Oleg Deripaska-Linked Firm Was Raided for Undisclosed U.S. Inquiry

[htuttle]

Source: Bloomberg.com

U.S. prosecutors are seeking records from a company associated with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska as part of a previously unreported investigation, according to documents filed in a London court.

The investigators are seeking evidence of “money laundering, tax offenses and fraud offenses” from 18 individuals and companies including Terra Services Ltd., a real estate firm that until last year was controlled by Deripaska, according to documents filed this week.

...


The U.S. probe grew out of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian election interference, according to the filings. It is “live and ongoing,” according to a document filed Thursday by the U.K. government.

...

Mueller’s team ended its work earlier this year, referring several matters to other U.S. prosecutors. Many of those haven’t been made public. Parts of Mueller’s report dealing with Manafort and Gates are redacted to avoid interfering with unspecified ongoing investigations.


Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-18/deripaska-linked-firm-was-raided-for-undisclosed-u-s-inquiry

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. There was an oligarch connection with Furtash/Parnass/tRump. Not sure if it was Deripaska. . . . nt

[dixiegrrrrl]

19. That was Dmytro Firtash

He is very connected to Russian Godfather, Semion Mogilevich.
Putin works for him.

Lev Parnas, one of the two associates of Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, served as a translator for lawyers representing oligarch Dmytro Firtash. Parnas was arrested on Thursday along with the other Florida businessman, Igor Fruman, on unrelated charges that included illegally funneling $325,000 to a political action committee supporting pro-Trump candidates.

Both men had worked in an unspecified capacity for Firtash before Parnas joined the Ukrainian’s legal team, according to a person familiar with the Florida men’s business dealings with Firtash.
Firtash, one of Ukraine’s wealthiest businessmen, is battling extradition by U.S. authorities on bribery charges from Vienna, where he has lived for five years.

Federal prosecutors in Illinois said in court papers in 2017 that Firtash was an “upper-echelon” associate of Russian organized crime. He was indicted in 2013 and charged with bribing Indian officials for access to titanium mines. Firtash has denied any wrongdoing.

Firtash was “financing” the activities of Parnas and Fruman, the source familiar with their business dealings said. The source did not detail their specific work for the oligarch or how much money he had paid them and over what period.

[Mc Mike]

2. Come on. Roll them up quick, counterintel.

That's what really frosts me about the Feds and counterintel, and the non-politized Justice Dept people. It definitely is as bad as or worse than alleged, all these criminal treasonous moves. Evidence is so overwhelming, these guys have so much surveillance capacity and latitude. How does it take 3 years to round up and charge the Rump treasoncrime gang?

[Bernardo de La Paz]

5. I share the emotion but think you misunderstand the court system

The standards of proof for the courts are very high, in order to protect defendants we or anybody else doesn't like.

Further, the gang is skilled at hiding transactions with numbered companies that have to be all unwound and tracked down, if you want to follow the money as the time honored phrase advises.

More, while the Intell and counterintell communities can know a fact, they sometimes need to find that fact a second way that does not reveal sources and methods used the first way.

Beyond even that, the people of the country (it's their country) need to be convinced and many of them are low-info and swayed by emotion, not facts. So the facts have to be so overwhelming that the emotional resistance is swamped.

tRump is impatient. The US is better than tRump. Don't be a tRump.

[Mc Mike]

21. Admitted, I don't have a great grasp of the legal system.

I just remember how quick the feds used their stingray technology to round up the anti-G-20 activists who coordinated their peaceful legal protests here in Pittsburgh with their cellphones. Done and dusted, super quick.

Justice delayed can be justice denied. The guy's a treasonous crook, how is justice served by letting him serve almost his full term, already? He tells us he's guilty, openly, onstage with a bullhorn, in front of international media cameras, with public pronouncements.

Agree about protecting sources, and also about swaying public opinion.

I'll try to avoid tRumpism, like the plague.

[genxlib]

3. This is the same guy connected to the McConnell swamp

Sanctions got lifted from his company and he promptly made a huge investment to open an aluminum plant in Kentucky.

https://www.newsweek.com/company-russian-oligarch-millions-aluminum-plant-mitch-mcconnell-1397061

[crickets]

20. Yup. More on Deripaska and Kentucky

AUG2019 A Kremlin-Linked Firm Invested Millions in Kentucky. Were They After More Than Money?

But to some observers, the story of how a Kremlin-linked aluminum giant offered an economic lifeline to Appalachia is an object lesson of the exact opposite. Critics of the deal, both Democrat and Republican, say it gives Moscow political influence that could undermine national security. Pointing to Moscow’s use of economic leverage to sway European politics, they warn the deal is a stalking horse for a new kind of Russian meddling in America, one that exploits the U.S. free-market system instead of its elections. “That’s just what the Russians do,” says veteran diplomat Daniel Fried, who shaped U.S. policy on Eastern Europe at the State Department from the late 1980s until 2017. “They insert themselves into a foreign economy and then start to influence its politics from the inside.”

What worries national-security experts is not that Rusal, Braidy or Deripaska broke any laws in the deal. It’s that they didn’t. A TIME investigation found that Rusal used a broad array of political and economic tools to fight the sanctions, establishing a foothold in U.S. politics in the process. “You cannot go against them in a policy decision, even though it’s in our national interest, when they have infiltrated you economically,” says Heather Conley, who served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State under President George W. Bush. “They use our laws, our rules, our banks, our lawyers, our lobbyists—it’s a strategy from within.”

