. “I had contacts in Moscow looking to invest in the United States,” Lenz said. “They all wanted to meet Donald.” To capitalize on his new business model, Trump struck a deal with a Florida developer to attach his name to six high-rises in Sunny Isles, just outside Miami. Without having to put up a dime of his own money, Trump would receive a cut of the profits. “Russians love the Trump brand,” Gil Dezer, the Sunny Isles developer, told Bloomberg. A local broker told The Washington Post that one-third of the 500 apartments he’d sold went to “Russian-speakers.” So many bought the Trump-branded apartments, in fact, that the area became known as “Little Moscow.” “Russians love the Trump brand,” said developer Gil Dezer, (left, with Trump). One Florida tenant, Anatoly Golubchik (right) was busted in a major money-laundering ring run out of Trump Tower. Billy Farrell/Patrick McMullan/Getty; John Marshall Mantel/ New York Times/Redux Many of the units were sold by a native of Uzbekistan who had immigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1980s; her business was so brisk that she soon began bringing Russian tour groups to Sunny Isles to view the properties. According to a Reuters investigation in March, at least 63 buyers with Russian addresses or passports spent $98 million on Trump’s properties in south Florida. 
What’s more, another one-third of the units—more than 700 in all—were bought by shadowy shell companies that concealed the true owners. Trump promoted and celebrated the properties. His organization continues to advertise the units; in 2011, when they first turned a profit, he attended a ceremonial mortgage-burning in Sunny Isles to toast their success. Last October, an investigation by the Miami Herald found that at least 13 buyers in the Florida complex have been the target of government investigations, either personally or through their companies, including “members of a Russian-American organized crime group.” Two buyers in Sunny Isles, Anatoly Golubchik and Michael Sall, were convicted for taking part in a massive international gambling and money-laundering syndicate that was run out of Trump Tower in New York. The ring, according to the FBI, was operating under the protection of the Russian mafia. The influx of Russian money did more than save Trump’s business from ruin—it set the stage for the next phase of his career. By 2004, to the outside world, it appeared that Trump was back on top after his failures in Atlantic City. That January, flush with the appearance of success, Trump launched his newly burnished brand into another medium. “My name’s Donald Trump,” he declared in his opening narration for The Apprentice, “the largest real estate developer in New York. I own buildings all over the place. Model agencies. The Miss Universe pageant. Jetliners, golf courses, casinos, and private resorts like Mar-a-Lago, one of the most spectacular estates anywhere in the world.” But it wouldn’t be Trump without a better story than that. “It wasn’t always so easy,” he confessed, over images of him cruising around New York in a stretch limo. “About 13 years ago, I was seriously in trouble. I was billions of dollars in debt. But I fought back, and I won. Big league. I used my brain. I used my negotiating skills. And I worked it all out. Now my company’s bigger than it ever was and stronger than it ever was.… I’ve mastered the art of the deal.” The show, which reportedly paid Trump up to $3 million per episode, instantly revived his career. “The Apprentice turned Trump from a blowhard Richie Rich who had just gone through his most difficult decade into an unlikely symbol of straight talk, an evangelist for the American gospel of success, a decider who insisted on standards in a country that had somehow slipped into handing out trophies for just showing up,” journalists Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher observe in their book Trump Revealed. “Above all, Apprentice sold an image of the host-boss as supremely competent and confident, dispensing his authority and getting immediate results. The analogy to politics was palpable.” Russians spent at least $98 million on Trump’s properties in Florida—and another third of the units were bought by shadowy shell companies.But the story of Donald Trump, self-made business genius, left out any mention of the shady Russian investors who had done so much to make his comeback narrative possible. And Trump’s business, despite the hype, was hardly “stronger than it ever was”—his credit was still lousy, and two more of his prized properties in Atlantic City would soon fall into bankruptcy, even as his ratings soared. To further enhance his brand, Trump used his prime-time perch to unveil another big project. On the 2006 season finale of The Apprentice, as 11 million viewers waited to learn which of the two finalists was going to be fired, Trump prolonged the suspense by cutting to a promotional video for his latest venture. “Located in the center of Manhattan’s chic artist enclave, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in