Billionaire banker Mukhtar Ablyazov was Kazakhstan’s minister of energy and trade from 1998 to 1999. In 2009 Ablyazov fled Kazakhstan after $10 billion was reported missing from BTA Bank, where he was chairman. He was arrested in France in 2013 in response to extradition requests from Russia and Ukraine. Ablyazov denied allegations of loan fraud and embezzlement. He was released in December 2016 after a French court ruled that Russia’s request was politically motivated. https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/stories/mukhtar-ablyazov?e=true
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7-9-19 A federal judge in New York ordered former BTA Bank JSC chairman Mukhtar Ablyazov to pay the Kazakh lender’s legal fees for the discovery process after he failed to hand over evidence in a lawsuit accusing him of laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. real estate.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker also said Ablyazov was “less than forthcoming” in a court-ordered deposition carried out in France, during which he claimed not to remember his own phone number or whether he’d used an accountant since fleeing Kazakhstan in 2009. “Ablyazov’s recalcitrance is particularly troubling given that the missing evidence goes to the heart of his defenses,” Parker said in a July 3 ruling in Manhattan. “Such failure to produce is intentional.”
BTA has long claimed that Ablyazov, 56, was stringing the court along in the three-year-old suit accusing him of stealing billions of dollars. Ablyazov fled to France from Britain after a U.K. judge found him in contempt in a parallel case.The new ruling follows Ablyazov’s “repeated refusal to obey court orders and participate honestly in the litigation process,” Matthew L. Schwartz, BTA’s New York-based lawyer with Boies Schiller Flexner LLP, said in an email. Parker agreed Ablyazov had failed to turn over any documents, even after he testified that his U.K. attorneys had the files in hand. The judge also barred Ablyazov from using any of the withheld evidence as part of his defense, which hinges on claims about an international conspiracy.
The judge, however, denied BTA’s request to rule against Ablyazov on the money-laundering claims without a trial. The ex-banker is participating in the case, albeit minimally, including by sitting for the deposition and attending hearings by telephone, Parker said.
BTA, which was Kazakhstan’s biggest bank before a $12 billion default in 2009, claims Ablyazov used a web of shell companies and corrupt associates to siphon billions of dollars from the lender before he fled.
Ablyazov says BTA’s claims were cooked up by Kazakhstan’s former president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, to stunt Ablyazov’s budding political opposition. Parker said in her ruling that Ablyazov is “in hiding” in France.
During Ablyazov’s deposition, he said his net worth was once $20 billion and that he “used trusted persons to mask the ownership of his businesses through nominees,” Parker said. But he couldn’t recall them. “Ablyazov claimed that he could not remember the names of any of these trusted persons,” Parker wrote.
According to Parker, Ablyazov testified that he has evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin is part of a conspiracy against him, including “minutes of meetings” in which it was decided that Russia’s courts would rule against Ablyazov. But he wouldn’t hand them over. Ablyazov is representing himself in the U.S. case after his lawyers withdrew in 2017. A legal representative in France who has been identified in U.S. court filings didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-07-09/ablyazov-sanctioned-by-u-s-judge-in-bta-bank-s-laundering-case
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7-31-2013 A number of opposition and independent media outlets in Kazakhstan, including the "Respublika" publication, and the K-Plus television channel that focuses on Central Asia, have been linked to
Ablyazov. Ablyazov's wife and his 6-year-old daughter were extradited from Italy to Kazakhstan in May despite having valid residence permits. Ablyazov's wife and his 6-year-old daughter were extradited from Italy to Kazakhstan in May despite having valid residence permits....
However, Ablyazov no longer has a place to live in Britain after a court there ordered that his property, worth some $90 million, should be sold and the money given to BTA creditors.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rferl.org%2Fa%2Fkazakhstan-ablyazov-arrested-france%2F25062636.html&psig=AOvVaw2pWCFiYX24GVnzWky14Ts6&ust=1569787717392000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAoQjhxqFwoTCMCV4I2p9OQCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAK
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former European Parliament staff member Gary Cartwright, who has spent almost two years researching the activities of Ablyazov, has woven together a tale that emerges not just as one of a prolific fraudster, but of a close knit and highly effective criminal syndicate that has links at the highest levels. “When I first started to understand what was going on here, I pitched the story to the British press. I was repeatedly told that the story was far too complex – it could never be explained in a single article, and in any case it was almost unbelievable. So I set myself the task of condensing it into an accessible book form”.
