Trump and Associates-III

2015-

The following comes from the below sources and various mainstream stories. Question Everything

Unlimitedhangout.com. whitney webb

Dark Towers -Deutsche Bank, Enrich

House of Trump, House of Putin, Unge

Trump Nation, O’Brien

Ordo ab Chao Volume Six: The Third Temple ,  Livingstone

Red Mafiya: How the Russian Mob Has Invaded America, Friedman

The focus here is not on Events during Trumps Presidency. That can be found here

The Trump Years

There is some redundancy as this is quite long and there are so many connections it may help to repeat some of them

2015-Donald Trump was forced to sell the Miss Universe Organization – which also includes sister scholarship programs Miss USA and Miss Teen USA – after his incendiary comments about Mexicans drove away broadcasters NBC and Univision. But Trump owned the pageant for nearly two decades, during which time he would have had the opportunity to come into contact with nearly 4,000 beauty queens.

2015–The Kushners purchase the retail space of the old New York Times building in New York City for $296 million. Four years earlier, Blackstone had purchased the upper 12 floors of the old building, which are used for offices, for $160 million.

2015, while Ross served as vice-chairman of the Bank of Cyprus, the bank’s Russia-based businesses were sold to a Russian banker and consultant, Artem Avetisyan, who had ties to both the Russian president and Russia’s largest bank, Sberbank.

That same year Trump signed an agreement to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow. And Trump’s partner in this project was a Russian development company that apparently previously obtained financing from Sberbank, a state-owned Russian bank hit with sanctions from the United States and the European Union due to Russia’s annexation of Crimea. This Trump project, though, fell through before any Russian financing was obtained.

The previous year, Sberbank was a co-sponsor of the Miss Universe contest—then co-owned by Trump—when the pageant was held in Moscow, and the bank’s chairman, Herman Gref, attended a Moscow luncheon for Trump

Avetisyan had earlier been selected by Putin to head a new business branch of the Russian president’s strategic initiative agency, which was tasked with improving business and government ties.

Avetisyan’s business partner, Oleg Gref, is the son of Herman Gref, Sberbank’s chief executive officer, and their consultancy has served as a “partner” to Sberbank, according to their website.

Ross had described the Russian businesses – including 120 bank branches in Russia – as being worth “hundreds of millions of euros” in 2014 but they were sold with other assets to Avetisyan for €7m (£6m).

Ross has not been accused of wrongdoing and there is no indication the Russian deal violated US or EU sanctions. Ross resigned from the Bank of Cyprus board after he was confirmed as commerce secretary last month (2017).

Democrats raised questions about Ross’s tenure at the Bank of Cyprus before his confirmation, but Ross has said the White House has refused to allow him to respond to the queries.

Senator Cory Booker and other Democrats recently sent a third letter to Ross with more questions, including whether Ross had ever done business with companies that were under US sanctions.

In 2014, the Bank of Cyprus was still considered to be in a precarious state following a dramatic €10bn rescue of Cyprus’s banking sector by the ECB and the IMF. Under the terms of the deal, many of the bank’s wealthy Russian deposit holders lost their cash and became shareholders in the bank.

Ross, who had made billions of dollars years earlier by betting on bankrupt steel mills, was known for taking risky bets. But his decision to inject €400m into the bank with other investors encompassed a different kind of risk.

It put him at the centre of the biggest financial institution in a country that was widely considered to be a tax haven for Russian oligarchs, even as the US and EU were imposing sanctions on Russia.

In 2014, the year he made his investment, the US State Department considered Cyprus an area of “primary concern” for money laundering (pdf), according to its official assessment.

Ross was appointed vice-chairman at the bank after his investment in 2014, a post he shared with a deposit holder-turned-shareholder, Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, referred to in Russian media as a former KGB official and Putin ally.

According to the bank’s annual reports, the two attended two board meetings together in 2014 and as many as five together in 2015 before Strzhalkovsky’s May 2015 resignation from the board. One of the questions that has been posed to Ross by Democratic senators is whether he ever had contact with Strzhalkovsky.

One of Ross’s first big decisions at the bank was the appointment of former Deutsche Bank chief executive Josef Ackermann as chairman, whom he chose in part because of Ackermann’s “huge Rolodex”, according to a 2014 Bloomberg interview.

Ackermann’s ties to Russia were especially strong, including a warm relationship with Putin and Herman Gref of Sberbank.

Peter Harrell, who served as the deputy assistant secretary for counter-threat finance and sanctions in the State Department at the time and is now an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said Cyprus was “obviously” one of the places the Obama administration was worried about at the time because it was seen as a place that could help Russian entities evade sanctions, imposed as a result of the conflict over Crimea.

“Cyprus is an EU member state, but given the opacity of the environment there, given the history, there was a risk that it could be used to evade sanctions,” Harrell told the Guardian.

But Ross seemed unfazed by the conflict and its potential impact in an interview with Fox Business News in 2014, telling Maria Bartiromo the tourism industry was surging in Cyprus.

When pressed to explain his plans for the bank’s assets in Russia, Ross said they had not been particularly profitable and were only worth “a couple of hundred million euros”.

“Clearly when they are in the middle of a war is not the right time to do anything,” he told Bartiromo.

A year later, Bank of Cyprus announced (pdf)it was offloading the Russian business, including loan exposures, to Avetisyan for €7m. The core assets had been purchased for €450m in 2008. Deutsche Bank’s London office advised Bank of Cyprus on the deal.

There are many factors that could have depressed the price including the financial crisis and the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

The Bank of Cyprus said the sale of its Russian business was part of a restructuring plan to dispose of non-core assets and that the deal had been agreed after a “rigorous sale process involving experienced external advisers”.

In a separate management decision under Ross’s watch, Bank of Cyprus gave Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest private bank, until 2019 – four more years than originally planned – to pay back a €100m debt it owed in connection to Alfa’s purchase of the bank’s Ukrainian assets.

Alfa Bank still owed Bank of Cyprus €57m as of the end of September 2017.  Bank of Cyprus said the extension was provided because of the “worsening geopolitical situation in Ukraine”.

In 2016 two internet servers belonging to Alfa Bank had looked up the address of the Trump Organization server 2,820 times between May and September 2016.

A long-awaited Senate reportin 2019 provides only this paltry, ambiguous conclusion:

“Based on the FBI’s assessment, the Committee did not find the DNS activity reflected the existence of covert communication between Alfa Bank and Trump Organization personnel. However, the Committee also could not positively determine an intent or purpose that would explain the unusual activity.”

2015-In August  co-founder Greta Guggenheim left Ladder to run TPG Capital’s new Real Estate Investment Trust unit.   

TPG launched its real estate finance subsidiary after it acquired $2.5 billion in high-yield real estate debt from Deutsche Bank.

TPG Chairman and co-founder David Bonderman was covered in the news recently when he resigned from the Uber board after making sexist remarks. And Bonderman, along with Blackstone’s Stephen Schwarzman, was an original advisor to the government-backed Russian Direct Investment Fund.

There is no evident business connection directly between TPG and Ladder Capital, but it’s interesting to note how Greta Guggenheim’s career has connected to both of Trump’s largest creditors, Ladder and Deutsche.

On her LinkedIn profile Guggenheim is listed as President of Ladder Capital from 2008 until 2015, and on the Ladder Capital website, Michael Mezzei is listed as President from 2012 until he retired in June 2017, when he joined the board, and Pamela McCormack became President.

2015, Vrablic’s group at Deutsche extended a $15 million personal credit line to Jared and his mother,Seryl Kushner. It was the largest lending facility they had, and they quickly borrowed $10 million at a very favorable interest rate.

2016-Jared and Ivanka are  close friends with the wife of Roman Abramovich, Dasha Zhukova. They were guests in August 2016 on Laurel Canyon media mogul David Geffen’s $200 million yacht off the coast of Croatia, and a few weeks later at the US Open.

Zhukova reportedly attended Trump’s inauguration as Ivanka’s guest.  Jared and Abramnovich have met three to four times in social settings, and their wives have been friends for a decade.

Jared and Ivanka attended a charity event with Roman Abramovich in early 2014, just a few months after the Miss Universe Moscow pageant and the Sochi Olympics that included representatives from Russia’s Alfa Bank, and numerous Russian oligarchs.

Both Viktor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik were at the gala attended by Jared and Ivanka, as were Alexey Reznikovich, the head of LetterOne Technology, which is controlled by Alfa Group’s Mikhail Fridman.

Also included were Ekaterina Vinokurova, the daughter of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, with her husband Alexander Vinokurov, who sits on the board of Alfa Group.

2016-Steve Mnuchin, a second-generation Goldman Sachs alumnus and Skull and Bonesman who grew up in Manhattan society, has known Trump for over 15 years.

His Dune Capital Management invested in at least two Donald Trump projects, the Trump International Hotel and Tower in Honolulu and its namesake in Chicago.

Mnuchin told the New York Times in May 2016: “I was there at the beginning when [Trump] decided to run for president, and I’ve been a supporter and quiet adviser behind the scenes to him.”

2016-The US law firm, Baker-Hostetler, hired by Veselnitskaya on behalf of Denis Katsyv, had hired Glenn Simpson in 2013, to investigate Browder, long before the Steele engagement.

As detailed in both his Senate and House testimonies, Simpson discovered that Browder’s Magnitsky story was full of unsubstantiated allegations and inconsistencies (thank Sen Feinstein for releasing Simpson’s testimony, the GOP Senators were protecting Browder).

In both testimonies, Simpson denied any knowledge of the Trump Tower meeting. Natalya Veselnitskaya has said she hardly spoke to Simpson on the morning of 9th June, when they both attended Browder appeal hearing, and that she considered the Trump Tower meeting to be a private matter.

Given the Browder disinformation planted in the conservative media, Rep Devin Nunes, formed the opinion that Simpson may have lied to Congress. Since Nunes was unable make a case against Simpson, he was unable to find any evidence. However, there was no attempt to retract the story by conservative outlets, and the false narrative continued to by John Solomon and various Fox News commentators.

The only commentator on the right to correct the record was former prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy, that since Browder had an appeal on 9th June in New York, and that Simpson was hired over three years before by Baker-Hostetler, that Veselnitskaya and Simpson were there on legitimate business, on the John Batchelor Show.

This is the only mention of Browder’s 9th June appeal in New York, on any conservative media after an extensive search.

If Browder had nothing to hide, why was his 9 June appeal hearing in New York put on the no-news-list?

Browder's testimony under oath was devastating, his entire Magnitsky Story was shown to be an elaborate fabrication, he couldn't substantiate any of the allegations against Katsyv and all the Russian officials he had unjustly had sanctioned via the Magnitsky Act.

Needless to say the political fallout would have been immense, but of course no media would touch it. Browder then launched into a year long attempt to disqualify Baker-Hostetler, to bury his deposition, and to engage in a massive smear campaign against Baker-Hostetler, Simpson and Veselnitskaya.

2016-Tammy McFadden had worked in Deutsche’s Jacksonville offices—a few buildings down from the FBI’s field office—for eight years when,in the summer of 2016,some suspicious Jared Kushner transactions landed in her inspection queue.

Deutsche’s computer systems automatically scanned thousands of transactions every day, looking for any hints of impropriety, and then sent those flagged transactions to experts for review.

McFadden, a veteran anti-money-laundering compliance officer attached to Deutsche’s private-banking division, was one of those experts.

Over the years, McFadden had received a number of internal awards from the bank for her strong performance. But by 2015, she had begun making waves, standing up for what she thought was morally and ethically right.

First, she protested that the private bank had created dozens of accounts for and was lending money to Jeffrey Epstein, a politically connected financier who had repeatedly been accused of sexually abusing girls and young women. (Epstein for many years had run his companies out of Henry Villard’s old Madison Avenue mansion.)

