An unofficial investigation into RussiaGate has uncovered a shocking and previously-unknown new connection— a CIA-connected man who became instantly famous after the Boston Marathon bombing — involved in recent allegations against Trump associate Felix Sater that he laundered $440 million of stolen money for billionaire oligarchs in Kazakhstan through American real estate. 

Evidence in the case also showed a startling similarity between suspicions of money laundering in Trump’s sale of a Palm Beach mansion to a Russian billionaire gangster and a billionaire gangster from Kazakhstan purchasing a similarly over-priced mansion in London from Prince Andrew, the Duke of York, a member of the British royal family, son of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, and at one time second in line to the throne.

When Donald Trump filed suit yesterday to keep his business dealings with Germany’s criminal Deutsche Bank secret, it prompted a review of notes for clues that led to long-unanswered questions about why Mueller’s investigation showed no apparent interest in linking crimes Deutsche Bank was committing while Trump was doing business with the bank with a man with whom he had clear ties: Saudi arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi.

Was an unwillingness to unmask CIA involvement behind both situations? 

 

Donald Trump’s Palm Beach ‘homies’ in the news

Adnan Khashoggi, one of Donald Trump’s longtime Palm Beach ‘homies,’  was committing crimes with Deutsche Bank, and, as this website never tires of pointing out, during the same time period Trump was involved in what many suspect was similar business, money laundering, with the bank. 

PRO TIP: If  investigators also subpoena information about criminal dealings between Deutsche Bank and Adnan Khashoggi—whose death a year ago makes accessing information about his criminal dealings with the bank easier—progress may be made. 

It’s just a suggestion, but probably a good one.

Khashoggi is one of Donald Trump’s Palm Beach ‘homies.’  Moreover his criminal collusion with Deutsche Bank  has already been proven in court.

Deutsche Bank was forced to pay a hefty $278 million fine for its illegal actions with Khashoggi which included a spectacularly-successful pump and dump scheme that stole more than $300 million from investors.

Clues to what was going on during that fascinating journey into the underworld of global criminal banking could help prosecutors quest to use three words criminals involved in organized crime fear most: “continuing criminal conspiracy(RICO).”

Khashoggi participated in banking giant Deutsche Bank’s successful scheme to launder $10-billion dollars  into the bloodstream of the Western economy for Russian gangsters, for which the bank was fined more than a half-billion dollars.

The scheme only came to light after a massive 500-man strong police raid at Deutsche Bank headquarters in Frankfurt, an act which would have probably caused immediate cardiac arrest in  U.S. authorities like former Attorney General Eric Holder.

 

Fur hats vs the fedoras

Another revelation sheds new light on suspicions about the connection between Felix Sater and the ultra-orthodox Jewish Chabad Lubavitch sect. 

Because Felix Sater’s name appears on 28 separate pages in the Mueller Report, his many and various connections with Chabad Lubavitch have been receiving  increased attention.  

Sater himself has also become a more intriguing figure. A lawsuit filed against him earlier this month by the quasi-state bank of the country of Kazakhstan claims Sater used money he stole from the bank (and by extension the people of Kazakhstan) to develop his project to create a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Sater was feted as “Man Of The Year” at Chabad’s synagogue in Port Washington on Long Island, a location seen as having been used as something like a dead drop between Putin and Trump.

As first reported in author Craig Unger’s excellent “House of Trump, House of Putin” , Vladimir Putin used Chabad Lubavitch to consolidate power in Russia, through putting Berel Lazar, the Chabad’s chief Rabbi in the country, in charge over a new Russian national organization for Jews.

With Putin’s support, reported Unger, “Chabad’s Lazar became Russia’s chief rabbi, and the alliance provided direct connections between Putin and Donald Trump.”

Putin’s Jewish outreach, Unger found, had helped him counteract rising resentment over the Russian Mafiya—sometimes called the Kosher Nostra for its heavily-Jewish gangster ranks—as well as Russia’s new class of billionaire oligarchs, many of them Jewish.

Putin’s new Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia was designed to replace what before Putin had long been the leading Jewish organization in Russia.

Called the Russian Jewish Congress, it had been cofounded by Russian oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky, who Israeli newspaper Haaretz called the “Number 1 Jew in Russia.”

