DOJ has identified a former business associate of Manafort: one Dmytro Firtash

[Leghorn21]

The Department of Justice has identified a former business associate of ex-Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort as an "upper-echelon [associate] of Russian organized crime."

The declaration came in a 115-page filing as part of the government's case against Dmytro Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch who was once involved in a failed multi-million-dollar deal to buy New York's Drake Hotel with Manafort, and an important player in the Ukrainian political party for which Manafort worked.

Firtash is being prosecuted for what federal prosecutors in Illinois say was his role in bribing Indian officials in order to get a lucrative mining deal to sell titanium to Boeing.

The government says that prosecuting Firtash and his co-defendant in the alleged scheme, Andras Knopp, "will disrupt this organized crime group and prevent it from further criminal acts within the United States."

more:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/amp/doj-ex-manafort-associate-firtash-top-tier-comrade-russian-mobsters-n786806

[Ilsa]

1. Someone at the DOJ must be watching TRMS.

She's discussed Firtash more than once. About tkme.

[Leghorn21]

4. Yes, and he's been talked about for ages by various twitter sleuths...I just actually read the

whole article and look who's here (my emphasis):


Also in 2008, according to a State Department cable posted by WikiLeaks, Firtash told U.S. Ambassador William Taylor that he got his start in business with the permission of one of Russia's most well-known organized crime bosses, Semion Mogilevich. But Firtash claimed to Taylor that he was forced to deal with such people.

[L. Coyote]

2. How is this not old news?

21 February 2017

Powerful in Ukraine, stranded in Austria for the past three years, and wanted by US authorities on bribery charges, Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash is no stranger to intrigue.

On Tuesday his case took yet another turn as a Vienna court ordered his extradition to the US – and he was taken into custody on a European arrest warrant by Austrian police just hours later.

The prosecutor’s office said the arrest was not to do with the US warrant, but due to supplementary information received from Spanish authorities, raising the possibility the oligarch may be extradited to Spain rather than the US.
Caught between Russia and the US? The curious case of Ukraine's Dmytro Firtash
Read more

Firtash denies the bribery charges and has always argued they are politically motivated – Washington’s way of removing him from the Ukrainian political playing field at a sensitive time.

The case has taken on an extra dimension of geopolitical interest because the businessman is a one-time partner of Paul Manafort, formerly Donald Trump’s campaign manager.

Firtash, who brokered gas deals with the Kremlin over many years, was arrested just weeks after the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine ousted former president Viktor Yanukovych from power. ...............

[Sanity Claws]

3. This probably was in the works for a while

However I still wonder whether the timing has something to do with the issues between Sessions and 45.

[Justice]

5. Dmytro Firtash is part owner of SCL Group Ltd, owner of Cambridge Analytica