House Democrats Want to Know Why a Major Russian Money-Laundering Case Was Abruptly Settled
July 12th, 2017Related: Why Did Loretta Lynch Grant Trump Jr’s Russian Lawyer A Special Visa To Enter America?
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Via: Business Insider:
Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Wednesday asking why the Department of Justice settled a major money-laundering case involving a real-estate company owned by the son of a powerful Russian government official whose lawyer met with Donald Trump Jr. last year.
Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, on Tuesday tweeted an email chain from June 2016 in which he entertained accepting damaging information from a “Russian government attorney” about Hillary Clinton as part of the Kremlin’s support for his father’s campaign.
That attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, represents the family of Pyotr Katsyv, the former vice governor of the Moscow region, whose son, Denis, owns the real-estate company Prevezon. The DOJ had been investigating whether Prevezon laundered millions of dollars through New York City real estate when the case was unexpectedly settled two days before going to trial in May.
“Last summer, Donald Trump Jr. met with a Kremlin-connected attorney in an attempt to obtain information ‘that would incriminate Hillary,'” the Democrats wrote, citing the emails he published. “Earlier this year, on May 12, 2017, the Department of Justice made an abrupt decision to settle a money laundering case being handled by that same attorney in the Southern District of New York.
“We write with some concern that the two events may be connected — and that the Department may have settled the case at a loss for the United States in order to obscure the underlying facts.”
The Prevezon case garnered high-profile attention, given its ties to a $230 million Russian tax-fraud scheme and the Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, whose suspicious death aroused international media attention and spurred the passage of the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Denis Katsyv and Veselnitskaya have become the face of Moscow’s lobbying efforts against the Magnitsky Act in recent years.
Democrats now want to know whether Veselnitskaya was “involved at any point in the settlement negotiations,” and they have asked Sessions to provide the committee “with the prosecution files and any other explanatory materials related to the settlement.”
They also want to know whether there was “any contact between President Trump, White House personnel, the Trump family, or the Trump campaign with the Department of Justice” regarding Prevezon, and whether Sessions discussed the case “with anyone associated with the transition team,” or with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, while he was being considered for attorney general.
Putin/Trump vs Bankster/Harvard Neocons?
Anne Williamson, author of CONTAGION: THE BETRAYAL OF LIBERTY; RUSSIA AND THE UNITED STATES IN THE 1990s had this to say to Congress:
http://archives.financialservices.house.gov/banking/92199wil.shtml
“The worst of it was that some pretty good ideas – private property, sound money, minimal government, the inviolability of contract and public accountability – that have delivered to the West’s citizenry the most prosperity and the most liberty in world history, and might have done the same for the Russians, were twisted into perverse constructions and only then exported via a Harvard-connected cabal of Clinton administration appointees who funded – without competition – their allies at Harvard University courtesy the public purse. Joining the US-directed effort were the usual legions of overpaid IMF/World Bank advisers whose lending terror continues to encircle the globe”
Some analysis on Williamson’s testimony: Note, the link within this article pointing to the testimony is broken.
https://gizadeathstar.com/2014/08/look-back-anne-williamson-rape-russia/
Sharon Tennison was an American program director who spent 30 years in in the Soviet Union/Russia. “I met Putin years before he ever dreamed of being president of Russia, as did many of us working in St.Petersburg during the 1990s. Since all of the slander started, I’ve become nearly obsessed with understanding his character. I think I’ve read every major speech he has given (including the full texts of his annual hours-long telephone “talk-ins” with Russian citizens)
https://www.sott.net/article/278407-Is-Putin-incorruptible-US-insiders-view-of-the-Russian-presidents-character-and-his-countrys-transformation
The first time she met Putin, she had this to say to a Russian colleague “Volodya, this is the first time we have ever dealt with a Soviet bureaucrat who didn’t ask us for a trip to the US or something valuable!” I remember looking at his business card in the sunlight – – it read Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.”
How Russia-gate Met the Magnitsky Myth
According to Browder’s narrative, companies ostensibly under his control had been hijacked by corrupt Russian officials in furtherance of a $230 million tax-fraud scheme; he then dispatched his “lawyer” Magnitsky to investigate and – after supposedly uncovering evidence of the fraud – Magnitsky blew the whistle only to be arrested by the same corrupt officials who then had him locked up in prison where he died of heart failure from physical abuse.
Despite Russian denials – and the “dog ate my homework” quality of Browder’s self-serving narrative – the dramatic tale became a cause celebre in the West. The story eventually attracted the attention of Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, a known critic of President Vladimir Putin. Nekrasov decided to produce a docu-drama that would present Browder’s narrative to a wider public. Nekrasov even said he hoped that he might recruit Browder as the narrator of the tale.
However, the project took an unexpected turn when Nekrasov’s research kept turning up contradictions to Browder’s storyline, which began to look more and more like a corporate cover story. Nekrasov discovered that a woman working in Browder’s company was the actual whistleblower and that Magnitsky – rather than a crusading lawyer – was an accountant who was implicated in the scheme.
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/07/13/how-russia-gate-met-the-magnitsky-myth/