What does the FBI takedown of a Russian money-laundering organization mean to Vladimir Putin and the man he helped install as U.S. President?

President Vladimir Putin was angry. He kept a group of his key cabinet ministers up until nearly 1 am on a recent Russian morning to lecture them on the country’s crypto-currency sector.

“I can straight-up tell you the president is completely mad about this,” recalls Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov. “The most significant issues about growth revolve around the digital economy and technological leadership,” Shuvalov told a bitcoin conference in St. Petersburg.

Putin has reason to be worried. Oligarchs have syphoned $335 Bn out of Russia since 2005. Putin himself is believed to be worth $200 Bn. When you’re stealing that kind of money, you need a fast and effective way to launder it and bitcoin is perfect for that type of money-laundering. The crypto-currency’s anonymity and global reach also makes it ideal for Russia’s interference campaigns in foreign elections.

This week, the FBI took down one of Russia’s biggest bitcoin exchanges, BTC-e.

Alexander Vinnick, 38, was arrested in Greece for laundering $4 Bn in dirty money through his bitcoin exchange. $2.2 Bn stolen from the Japanese bitcoin exchange, MtGox, and $1.8 Bn from hackers, drug traffickers and embezzlers. The FBI claims Vinnick is one of the world’s biggest crime dons.

Investigators also seized the exchange’s servers. The data on those servers could provide important evidence linking Russia’s organized crime organizations and the hacking of last year’s U.S. election.

Vinnick’s arrest comes as the U.S. has begun to systematically dismantle Russian organized crime networks around the world. Last week, they shut down dark web AlphaBay and they’ve arrested spam lord Pyotr Levashov, who has been linked to the hacking of the DNC.

Deputy PM says Putin is completely “mad” about this.

As investigators close in on the font of his power, Putin faces a real liquidity crisis.

Soon after that late-night tirade about bitcoin with his ministers, Putin met with Vitalik Buterin, the 23-year-old Russian founder of the world’s second most popular crypto-currency, Etherium, perhaps with an eye to ‘nationalizing’ it.

At the same time, Putin’s state-run Sberbank announced it intends to launch its own national crypto-currency. Sberbank CEO Herman Gref let it be known the new Russian bitcoin will be “the only cryptocurrency freely buyable and sellable in Russia” and will likely operate on its own blockchain, evading international prosecutors.

Trump loves bitcoin, too. 

Herman Gref has close ties to President Donald J. Trump. They were introduced to each other at the 2013 Moscow Miss Universe by a Russian oligarch whose deputy offered Donald Trump Jr. dirt on Hillary Clinton in June 2016. Gref and Trump are also both linked to the money-laundering Bank of Cyprus. Perhaps not too coincidentally, the Trump administration has been enthusiastic about introducing bitcoin into the U.S. government bureaucracy.

Russia’s unprecedented cyber attack on the U.S. election in 2016 was a multi-layered campaign which included disinformation, an unexplained server link to Alfa Bank in Trump Tower, hacking DNC servers, voters rolls and voting machine vendors, along with Wikileaks disclosures. (Wikileaks itself was saved by millions of dollars in bitcoin deposits despite an international blockade).

An operation of the scale of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. election is not cheap and requires the very kind of anonymity and global reach crypto-currencies provide. The FBI is now surely following the BTC-e blockchain (bitcoin’s ledger) for links between Russia and the Trump campaign.

In Watergate, investigators followed the money. In Trump-Russia, they follow the bitcoin.

The post Bitcoin & Consequence appeared first on Narativ.

President Trump needs to answer questions about the Trump Organization’s ties to terrorist organizations and his support for their state-funders.

On May 10, President Donald Trump invited Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and then-ambassador Sergey Kislyak into the Oval Office. During that meeting, he revealed to his guests key information which compromised an Israeli spy who had infiltrated ISIS.

“Trump revealed the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat,” Greg Miller and Greg Jaffe wrote in the Washington Post. “The identification of the location was seen as particularly problematic, officials said, because Russia could use that detail to help identify the US ally or intelligence capability involved.”

Russia has supported ISIS extensively both directly and indirectly for some time.

ISIS supplies oil to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Russian-made weapons from Assad’s arsenal regularly find their way into the hands of ISIS. A former FSB counter-terrorism specialist has revealed that Russian security forces helped recruit thousands of Russian-speaking Jihadis for ISIS, and that Russia deployed air defense capabilities to prevent U.S. air attacks on ISIS. To be clear, ISIS is secretly funded and armed by Russia even as Moscow declares the terror group an ‘enemy’ in public. It’s convenient for Putin to control both sides of the war. So much easier to win.

