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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Russiagate Open Thread: Follow the Money, Again

Russiagate Open Thread: Follow the Money, Again

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The classics, evergreen:

… The documents show Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, at the center of this vast network and how he used accounts overseas to filter money to himself, his son, and at least two people who attended the Trump Tower meeting. The records also offer new insight into the murky financial world inhabited by many of Trump’s associates, who use shell companies and secret bank accounts to quickly and quietly move money across the globe.

Now, four federal law enforcement officials told BuzzFeed News, investigators are focused on two bursts of transactions that bank examiners deemed suspicious: one a short time after the meeting and another immediately after the November 2016 presidential election.

The first set came just 11 days after the June 9 meeting, when an offshore company controlled by Agalarov wired more than $19.5 million to his account at a bank in New York.

The second flurry began shortly after Trump was elected. The Agalarov family started sending what would amount to $1.2 million from their bank in Russia to an account in New Jersey controlled by the billionaire’s son, pop singer Emin Agalarov, and two of his friends. The account had been virtually dormant since the summer of 2015, according to records reviewed by BuzzFeed News, and bankers found it strange that activity in Emin Agalarov’s checking account surged after Trump’s victory.

After the election, that New Jersey account sent money to a company controlled by Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime business associate of the Agalarovs and their representative at the Trump Tower meeting. Kaveladze’s company, meanwhile, had long funded a music business set up by the person who first proposed the meeting to the Trump camp, Emin Agalarov’s brash British publicist, Rob Goldstone…

The transactions came to light after law enforcement officials instructed financial institutions in mid-2017 to go back through their records to look for suspicious behavior by people connected to the broader Trump-Russia investigation. The bankers filed “suspicious activity reports” to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which in turn shared them with the FBI, the IRS, congressional committees investigating Russian interference, and members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

Suspicious activity reports are not evidence of wrongdoing, but they can provide clues to investigators looking into possible money laundering, tax evasion, or other misconduct. In the case of the Agalarovs and their associates, bankers raised red flags about the transactions but were unable to definitively say how the funds were used.

Federal prosecutors have used suspicious activity reports not only to investigate possible election interference and collusion, but also to charge people, such as Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, with financial and other white-collar crimes. Manafort was convicted last month of bank and tax fraud, and Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russia…

***********
Beginning 13 days after the election, the Agalarovs’ bank account in Russia made 19 separate wire transfers to a New Jersey personal checking account belonging to Emin Agalarov and two friends from high school. That checking account, held at TD Bank, had been opened in 2012. Bank examiners thought it was unusual that the account had never before received a Russian wire transfer and that its only deposit since the summer of 2015 was for $200, in January 2016.

The postelection transfers to the checking account were in large, round-dollar amounts ranging from $15,000 to $175,000. Between November 2016 and July 2017, the sum topped $1.2 million.

But what triggered alarms wasn’t just that activity in the account had jumped since Trump’s election. It was also how the checking account handled the money. While some of it went toward credit card bills, mortgage installments, and other run-of-the-mill payments, TD Bank officials also saw the checking account quickly pass funds to an account controlled by another participant in the Trump Tower meeting.

On Nov. 21, 2016, Emin Agalarov’s checking account received $165,000 from an account based in Russia belonging to his family. The following day, the account sent $107,000 to Corsy International, a company run by Kaveladze, the longtime Agalarov associate who attended the Trump Tower meeting.

Bankers were suspicious for a number of reasons. For one, Kaveladze was an employee of the Agalarovs’ Crocus Group, their sprawling construction and real estate empire based in Russia. Why, bankers wondered, would the funds start in Russia, briefly make a pit stop in Emin Agalarov’s New Jersey account, and finally be sent to Corsy International? Balber, the attorney for Kaveladze and the Agalarovs, would not address questions about specific transactions, but said they were all legitimate.

Second, bankers noted that Kaveladze — who after the election pushed for an additional get-together with the Trumps and some of the original Tower meeting participants — had previously been investigated for money laundering. According to a Government Accountability Office report published in 2000, Kaveladze established more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian real estate brokers, then set up bank accounts for them in the US. The brokers used these accounts to launder about $1.4 billion, the report found. Kaveladze was never charged with a crime and he referred to the GAO’s probe as a “witch hunt.”…

 
Such comparatively penny-ante sums, considering the stakes involved. Just gives the whole process the genuine Trump Touch.

Reader Interactions

50Comments

  1. 1.

    dedc79

    Seemingly related:

    Sean Illing
    I’ll ask you straightforwardly: Do you believe the Russian government successfully targeted and compromised Trump?