A few years after being convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor, Epstein had been cut offfrom his previous bank,  JPMorgan,at which point he decamped to Deutsche, as willing as ever to ignore clients’ ugly backgrounds.

Some of McFadden’s colleagues had alerted superiors to suspicious overseas transactions in Epstein’s accounts, fearing that he might have been moving money around as part of a sex-trafficking operation.

Deutsche’s higher-ups did nothing. McFadden, too, refused to sign off on Epstein’s activity, but managers didn’t want to hear it—he was a lucrative client.()“If they’re willing to do business with Jeff, Lord help us all,” McFadden would tell me.

Next, in early 2016, McFadden had noticed that many customers of the private bank, including quite a few of Vrablic’s superrich clients,didn’t have the proper documentation attached to their accounts.

This was especially problematic for customers who were classified as “politically exposed persons”—a designation that is supposed to subject them to extra vetting because of the heightened risk that they could be involved in bribery or other public corruption.

After initially noticing the problem in a couple of isolated accounts,McFadden did a broader review and found more than a hundred politically exposed clients who didn’t have the requisite documentation showing things like where their money came from.

Among those customers, she realized, were Donald Trump and his family members. When McFadden alerted her superiors, they told her not to worry about it. McFadden didn’t let it go ,lodging a complaint with the HR department and,in the process,angering her bosses.

Now,in the summer of 2016,with Trump having clinched the Republican nomination and Kushner serving as his adviser, McFadden was assigned the task of reviewing a number of transactions in the Kushner Companies’ accounts that had triggered alerts in Deutsche’s computer system.

Right off the bat, she could see why the transactions had tripped up the software: Kushner’s real estate company was moving money to a number of Russian individuals.That didn’t mean there was anything improper—it certainly wasn’t proof of money laundering—but it was unusual.

McFadden did some research, looked into the recipients of the money and into the Kushner Companies’ history of moving funds overseas, and concluded that the appropriate response was for Deutsche to file a “suspicious activity report” with FinCEN, the arm of the Treasury Department responsible for policing financial crimes.

Banks file thousands of such reports every year, and this didn’t strike McFadden as an especially close call. She typed up a report and sent it to her superiors.

Normally, a proposed suspicious activity report would be reviewed by another money-laundering expert, one who was outside the business unit where the transactions in question originated—in this case,the private-banking division.

It was important to keep things separate; otherwise, employees with financial interests in seeing transactions go through unimpeded would be calling the shots,potentially compromising the effectiveness of Deutsche’s already questionable anti-money-laundering safeguards.

This time, though, word traveled back to McFadden that her report was being killed—by managers in the privatebank. McFadden was pretty sure this was an example of the private bank trying to preserve its lucrative relationship with the Kushners(and therefore the Trumps),at the cost of not adhering to anti-money-laundering laws.

She hadn’t survived at banks for decades without knowing how to stand up for herself and her work— more than a decade earlier, she’d sued Bank of America for racially discriminating against her and other black employees—and now she started making more noise.That was not the way to get ahead at Deutsche, as guys like Eric Ben-Artzi could have told her.

Bosses derided McFadden to colleagues as a crazy, difficult woman. Soon she was transferred to another division and then, in April 2018, fired.

McFadden had found something important. The Kushners— with their long-standing ties not just to Deutsche but also to Bank Leumi, which had its own problematic history of doing business with Russians—were moving money to Russians at the same time that Russia was allegedly interfering in the American presidential election, trying to tilt it in favor of Jared Kushner’s father- in-law. (And Kushner’s personal banker, Vrablic, had learned the nuts and bolts of banking at . . . Bank Leumi.) It was hard not to be a little suspicious.

With McFadden gone, and her suspicious activity report deleted, the answers to questions vanished inside Deutsches computer systems.

2016-George Nader like Epstein he has had several run-ins with the law over the years related to sexual abuse of children. He was convicted in the 1990s of transporting child pornography publications, and imprisoned in 2003 for sexually abusing ten boys in the Czech Republic.

He pleaded guilty in early 2020 to flying a 14-year-old boy from Europe to the US for sex, and transporting pornography depicting child sexual abuse and bestiality.

During the George H. W. Bush Administrationhe helped to free American hostages in Lebanonafter the Iran–Contra affair.

During the Clinton Administration, Nader tried unsuccessfully to broker an Israeli–Syrian peace agreement, working with Estée Lauder heir Ronald Lauder, a Mega Group connection that may have put him in Epsteins/Maxwell/Trumps circle

2016, June 9 , Donald Trump Jr. sent Kushner an email inviting him to a Trump Tower meeting on June 9, 2016 with several Russians associated with Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov, including attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya — who had represented Prevezon Holdings in a civil forfeiture case in the southern district of New York (SDNY).

This case involved the laundering of proceeds — some of which were transferred through Deutsche Bank — ripped off from the $230 million in Russian taxes Bill Browder paid on his Hermitage company.

The email subject of the proposed Trump Tower meeting — cc’d to Paul Manafort — was “Russia – Clinton – Confidential.” Kushner originally omitted mention of this now infamous meeting on his security clearance form.

Lost in the hoopla over the June 9 Trump Tower meeting is the Prevezon association.

2016 August 3, Nader met with Trump Jr., Erik Prince, and Joel Zamel, an Israeli entrepreneur and specialist in social media manipulation, to offer help to the Trump team in winning the elections.

There are conflicting accounts of whether the close to 2 million dollars Nader paid Zamel after Trump's victory is attributed to that or not.

Nader served as an envoy representing Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince and de facto ruler Mohammad bin Salmanand Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.

Joel Zamel, is an Israeli specialist in social media manipulation and owner of intelligence gathering firms including Wikistratand the Psy-Group.

Wikistrat bills itself as a “crowdsourced” geopolitical analysis firm based in Washington, D.C.   The vast majority of Wikistrat’s clients were foreign governments; that Wikistrat is, for all intents and purposes, an Israeli firm; and that the company’s work was not just limited to analysis. It also engaged in intelligence collection

Psy Group, deputy campaign chairman Rick Gates in 2016 used social media manipulation to help Trump beat his Republican primary opponents and Hillary Clinton. Psy Group’s founder Joel Zamel also owns WikiStrat, which reportedly gamed out how to successfully interfere in an election as early as 2015.

Psy-Group is a former Israeli private intelligence agency which was owned by Joel Zamel and operated by CEO Royi Burstein from Petah Tikva, which closed after revelations that it was under investigation by Special CounselRobert Mueller.

The company had conducted both online perception management, social media influencing/manipulation campaigns, opposition research honey traps and clandestine on-the-ground activities for clients.

Royi Burstien, a former lieutenant colonel in the Israeli army, headed an intelligence unit before starting Psy-Group and acting as Psy Group’s vice-president of business development.

Zamel proposed an extensive social amplification campaign to support Trump’s 2016 campaign, and Nader is reported to have pledged the Saudis and the UAE would foot the bill. Nader would later give Zamel $2m for those services, although Zamel disputes that claim.

Erik Prince, founder of security firm Blackwater, hired Nader to help with contracts with the Iraqi government; in a 2010 deposition, Prince identified Nader as a "business development consultant".

Prince is now working for the Chinese. Frontier Resources Group (FRG)  is based in the UAE and is a subsidiary of Prince’s Frontier Services Group (FSG). Prince sold a majority stake in FSG to the Chinese in 2013. His boss is now Chang Xhenming, who is very close to President Xi Jinping.

Chang is also chair of China’s massive Citic Group.  FSG is one of the companies helping to build “re-training” camps for ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslim communities in China’s Xinjiang province. China detains 1 million people in those camps and keeps 13 million people under surveillance.

Epsteins Carbyne has ties to China through Co-founder Lital Leshem. Leshem, who remains a shareholder at Carbyne, now works alongside Erik Prince.

Chinese authorities use a platform not unlike Carbyne to illegally surveil Uyghurs. China’s Integrated Joint Operations Platform brings in a much bigger data-set and sources of video, which includes an app on people’s phones. Like Carbyne, the platform was designed to report emergencies. Chinese authorities have turned it into a tool of mass surveillance.

The app monitors every aspect of a user’s life, including personal conversations, power usage, and tracks a user’s movement. “

In January 2017 Nader was at a meeting on the Seychelles islands between the Emiratis and Erik Prince, and was present when Prince met with officials from the UAE and Kirill Dmitriev, head of state-run Russian Direct Investment Fund representing Putin

2016-The developer of the uCampaign app, Vladyslav Seryakov, is an Eastern Ukrainian military veteran who trained in computer programming at two elite Soviet universities in the late 1980s.

The main investor in uCampaign is the American hedge fund magnate Sean Fieler, who is a close associate of the billionaire backer of SCL and Cambridge Analytica, Robert Mercer.

An article published by Business Insideron 7 November 2016 states: “If users download the App and agree to share their address books, including phone numbers and emails, the App then shoots the data [to] a third-party vendor, which looks for matches to existing voter file information that could give clues as to what may motivate that specific voter.

Thomas Peters, whose company uCampaign created Trump’s app, said the App is “going absolutely granular”, and will—with permission—send different A/B tested messages to users’ contacts based on existing information.”

Despite the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, it seems that the Republican data machine is still a shadowy network that includes international operators, tangled up with vendors under intense scrutiny for unlawful conduct in multiple jurisdictions,” he said. “I don’t understand why Republicans don’t insist on working with domestic tech vendors and technologists who are U.S. citizens.”

2016-August- Kushner Companies and partners buy the iconic Watchtower building in downtown Brooklyn. (Formerly the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ world headquarters, it is not to be confused with the organization’s other properties that the Kushner Companies bought in 2013). They receive $376 million in loans from a Blackstone-controlled company.

This sum represents the largest loan made for such a purchase in New York City that year.

2016 October ,  Jared Kushner’s business receives a $285 million loan from Deutsche Bank relative to property Kushner’s company purchased from Lev Leviev’s Africa-Israel Inc.

2016 October - Trump’s campaign team announces that Kushner will recuse himself from any involvement with Deutsche Bank.

2016-June , Fusion GPS hired Orbis Business Intelligence, a private British intelligence firm, to look into connections between Trump and Russia. Orbis co-founder Christopher Steele, a retired British MI6 officer with expertise in Russian matters,was hired as a subcontractor to do the job.

In total, Perkins Coie paid Fusion GPS $1.02 million in fees and expenses, $168,000 of which was paid to Orbis by Fusion GPS and used by them to produce the dossier.

Orbis was hired between June and November 2016, and Steele produced 16 memos during that time, with a 17th memo added in December. The memos were like "prepublication notes" based on reports from Steele's sources, and were not released as a fully vetted and "finished news article".

Steele believes that 70–90% of the dossier is accurate,a view that is shared by Simpson.

2016 November 8,  Donald Trump elected President of the US.

2016-In the weeks after the election, executives hustled to devise a plan. One immediate step was to reduce the bank’s exposure to Russia. A decade earlier, Deutsche had extended a $1 billion credit line to VTB, the Kremlin bank.

By 2016, about  $600 million was outstanding. There was nothing wrong with two banks lending each other money; bank-to-bank transactions were the lifeblood of the financial system. But this was a large loan to a bank with links to Russian intelligence, and Deutsche executives were scared about what might happen if it became public.

In the weeks after the election, bankers raced to get the loan off Deutsche’s books, selling a large chunk of it to another Russian bank at a discounted price.

The bigger problem, Deutsche executives concluded, was the fact that Trump had given his personal guarantees on hundreds of millions of dollars of outstanding loans.At the time,this had seemed like the safest course,partly shielding the bank if Trump defaulted. Now, though, it meant that the incoming American president was deep in hock to a foreign institution, one over which his administration wielded enormous power.

One possibility was to just let Trump off the hook for his personal guarantees; the loan agreements could be amended to delete those provisions, and then it would be the Trump Organization, not Trump himself, that owed all the money.