SoHo is the site of my latest development,” he narrated over swooping helicopter footage of lower Manhattan. The new building, he added, would be nothing less than a “$370 million work of art … an awe-inspiring masterpiece.” Trump SoHo was the brainchild of two development companies—Bayrock Group LLC and the Sapir Organization—run by a pair of wealthy émigrés from the former Soviet Union who had done business with some of Russia’s richest and most notorious oligarchs. Together, their firms made Trump an offer he couldn’t refuse: The developers would finance and build Trump SoHo themselves. In return for lending his name to the project, Trump would get 18 percent of the profits—without putting up any of his own money. One of the developers, Tamir Sapir, had followed an unlikely path to riches. After emigrating from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, he had started out driving a cab in New York City and ended up a billionaire living in Trump Tower. His big break came when he co-founded a company that sold high-tech electronics. According to the FBI, Sapir’s partner in the firm was a “member or associate” of Ivankov’s mob in Brighton Beach. No charges were ever filed, and Sapir denied having any mob ties. “It didn’t happen,” he told The New York Times. “Everything was done in the most legitimate way.” Trump, who described Sapir as a “great friend,” bought 200 televisions from his electronics company. In 2007, he hosted the wedding of Sapir’s daughter at Mar-a-Lago, and later attended her infant son’s bris. In 2007, Trump celebrated the launch of Trump SoHo with partners Tevfik Arif (center) and Felix Sater (right). Arif was later acquitted on charges of running a prostitution ring.Mark Von Holden/WireImage/Getty Sapir also introduced Trump to Tevfik Arif, his partner in the Trump SoHo deal. On paper, at least, Arif was another heartwarming immigrant success story. He had graduated from the Moscow Institute of Trade and Economics and worked as a Soviet trade and commerce official for 17 years before moving to New York and founding Bayrock. Practically overnight, Arif became a wildly successful developer in Brooklyn. In 2002, after meeting Trump, he moved Bayrock’s offices to Trump Tower, where he and his staff of Russian émigrés set up shop on the twenty-fourth floor. Trump worked closely with Bayrock on real estate ventures in Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. “Bayrock knew the investors,” he later testified. Arif “brought the people up from Moscow to meet with me.” He boasted about the deal he was getting: Arif was offering him a 20 to 25 percent cut on his overseas projects, he said, not to mention management fees. “It was almost like mass production of a car,” Trump testified. But Bayrock and its deals quickly became mired in controversy. Forbes and other publications reported that the company was financed by a notoriously corrupt group of oligarchs known as The Trio. In 2010, Arif was arrested by Turkish prosecutors and charged with setting up a prostitution ring after he was found aboard a boat—chartered by one of The Trio—with nine young women, two of whom were 16 years old. The women reportedly refused to talk, and Arif was acquitted. According to a lawsuit filed that same year by two former Bayrock executives, Arif started the firm “backed by oligarchs and money they stole from the Russian people.” In addition, the suit alleges, Bayrock “was substantially and covertly mob-owned and operated.” The company’s real purpose, the executives claim, was to develop hugely expensive properties bearing the Trump brand—and then use the projects to launder money and evade taxes. The lawsuit, which is ongoing, does not claim that Trump was complicit in the alleged scam. Bayrock dismissed the allegations as “legal conclusions to which no response is required.” But last year, after examining title deeds, bank records, and court documents, the Financial Times concluded that Trump SoHo had “multiple ties to an alleged international money-laundering network.” In one case, the paper reported, a former Kazakh energy minister is being sued in federal court for conspiring to “systematically loot hundreds of millions of dollars of public assets” and then purchasing three condos in Trump SoHo to launder his “ill-gotten funds.” Felix Sater had a Trump business card long after his criminal past came to light.] During his collaboration with Bayrock, Trump also became close to the man who ran the firm’s daily operations—a twice-convicted felon with family ties to Semion Mogilevich. In 1974, when he was eight years old, Felix Sater and his family emigrated from Moscow to Brighton Beach. According to the FBI, his father—who was convicted for extorting local restaurants, grocery stores, and a medical clinic—was a Mogilevich boss. Sater tried making it as a stockbroker, but his career came to an abrupt end in 1991, after he stabbed a Wall Street foe in the face with a broken margarita glass during a bar fight, opening wounds that required 110 stitches. (Years later, in a deposition, Trump