    Craig Unger
    Yes, absolutely. But let’s go back in time, because I think all of this began as a money-laundering operation with the Russian mafia. It’s well known that Trump likes doing business with gangsters, in part because they pay top dollar and loan money when traditional banks won’t, so it was a win-win for both sides.

    The key point I want to get across in the book is that the Russian mafia is different than the American mafia, and I think a lot of Americans don’t understand this. In Russia, the mafia is essentially a state actor. When I interviewed Gen. Oleg Kalugin, who is a former head of counterintelligence in the KGB and had been Vladimir Putin’s boss at one point, I asked him about the mafia. He said, “Oh, it’s part of the KGB. It’s part of the Russian government.”

    And that’s essential to the whole premise of the book. Trump was working with the Russian mafia for more than 30 years. He was profiting from them. They rescued him. They bailed him out. They took him from being $4 billion in debt to becoming a multibillionaire again, and they fueled his political ambitions, starting more than 30 years ago. This means Trump was in bed with the Kremlin as well, whether he knew it or not.

  2. 2.

    MattF

    There’s a reasonable chance that it really is all about money laundering. Trump may be a Russian asset, but Putin may have decided that he’s too stupid to be really useful

  3. 3.

    Mary G

    I know you have to use it, but now when I see “RussiaGate” in the title of a post, I wearily sigh “what now?” I need a Roger Stone indictment.

    In other news, I can now access the site across all devices! Hooray! i’ve read a lot of the posts and comments that I missed, and I have to say, I was right to be sad. You are some smart and funny vicious jackals.

  5. 5.

    hells littlest angel

    @MattF: I think Putin has found Trump to be exactly stupid enough to be useful. A smarter man couldn’t have damaged this country nearly as much as Trump has.

  6. 6.

    Cheryl Rofer

    I found this article to be one of the ones that is more confusing than helpful. There was the meeting, and then lots of money moving around. I can’t figure out who might have been paying whom off, or why. It’s another coincidence, of far too many. What needs to be done is to match up these money movements with payoffs, and that’s much, much harder to do. But I assume that this is why Mueller has specialists in this sort of thing working with him.

  9. 9.

    AnonPhenom

    “It’s our own corruption, stupid”

    The method was our own, the West was hoisted with our own petard.

    When we can finally gain the full perspective that only time and distance will afford us, we will step back from all of this and come to the realization that this -all of it- is about corruption.
    The Why. The Who. The How.
    All the individuals, all the institutions, and all the interested parties.
    The bait of oil sanctions.
    The money laundering.
    The bribery of politicians (technically ‘legal’ and not)
    The shell corporations and tax havens.

    None of it new. It’s been going on all over the world for decades. All made possible by the same Global Facilitators.

  10. 10.

    trnc

    @MattF:

    There’s a reasonable chance that it really is all about money laundering.

    Casino bankruptcy for fun and profit. There’s no other explanation I can think of besides money laundering that he would be able to continue to open and then bankrupt casinos.

  12. 12.

    Litlebritdifrnt

    I just saw a tweet posting an ad for a Trump fundraiser tonight at a Trump hotel offering tickets for 50K, 70K (for a photo opportunity with Trump) and 100K. My question is what amount of those donations are going straight into Trumps pockets to “reimburse” the hotel for the fundraiser being held there. My guess would be “all of them Katie” this is a straight up money laundering operation operating right in front of our faces with absolutely no shame. WTF?

  14. 14.

    lamh36

    Evening BJ.

    Flight from NOLA to ATL was uneventful. Now Boarded my flight to London. Full flight, but i’m comfortable so that’s good. Overnight Flight time 7hrs 53min! #LondonVayKay here I come.

  15. 15.

    Doug R

    Saw idle speculation that Mueller’s not interested in money laundering and he will just end up writing a report that will do next to nothing. This seems to ignore what has happened already and I think Mueller is instead circling slowly and carefully lining up all the small fish first before he indicts trump.
    You didn’t fight a revolution to have a KING with less powers and yet UNTOUCHABLE. Good enough for Clinton, good enough for trump.

  18. 18.

    TenguPhule

    You can’t swing a pick axe in Trump tower without hitting a Russian or a Republican connected to a Russian.

  20. 20.

    TenguPhule

    @Litlebritdifrnt:

    this is a straight up money laundering operation operating right in front of our faces with absolutely no shame. WTF?

    in this timeline nothing matters anymore. Laws are for the little people.

  22. 22.

    Shana

    @lamh36: Good news. Enjoy your vacation. London is one of my favorite cities to visit. Please keep us updated when you can. But mostly, have fun.