But when Deutsche’s discussions about that idea leaked, the outcry was swift. The bank was facing multiple federal investigations, which would now be in the hands of the Trump administration,and giving the president elect a big financial break smelled corrupt. “It looks terrible,”one ethics expert remarked.

The bank decided to revert to its typical plan in such crises: Keep quiet, downplay the severity of the problem, and hope everyone gets distracted and moves on.

2016-The Wall Street Journal reported that Ukrainian-born billionaire Sir Leonard “Len” Blavatnik, is part of a number of rich donors to the Republican Party account that Trump is using to fund his legal battles in the Russia Probe.

Blavatnik, who was named Britain’s richest man in 2015, founded Access Industries which now owns Warner Music Group. Blavatnik and Vekselberg hold their 15.8 percent joint stake RUSAL.

Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik had formed the Renova investment vehicle, and then the two joined with Fridman’s Alfa Group to form the AAR venture.

Blavatnik is also embroiled in investigations about his friend Benjamin Netanyahu’s alleged attempts to influence the Israeli media while he was both Prime Minister and Minister of Communications in Israel.

During the 2015-2016 election season, Blavatnik contributed a total of $6.35 million to Trump and the political action committees for Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Lindsey Graham, John Kasich and John McCain.

Blavatnik donated another $1 million to Trump’s Inaugural Committee.

2016 November 30-  US Attorney SDNY Preet Bharara meets on the 26th Floor of Trump Tower with President Elect Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner.   Trump asks Preet to stay on as US Attorney.

December 2016 SDNY announces $7.2 billion settlement with Deutsche Bank regarding Deutsche’s involvement in toxic mortgage securities 2005-2007. It is noted that SDNY originally recommended a $14 billion fine for Deutsche.

2017 December 1,  Michael Flynn and Jared Kushner meet with Russian Ambassador Kislyak and discuss establishing back-channel communications with Putin in Russian embassy.

Flynn had multiple undisclosed contacts with Kislyak in December

2016- December 13 , Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and a top White House adviser, met with the Vnesheconombank (VEB) CEO Sergey Gorkov in December, The New York Times reported in late March.

Putin appointed Gorkov in January 2016 as part of a restructuring of the bank's management team, according to Bloomberg.

At the time, Kushner was trying to find investors for an office building on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

But the meeting was reportedly orchestrated by Russia's ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, who also met with Kushner in December, and it caught the eye of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has invited Kushner to testify about his meetings with Gorkov and Kislyak.

Less than a month after the secret Kushner/Gorkov meeting, Erik Prince, brother of Secretary of Education Betsy Devos, at the suggestion of UAE Crown Prince bin Zayed, met covertly with Kirill Dmitriev, a representative of Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) in the Seychelles — an archipelago off the coast of East Africa and a well-known bank secrecy haven. RDIF is under US sanctions.

RDIF’s parent company is VEB.   VEB is also under sanctions. Five days after the Seychelles meeting, Anthony Scaramucci, Trump senior advisor, met with Kirill Dmitriev of RDIF in Davos, Switzerland. Dmitriev is also under sanctions.

2016 December UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nayan meets with Kushner and Steve Bannon in an undisclosed meeting.

2016 December 29,  Flynn tells Kislyak that Trump will ease sanctions.

2016- Trump appoints Schwarzman to serve on the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum.

2016-Also in December, Russian officials announce the privatization of the Russian state oil company, Rosneft. The company’s chief executive calls it the largest privatization in Russian history. Details as to who paid what are murky, to say the least

In 2012, Rosneft entered into a $500 billion joint venture with ExxonMobil, which at the time was run by Trumps first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson; it was this mammoth joint venture, apparently, that inspired Putin to award Tillerson the Medal of Friendship in 2013.

The oil reserves in the Arctic, the reason for the venture, are estimated to contain 85 billion barrels. At a conservative price of $50 a barrel, that amounts to a staggering $4.25 trillion in potential gross revenue. Trillion, with a T.

Also in 2012 Rosneft and VTB Bank concluded a strategic partnership agreement. The document was signed by Igor Sechin, Rosneft President and Chairman of the Management Board and VTB Bank Chairman and CEO Andrey Kostin at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum.

The agreement covers various types of services in corporate finance and investment banking as well as a five-year RUB 100 bln credit line to be extended to Rosneft to finance regional projects.

According to allegations in the Steele Dossier in October,  Trump adviser Carter Page allegedly acted as the go-between between Trump and the Vladimir Putin run oil company, meeting with Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin, who proposed arranging a transfer of the shares to Trump in exchange for removing the United States economic sanctions, which were put in place under former President Barack Obama as retaliation for Putin and Russia's annexation of Crimea and proxy war against Ukraine.

In an interview with ABC News, Page denied early in 2017 that the alleged meeting with Sechin took place, and that he took part in negotiating any quid pro quobetween Russia and Trump.

But political writer Alex Mohajer in his now-retracted Sunday Huffington Postpiece presented evidence that at least part of that $11 billion sale — 19.5 percent of the massive oil company — was connected to a Cayman Islands company at least potentially related in some way to businesses run by Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire CEO of Blackstone Group, a major Wall Street financial management firm.

Schwarzman is a close friend and adviser of Trump, has a reported net worth of $11.4 billion. Trump had been reportedly planning to attend the lavish 70th birthday party thrown by Schwarzman for himself on Saturday, February 11, 2017 in Palm Beach, Florida.

While Trump apparently did not attend — though he was at his Palm Beach Mar-A-Lago estate on Saturday meeting with Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe — his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Trump White House adviser Jared Kushner, did show up at the party where pop singer Gwen Stefani gave a private performance.

Trump did reportedly attend Schwarzman's 69th birthday party last year.

Schwarzman's Blackstone firm owns a Dutch company known as Intertrust, which Blackstone acquired in 2012 according to the Financial Timesnewspaper— a Cayman Islands firm known as Walkers Management Services.

A recently registered limited partnership is listed at the same Cayman Islands address as the Walkers offices there. The partnership is known as QHG Cayman Limited.

According to a report in January by CNBC, a Walkers managing partner refused to confirm or deny that QHG Cayman, or any company, was connected to Walkers.

Why is QHG Cayman Limited potentially important? Because the shares representing 19.5 percent of Rosneft, when they were sold in December, were transferred to Singapore firm QHG Shares, a partner with QHG Cayman, according to the Cayman Compassnewspaper. The Cayman-based QHG was part of the deal that provided financing for the massive sale of Rosneft shares.

However, the complete ownership structure of the Cayman-based firm remains shrouded in mystery, as does the entire Rosneft deal in which Putin and Russia were able to unload the $11 billion in oil shares without revealing their true buyers.

Initially the Russian government claimed that in December 2016 Rosneft had sold a 19.5% stake for €10.5bn to QHG Oil, a Singapore-registered joint venture of QIA (Qatar’s Soverign Wealth Fund) and Swiss commodity trader Glencore.

However, it later became clear that the money raised was actually a loan, with VTB reportedly crediting QHG for RUB692bn (€10.2bn) taking Rosneft's shares for collateral. Eventually, RUB692bn were transferred to the state budget as proceeds of the deal.

In 2017 Rosneft announced that a 14.16% stake was going to be sold to China’s CEFC for $9.1bn. It was billed as the biggest ever investment by a Chinese company into a Russian company, with QHG Oil theoretically recouping its investment. Unconfirmed reports claimed that VTB could finance up to €5bn for CEFC. 

However, CEFC was rocked by investigations at home in 2017, missed the April 1 deadline to pay a €1.5bn instalment, and finally dropped out of the deal in May 2018. Its stake was taken over by QIA in September, allegedly, again, with VTB's help.

Based on accounts from five of the sources, the value of the Russian loan to the Qatari sovereign wealth fund is around $6 billion.

VTB denied it issued a loan to the Qatari sovereign wealth fund, called the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA).

“VTB has not issued and is not planning to issue a loan to QIA to finance the acquisition.”

VTB data for September published by the Russian central bank showed that VTB loaned 434 billion roubles ($6.7 billion) for up to three years to unnamed foreign borrowers after having raised 350 billion roubles via loans from the central bank itself

VTB’s financial results, published on Nov. 8, showed that during the third quarter the volume of loans to its 10 biggest borrowers had gone up by 403 billion roubles, or approximately $6 billion.

2017-January , Nader and Prince took part in a meeting in Seychelles. The backchannel get-together discussed bringing Russia closer to the incoming Trump administration as part of an anti-Iran alliance with Israel, KSA and UAE.

Erik Prince represented the Trump administration. Kiril Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, represented Putin.

Epstein and Nader share a personal network that includes Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, Erik Prince, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and his UAE counterpart, Mohamed Bin Zayed.

2017-In addition to Epstein and Barak, Russian oligarchs Viktor Vekselberg and Andrew Intrater bought 24% of Carbyne’s Class A-1 shares through Intrater’s Columbus Nova Technology Partners (CNTP) in September 2017. Vekselberg and Intrater are under U.S. sanctions because of Russia’s malign activities. Ukrainian-born Vekselberg is close to Vladimir Putin.

While still employed as Donald Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen consulted for Columbus Nova until August 2017 under a $1 million agreement to his company, “Essential Consulting.”

Carbyne has ties to China through Co-founder Lital Leshem. Leshem, who remains a shareholder at Carbyne, now works alongside Erik Prince at Frontier Resources Group (FRG). FRG is based in the UAE and is a subsidiary of Prince’s Frontier Services Group (FSG).

2017-January 9, a billionaire Russian businessman with ties to the Kremlin visited Trump Tower in Manhattan to meet with Donald J. Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer, Michael D. Cohen, according to video footage and another person who attended the meeting.

In Mr. Cohen’s office on the 26th floor, he and the oligarch, Viktor Vekselberg, discussed a mutual desire to strengthen Russia’s relations with the United States under President Trump, according to Andrew Intrater, an American businessman who attended the meeting and invests money for Mr. Vekselberg. The men also arranged to see one another during the inauguration festivities, the second of their three meetings, Mr. Intrater said.

Days after the inauguration, Mr. Intrater’s private equity firm, Columbus Nova, awarded Mr. Cohen a $1 million consulting contract,

The meeting came months after Mr. Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., met at Trump Tower during the campaign with a Kremlin-linked lawyer claiming to have damaging information on his opponent, Hillary Clinton, and a former campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, met with Russian intermediaries in Europe.

During the campaign, Mr. Cohen himself was pursuing a deal to build a Trump high-rise in Moscow, which did not come to fruition.

Andrew Intrater, Mr. Vekselberg’s cousin, leads the firm that awarded the contract.

Mr. Cohen, who promoted his connection to Mr. Trump, was seeking moneymaking opportunities.

Mr. Vekselberg, who has longstanding business and philanthropic ties to the United States and controls a global conglomerate, was interested in Mr. Trump’s Russia-friendly stance.

And Mr. Intrater, looking for new investors, was drawn to Mr. Cohen’s Rolodex of rich donors — he is a deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee — and the lure of new deals to invest in, prompting Columbus Nova to hire him as a consultant.

By all accounts, it did not work out as planned for any of the men. Mr. Cohen is under investigation; the Trump administration hit Mr. Vekselberg with sanctions , making him one of seven Kremlin-linked oligarchs to be punished as part of a response to meddling and other aggressions; and Columbus Nova parted ways with Mr. Cohen after no new deals or investors materialized, despite paying him $580,000 of the $1 million contract.

Mr. Intrater donated $250,000 to Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, which entitled him to the tickets he and Mr. Vekselberg used to attend the event. Days later, Mr. Cohen signed on as a consultant to Columbus Nova, and documents show that in addition to the taxi loans, he pitched the firm on an oil and gas operation in the American Southwest.

Vekselberg founded his company, Renova Group, in 1990 as a Russian-American joint venture, according to an archived version of the company’s website.