Not anymore. 

 

Chabad Lubavitch

“Felix Sater and others at Bayrock with close ties to Chabad—like Tamir Sapir and his son-in-law Rotem Rosen—were part of an extraordinarily powerful channel between Trump and Putin,” Unger reported.

When the late Russian billionaire Tamir Sapir first arrived in New York in 1976, he opened an electronics store in the Flatiron district, which largely catered to KGB agents, according to the New York Times.

Over time Tamir Sapir became a significant partner in Bayrock.

Donald Trump, who called Sapir “a great friend,” hosted the wedding of Sapir’s daughter at Mar-a-Lago, an event featuring  performances by Lionel Ritchie and the Pussycat Dolls.

The wedding’s groom, Rotem Rosen, became Sapir’s son-in-law, the CEO of the Sapir organization, and the head of the American branch of  Putin oligarch Lev Leviev’s holding company, Africa Israel.

At the time, the busy Rosen was already a lieutenant of Israeli diamond king Lev Leviev, Chabad’s biggest backer.

 

Felix Sater in Kazakhstan 

Sater was back in the news as the defendant in a lawsuit brought by the government of Kazakhstan on behalf of the country’s chief bank. The suit describes him as “a notorious New York ‘businessman’ and “two-time felon’ before claiming he participated in an international criminal conspiracy to launder $440 million stolen from Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank though American real estate.   

According to the lawsuit, Sater helped Mukhtar Ablyazov, the former chairman of BTA Bank, and Ilyas Khrapunov, the son of the former Mayor of  Almaty, the capital of Kazakhstan, to funnel money out of the country to the U.S., where it was invested  in U.S. real estate.

In our notes was something noteworthy: Also popping up in the scandal is someone  whose involvement proves something a retired Customs Agent in Louisiana once told me:

“There aren’t that many players out there. Pretty much, they all know each other.” 

 

The return of Uncle Ruslan

Ruslan Tsarni  shot to fame six years ago on the day after the Boston Marathon bombing as the uncle of the two men accused. He roundly and vociferously condemned his nephews, and quickly became the chief source of information about the two men. 

For days he was ubiquitous on television. Now he has a prominent role in accusing  Felix Sater of laundering money for two billionaires from Kazakhstan through American real estate. 

It was exclusive reporting here which first revealed that Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of the suspected Boston Marathon bombers, had been married to the daughter of former top CIA official Graham Fuller, who was still active in the region, although not, he claimed, on behalf of the CIA.

Two years earlier Tsarni was involved in the international criminal investigation into a Kazakh billionaire banker-turned-fugitive who allegedly absconded with more than $6 billion from Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank before settling down in London.  

“Tsarni was a US lawyer who has had dealings in Kazakh business affairs,” reported the May 8, 2011 London Sunday Times.

“A statement by Ruslan Zaindi Tsarni claimed that the two Kazaks involved bought properties in Mayfair with $96 million derived from a complex series of deals intended to disguise money laundering.”

“Tsarni alleged that the money came from the takeover of a western company, which had been used as a front to obtain oil contracts from the Kazakh state.”

 

Felix Sater & Ruslan Tsarni

During the “Wild West” days in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan in the early 9o’s— when anything that wasn’t nailed down in that country was up for grabs—Uncle Ruslan Tsarni had been in Kazakhstan working as a Halliburton contractor as well as for the Agency for International Development (USAID), which is often used for cover by CIA agents overseas.

The “takeover of the western company” mentioned in the lawsuit was Big Sky Energy Corporation, where Tsarni was a top executive. The soon-to-be-bankrupt US oil company had oil leases in Kazakhstan’s Caspian Basin, and was being run by a long-time Halliburton top executive.

At the time I contacted a reporter at Oilgram News, a respected oil industry trade publication, for information about U.S. oil companies in the ‘Stans, one of a myriad of subjects about which I knew nothing.  

After requesting anonymity, he replied. “Big Sky, Ablyazov, Kulibayev and the rest, were all on my watch list for intelligence connections and pay-offs of various kinds.”  

As if that weren’t enough— and its never enough— the Felix Sater-Ruslan Tsarni connection offered one more piece of intriguing information on a subject that should ring a bell to anyone following the RussiaGate scandal…

 

No? Prince Andrew? Laundering dirty cash just like Trump?