    Back to the topic at hand though: I’m sure Mueller is on top of all this, as is Bruce Ohr, which is why Trump is trying so hard to discredit him.

  28. 28.

    SiubhanDuinne, Badass Jackal

    @lamh36:

    You wil love London SO HARD. I am wildly envious — you are going to my favourite city on the planet! Have the most wonderful time, and do take and share lots of pictures!

  29. 29.

    Humdog

    @lamh36: Does anyone tell you what a bad ass you are for up and taking off someplace brand new by yourself? I travelled far and wide, and alone, when I was younger but doubt I’d have the gumption to do it now. Good on you and have a great time!

  34. 34.

    Martin

    So, had a series of conversations with my mom when she was visiting this week around this kind of stuff. Suffice to say she would qualify as being ‘deep state curious’. And she thought it was odd that all of this stuff was coming to light now. I had to remind her that prior to 2015, Trump was a fucking nobody. Sure, he thought he was a very important person, but everyone else thought of him as some 2-bit sleazy businessman turned reality TV star. Nobody really fucking cared about his shady business, at least, not enough to get into the weeds about it – not the FBI, not the IRS, not the Washington Post.

    But when you become President, everything gets investigated, including your choice of mustard and who you send your christmas cards to. And there’s no statute of limitations on this kind of stuff. Your entire life is going to be turned over, because that’s how this works. Even small infractions matter when you are the most important person. If you want large infractions to be overlooked, then you need to remain a not important person.

    Of course this is about money laundering. It was always about money laundering, and it was about what Russia could get out of their knowledge of money laundering. And Trumps kids knows its about money laundering, as does Cohen, as does Manafort, as does damn near everyone else around him. That was the family business. That was the business model. Everyone knows that.

  36. 36.

    Ruckus

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    Well isn’t it supposed to be difficult to follow?
    After all, if you make it to easy then anyone can follow the trail. And the more the money moves around, through multiple accounts/people/countries, the more chances of creating a missing link, or breaking the trail.

  37. 37.

    Mary G

    @Litlebritdifrnt: It’s even worse:

    That was my question – you pay $100K to come, but don't get dinner unless you pay another $35,000? I'm guessing the hotel will charge the campaign the $35K, spend $259 for the food and chefs and waiters, and keep $34,741 as profit that goes into his pocket.— Mary Michel Green (@marymichelgreen) September 12, 2018

  38. 38.

    trnc

    @Martin:

    Suffice to say she would qualify as being ‘deep state curious’. And she thought it was odd that all of this stuff was coming to light now.

    Would love to know if she thinks it’s all just made up, or if she thinks everyone does it but they’re picking on DT. If all made up, why do the targets keep changing their stories?

  40. 40.

    Mary G

    Masha Gessen has a piece in the New Yorker: What Can We Expect of Vladimir Putin When He Is Scared?

    Putin’s approval has gone from the 80s to the 60s, and protests boiled up over his attempt to raise the age when retirement pensions kick in by five years. He also has a lot less money to launder:

    During his first two terms as President, he enjoyed extreme economic luck: thanks to skyrocketing oil prices, Russia was more prosperous than ever in its history. This kept the population satisfied and distracted, and when a crisis did arise, as it did the last time the government attempted pension reform, in 2005, the Kremlin was able to pour money on the fire. Now this is no longer an option: the Russian government has used up its currency reserves, which is part of the impetus for the current attempt at pension reform.

    She says his go-to option is war, as annexing Crimea propped him up due to national pride, and that Russia’s neighbors should be scared.

  47. 47.

    Mnemosyne

    @PJ:

    Because shut up and stop trying to confuse me with your bogus “facts,” that’s why, libtard!
    /Trump fan

    It does seem to be a claim born out of desperation. Sure, Mueller is indicting and getting convictions or plea bargains from other people for money laundering and financial crimes, but he wouldn’t follow the evidence to anyone higher up engaged in the same crimes!

  50. 50.

    Ruckus

    @Cheryl Rofer:
    Do you think the person writing the article understands how it works and is capable of explaining it so that it is understandable?
    You are a smart person and don’t see it clearly from this article, and I’d bet tomorrow’s lunch money that you are smarter than the author of the article. Think about it this way, you need to see all the evidence, put it in order, lay it out so that the dots can be connected and then and only then does it become clear. You have to whiteboard it to make it clear. It is possible once you’ve done it that it looks simple but I’d bet Friday’s lunch money that isn’t the case here. These people have made lots and lots of money laundering same, they can’t be all bad at it.

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