downplayed the incident, insisting that Sater “got into a barroom fight, which a lot of people do.”) Sater lost his trading license over the attack, and served a year in prison. In 1998, Sater pleaded guilty to racketeering—operating a “pump and dump” stock fraud in partnership with alleged Russian mobsters that bilked investors of at least $40 million. To avoid prison time, Sater turned informer. But according to the lawsuit against Bayrock, he also resumed “his old tricks.” By 2003, the suit alleges, Sater controlled the majority of Bayrock’s shares—and proceeded to use the firm to launder hundreds of millions of dollars, while skimming and extorting millions more. The suit also claims that Sater committed fraud by concealing his racketeering conviction from banks that invested hundreds of millions in Bayrock, and that he threatened “to kill anyone at the firm he thought knew of the crimes committed there and might report it.” In court, Bayrock has denied the allegations, which Sater’s attorney characterizes as “false, fabricated, and pure garbage.” RELATED What Did Republicans Know About the Russia Scandal? America Deserves an Answer.Either Trump deceived GOP leaders, or they ignored the collusion. By Sater’s account, in sworn testimony, he was very tight with Trump. He flew to Colorado with him, accompanied Donald Jr. and Ivanka on a trip to Moscow at Trump’s invitation, and met with Trump’s inner circle “constantly.” In Trump Tower, he often dropped by Trump’s office to pitch business ideas—“just me and him.” Trump seems unable to recall any of this. “Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it,” he told the Associated Press in 2015. Two years earlier, testifying in a video deposition, Trump took the same line. If Sater “were sitting in the room right now,” he swore under oath, “I really wouldn’t know what he looked like.” He added: “I don’t know him very well, but I don’t think he was connected to the mafia.” Trump and his lawyers say that he was unaware of Sater’s criminal past when he signed on to do business with Bayrock. That’s plausible, since Sater’s plea deal in the stock fraud was kept secret because of his role as an informant. But even after The New York Times revealed Sater’s criminal record in 2007, he continued to use office space provided by the Trump Organization. In 2010, he was even given an official Trump Organization business card that read: FELIX H. SATER, SENIOR ADVISOR TO DONALD TRUMP. In 2013, police burst into Unit 63A of Trump Tower and rounded up 29 suspects in a $100 million money-laundering scheme.Sater apparently remains close to Trump’s inner circle. Earlier this year, one week before National Security Advisor Michael Flynn was fired for failing to report meetings with Russian officials, Trump’s personal attorney reportedly hand-delivered to Flynn’s office a “back-channel plan” for lifting sanctions on Russia. The co-author of the plan, according to the Times: Felix Sater. In the end, Trump’s deals with Bayrock, like so much of his business empire, proved to be more glitter than gold. The international projects in Russia and Poland never materialized. A Trump tower being built in Fort Lauderdale ran out of money before it was completed, leaving behind a massive concrete shell. Trump SoHo ultimately had to be foreclosed and resold. But his Russian investors had left Trump with a high-profile property he could leverage. The new owners contracted with Trump to run the tower; as of April, the president and his daughter Ivanka were still listed as managers of the property. In 2015, according to the federal financial disclosure reports, Trump made $3 million from Trump SoHo. In April 2013, a little more than two years before Trump rode the escalator to the ground floor of Trump Tower to kick off his presidential campaign, police burst into Unit 63A of the high-rise and rounded up 29 suspects in two gambling rings. The operation, which prosecutors called “the world’s largest sports book,” was run out of condos in Trump Tower—including the entire fifty-first floor of the building. In addition, unit 63A—a condo directly below one owned by Trump—served as the headquarters for a “sophisticated money-laundering scheme” that moved an estimated $100 million out of the former Soviet Union, through shell companies in Cyprus, and into investments in the United States. The entire operation, prosecutors say, was working under the protection of Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, whom the FBI identified as a top Russian vor closely allied with Semion Mogilevich. In a single two-month stretch, according to the federal indictment, the money launderers paid Tokhtakhounov $10 million. Tokhtakhounov, who had been indicted a decade earlier for conspiring to fix the ice-skating competition at the 2002 Winter Olympics, was the only suspect to elude arrest. For the next seven months, the Russian crime boss fell off the radar of Interpol, which had issued a red alert. Then, in November 2013, he suddenly appeared live on international television—sitting in the audience at the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow. 