7-31-2013 A number of opposition and independent media outlets in Kazakhstan, including the "Respublika" publication, and the K-Plus television channel that focuses on Central Asia, have been linked to
However, Ablyazov no longer has a place to live in Britain after a court there ordered that his property, worth some $90 million, should be sold and the money given to BTA creditors.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.rferl.org%2Fa%2Fkazakhstan-ablyazov-arrested-france%2F25062636.html&psig=AOvVaw2pWCFiYX24GVnzWky14Ts6&ust=1569787717392000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAoQjhxqFwoTCMCV4I2p9OQCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAK
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former European Parliament staff member Gary Cartwright, who has spent almost two years researching the activities of Ablyazov, has woven together a tale that emerges not just as one of a prolific fraudster, but of a close knit and highly effective criminal syndicate that has links at the highest levels. “When I first started to understand what was going on here, I pitched the story to the British press. I was repeatedly told that the story was far too complex – it could never be explained in a single article, and in any case it was almost unbelievable. So I set myself the task of condensing it into an accessible book form”.
Ablyazov, had already served a short jail sentence in 2002 for “abusing official powers” when he assumed control of the BTA Bank after Yerzhan Tatishev, then head of the Bank, was killed in 2004 in what was described at the time as a ‘hunting accident.’ He died from a shot to the head whilst driving in a car with fellow hunters. The man responsible for his death, Muratkhan Tokmadi, a known criminal with strong links to organised crime, received a short jail sentence for causing Tatishev’s ‘death through negligence.’ He was later to confess to having carried out the killing deliberately, on the orders of Ablyazov himself.
Between taking control of the bank and the moment he fled the country in 2009, he had channelled billions through a network of over 1,000 offshore companies set up for the purpose, largely through the issue of loans that would never be repaid. Investors suffered heavy losses through his activities, including HSBC, Barclays, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, as well as the Royal Bank of Scotland which had invested $1.8 billion of private pension funds with the bank. Very little of this money has been recovered.
Cartwright makes clear connections with other wanted criminals such as Viktor Khrapunov, a former Mayor of the city of Almaty, and the subject of no less than twenty criminal prosecutions who has been found guilty of defrauding the Kazakh state to the tune of some $300 million. Khrapunov’s son, Ilyas, who is married to Ablyazov’s eldest daughter is, like his father and his father-in-law, subject to multiple extradition warrants and is on Interpol’s Red List.
In August 2018, the High Court of England and Wales ruled that Ilyas Khrapunov had conspired with Mukhtar Ablyazov to swindle over $6 billion. Court documents openly suggest that some of this vast sum is likely to have been laundered through the real estate empire of US President Donald Trump.
The book also devotes a chapter to the controversial human rights NGO, the Warsaw-based Open Dialogue Foundation. It has been widely speculated that this NGO was set up by Ablyazov himself in order to sanitise his reputation and to present him as a victim of political persecution. Cartwright points out that a suspicious number of “politically persecuted” individuals represented by the NGO are, like the Khrapunovs, associated with Ablyazov himself, and also have convictions for money laundering as well as other offences. The author also draws attention to suspicious funding issues relating to the NGO itself.
Whilst telling the story in a light-hearted and easily digestible manner, the book also contains copies of the many court judgements against Ablyazov. It will appeal to anyone curious to learn about the murky world of international fraud and money-laundering. https://www.eupoliticalreport.eu/wanted-man-the-story-of-mukhtar-ablyazov/
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Blue balloons in the streets of Astana--it is the penultimate strategy of Mukhtar Ablyazov who wanted to attribute to himself the success of an absurd round. To celebrate the Nowruz, the Persian New Year, he proposed to the Kazakh citizens, from his “golden exile”, to carry blue balloons, precisely the color of the national flag. Ablyazov, former magnate, passes himself off as “political member of the opposition in the exile” and promotes from France his smear campaign against Kazakhstan’s president. But, who is Mukhtar Ablyazov and who is giving him media and political support? In Spain we barely know this figure, who is using many European countries as his base of operations, sometimes not very legal.