Mr. Vekselberg, whose fortune is now estimated at more than $13 billion, also sponsored the American-Russian Chamber of Commerce & Industry. At one point, Renova donated between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Foundation.

As Mr. Vekselberg’s business empire expanded, he picked up various Kremlin projects, including a plan to create a Silicon Valley-style development outside Moscow and the construction of a hotel cluster for the 2014 Winter Olympics. In return, the Kremlin awarded him a medal of honor.

He also attended a now-famous December 2015 dinner in Moscow where Mr. Flynn sat at a table with Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.

The day before Mr. Trump was sworn in, Mr. Vekselberg expressed doubt on Russian television that the United States would quickly lift its economic sanctions against Russia. It was worse than he feared: He and Renova were placed on the Treasury Department’s sanctions list.

Although Columbus Nova is not subject to the sanctions and continues to operate, Mr. Intrater said he had not spoken to his cousin since the sanctions were imposed.

2017 January 11,  Erik Prince — founder of Blackwater, brother to Secretary of Education Betsy Devos and classmate of Carter Page at the Naval Academy — has “one beer” with Kirill Dmitriev — head of RDIF and former Goldman Sachs banker — on Seychelles Island. Mohammed bin Zayed and Alexander Mashkevich — Kazak businessman associated with Bayrock and Trump Tower Soho — are also known to be in the Seychelles at the same time.

2017 January 17,  Anthony Scaramucci, senior advisor to Trump on the Executive Committee of the Presidential transition team, meets with Kirill Dmitriev of RDIF at  Davos, Switzerland.

2017 January 30, New York State DFS announces a $425 million fine against Deutsche Bank and UK’s FCA announces a $204 million fine against Deutsche Bank with regard to “failing to have proper controls to stop customers from transferring billions from Russia to offshore bank accounts using mirror trades.

2017-January  US Attorney SDNY Preet Bharara issues a settlement for $95 million with Deutsche Bank regarding their questionable tax practices pertaining to their use of insolvent shell companies.

2017 January , Cohen met with Ukrainian opposition politician Andrey Artemenko and Felix Sater at the Loews Regency in Manhattan to discuss a plan to lift sanctions against Russia.

Felix Sater was Trumps old Bayrock partner and a childhood friend of Cohen

The proposed plan would require that Russian forces withdraw from eastern Ukraine and that Ukraine hold a referendum on whether Crimea should be "leased" to Russia for 50 or 100 years. Cohen was given a written proposal in a sealed envelope that he delivered to then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynnin early February.

2017- At the time of his inauguration, Donald Trump, his daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner and companies under their control owed Deutsche Bank a combined $659 million-$699 million according to a Forensic News analysis. The vast majority, if not all of this money was owed to DBTCA specifically:

• $364 million in loans to Donald Trump companies for properties in Chicago, Florida, and Washington, DC.

• $285 million loan to Kushner Companies.

• $5-25 million line of credit to Jared Kushner

• $5-25 million line of credit to Ivanka Trump.

Trump and Kushner alone appear to comprise about 1.6%-1.7% of DBTCA’s entire portfolio, which has total assets of $40 billion. Kushner’s mother also has a line of credit with Deutsche Bank, worth up to $25 million.

Two of the loans to Trump entities for the Doral resort in Florida mature in 2023, before a potential second-term would end. Trump still owes at least $55 million of those loans, with their due date approaching in 3 years.

Those loans have come under previous media scrutiny, in large part due to their alleged management by Rosemary Vrablic, a private banker at DBTCA, and not Deutsche Bank’s commercial real estate division.

Vrablic’s former boss at DBTCA, Tom Bowers, recently committed suicide in California following Epsteins suicide.

Deutsche Bank pushed back on connections between scrutinized DBTCA loans and separate cash management services like it provided for Gazprombank. Both areas of banking, however, occured under DBTCA.

Testimony of bank officials like Vrablic might be essential to understanding how DBTCA justified lending to Trump, who had previously defaulted on multiple loans and declared corporate bankruptcy several times.

2017- trump would tap Ross to be his commerce secretary.

Ross insists there was nothing improper about his stake in a Russian shipping company that also has close ties to oil and gas companies connected to Russian president Vladimir Putin. The problem is that Ross did not tell lawmakers the details of his investments during his confirmation proceedings, according to the Paradise Papers, the trove of leaked documents detailing the offshore accounts of the super wealthy.

Ross, through an offshore entity, owns a stake in shipping company Navigator Holdings, journalist consortium ICIJ reported on Nov. 5. One of Navigator’s customers, Sibur, is a company partly owned by the son-in-law of Russian president Vladimir Putin and another businessman who is under US sanctions, ICIJ said.

Navigator calls itself the world’s “largest fleet of natural gas carriers”; it owns 38 ships that transport liquefied natural gas (LNG) and other chemicals. On July 12, Navigator announced an agreement to develop an ethylene marine export terminal in Houston. Ethylene is used to make everything from plastics to antifreeze.

In July, Wendy Teramoto, a long-time associate of Ross’s who now works with him at the Department of Commerce, retired from the board of Navigator. She was replaced by an appointee from WL Ross, Ross’s investment company, which he pledged to divest from when he was appointed to the cabinet.

Maria Cantwell, the Democratic senator from Washington state, was much more pointed, asking (p. 108) specifically “How will you shift your focus to represent the interest of the American people rather than your Russian partners?”

In his answer, Ross focused only on the Bank of Cyprus, where he and Russians close to Putin had invested and served on the board. “I have only met once, for one hour, the principal Russian investor, and then only after he had invested in the Bank,” he said. There was no mention of Navigator.

He previously served as privatization adviser to New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the board of The U.S. Russia Investment Fund.

By 1998, Ross was involved in eight of the 25 biggest bankruptcies to date, including Drexel Burnham Lambert, Texaco, Public Service of New Hampshire (now Eversource Energy), and Eastern Air Lines. (Acquired by Trump)

In the 1980s, Donald Trump's three casinos in Atlantic City were under threat of foreclosurefrom lenders. Ross, who was then the senior managing director of Rothschild & Co, represented investors in the casino. Along with Carl Icahn, Ross convinced bondholders to strike a deal that allowed Trump to keep control of the casinos.

2017-February  National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is fired for lying to VP Pence about his discussion of sanctions with Russian Ambassador Kislyak.

2017-in February real-estate development firm Related Companies purchased $80 million of stock in Ladder Capital and gained a seat on Ladder’s board.

Ladder Capital Finance  had issued $282 million in loans to Trump on 4 properties.

Stephen Ross, the Chairman and Founder of Related Companies originally co-founded Related Group with Jorge Pérez, a long-time friend and a former business partner of Donald Trump.

In early 2017 Pérez came out vocally in interviews denouncingthe idea of building a border wall with Mexico, calling it “the most idiotic thing I’ve ever seen or heard in my life.”

More recently, a Miami Herald articleannounced that the Related Group, the largest real estate developer in Southern Florida, is part of an affordable housing probe by the U.S. Attorneys office into fraud and abuse of federal tax credits. While there is no indication what involvement, if any, Pérez has in making decisions about the terms of the $280 million plus in loans made to Trump, it’s important to be aware of potential conflicts that could arise related to the Federal government probe of Related.

Long-time partner of Pérez, Stephen Ross who is chairman and founder of the Related Companies, also has a connection to Donald Trump through Deutsche Bank, where both have been clients of Rosemary Vrablic, a senior banker in Deutsche Bank’s private wealth management business.

Trump’s working relationship with Vrablic started in the mid 2000’s, when Deutsche Bank and other investors, including Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s former hedge fund, Dune Capital Management, financed a $640 million loan to build Trump International Hotel and Tower in Chicago.

2017-March 10,  Congresswoman Maxine Waters writes a letter to Committee Chair Jeb Hensarling requesting that the Committee conduct a formal assessment of DOJ’s reported investigation in SDNY of Deutsche Bank’s $10 billion Russian money laundering through mirror trades activity.

2017-March President Trump fires US Attorney SDNY Preet Bharara despite originally promising to retain him.

2017 March -Blackstone has positioned itself better than almost any other private-equity firm to capitalize on Trump’s victory, particularly his long-stated plan to use private money to leverage around $200 billion in public funds for domestic infrastructure projects.

Though no longer part of Trump’s now defunct business council, Schwarzman continued to advise Trump on policy issues ranging from trade to infrastructure.

2017 March ,  Vekselberg was offered citizenship of the Republic of Cyprus due to his investments in the country, however a spokesperson for Vekselberg reiterated that he only had Russian citizenship.

2017- the laundering case against Prevezon was settled two months after Trump fired Bharara, with a $6M slap on the wrist settlement that raised some eyebrows.

A New York Times article reported that federal prosecutors in SDNY claimed Prevezon, which admitted no wrongdoing in the civil forfeiture suit, laundered proceeds of an alleged Russian tax fraud through Manhattan real estate.

Further lost in the volume of reporting was that “Prevezon and its partners relied in part on $90 million in financing from a big European financial institution, court records show. It was Deutsche Bank.”

If this case had actually gone to trial, and if the DOJ had prevailed and obtained a forfeiture for the full $230 million allegedly laundered, would Deutsche Bank have been left holding the bag on their $90 million financing? How would that have affected Lev Leviev, business partner to Prevezon Holdings?

Would it have uncovered the long-time relationship between Leviev and Pyotr Katsyv, the VP of Russian Railways at the center of the Hermitage tax ripoff?

While the exact reasons for the Prevezon forfeiture settlement are unknown, it should be noted that Nikolai Gorokov, a lawyer representing Sergei Magnitsky’s family, was able to photocopy documents contained in a Russian case file targeting two people involved in the $230 million scheme that traced the money to Russia.

Gorokov mysteriously fell from a window in Moscow about a month before he was due to testify in the Prevezon case. But the documents he photographed were admitted into evidence just days before the settlement was reached.

The settlement came as a surprise to some. According to an article in Business Insider, Louise Shelly — an illicit-finance expert who was set to testify in support of the US government — told CNN the day after the case was settled that she was concerned about the possibility that “political pressure” had been applied to the US Attorney’s office in SDNY.

It is noted that the Prevezon forfeiture case was settled, but the criminal investigation of the money laundering that permeated this case has not been officially closed by the SDNY as of this writing.

In  2019 The Russian lawyer who attended the 2016 Trump Tower meeting has been charged with obstruction of justice, according to indictments unsealed Tuesday.

The charge against Natalia Veselnitskaya relates to a money laundering case separate from the investigation into whether Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, but the court documents provide a detailed account of her close relationship with the Kremlin.

It is further noted that the New York Times reported on December 22, 2017, that the US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York has requested documents from Deutsche Bank relative to Jared Kushner’s companies. It is unknown at this time what this EDNY inquiry is focusing on.

A Google search of Natalia Veselnitskaya would have forewarned Kushner, Manafort and Trump Jr. of what they were walking into on that June 9 meeting — if they did in fact not know. Not as evident was Deutsche Bank’s association with Trump, Kushner, Leviev et al.

2017-Just a few days after Saudi Arabia pledges $20 billion to Blackstone Group’s record infrastructure fund, the Trump administration reveals its 2018 budget proposal, including his long-awaited $1 trillion infrastructure plan.

Blackstone expects to use the $40 billion in its infrastructure fund to invest in $100 billion of projects. Company president Tony James tells the New York Times that this deal could allow Blackstone to “establish overnight a leadership position” in infrastructure. Blackstone’s stock rises more than seven percent when the Saudi deal is announced.

According to one Vice report, she and Borgerson attended Bezos' ultra-exclusive book retreat in 2018. The annual event, known as Campfire, is held for a weekend each fall in Santa Fe, New Mexico (not far from Epstein’s nightmarish “baby ranch”in Stanley, where Maxwell and Epstein allegedly raped an underage girl, molested another girl, and where they welcomed visitors such as Prince Andrew and the Clinton family).