Tokhtakhounov was in the VIP section, just a few seats away from the pageant owner, Donald Trump. Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. Dmitry Korotayev/Epsilon/Getty After the pageant, Trump bragged about all the powerful Russians who had turned out that night, just to see him. “Almost all of the oligarchs were in the room,” he told Real Estate Weekly. Contacted by Mother Jones, Tokhtakhounov insisted that he had bought his own ticket and was not a VIP. He also denied being a mobster, telling The New York Times that he had been indicted in the gambling ring because FBI agents “misinterpreted his Russian slang” on their Trump Tower wiretaps, when he was merely placing $20,000 bets on soccer games. Both the White House and the Trump Organization declined to respond to questions for this story. On the few occasions he has been questioned about his business entanglements with Russians, however, Trump has offered broad denials. “I tweeted out that I have no dealings with Russia,” he said at a press conference in January, when asked if Russia has any “leverage” over him, financial or otherwise. “I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we’ve stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia. I have no loans with Russia at all.” In May, when he was interviewed by NBC’s Lester Holt, Trump seemed hard-pressed to think of a single connection he had with Russia. “I have had dealings over the years where I sold a house to a very wealthy Russian many years ago,” he said. “I had the Miss Universe pageant—which I owned for quite a while—I had it in Moscow a long time ago. But other than that, I have nothing to do with Russia.” But even if Trump has no memory of the many deals that he and his business made with Russian investors, he certainly did not “stay away” from Russia. For decades, he and his organization have aggressively promoted his business there, seeking to entice investors and buyers for some of his most high-profile developments. Whether Trump knew it or not, Russian mobsters and corrupt oligarchs used his properties not only to launder vast sums of money from extortion, drugs, gambling, and racketeering, but even as a base of operations for their criminal activities. In the process, they propped up Trump’s business and enabled him to reinvent his image. Without the Russian mafia, it is fair to say, Donald Trump would not be president of the United States. Semion Mogilevich, the Russian mob’s “boss of bosses,” also declined to respond to questions from the New Republic. “My ideas are not important to anybody,” Mogilevich said in a statement provided by his attorney. “Whatever I know, I am a private person.” Mogilevich, the attorney added, “has nothing to do with President Trump. He doesn’t believe that anybody associated with him lives in Trump Tower. He has no ties to America or American citizens.” Back in 1999, the year before Trump staged his first run for president, Mogilevich gave a rare interview to the BBC. Living up to his reputation for cleverness, the mafia boss mostly joked and double-spoke his way around his criminal activities. (Q: “Why did you set up companies in the Channel Islands?” A: “The problem was that I didn’t know any other islands. When they taught us geography at school, I was sick that day.”) But when the exasperated interviewer asked, “Do you believe there is any Russian organized crime?” the “brainy don” turned half-serious. “How can you say that there is a Russian mafia in America?” he demanded. “The word mafia, as far as I understand the word, means a criminal group that is connected with the political organs, the police and the administration. I don’t know of a single Russian in the U.S. Senate, a single Russian in the U.S. Congress, a single Russian in the U.S. government. Where are the connections with the Russians? How can there be a Russian mafia in America? Where are their connections?” Two decades later, we finally have an answer to Mogilevich’s question. Craig Unger is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and the author of several books, including House of Bush, House of Saud.Read MorePolitics, Magazine, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Russia, Ivanka Trump, New York, Florida, Cover Story, feature, Trump Tower, Semion Mogilevich, Vyachelsav Ivankov, Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov, August-September 2017 == why only ukraine? rw redditt bs The renewed focus on the Odessa or Russian-Ukrainian Israeli Mafia may spell trouble for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. Many of the key members of the syndicate, including Marc Rich, Grigori Loutchansky, and Vadym Rabinovich, were donors to Bill Clinton's political coffers. Part of the current congressional investigation of Hillary Clinton's activities at the State Department involve her shake down of foreign political and business leaders for donations to her and her husband's Clinton Foundation. And none of these leads have anything to do with Benghazi.=