It is enough to surf the Internet to discover who Mukhtar Ablyazov is (the Financial Times has dedicated about twenty articles to him). He graduated in 1986 in Theoretical Physics by the Moscow Engineering Physics Institute. He started creating a fortune by selling computers during the last years of the USSR and the first of the independence of Kazakhstan. He joined the business of food commercialization and in 1997 he was entrusted with the presidency of the state electricity company Kazakhstan Electricity Grid Operating Company (KEGOC). In 1998, he asked for a loan to acquire, along with a group of investors, part of the shares of the Bank Turan Alem during its privatization process. That is when his career as a banker started, giving the bank a new name: BTA Bank.
Between 2005 and 2009 he was president of the Managing Board of the BTA Bank and he used his position to deviate funds of depositors to his own accounts. He was sentenced in the United Kingdom to 22 months of prison for contempt of court, since he did not attend the hearings to avoid being imprisoned. Ablyazov did not steal from the rich to give it to the poor; he stole from small savers to keep it himself.
Little by little he amassed a far from negligible fortune of around 7.5 thousand million dollars. To carry out such as theft, he needed the help of some collaborators. The Spanish National Court, when trying Aleksander Pavlov, called them “Organized Criminal Group”, since they made up a plot dedicated to loot the funds of the bank. In particular the bank granted fraudulent loans to front men of Ablyazov that they would never return.
Since in 2009 it was evident that the Kazakh authorities were going to uncover the plot, he fled to the United Kingdom, where he had acquired many properties. There he was granted the status of refugee until more solid evidence arrived and he was sentenced in absentia. Then he fled to France, he was located and, after a complex legal process, he ended up being released. His family followed the journey through several European countries, but they all finally met in France, except for a daughter married to another member of the plot.
The media have untangled the plot presented by the judges of different countries and they are clarifying the relationships between them. One of the most important figures is Viktor Khrapunov, former mayor of Almaty; his son Ilyas is married to Madina, Ablyazov’s oldest daughter. Everything is kept in the family. International connections of this branch of the plot get to the Trump Tower of New York and the Central African Republic. Let us not forget about Timur Sabyrbayev either, who comfortably lives in Spain with the status of refugee, like Ablyazov’s former bodyguard, Aleksander Pavlov.
All this process would have been simpler if Ablyazov had not invoked his condition of “leader of the opposition”, of martyr of the “dictatorship of Nazarbayev”. It goes without saying that such arguments are futile excuses that, however, got through part of the European public opinion that, in turn, exercised pressure on the judges. The last show in this sense was the presentation in Brussels of a political platform called Zhana Kazakhstan (“New Kazakhstan”), whose main figures was Akezhan Kazhegeldin, who was Prime Minister between 1994 and 1997 (accused of tax fraud and money laundering). This platform could take international support away from Ablyazov’s cover: Democratic Choice of Kazakhstan, a pseudo political party without popular support in Kazakhstan.
The most interesting of all this is the amount of political implications behind it. To be clear, Ablyazov is not political leader of any opposition. That is simply a cover to get some advantage in the judicial field. The description of this case will immediately sound familiar to any Spaniard well informed (“political leader wraps himself up in a flag to hide millions of stolen euros…”). So far, his trick is not doing bad for him.
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The money was allegedly stolen by Kussainova’s brother, Mukhtar Ablyazov, who is accused by Bank TuranAlem, or BTA, of having stolen more than $4 billion from the bank when he was its chairman, before fleeing Kazakhstan in 2009.
If the bank sounds familiar, it’s because it made a surprise appearance in Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee last month, in which Trump’s former personal attorney was questioned about his short-lived--but lucrative--work for the bank in its efforts to recover the money allegedly stolen by Ablyazov.
Some of that money had allegedly flowed into U.S. real estate purchases and investments by his family members, including three units at the former Trump SoHo. The bank has also paid another controversial former Trump associate, Felix Sater, who was also Cohen’s partner on a potential Trump Moscow deal.
H udson is not a party to the Virginia suit and told McClatchy that he is unfamiliar with the specific details of the case. “I’m the boyfriend of Gaukhar Kussainova and by proximity I got pulled into this, there’s nothing more than that to it,” Hudson said.
Ablyazov, who has opposed Kazakhstan’s long-ruling, autocratic ruler, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has maintained that the bank’s legal pursuit of him and his family is politically motivated.