If all of this sounds outlandish, consider how Putin came to power and its historical echo of Hitler’s Reichstag fire. In September 1999, as the Yeltsin era was coming to an end in Russia, four apartment buildings were blown up in Moscow, Buinaksk, and Volgodonsk. Putin’s response was resolute: “We will pursue the terrorists everywhere. If they are in an airport, then in an airport, and, forgive me, if we catch them in the toilet, then we’ll rub them out (mochit) in the toilet…. The question is closed once and for all.”

That was then. What we know now, is that Russia’s FSB was behind blowing up those apartment buildings. According to Boris Berezovskiy, a Yeltsin-era businessman, the explosions were “intended to unite Russians in fear and in a desperate desire for a new, decisive, even aggressive leader who would spare no enemy.” Putin is quite adept at acting tough in the face of a threat he has created, even terrorism against his own people.

Trump hands Syria, Russia, Turkey and Iran a major victory.

Russia’s main mid-east ally in the war for Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria is Turkey, which has the world’s 6th largest military. On July 19th, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu Agency leaked the positions of 10 U.S. military posts in northern Syria, drawing swift criticism from the Pentagon. “The release of sensitive military information exposes Coalition forces to unnecessary risk and has the potential to disrupt ongoing operations to defeat ISIS,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Adrian Rankine-Galloway said.

Why would Turkey, a NATO ally, compromise the U.S. and help ISIS? Under President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an, Turkey has been folded into the Kremlin’s sphere of influence. With Putin’s guidance, Erdo?an has quashed democracy in Turkey and openly supports the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad. Erdo?an also enjoys the support of President Trump who, In May, praised Erdogan’s efforts to bring stability to Syria.

Now, Trump has handed Turkey and Russia a significant victory by ending a CIA program to arm Syrian rebels fighting Assad and working alongside the U.S. to defeat ISIS. “Officials said the phasing out of the secret program reflects Trump’s interest in finding ways to work with Russia, which saw the anti-Assad program as an assault on its interests,” according to the Washington Post.

The U.S. is also conspiring with Russia in a cease-fire in parts of Syria which analysts believe protects and emboldens a re-emerging al-Qaeda. “Current US strategy empowers al-Qaeda, which has an army in Syria, is preparing to replace ISIS .?.?. [and] is more dangerous than ISIS,” says a recent report from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW). It’s a play right out of Putin’s playbook and helps Russia more than any other nation state.

It’s worth recalling Trump’s former national Security Adviser Michael Flynn was on the Turkish payroll to the tune of $500,000, and also compromised by the Kremlin. Facts he failed to disclose before taking office.

Trump Organization linked to Iran, terror funding.

Azerbaijan is a former Soviet Republic which is a vital conduit between Russia and Iran. Along with Georgia and Armenia, the countries form the South Caucasus, and Vladimir Putin considers the area as a major goal for Russian expansionism.

Baku in Azerbaijan is not the type of place you’d find an ultra-luxury Trump Hotel, but there is one, although it never opened. A brilliant and exhaustive article by Adam Davidson in The New Yorker details the ties between the Trump organization and Zika Mammadov, a corrupt Azerbaijani with deep ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. While the Trumps don’t own the hotel, they did receive licensing and other fees for their role in building it. Ivanka Trump was involved in every design detail and even showed off her work on Instagram.

Davidson posits that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (which funds Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations) laundered drug and nuclear arms material trafficking money through the Trump Hotel.

“Investigators of financial fraud like to say that government corruption, money laundering, and other illicit behavior often form a “nexus” with even more troubling activity, such as financing terrorism and developing weapons of mass destruction,” wrote Davidson. “This appears to be true in the Baku deal.”

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) believes the Trump Azerbaijan project needs to be investigated as a possible violation of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. “The Trump Organization’s Baku project shows the lack of ‘extreme vetting’ Mr. Trump applied to his own business dealings in corruption-plagued regimes around the globe. . . . Congress—and the Trump Administration itself—has a duty to examine whether the President or his family is exposed to terrorist financing, sanctions, money laundering, and other imprudent associations through their business holdings and connections.”

Warm-water ports, by any means necessary.

