ITONDON – A US-sanctioned company for Alexei Navalny’s poison attack is linked to the money laundering network Natalia Veselnitskaya tried to cover at the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting, according to financial records obtained by The Daily Beast .
We now know why Vladimir Putin was so desperate to reduce the international corruption polls that began when Sergei Magnitsky discovered a $ 230 million fraud against the Russian people. For the first time, that network of dark money may be linked to the criminal chemical weapons program run by Russia’s notorious intelligence services.
After exposing the massive theft of state money, Magnitsky was found dead in a Russian prison cell. The legislation on its behalf has been passed around the world by governments trying to counter corruption, including the US Magnitsky Act. Despite interventions by Veselnitskaya – a Russian lawyer who was sent to the United States to persuade Trump’s campaign to overturn the law – investigations into those stolen sums continue to reveal an international network of bank accounts linked to alleged wrongdoing.
This month, the Biden administration said it was sanctioning a German chemical company called Riol-Chemie for “its activities in support of Russia’s mass destruction programs.”
It was part of the administration’s response to Putin’s nemesis Navalny’s attempted murder. The anti-corruption activist easily survived a chemical weapons attack after a plane carrying him on a long flight to Moscow was diverted and was able to receive emergency medical care – first in a Siberian hospital and then in Germany where he additional treatment was transported.
After waking up from a coma for several weeks, Navalny deceived a member of the assassination team, imitating a high-ranking FSB official and fooling his future killer into explaining over the phone how the killer’s team frightened the nerve Novichok in the seams of Navalny’s panties.
President Trump dropped the attack, but the Biden team announced sanctions against seven senior Russian officials and 14 other entities involved in the production of chemical and biological weapons on March 2.
One of the entities designated by the US government as a role in the Russian program of weapons of mass destruction was Riol-Chemie. Investigative files compiled by Lithuanian authorities – and reviewed by The Daily Beast – show that Riol-Chemie received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a British Virgin Islands company accused of laundering some of the stolen money that was discovered. of Magnitsky.
According to sources close to a separate investigation by the French authorities, financial records show that two companies registered in New Zealand, which also received funds from the $ 230 million fraud, transferred more than $ 1 million to Riol-Chemie.
Riol-Chemie did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.
The official U.S. designation of Riol-Chemie as a sanctioned entity does not provide any details about its role in Russia’s weapons program, but purchase orders and invoices seen by The Daily Beast show that the company received components from an American manufacturer. now defunct called Aeroflex. Records show that Aeroflex, then headquartered in New York, received orders for semiconductors and radiation-enhanced regulators in 2007. These components are often used to build missiles and satellites.
The orders were to be sent to Riol-Chemie in northern Germany, but records show that the strictly controlled radiation chips were paid for by another entity accused of laundering the stolen Russian money. According to the documents, the invoice was sent to Tolbrist Alliance Inc, a shell company listed in the database of offshore leaks by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists as being registered in a mailbox in the British Virgin Islands.
According to bank records analyzed by The Daily Beast, the Lithuanian authorities found that Tolbrist Alliance Inc received about $ 50 million from companies related to the fraud discovered by Magnitsky.
“This clearly shows why Putin was disappointed with the Magnitsky investigation.”
– Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital, who was assaulted in $ 230 million fraud.
Financial records show that Tolbrist spent at least $ 1.5 million on Aeroflex.
Aeroflex, which is no longer traded, has been banned by the State Department for hundreds of violations of the International Arms Trafficking Regulation (ITAR) “consisting largely of unauthorized exports”. There is no indication that the company violated the law by delivering rad-chips to Riol-Chemie – the transactions took place years before the US government announced that the German company was a secret part of Putin’s illegal arms smuggling operation.
Repeated links between the companies accused of laundering the $ 230 million and Riol-Chemie could indicate a broader, calculated scheme with far-reaching political implications. The money stolen from the Russian people – while the authorities closed their eyes – was apparently channeled into an armaments program on the black market. Whoever led the scattering of the stolen funds also played a secret role in Russian national security.
“This clearly shows why Putin was disappointed with the Magnitsky investigation,” said Bill Browder, who led the anti-corruption campaign on behalf of his former lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. “Every layer of this onion that is cleaned, more and more dirty and dangerous information appears.”
Earlier reports also claimed that some of the stolen funds ended up in the hands of people connected to the Syrian chemical weapons program.
The man who was tasked with shutting down Magnitsky-inspired investigations that were flourishing around the world was Yury Chaika, one of Putin’s top fixers and Russia’s attorney general until last year. President Obama signed the Magnitsky Act anti-corruption law in 2012, and Chaika’s protégé Veselnitskaya was sent to act against the law in a notorious Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul’s former campaign manager. Paul Manafort in 2016.
Putin spoke with Trump himself at the 2018 Helsinki summit. The former president listened, nodding along with a litany of distortions over electoral interference, Crimea and Browder during a joint news conference.
Veselnitskaya was also part of the legal team that defended Prevezon, another company accused of money laundering, which was investigated by the southern district of New York. The case was eventually settled out of court, with Prevezon paying $ 6 million. Velselnitskaya was charged with obstruction of justice for collaborating with the Chaika office in Moscow on the doctor’s evidence presented to the court.
While Trump-Russia speculation was at its height, Veselnitskaya always insisted that he was not at the Trump Tower to try to help influence the election; she was there to prosecute the Magnitsky investigation.
“To sum it up, those days weren’t the happiest of my life,” Velselnitskaya told NBC in the context of the reaction around the Trump Tower meeting.
Despite the personal costs, it seems that Putin and his friends will not stop at anything to prevent the fraud investigations they face. But the US government’s sanction of Riol-Chemie can teach the Kremlin an important lesson: even black money can be pursued.