One insider told Vice that Maxwell attended two other Campfire weekends before the 2018 event.

Bezos has not commented on his alleged ties to Maxwell.

Representatives of Amazon and his space company, Blue Origin, did not return messages left by The Daily Beast

2017- Russian state-owned Vnesheconombank(VEB) provided financing for the construction of the  Trump International Hotel & Tower development in 2010.   

According to the Panama Papers, in 2010, the Russian born Shnaider sold at least half of Midland Group's ownership in the Zaporizhstal steel mill to buyers financed by VEB, who were then themselves acquired by the bank.

The bank, Vnesheconombank, or VEB, financed the purchase of $850 million of stock in the Ukrainian steelmaker from the billionaire Russian-Canadian developer Alexander Shnaider, who was constructing the hotel at the time

Shnaider initially purchased the stock via his company, Midland Resources Holding, for about $70 million after the collapse of the Soviet Union, according to The Journal.

The money from the sale of that stock to VEB — which The Journal said went through while Russian President Vladimir Putin was chairman of VEB's supervisory board — was used to help finance the construction of the Toronto hotel "at a key moment for the project."

From the Journal:

"After Mr. Shnaider and his partner sold their stake in the steelmaker, Mr. Shnaider injected more money into the Trump Toronto project, which was financially troubled.

The buyer, who was financed by Vnesheconombank(VEB), has only been described as "an entity acting for the Russian government.

Mr. Shnaider's lawyer, Symon Zucker, said in an April interview that about $15 million from the asset sale went into the Trump Toronto project. A day later, he wrote in an email: 'I am not able to confirm that any funds' from the deal 'went into the Toronto project.'"

Trump was never a partner," Zucker said. "He never had an equity interest. We licensed his name and there was a contract for him to manage the hotel."

The Tower finally opened in 2012 but by August 2013, close to six years after the start of construction, the "TRUMP" sign on the north side of the tower read "TRUM", and the public art feature Lightline was missing.

The initial financing came on March 23, 2007, when Talon International Development Incorporated of Markham announced that it had reached an agreement with international bank Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich AG(RZB) to arrange C$310 million in construction financing

Raiffeisen Bank International AG in Vienna, is a bank whose affiliate has been called “a front to provide legitimacy to the gas company [US-indicted Russian crime boss Semion Mogilevich] controls, RosUkrEnergo,” according to Scott F. Kilner, deputy chief of mission for the US embassy in Austria.

So it followed that it was likely that funds from the Mogilevich-Firtash money pipeline were behind the Trump project in Toronto.

The bank, which was also named in an extensive investigation into Russian money laundering published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project

In October 2016, JCF Capital ULC (a private firm that had bought the construction loan on the building) announced that it was seeking court approval under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to have the building sold in order to recoup its debt, which then totalled $301 million

The Raiffeisen Bank never came back to secure what it could in bankruptcy, in terms of the return of their funds

In March 2017, JCF Capital ULC (a joint venture between Juniper Capital Partners and Cowie Capital Partners) acquired the building, including 211 hotel units, 74 condo units and most of the commercial, retail and amenity space, for $298 million.

On June 27, 2017, JCF Capital reached an agreement to buy out the Trump Organization's management contract for the property, meaning that the hotel would drop the Trump branding. Bloomberg reported that the property was likely to be rebranded under Marriott International's St. Regis banner.

The total amount of money Trump received from the failed Toronto project is unclear.

Public financial disclosure documents filed by Trump in the U.S. show he collected $1.7 million (U.S.) in management fees from the Toronto project between 2014 and 2016. Walking away from the deal brought Trump’s organization a further payout of at least $6 million (Canadian), according to a 2017 Bloomberg report citing an inside source.

The Trump Organization has distanced itself from the Toronto project, which faced financial difficulties last year. The organization "merely licensed its brand and manages the hotel and residences," it told The Journal in a statement.

The project was initially a joint venture between Trump and Shnaider, who approached Trump in 2004 asking to license the Trump name for the 65-story tower. Trump said at the time that he would "manage the hotel's operations," according to The Journal, while Shnaider and his business partner, Val Levitan, would focus on the development.

Additionally, Zucker claimed, "we had nothing to do with VEB... the infusion of cash [into the hotel] didn't come from the Russians --

Alex [Shnaider] borrowed $350 million from an Austrian bank in 2007 and invested some of his own" into the project.

Zucker, Shnaider's lawyer, told The Journal that Midland Resources "has never had any relationship with VEB" and "does not dictate where their purchasers borrow funds." He told Business Insider that the Journal " got their facts all wrong."

2017-When he first filed the financial disclosure forms mandated for all federal employees, Kushner disclosed that he and his mother have a personal line of credit with Deutsche Bank worth up to $25 million.

But at that time, Kushner failed to disclose the $285 million refinancing his firm received from Deutsche in October 2016 — a month before the presidential election, and just two months before the December 2016 announcement of Deutsche’s $7.2 billion mortgage securities settlement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ).

While the previous administration’s DOJ agreed to the settlement, it’s reasonable to wonder: did officials fear that waiting later could endanger any enforcement action against Deutsche?

Remember that President-elect Trump met with US Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) Preet Bharara in Trump Tower on November 30, 2016, along with advisor Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner to request that Bharara stay on at SDNY during the new administration. Bharara agreed.

The DOJ reportedly initially sought $14 billion from Deutsche. The final settlement concerned the bank’s sale of defective mortgage bonds, and detailed the awarding of toxic home loans and the deceiving of investors during the period between 2005 and 2007.

The timing of the Deutsche refinancing transaction with Kushner and the subsequent media attention caused the Trump circle so much anguish that they issued an undated statementsaying that Kushner would recuse himself from all future actions with parties involving Deutsche Bank.

But Kushner’s real estate holdings raise other questions. In 2015, Kushner’s company purchased the retail space in the former New York Times Building in Times Square from an entity called Africa-Israel Investments, headed by Russian oligarch Lev Leviev.

An Uzbek-born Israeli citizen and a Russian oligarch, Leviev is considered one of the world’s wealthiest men, known as the “King of Diamonds” due to his extensive holdings in Africa, Israel and Russia.

Africa-Israel is heavily involved in real estate investment in Russia, Europe and the US, as well as in West Bank settlement construction activities.

In July, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz ran an article entitled “Who Is Lev Leviev, the Israeli Billionaire With Ties to Jared Kushner and Putin?” This article referenced various media stories describing a number of business and social relationships that connect Leviev to Vladimir Putin and Kremlin-related businesses, as well as to the Trump Organization.

Leviev was a business partner of Prevezon Holdings, the Russian firm that was accused of money launderingby the DOJ, and that was represented by Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyerwho arranged a meeting with Donald Jr. during the campaign — offering “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Prevezon got off with a $6 million fine. Haaretz called it a “slap on the wrist.”

Leviev has been open about his desire to do a real estate deal with Donald Trump in Russia. He may have the connections to pull this off. He told the New York Times that he was a “true friend” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, largely through his work with the Moscow Jewish Museum, the Russian Jewish Congress and his close ties to Russia’s Chief Rabbi, Berel Lazar.

However, Leviev’s company said in a statement to the Washington Post that Leviev “does not have a personal relationship” with Putin but that he has met the Russian leader on a few occasions.

2017-Bank of Cyprus’s major stakeholder Viktor Vekselberg has sold his 9.3 per cent stake in the island’s largest lender

Details of the transaction such as the name of the buyer and price were unknown at the time of writing, as no announcement had yet been issued by the Cyprus Stock Exchange (CSE) or the London Stock Exchange (LSE).

Vekselberg, who participated in Bank of Cyprus’s capital increase in August 2014 and had expressed interest in further expanding his stake, was targeted last month with US sanctions.

After it emerged that the Cypriot government decided last year to offer him an honorary Cypriot citizenship, a spokesperson for Vekselberg, seen as an ally of Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, said that he only had the Russian citizenship.

2017-Leviev was a business partner of Prevezon Holdings, the Russian firm that was accused of money laundering by the DOJ, and that was represented by Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who arranged a meeting with Donald Jr. during the campaign — offering “dirt” on Hillary Clinton.

Leviev has been open about his desire to do a real estate deal with Donald Trump in Russia. He may have the connections to pull this off. He told the New York Times that he was a “true friend” of Russian President Vladimir Putin, largely through his work with the Moscow Jewish Museum, the Russian Jewish Congress and his close ties to Russia’s Chief Rabbi, Berel Lazar. However, Leviev’s company said in a statement to the Washington Post that Leviev “does not have a personal relationship” with Putin but that he has met the Russian leader on a few occasions

2017- at the end of May, the Fed’s years of frustration with Deutsche culminated in an eighteen-page legal agreement with the bank, known as a cease- and-desist order.

Like the order the Fed had imposed on DBTCA twelve years earlier in relation to the Latvian money laundering, this one demanded that the bank take immediate action to prevent its customers from using Deutsche to engage in financial crimes.

Unlike the 2005 order, this one came with a $41 million penalty attached—a small but symbolic escalation in the severity of the Fed’s wrist-slapping.

The Fed’s order was public, but in secret it imposed a more draconian punishment: It downgraded the bank’s financial status to “troubled”—a classification that reflected its managerial and financial woes and set it up for years of intense regulatory scrutiny and limits on its operations. After so many years of running wild, DBTCA was finally being put on a tight leash.

2017, May-real-estate investing start-up Cadre found itself in the limelight when The Wall Street Journal reported that Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law, had failed to disclose his investment in the three-year-old company when he became a senior adviser to Trump. Jared and his younger brother, Josh, are both listed as the company’s co-founders, along with Ryan Williams, who met Josh Kushner at Harvard.

Before Trump’s inauguration, Jared Kushner stepped down from Cadre’s board and sold some of his stake in the company, Bloomberg reports.

Now, the company has raised $65 million in funding, valuing Cadre at $800 million. The biggest firm to invest in the new round of funding is Silicon Valley heavyweight Andreessen Horowitz, which joins a number of institutional investors, including Vinod Khosla, David Yu, George Soros, and Trump adviser Peter Thiel in backing the real-estate tech start-up.

2017-By now, most readers are familiar with Kushner’s multiple financial disclosure omissions as well as the multiple foreign contacts he omitted from his SF-86 — the form, signed under oath, which is required of all federal employees applying for security clearance.

Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn initially omitted five-figure payments from Russia in 2015 on this form, and six-figure payments from Turkey in 2016.

Flynn had multiple contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak, some of which were recorded by US intelligence and at least one of which Flynn lied about to the FBI.

Flynn was ultimately fired because he lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations concerning sanctions with Kislyak. He has pleaded guilty to one count of perjury in this regard. Kushner also omitted from his security clearance form several telephone contacts with Kislyak.

Additionally, Kushner neglected to mention that — subsequent to another meeting with both Flynn and Kislyak at Trump Tower in December 2016 — he’d had a Trump Tower meeting with Sergei Gorkov, head of the sanctioned Russian bank VEB, who had received training from the Russian intelligence agency FSB.

Kushner must have forgotten about the promise he made to recuse himself from contact with any parties at Deutsche, in addition to the requirement to note down his meetings/contacts on his security clearance form. It is plausible that Kushner and his attorneys were not aware of the cooperation agreement between Deutsche Bank and VEB.

2017 May -Schwarzman, who became chair of Trump’s business-advisory council in December, is seen in Saudi Arabia with both Trump and Kushner during a presidential visit.

Just a few days after Saudi Arabia pledges $20 billion to Blackstone Group’s record infrastructure fund, the Trump administration reveals its 2018 budget proposal, including his long-awaited $1 trillion infrastructure plan.

Blackstone expects to use the $40 billion in its infrastructure fund to invest in $100 billion of projects. Company president Tony James tells the New York Times that this deal could allow Blackstone to “establish overnight a leadership position” in infrastructure.

Blackstone’s stock rises more than seven percent when the Saudi deal is announced.