This week, Russia, Iran and Azerbaijan will begin joint military exercises in the Caspian Sea. This should be viewed as a pivotal turning point in Kremlin’s expansion into the South Caucasus. If Putin continues his march into Georgia and consolidates power in Azerbaijan, the new “Russian Empire” will have direct access to the Mediterranean Sea through Turkey and Syria, and to Asia through Iran. Russia’s has long sought access to warm-water ports, in an attempt to gain dominance over liberal-leaning democracies like the U.S. and its allies.

The military exercises and geo-political realignment also underline a growing partnership between Russia and Iran – two countries actively supporting and funding terror organizations like ISIS and Hezbollah.

Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Iran’s involvement in terrorism and state funding of terrorism are also war crimes and warrant investigation by domestic prosecutors and the International Criminal Court in the Hague (although Russia, Iran the U.S. are not currently party to the ICC). It would be an astounding turn of events if a sitting U.S. President is openly aiding and abetting Russia and Iran and if his businesses have profited from dealings with these states.

The post Crimes Of War appeared first on Narativ.

There’s more to Donald Trump Jr.’s e-mails than meets the eye.

In the shadow of the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, Donald Trump was feted by Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov and his pop-star son, Emin. “I’m in Moscow for Miss Universe tonight,” Trump tweeted on November 9. “Picking a winner is very hard, they are all winners. Total sellout of arena. Big night in Russia!”

Trump’s Russia visit in 2013 was far more than just an exercise in showmanship. Agalarov arranged at least one two-hour dinner for Trump at Moscow’s Nobu with high-powered Kremlin officials. Noteworthy among them, was Herman Gref, CEO of state-run Sberbank. “[Trump] is lively with a positive energy and a good attitude toward Russia,” Gref said in an interview. Trump was equally effusive. “I was with the top-level people, both oligarchs and generals, and top-of-the-government people,” Trump told Hugh Hewitt in 2015.

Post sanctions, an effort to launder Russian money.

A year after the Moscow Miss Universe, the U.S. and E.U. imposed sanctions on Sberbank after the Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Sberbank CEO Herman Gref began looking for a way to move roubles out of the country. He found it in 2015. Gref’s son and another oligarch bought the Bank of Cyprus as a go-between for illegal Russian funds. A Russian laundromat, if you will. The deal was overseen by the bank’s vice-chairman, Wilbur Ross.

“Cyprus has a reputation as a laundromat for the Russians who are trying to avoid sanctions,” Rep. Mike Quigley told The Daily Beast. Paul Manafort, Trump’s Campaign Manager, also used the Bank of Cyrus to launder some of his own dirty money, including $12.7m he illegally got from a pro-Kremlin party in the Ukraine. Wilbur Ross, the chief engineer of the Russian-Cyprus deal, is now Trump’s Commerce Secretary, linking a key presidential ally to the Cyprus-based ruble washing machine.

Russian oligarch offers dirt on Hillary Clinton.

A year after the Bank of Cyprus was acquired by the Russians, on June 3 last year, an e-mail popped into Donald Trump Jr.’s inbox from British Publicist Rob Goldstone. Goldstone represents Emin Agalarov, the pop-star whose father, Aras, partnered with Trump in Miss Universe. The same oligarch who introduced Trump to Sberbank CEO, Herman Gref, who indirectly owns the Bank of Cyprus. The e-mail offered the Trump campaign explosive “kompromat” on Hillary Clinton:

“The Crown prosecutor of Russia met with [Emin’s] father Aras this morning and in their meeting offered to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary [Clinton] and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father,” Goldstone wrote to Don Jr.

“This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr Trump – helped along by Aras and Emin,” Goldstone said.

“If it’s what you say, I love it,” Don Jr. replied.

The eldest Trump son looped in then Campaign Manager Paul Manafort and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner has ties to another Russian bank and diplomats. A few days later, Manafort and Kushner attended the follow-up meeting with Russian state attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower on June 9, 2106.  Also present was Ike Kaveladze, Aras Agalarov’s US based deputy, who is suspected of laundering $1.4Bn in Russian dirty money through fake Citibank accounts in 2000.

Senate, House committees probe Trump’s role in Russian money laundering.

Donald Trump’s personal connection to Russian oligarchs, their money-laundering deputies and Wilbur Ross raises an important question. What role, if any, does the Trump Organization play in laundering dirty Russian money? Furthermore, did Trump’s Russia support come as part of a cash-fueled relationship?

Senate and House Intelligence Committees are now looking for specific ties to money laundering. This week, they finally began receiving data from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). FinCEN’s mission is to combat money laundering and protect national security from illicit use. If investigators find proof of Trump’s role in Russian money laundering, it seems like the probe could reach a very different level of criminality.

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