Prince Andrew, the younger brother of Prince Charles and the second or third heir to the throne, sold one of his chief residences to a man named Timur Kulibayev, one of the billionaire Kazakh oil tycoons who “controlled that country’s oil industry.

Conveniently, he was also married to the daughter of Kazakhstan’s autocratic then-President,  Nursultan Nazarbayev.

The story, headlined “Prince’s home in ‘laundered cash’ inquiry,”  reported that the President-for-Life’s son-in-law, amid allegations of money laundering, paid millions  over the asking price to Prince Andrew for his home, paid through a network of offshore companies to hide his ownership.

This money laundering tale bears a startling similarity to Donald Trump’s sale of a Palm Beach mansion to a Russian mobster at about the same time.

No doubt it is just a coincidence.

Still, it is now clear, but too late to do any good, that buying anonymous real estate in friendly Western countries has been the main way Russian gangsters use to get their dirty cash laundered out of Russia and into the Western economy.

 

The Messiah of Brooklyn & Jared Kushner’s Dad 

Chabad Lubavitch is a tiny Brooklyn-based sect centered on the teachings of Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, who some Jews, in all seriousness, called the messiah or Mashiach.

The sect is anti-abortion, anti-homosexual, and big-time fundamentalist.  Although it has less than a hundred thousand adherents, it has more than 1100 outposts around the world. 

In Russia, recognizing Chabad as the official state representative for Jews would be like America naming Fred Phelps’ Westboro Baptist Church — remember them? Running anti-gay protests at military funerals while carrying signs reading “thank God for dead soldiers” and “God blew up the troops?”— as official spokesman for Protestants.

One of Chabad’s biggest financial backers was Russian billionaire oligarch Lev Leviev, who, because of his stature in the diamond trade, is known as ‘The King of Diamonds.”

Another is Jared Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner. 

Coming disclosures to come will push the story of RussiaGate ever-deeper into the high cotton, to places the timid Mueller Report feared to tread.  

 

Sarasota grifter & Semion Mogilevich

Trump-Bannon-Khashoggi associate Jonathan Curshen tried to save Russian Mob Uber-Boss Semion Mogilevich’s nuts from the fire in the YBM Magnex affair.

Individuals close enough to Trump to stroll around the block with him outside the Ravenite Social Club, metaphorically-speaking, were doing the bidding of Russia’s most powerful gangster… back in 1998.

Jonathan Curshen has been the subject of reporting here for a decade. Still, it was a shock to discover he was involved in a major financial fraud with the Maestro himself, ‘the Brainy Don,’ the ‘Russian Meyer Lansky’… Semion Mogilevich.

Curshen’s connection with grifters associated with Donald Trump can be found  in corporate documents available to anyone online. What’s lacking? 

Grainy security-camera footage of Curshen passing a suitcase stuffed with cash up the ladder to his capo.  

There’s more news about Donald Trump and the ultra-orthodox Jewish sect Chabad Lubavitch—whose chief defining characteristic is its Mormon missionary-type zeal to bring in new recruits worldwide— which may be nothing nothing more than cover for  criminal and espionage operations.

Russian gangsters living in the U.S.  appear to have been involved in a Whitman’s Sampler-assortment of criminal operations which have been supporting efforts to subvert sovereign nation-states on the planet…  

Including our own.

 

Hackers, Mob Bosses & Alt-Right Grifters

The Russian Mob nexus with U.S. organized crime has been operational for at least the past 30 years. 

Even before that, the “outreach” of the tiny Chabad Lubavitch sect began spreading across America — as I will soon personally and ruefully attest— have been in existence for 50 years or longer.

Close business associates of Donald  Trump — including his former campaign manager Steve Bannon and Bannon’s lieutenant and former employee Andy Badolato— were in business in 2003 with Russia’s premier hacker, who was fingered by name by the FBI in July of 2016 for hacking election databases in the United States.

No one has laid a finger on Pavel Vrublevsky.

As long as he confines himself to the vast steppes of his Russian homeland, “Red Eye,’ as he’s called, remains safe.

But that can’t last. Can it?