(Later that year, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef, Bin Salman’s cousin, reportedly tells confidants that Kushner shared with him the names of allegedly disloyal Saudis.)

July 27, 2017 The Senate votes overwhelmingly, 98-2, to impose new sanctions on Russia. The House passes the measure, 419-3. The bill targets Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Syria. President has until January 29, 2018 to implement.

2017-September, Kushner meets with an official of Apollo, the investment firm of Leon Black — another Putin advisor — at the White House. (Black and Kushner were already friendly, having sat together at the US Open just prior to the 2016 election.)

Six weeks after the White House meeting, Apollo extends a $184 million loan to the Kushners. As ABC News reported, the SEC advised Apollo it had concluded its inquiry on December 23, 2017. As is customary, no reason was given.

2017-In addition to Epstein and Barak, Russian oligarchs Viktor Vekselberg and Andrew Intrater bought 24% of Carbyne’s Class A-1 shares through Intrater’s Columbus Nova Technology Partners (CNTP) in September 2017.

Vekselberg and Intrater are under U.S. sanctions because of Russia’s malign activities. Ukrainian-born Vekselberg is close to Vladimir Putin.

While still employed as Donald Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen consulted for Columbus Nova until August 2017 under a $1 million agreement to his company, “Essential Consulting.”

Carbyne has ties to China through Co-founder Lital Leshem. Leshem, who remains a shareholder at Carbyne, now works alongside Erik Prince at Frontier Resources Group (FRG). FRG is based in the UAE and is a subsidiary of Prince’s Frontier Services Group (FSG).

In May, Human Rights Watch revealed Chinese authorities use a platform not unlike Carbyne to illegally surveil Uyghurs. China’s Integrated Joint Operations Platform brings in a much bigger data-set and sources of video, which includes an app on people’s phones.

Like Carbyne, the platform was designed to report emergencies. Chinese authorities have turned it into a tool of mass surveillance.

The app monitors every aspect of a user’s life, including personal conversations, power usage, and tracks a user’s movement. “Did the family say something religious? Did they exit through the front door or the back door? (Going through the back door is presumably more suspicious),” Human Rights Watch says.

2017-Bank of Cyprus’s major stakeholder Viktor Vekselberg sold his 9.3 per cent stake in the island’s largest lender

Details of the transaction such as the name of the buyer and price were unknown at the time of writing, as no announcement had yet been issued by the Cyprus Stock Exchange (CSE) or the London Stock Exchange (LSE).

Vekselberg, who participated in Bank of Cyprus’s capital increase in August 2014 and had expressed interest in further expanding his stake, was targeted last month with US sanctions.

2017, Deutsche Bank was fined $630 million by the New York Fed for a Russian money laundering scheme that involved its Moscow, New York and London branches. An overview of the scheme, written by the Fed, including the following:

“The ‘mirror trading’ scheme at issue here was simple and effective.

Deutsche Bank Trust Company of the Americas (“DBTCA“)…was the entity through which the U.S. dollar payments flowed to the suspicious entities involved here. Operating through the securities desk at Deutsche Bank’s Moscow affiliate, certain companies that were clients of that desk routinely issued orders to purchase Russian blue chip stocks, always paying in rubles.

The size of the typical order ranged in value from $2 to $3 million…Every single one of the U.S. dollar payments involved in the mirror trading and one-legged trading activity discussed above flowed through DBTCA….by virtue of this

scheme, the counterparties were able to surreptitiously convert rubles into U.S. dollars using Deutsche Bank.”

Two years later, an internal bank report surfaced alleging that Deutsche Bank had direct involvement in another Russian money laundering scheme where “Russian criminals with links to the Kremlin, the old KGB and its main successor, the FSB, used the scheme between 2010 and 2014 to move money into the western financial system.” A slew of other regulatory actions have been brought against Deutsche Bank for separate financial wrongdoing.

Gazprombank has encountered its own share of money laundering problems. After the Panama Papers revealed that Gazprombank’s Switzerland division attempted to open a bank account in the name of Sergei Roldugin, a longtime friend of Vladimir Putin’s who allegedly holds wealth on behalf of the Russian President, a Swiss probe was launched.

The 2018 conclusion of that probe, led by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA), led to a court order which banned the Gazprombank subsidiary in Switzerland from accepting any new clients. The report concluded that, “Gazprombank Switzerland was in serious breach of its anti-money laundering due diligence requirements in the period from 2006 to 2016.”

2018-NEW YORK CITY—Kushner Companies received relief for its aluminum-clad albatross of 666 Fifth Ave.

Brookfield Asset Management purchased a 99-year, 100% leasehold interest in the 1.5 million square-foot Midtown Manhattan office building.

Although the financial terms were not disclosed The New York Times reported Brookfield (a top investor Vanguard is 9% owned by Black Rock, also Qatar is part owner) paid approximately $1.1 billion in upfront rent, and that Charles Kushner, who’s now heading the company, negotiated to pay lenders substantially less than what was owed on the building.

The paper previously had reported that the property had a $1.4 billion mortgage with accrued interest due in February 2019.

The funds from Brookfield’s leasehold would come in handy for another transaction involving the same asset.

Kushner Companies purchased the 49.5% interest in 666 Fifth Ave. from its partner Vornado Realty Trust (Black Rock has significant holdings) for approximately $120 million. (Originally bought for 80 million and assumption of half of the Kushner mortgage) That deal was originally announced in April with Vornado CEO Steve Roth’s letter to shareholders filed with the SEC.

Along with Vornado’s sale of its interests, the existing mortgage loan on the property was repaid. Vornado will receive net proceeds of approximately $57 million and will recognize an $8 million financial statement gain in the third quarter for the participation it held in the mortgage loan.

Vornado will continue to own the property’s retail space which  housed Uniqlo, Tissot and Hollister with 125 feet of frontage on Fifth Avenue between 52nd and 53rd streets.

Previously, to pay off debt in July 2008, the Kushners had sold the controlling interest in the building’s 90,000 square feet of retail space to the Carlyle Group and Crown Acquisitions for $525 million.

In July 2012, Vornado acquired the retail component from Carlyle and Crown for $707 million.

Originally an outgrowth of the Bronfman liquor dynasty, the Brookfield group today attracts money from ordinary stock market investors, sophisticated public pension systems and sovereign states including Qatar, the gas-rich Middle East emirate

The known links between Qatar and Brookfield all converge on the investment group’s listed property fund BPY. About one-tenth of the fund’s assets are tied up in skyscrapers in Canary Wharf and Manhattan that are co-owned by Qatar, but the connection goes further.

Through a sovereign wealth fund, Doha is one of BPY’s biggest investors, holding $1.8bn worth of BPY preferred equity.

In theory, Qatar has significant influence over BPY. It is entitled to choose one person to sit on BPY’s board, and to receive confidential information that other investors never see.

Both sides have previously indicated that, when Brookfield was negotiating a $1.3bn lease on 666 Fifth Avenue, a building that Charles Kushner had discussed with the Qataris the previous year, the emirate was not involved.

2018-The mysterious killing of Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey

One of Epstein's clients was Jamals Uncle, the late Saudi Arabian businessman Adnan Khashoggi, who was the middleman in transferring American weapons from Israel to Iran, as part of the Iran–Contra affair in the 1980s.

Adnan had died on June 6, 2017 in London

Trump attended parties of Adnan Khashoggi in early 80’s at his plush condo at Olympic Tower.  He Implemented some ideas taken from Adnans condo in his Trump Tower project

In 1983 a Khashoggi-led group formed the gold  company whose name was soon changed to Barrick Gold Corp. Sheik Kamal Adham was reportedly one of the new company's founding co-owners. Adham, the chief of Saudi intelligence, had coordinated royalist guerrillas in Yemen, with British arms secretly provided through Khashoggi.

In 1985 Khashoggi borrowed $21 million, using his Barrick stock as collateral, for the covert  transfer of arms to Iran for the Bush-North group, during an official U.S. arms embargo against the Khomeini regime.

Khashoggi made Donald Fraser, the Toronto-based businessman who allegedly provided the loan from his Cayman Islands company, president of Khashoggi's Triad American holding company. Khashoggi used the Monte Carlo office of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International to launder money for Iran arms sales.

Barrick Gold Corp. co-founder Kamal Adham was later prosecuted for fraud in the BCCI case, and paid a $100 million fine. Khashoggi's Saudi royal piggybanks also underwrote  George Bush's Central American ``Contras'' adventures, making payments through the Swiss Bank Corp. and a Cayman Islands bank, totalling about $27 million.

In 1986 when the Iran and Contra scandals blew up , U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese linked the two scandals in a Nov. 25 public revelation. The next day, Munk announced a shareholders' meeting to decide on an urgent restructuring plan. A new organization emerged, keeping the Khashoggi group in control, but easing Khashoggi out of the limelight and making Munk the sole public figurehead.

Personnel were shifted into the Canada organization out of Khashoggi's Triad operations in Utah.

In 1988-89 Triad Holding Company went bankrupt after he was indicted for using it to channel money for the Iran-Contra deal.  Fortunately, he made his $4 million bail thanks to his friend, Peter Munk, chairman of Barrick Gold.  

He still held onto his Barrick Gold shares though -- despite them being held as collateral for the arms deal.

Business was good for a while, having helped out his good friend Imelda Marcos hide her gold and assets -- legally according to the not guilty  verdict in 1991

In 1991, Trump — envious of the Adnans lifestyle — arranged to buy his yacht, the Nabila, for $29 million, touting it on the David Letterman show as “probably the greatest yacht ever built. It's really been kind of a great investment.” (Trump renamed it the Princess, apparently after his daughter Ivanka.)

But not that great an investment. Three years later, when Trump was facing bankruptcy over his floundering Atlantic City casinos, he was bailed out by yet another Saudi mogul — Prince Alwaleed bin Talal — who bought the yacht from him for $20 million

Khashoggi started another business, called GenesisIntermedia, a telemarketing company.  This was during the .com boom. The stock was the best performer in 2000 despite losses of more than $17 million on just $229,000 revenue....

Having pushed the stock from $1 a share all the way up to $17, Khashoggi paid off some brokers to borrow his stock and lend it to Deutsche Bank Canada to the tune of $130 million.  Despite having internet revenues of less than half a million.  Under this scheme, Deutsche borrows the stock and pays Khashoggi the value of the shares. 

After the stock crashed, GenesisIntermedia went belly up and Khashoggi made out like a Saudi oil tycoon.  Deutsche Bank and a few securities companies were left holding the baby.  Khashoggi made the $130 million disappear

Jamal Khashoggi was acquainted with Osama bin Laden in the 1980s and 1990s in Afghanistan while bin Laden was championing his jihad against the Soviets. Khashoggi interviewed bin Laden several times, usually meeting bin Laden in Tora Bora, and once more in Sudanin 1995.

Jamal Khashoggi was the only non-royal Saudi Arabian who knew of the royals' intimate dealing with al-Qaedain the lead-up to the September 11 attacks. He dissociated himself from bin Laden following the attacks.

On May 20, 2017, U.S. President Trump and Saudi Arabia's Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud signed a series of letters of intent for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to purchase arms from the United States totaling US$110 billion immediately, and $350 billion over 10 years.

Adnan Khashoggi died on 6 June 2017 while being treated for Parkinson's disease at the Harley Street Clinicin London.He was 81.  Jamal Khashoggi fled Saudi Arabia and relocated to the United States in June 2017 and began writing for The Washington Post in September 2017.

Khashoggi said that the Saudi government had "banned him from Twitter", and he later wrote newspaper articles critical of the Saudi government. Khashoggi had been sharply critical of the Saudi rulers, King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman(MBS) He also opposed the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.

Former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden accused the Saudi Government of using spywareknown as "Pegasus") to monitor Khashoggi's cell phone.