To free itself from sanctions, Rusal fielded a team of high-paid lobbyists for an intense, months-long effort in Washington. One of the targets was Kentucky’s own Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, who helped thwart a bipartisan push to keep the sanctions in place. Since May, two of McConnell’s former staffers have lobbied Congress on behalf of Braidy, according to filings. Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, one of Rusal’s longtime major shareholders, Len Blavatnik, contributed more than $1 million through his companies to a GOP campaign fund tied to McConnell.

Deripaska denies he has interest in meddling in U.S. affairs. “If they didn’t touch me, I wouldn’t have to be so interested in U.S. politics,” Deripaska told TIME in February, after attending a panel with U.S. lawmakers in Munich. “But here I am,” he added with a smile.

Bolding is mine. Len Blavatnik is another name to watch for.

JAN2019 Major GOP donor Len Blavatnik had business ties to a Russian official

OCT2019 Money Talks: Len Blavatnik And The Council On Foreign Relations

[SunSeeker]

4. Sounds like Trump's bad week is only getting worse. nt

[Pepsidog]

6. not to be a Debbie downer but I'm so over Mueller.

[gab13by13]

7. Mueller laid it all out.

Don't forget all we saw was a redacted Mueller report. We never saw any grand jury testimony. I can't condemn Mueller when I haven't seen entire report.

[liberalla]

8. Didn't we all know there were numerous ongoing investigations?

Investigations that Mueller referred to individual jurisdictions?

It's been so frustrating the amount of time it takes... Well Hallelujah! More is being revealed and not a moment too soon. Still just the tip of the iceberg and much more come. Let it rain!

[ProudMNDemocrat]

9. What about Moscow Mitch's deal with Oleg Daripaska?

For a $200 Million dollar investment in an Aluminum plant in Kentucky? Does one think ole Oleg is giving away that money because he has such a big heart? Or did Moscow Mitch just mortgage the farm for that sweet deal?

[machoneman]

11. We need to be careful of the timing. It's only October, 2019, not say September/October 2020.

The closer we get to Election Day with all these indictments and hopefully some guilty verdicts added to a later breaking impeachment sent to the Senate + far more defections from the WH staff and Cabinet + more whistle-blowers on new law breaking = a greater chance we win the Senate as well.

Whew!

[usaf-vet]

12. Let's not forget the NRA. Did they funnel Daripaska money to the GOP.

Remember Justice Alito mouthing "not true" when Obama said the Citizen United would bring in foreign money to our elections.

President Obama warned that Citizen United would open the door to foreign money spent to influence our elections.
HE WAS RIGHT!

The recent guilty plea by Maria Butina for her scheme to use Russian money to impact U.S. politics — including, potentially, part of the $30 million that the National Rifle Association spent to support President Trump’s election — has led to a renewed discussion of the warnings that Hillary Clinton campaigns gave about foreign influence during the 2016 campaign.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/21/justice-alito-you-owe-president-obama-an-apology/

[ProudMNDemocrat]

13. Alito did not attend another STOU since that utterance.....

Until Trump.....

[usaf-vet]

14. Hoping Trump would thank him for Citizens United?

[George II]

17. And Tad Devine's, too, along with his partner at the time, Paul Manafort.

[Botany]

10. Hello McTurtle

SANCTIONED RUSSIAN OLIGARCH'S COMPANY TO INVEST MILLIONS IN NEW ALUMINUM PLANT IN MITCH MCCONNELL'S STATE

https://www.newsweek.com/company-russian-oligarch-millions-aluminum-plant-mitch-mcconnell-1397061

Rusal, the aluminum company partially owned by Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, announced plans to invest around $200 million to build a new aluminum plant in Kentucky just months after the Trump administration removed it from the U.S. sanctions list.

The new aluminum plant, slated to be built in the home state of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, will be the biggest new aluminum plant constructed in the U.S. in decades. Rusal will have a 40 percent stake in the facility.

"Rusal, one of the leading global aluminium producers, and Braidy Industries Inc., a U.S. base holding company which owns both Veloxint, an MIT-incubated lightweighting solutions company, and NanoAl, a Northwestern University incubated materials research and technology company, announce an intent to establish a joint project in Ashland, Kentucky, USA to produce flat-rolled aluminium products for the U.S. automotive industry," according to a company press release.

The U.S. removed Rusal from its sanctions list in January, after the Treasury Department struck an agreement with the company that saw Deripaska, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, reduce his stake in the company to below 50 percent and lower his voting rights to below 35. The agreement requires the companies to report any contact between Deripaska and company affiliates, including members of the board.


McConnell was among the advocates for lifting sanctions on Rusal, arguing that the deal with Treasury would maintain pressure on Deripaska personally without disrupting global aluminum supplies.

[Baitball Blogger]

15. +1

[George II]

16. Is this the company that hired Paul Manafort (eventually trump's campaign manager) and....

...Tad Devine (eventually Sanders' campaign manager) several years ago?

[Sedona]

18. Hopefully Rachel will be all over this tonight

Hi Rachel!