According to an article from Forensic News, Oren Kesler, then Director of Operations at Wikistrat, told a subordinate in a July 2018 email that Jamal Khashoggi worked for Wikistrat, but it is unclear when Khashoggi was hired by Wikistrat..

Wikistrat admitted in an email to Forensic News that Khashoggi did in fact work for the firm. Articles published by The Daily Beast and The New York Times reported that the founder of Wikistrat, Joel Zamel, met with General Ahmed al Assiri, the Saudi general who allegedly ordered Khashoggi's assassination, in early 2017 to discuss covert operations to destabilize Iran. One of the topics discussed was assassinating dissidents.

Wikistrat Inc. is a geostrategic analysis and business consultancy founded in Israel in 2010 by Joel Zamel and Daniel Green and headquartered in the United States.

Wikistrat maintains a network of hundreds of academics, consultants, journalists, and retired government/military personnel. Contributors are invited to participate in a given project if they have relevant expertise, and each individual is compensated for his or her time. Analysts can accept or refuse invitations on a case-by-case basis.

So why would Khashaggi be snuffed in 2018?  What could he know? Maybe some dark secrets he could no longer be trusted to keep given his break with MBS?   Perhaps related to Osama and 9/11. Maybe he knew too much of what his Uncle knew?  A bit of both maybe. Both out of the picture now

2018 In 2016, adult film actress Stormy Daniels (legal name Stephanie Clifford) was speaking to some reporters and said that she had had a sexual affair with Trump in 2006.

In October, Cohen and Daniels' attorney Keith M. Davidson negotiated a non-disclosure agreement under which she was to be paid $130,000 hush money. Cohen created a Delaware LLC called Essential Consultants and used it to pay the $130,000.

The arrangement was reported by The Wall Street Journal in January 2018

In April 2018, Trump acknowledged for the first time that Cohen has represented him in the Stormy Daniels case, after previously having denied knowledge of the $130,000 payment

Cohen officially surrendered to the FBI on August 21, 2018. That afternoon, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight criminal charges: five counts of tax evasion, one count of making false statements to a financial institution, one count of willfully causing an unlawful corporate contribution, and one count of making an excessive campaign contribution at the request of a candidate (Trump) for the "principal purpose of influencing [the] election".

After Cohen's August 2018 conviction, Trump stated that the payment to Daniels came from him personally and not from the campaign during a Fox & Friends interview.

2018-May , Rudy Giuliani announced that Cohen was no longer Trump's lawyer.

In July, seized tapes secretly recorded by Cohen of his conversations with Trump about hush payments to Karen McDougal were disclosed to The New York Times, seemingly contradicting earlier statements by Trump denying knowledge of the payments, and raising questions about campaign finance ethics.

Cohen also asserted that then-candidate Trump knew in advance about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his son Donald Jr., and other Trump campaign officials with Russians who claimed to possess information damaging to the Hillary Clinton campaign, contradicting the President's repeated insistence that he was not aware of the meeting until long after it had taken place.

2019-The Supreme Court ruled in June that  Trump can block Congress from receiving his Deutsche Bank records. Congress issued wide-ranging subpoenas for financial records relating to Trump entities and family members, as well as broader Deutsche Bank records regarding money laundering compliance. Those records would reveal where payments toward Trump’s loan balance originated, or whether any senior Deutsche Bank officials knew the loans were underwritten by Russian banks like VTB or Gazprombank.

The FBI continues to investigate Deutsche Bank in a criminal money laundering probe.

2019-Val Broeksmit acquired the emails and files of his late father, Deutsche Bank executive William S. Broeksmit, after Broeksmit tragically took his own life in 2014.

Val informed the FBI in late 2019 about his knowledge of VTB’s underwriting of Trump’s loans, information he attributed to a network of sources connected to the bank he cultivated over the past five-plus years.

Underwriting is the process where financial institutions assess the ability of potential customers to fulfill their obligations. Underwriters have access to “credit and financial information, as well as the state of the [property],” according to US News, though underwriters can sometimes be unknown to the person seeking the loan.

This does not confirm the underlying claim that VTB, or a high-profile client of VTB, underwrote Trump’s loans from Deutsche Bank.

However, at least some of Trump’s loans were issued by a bank subsidiary with business ties to VTB. That subsidiary owed more than $48 million to VTB in 2013 and documents suggest the subsidiary continued doing business with VTB even after the bank was sanctioned in 2014.

One federal agent working on the Deutsche Bank investigation indicated that VTB is under scrutiny in the FBI criminal probe. “We know VTB very well,” the investigator said on background. That person did not comment directly on the Trump loans.

Val Broeksmit’s full statement is below:

The Russian state bank VTB underwrote loans to Donald Trump via Deutsche Bank. Over the course of Trump’s relationship with DB, an inordinate amount of questionable, mismanaged & risky loans approved by Deutsche Bank to Trump required his Personal Guarantee which, over time, also lost its value.

Trump’s team at DB sought out creative ways to circumvent the varied protections DB’s compliance team institutionally implemented, & whether by happenstance or by design Trump’s loans became underwritten by Russia’s own VTB.

I informed the FBI of this in 2019.

2018-Newly discovered financial documents and ownership history records suggest that the Kremlin-connected oligarch Oleg Deripaska may own part of the development company with which Donald Trump signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) in late 2015 to build Trump Tower Moscow.

Financial transaction logged with the Cyprus government showing the Sberbank loan to Colinsen Trading Limited, IC Expert’s main shareholder

The agreement was signed by Donald Trump on October 28th, 2015, four months into his presidential run. Presented by Felix Sater, the Letter of Intent confirmed a non-binding agreement between Trump Acquisition LLC and the Russian development company IC Expert.

According to Michael Cohen, the deal was abandoned in January 2016 because he “lost confidence that the prospective licensee would be able to obtain the real estate, financing and government approvals.”

Previous exclusive reporting has shown that the Russian state-owned Sberbank issued a loan worth approximately $184 million to IC Expert three weeks after the LOI was signed.

Capilana Trading Limited in the British Virgin Islands was the majority owner until just months before Donald Trump partnered with IC Expert, when Capilana’s share in the Russian development company dropped to 15%.

Weeks after IC Expert’s chairman Andrey Rozov was granted amnesty by the Russian government in a negligent homicide case, the majority ownership of IC Expert was transferred to a prominent Cyprus lawyer in order to mask the true ownership.

Deripaska’s connection to Capilana is through his Cypriot manager — Ioanna Theofilou. Whereas many Cypriot directors and secretaries act for hundreds or thousands of companies, Theofilou is only involved with a few dozen, with the plurality of those being companies owned by Deripaska.

For example, subsidiaries of Deripaska’s largest companies En+ and RUSAL list Theofilou as its director and secretary. When Deripaska established a Panamanian company under the RUSAL umbrella, he again entrusted Theofilou to be one of his only directors.

The only other Panamanian company in which Theofilou is a director cannot immediately be traced to Deripaska, though the same officers are involved, and the incorporation dates are only one year apart.

British Virgin Islands law allows the principals of a company to remain anonymous. This secrecy makes it an attractive destination for high-profile businesspeople to register their companies.

https://medium.com/@ScottMStedman/newly-discovered-evidence-suggests-oleg-deripaska-may-own-part-of-trumps-chosen-moscow-developer-be7c000ab8c2

2019-Deripaska

Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska (Russian: Олег Владимирович Дерипаска; born 2 January 1968)is a Russian oligarchand industrialist. He is the founder of Basic Element, one of Russia's largest industrial groups, and Volnoe Delo, Russia's largest charitable foundation.

Until 2018,he was the president of En+ Group, a Russian energy company, and until 2018 headed United Company Rusal, the second-largest aluminium company in the world.

Deripaska is a friend of Nathaniel Rothschild, a major investor in both Glencoreand United Company RUSAL.

22 March 2017, the Associated Press published a report alleging that Paul Manafort,  Donald Trump's former presidential campaign manager, negotiated a $10 million annual contract with Deripaska to promote Russian interests in politics, business, and media coverage in Europe and the United States, starting in 2005.

Both Deripaska and Manafort confirmed working together in the past, but rejected the contents of the AP story. Manafort argued that his work had been inaccurately presented, and that there was nothing “inappropriate or nefarious" about it.

In April 2018, the United States imposed sanctions on Oleg Deripska and 23 other Russian tycoons and officials.

In October 2018, the U.S. Treasury announced it had extended until 12 December a deadline for the full imposition of sanctions against Rusal and its parent company En+ Group, pending the review of the proposals presented by En+ Group to the U.S. government that would see Deripaska reduce his stake in En+ to below 45 per cent from around 70 per cent.

In January 2019, the U.S. Treasury lifted the sanctions on companies formerly controlled by Deripaska. Sanctions on Deripaska himself remained in effect.

In April 2019, the U.S. Treasury Department nonetheless allowed Deripaska to transfer 10.5 million shares of his holding company En+ Group to a trust fund for his children as part of a divorce settlement with his ex-wife Polina Yumasheva, which had been finalized before the sanctions were put in place.

The deal to have U.S. sanctions removed from En+ Group was brokered by Greg Barker, a UK legislator, who in February 2019 went on to be appointed chairman of En+ Group.

As part of the deal to lift the sanctions in what was stated to be an effort to dilute Deripaska’s control, EN+, the parent of his aluminum company Rusal, announced seven new directors, four of them American or British. They include former Deutsche Bank executiveChristopher Bancroft Burnham, who served on Trump’s State Department transition team.

Burnham also served as undersecretary general for management of the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration when John Bolton—  was the U.N. ambassador.

Deripaska and Trump have both been clients of Deutsche Bank. The bank has paid billions of dollars in fines for money-laundering, interest rate manipulation and toxic mortgage assets.

2019-On March 7, 2019, Judge T. S. Ellis III sentenced Manafort to 47 months in prison.[On March 13, 2019, Jackson sentenced Manafort to an additional 43 months in prison.

On May 13, 2020, Manafort was released to home confinement due to the threat of COVID-19. On December 23, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned Manafort.

2020-Judge Salas was assigned to a lawsuit by Deutsche Bank investors against the firm less than a week before her son and husband were shot by Hollander. The lawsuit was filed after Deutsche Bank agreed to pay a $150 million fine for compliance failures linked to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The suit in Salas’s court alleged the bank had failed to vet “risky” clients like Jeffrey Epstein, the notorious (and now deceased) pedophile suspected of having his own rather extensive ties to Israeli and US intelligence.

The shooter would be found after committing suicide.  Ex-Kroll Moscow /Hollander’s  “suicide” would not be the first suspicious death surrounding Epstein In addition to his own jailhouse suicide. His personal banker at Deutsche Bank  (Tom Bowers) supposedly did away with himself back in November.

Thomas Bowers, head of the firm’s Private Wealth Management Division from 2012 to 2015, was discovered hanging from a rope in his New York home before Thanksgiving, just as FBI agents were hoping to interview him about the loans he’d approved to Epstein and his various shell companies.

Epstein had followed Bowers to Deutsche Bank in 2013, where – despite his allegedly defaulting on some $25 million in loans from Citigroup – Bowers secured further high-risk loans and credit lines for the convicted sex offender

Roy Den Hollander worked for Kroll Associates in Moscow at about the time Putin becomes President following the suspicious apartment bombings is interesting. He also worked at US Treasury Department in the late 80’s when PROMIS was disclosing many secrets and Trump was making himself known and also visiting Moscow in 1987

After leaving Kroll Associates in 2008, founder Jules Kroll launched Kroll Bond Rating Agency, a credit rating agency that has become something of a second home for high-ranking Deutsche Bank staff, employing over half a dozenVP-level and above staff. The cozy “revolving door” relationship has seen KBRA vociferously defend Deutsche Bank in the press against allegations of wrongdoing – no matter how well-founded.

Kroll himself was hired by newspaper baron and Israeli spy Robert Maxwell – father of now-imprisoned alleged Epstein madam Ghislaine Maxwell – to uncover “people out to get him, to destroy his empire, to cripple him financially, and to destroy his life and business in any way they could.”

Maxwell died under mysterious circumstances shortly thereafter– also officially declared suicide, despite considerable evidence to the contrary – before he could compile the “memorandum of suspicions and unexplained events” he planned to send Kroll,

Why use a 72 yo with cancer for the job, assuming he did not act independently.  This seems like professional job with a predetermined patsy and narrative.

And why use or set up as a patsy a guy tied to Kroll Associates and Moscow and seemingly a Trump supporter.

2019-Ex-Kroll Moscow /Hollander’s  “suicide” would not be the first suspicious death surrounding Epstein In addition to his own jailhouse suicide. His personal banker at Deutsche Bank  (Tom Bowers) supposedly did away with himself back in November following Epsteins “suicide”

2019 outflow of Russian funds from the island marks the reversal of a trend that began after the fall of the Soviet Union and accelerated as Cyprus joined the European Union in 2004 and adopted the euro in 2008. Russian investors were attracted to Cyprus by its status as a low-tax regime within the EU and was seen as safe and stable.

While some of the drop in numbers over the years stems from Russians — like Deripaska — acquiring Cypriot nationality, affecting the way such funds are classified, tightened local rules are also beginning to bite.

In November, a directive from the Central Bank of Cyprus kicked in, giving lenders less leeway to work with shell companies. That’s making many Russian companies “non-bankable,” said Iordanou.

Two Russian businessmen with accounts in Cyprus for over a decade said they were contacted by their banks over the past few months asking for documents from many years ago on the source of the money in their accounts. Unable to provide them, they were forced to close the accounts, they said, declining to be named.

“Cyprus banks require a lot of papers now,” said Alexander Ryazanov, Gazprom’s former deputy CEO, who has a real-estate business in Cyprus and has worked for many years with Cypriot banks. “It is very difficult to open a new account now.”

The central bank directive on money laundering involves avoiding dealings with entities deemed to be shell companies, which hits at the heart of Russian investments.

Meanwhile, for Bank of Cyprus, the country’s largest lender, Russian clients now account for only 1.5 percent of the total and 5.7 percent of total deposits compared with 2.4 percent and 9.9 percent in 2014, according to the lender.

Although the central bank’s measures didn’t specifically target Russians, “one can argue that this group is affected to a larger degree than others,” said Demetris Taxitaris, general manager of Cyprus-based MAP S.Platis, a consultancy firm for financial services companies.

That said, a number of Russian businesses continue to keep a foothold in Cyprus, among them Victor Rashnikov, owner of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works PJSC; Vladimir Lisin, who controls his stake in Novolipetsk Steel PJSC through a Cyprus-based holding company; and Vladimir Potanin, president of MMC Norilsk Nickel PJSC, a producer of refined nickel.

For their part, Cypriot entities are cutting their Russian exposure. RCB Bank Ltd, whose second-largest shareholder is Russia’s state-owned VTB Bank PJSC with a 46.3 percent stake, plans to strengthen and further develop domestic business operations, a spokesperson for the Limassol-based lender said.

“Amid sanctions and tightening compliance, Cyprus banks prefer not to deal with Russian money and Russian clients, even those who’ve had accounts in Cyprus banks many years,” said Evgeny Kogan, former director of the Center for Protection of Shareholders and Investor Rights of Cypriot Banks set up in 2014. “Russian clients are becoming toxic.”

2020-Unlike a typical bank, Ladder Capital is a Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) that has a niche “writing riskier commercial mortgages than banks are typically comfortable with.”

A review of property records in NYC’s online document database ACRIS shows that loan agreements from Ladder Capital Finance for four Trump properties total $282 million (see links to source documents below). Two GAP mortgages for over $80 million were also recorded, but the ACRIS filings do not show if or when mortgages and loans have been paid. The data in Trump’s June 2017 financial disclosure (below) is vague, and shows Ladder debt ranging from $110 million to over $150 million. It is clear, however, that Ladder Capital Finance holds significant financial leverage related to money owed on four Trump real-estate holdings, including the well-known Fifth Avenue Trump Tower property.

The loan amounts from Ladder Capital Finance to Trump, displayed in the chart above, are based on the most recent financial records filed in the NYC ACRIS database:

• 40 Wall Street — 7/2/15 loan agreement for $160,000,000

• Trump Tower Commercial LLC (721–725 Fifth Avenue) — 8/30/12 loan agreement for $100,000,000(note: 8/30/12 GAP mortgage for $73,265,168.90is not included in $282 million total Ladder estimate).

• Trump Plaza LLC (163–169 East 61st Street, 160–162 East 62nd Street, 165 East 61st Street) — 6/30/14 loan agreement for $15,000,000(note: 6/30/14 GAP mortgage for $7,057,593.54is not included in $282 million total Ladder estimate).

• Trump International Hotel & Tower — TIHT Commercial LLC (1 Central Park West) — 7/11/16 loan agreement for $7,000,000

Now held by Wells Fargo

Deutsche Bank Loans

Deutsche Bank Loan amounts to Trump are based on the following sources:

• Trump National Doral Hotel Miami FL ( Trump Endeavor 12 LLC) — $125 million mortgage 2015 (March 2017 Bloomberg article)

• Trump Old Post Office (Washington D.C.) — $170 million loan (March 2017 Bloomberg article)

• Trump International Hotel Chicago — unknown loan balance, estimated as $25 million (the lower end of $25-$50 million range in OGE form). Note: an additional loan of $50 millionon this property from Chicago Unit Acquisition LLC is not included in the chart.

Ladder Capital Executive Director on the originations team, Jack Weisselbergis the son ofTrump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg.

The Trump property at 40 Wall Street re-assigned the $160,000,000 mortgage from Ladder Capital to Wilmington Trust, National Association, as Trustee for the registered holders of Wells Fargo Commercial Mortgage Trust.

October 18, 2015 Assignment of Mortgage for 40 Wall StreetACRIS filing

Weisselberg and Wells Fargo information heard through twitter in thread below:

The Trump SoHo hotel, which stripped Trump’s name from the property in 2017, was financed in the mid-2000s in part with loans channeled through Icelandic banks that collapsed during the financial crisis.

, Bayrock Group LLC; one of Bayrock’s executives, Felix Sater; and about murky funds from Europe that were channeled into the project. While Deutsche was closely involved with Icelandic banks at the time of the collapse, no information has surfaced indicating the bank had a direct role in the Trump SoHo debacle.

2020-After becoming senior White House advisor, Jared Kushner decided it was time to walk away from his investment as reports started to emerge that the business was backed by foreign investors. Kushner’s original stake in Cadre ranged from $25 million to $50 million, according to his latest financial disclosure form.  

Bloomberg reported in February that Kushner transferred his interest in Cadre to a trust that was supposed to sell his shares back to the company. A month later, as the pandemic swept through the country, states started shutting down and the Dow Jones Industrial Average  eventually hit its lowest mark since Trump was inaugurated.  

Kushner’s brother’s venture capital firm, Thrive Capital, along with Goldman Sachs and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, are listed on Cadre’s website as key financial backers. 

Kushner has been involved with multiple projects involving leaders of foreign countries, including the crafting of a Middle East peace plan, leaving the possibility that his investment in the company could have brought at least an appearance of a conflict of interest. 

Yet in late June, a filing that said Kushner would defer taxes on the sale of his Cadre shares was withdrawn, according to a Office of Government Ethics disclosure report. The new filing was first flagged by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which recently said in an online post that their experts “have never seen a situation like this before.” 

Cadre itself has tried to play down its link to Kushner during his time in the White House. 

2020--Oscar Health,the health insurance company co-founded by Jared Kushner’s younger brother,announced it has launched a testing center locator for COVID-19. It shows where more than 100 centers are in the United States. The company is also offering a risk assessment survey and means to talk to a doctor online.

Oscar is most definitely a tech company first and foremost. It serves as a sort of platform for healthcare providers and healthcare product vendors to scale their access to the telemedicine market, which is exploding as a result of the pandemic protocols

Joshua Kushner co-founded Oscar Health in 2012. His co-founders are Mario Schlosser,the company CEO, and Harvard Business School classmate Kevin Nazemi who left the company in 2015 , and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law,

Jared was increasingly involved in Team Trump’s response to the pandemic. He helped writeTrump’s half-baked Oval Office speech on the disease. The Kushner brothers co-founded Cadre, a real-estate investing start-up.

Jared had a controlling stake in Oscar Health before joining the administration and had to relinquish control. Oscar’s parent company is Mulberry

Oscar, was founded to rethink how a health insurer should look and act in the digital age and after the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act

Oscar’s CEO and co-founder Mario Schlosserr claims that he came up with the concept for Oscar after his wife’s first pregnancy. Speaking to Bloomberg in 2018, Schlosser said he identified a gap “in the way the system works” and decided to launch an insurance company based on the consumer that would make it “easier for them to navigate the system.”

A McKinsey & Company alumnus, Schlosser’s background runs through some of the darkest corners of the technology, venture capital, and intelligence nexus, including his stint at the Epstein-connected MIT Media Lab, whose founder Nicholas Negroponte developed the abortive covert political influence operation in Latin America known as the One Laptop per Child initiative.

Nicholas Negroponte, who cofounded the Media Lab in 1985 and was its director for 20 years, said he had recommended that Ito take Epstein’s money. “If you wind back the clock,” he added, “I would still say, ‘Take it.’” And he repeated, more emphatically, “‘Take it.’

Oscar Health was criticized in 2018 for selling health insurance in Ohio through the Affordable Care Act with a deductible of $15,800.The company sold health insurance under the Affordable Care Act in 15 statesfor 2020.

In 2018, Alphabet took a nearly 10% stake in Oscar Health for $375 million

Billionaire Peter Thiel, a Trump supporter who co-founded PayPal, invested millionsin Oscar Health through his Founders Fund. Joshua Kushner’s father-in-law is New York doctor Kurt Klosswho turned to his Facebook group of emergency room doctors for advice to pass onto Team Trump about how best to handle the pandemic.

Oscar, scaled up big in 2020 with $145 million round of funding led by Peter Thiel and Brian Singerman at Founders Fund.

While the company couldn’t comment on valuation, we hear that the round pegged the company’s worth at $1.5 billion. The company has said it has about 40,000 members. If the average customer is paying about $4,800 per year, you could calculate the annual revenue run rate at somewhere around $200 million.

Li Ka-Shing of Horizon Ventures, the Wellington Management Company and Goldman Sachs also participated in funding round

2021-March 2 (Reuters) - Oscar Health Inc OSCR.N, a health insurance startup backed by Google parent Alphabet Inc GOOGL.O, sold shares in its initial public offering (IPO) on Tuesday at $39 apiece, above its target range, to raise $1.2 billion.

The IPO gives New York-based Oscar Health a market value of $7.7 billion.

2021-Donald Trump’s prospective media company has raised an additional $1 billion from an undisclosed group of investors, it was announced on Saturday.

Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) is attempting to go public via an SPAC (special purpose acquisition company) called Digital World Acquisition. The $1 billion investment is part of a so-called PIPE (private investment in public equity) investment.

It is highly unusual for a company to not disclose investors for a transaction of this size.

Secrets must be kept

2021-In December , Nunes announced his resignation from Congress, effective at the end of the year, in order to join the Trump Media & Technology Groupas chief executive officer

In March 2017 the U.S. House intelligence committee, which Nunes chaired at the time, launched an investigation into possible Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.

In February 2018, Nunes publicly released the Nunes memo, a four-page memorandum alleging an FBIconspiracy against Donald Trump. Nunes subsequently began an investigation of the FBI and the Justice Department for allegedly abusing their powers in an attempt to hurt Trump.

In January 2021, Trump awarded Nunes the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

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