-from the Facebook page of former Energy Department HR chief Jody Hudson shows a posting from Sept. 22, 2013, with his girlfriend Gaukhar Kussainova in the south of France. He is a witness in a money-laundering civil lawsuit playing out in Virginia where she is accused of helping her fugitive Kazakh brother hide billions of ill-gotten gains, some of it through U.S. real estate.
Neither Cohen nor Sater are connected to the Virginia case, which is one of several legal actions in the United States and abroad that have traced the flow of allegedly stolen money through a maze of shell companies across the globe. Two such companies registered in the British Virgin Islands--Devesta Limited and Denmar Assets Management, Inc.--were alleged in the Virginia lawsuit to be the source of funds for two homes totaling nearly $4 million that Kussainova purchased in northern Virginia in 2006 and 2008. The Virginia trial gets under way on Monday, and beforehand Hudson turned over documents and e-mails to lawyers for the Kazakh bank in which he directs that an invoice for a $75,000 luxury villa rental in 2013 in the south of France be sent to his offshore company in the Seychelles called San Vito Invest. Those e-mails have not yet been released in the Virginia lawsuit but were released earlier in a related federal lawsuit in New York targeting Ablyazov and his son-in-law’s family and their involvement in different real estate transactions.
-from the Facebook page of former Energy Department HR chief Jody Hudson shows a posting from Sept. 22, 2013, with his girlfriend Gaukhar Kussainova in the south of France. He is a witness in a money-laundering civil lawsuit playing out in Virginia where she is accused of helping her fugitive Kazakh brother hide billions of ill-gotten gains, some of it through U.S. real estate.
There’s no reference to the company — or any foreign holdings — in any of Hudson’s personal financial disclosures filed with the federal government since 2012. The company also has no Internet footprint.
Hudson told McClatchy that the company isn’t his. “It’s not my company, it has never been my company,” he said. But when pressed to explain the existence of an e-mail claiming the company as his own he declined to elaborate. “I think it’s likely to be a topic that would come out at trial,” Hudson said.
The bank said in the New York federal case that Hudson helped Ablyazov, the banker, evade the French authorities. At the time, Ablyazov was the subject of an Interpol red notice — meaning he is wanted in his homeland — and he had shuffled between villas in the south of France to evade detection before his arrest. When the authorities finally found Ablyazov, after tailing one of his lawyers, he was with Kussainova. After three years in a French prison, Ablyazov was freed by French authorities, who reversed an extraditionorder to Russia, citing concerns about political pressure exerted by Kazakhstan.
The bank said in the New York federal case that Hudson helped Ablyazov, the banker, evade the French authorities. At the time, Ablyazov was the subject of an Interpol red notice — meaning he is wanted in his homeland — and he had shuffled between villas in the south of France to evade detection before his arrest. When the authorities finally found Ablyazov, after tailing one of his lawyers, he was with Kussainova. After three years in a French prison, Ablyazov was freed by French authorities, who reversed an extraditionorder to Russia, citing concerns about political pressure exerted by Kazakhstan.
Kussainova met in 2003 and began living together in 2006. Kussainova purchased the 7,400-square- oot Mclean, Virginia home in which they currently live for nearly $2.7 million in 2008, with funds the bank says Ablyazov had stolen.
At the time Hudson was separated from his wife but he and his ex were not formally divorced until 2016. Because Hudson and Kussainova were not married, Hudson did not list Kussainova’s assets on any of his federal financial disclosure forms. In 2009 Hudson began working at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. His work for the NRC, which required him to obtain a security clearance, took him across the globe, representing the agency numerous times at the International Atomic Energy Association in Vienna, as well as at conferences in United Arab Emirates and Madrid.
The potential for foreign influence is one of the 13 factors that investigators are supposed to take into account when determining whether to grant a security clearance to a federal employee.
An employee’s foreign ties could be problematic “if they create circumstances in which the individual may be manipulated or induced to help a foreign person, group, organization, or government in a way inconsistent with U.S. interests or otherwise made vulnerable to pressure or coercion by any foreign interest,” the guidelines state.
But Hudson’s relationship with Kussainova, which he said he disclosed, didn’t appear to raise any red flags during his government background check. “If there were any issues or concerns they were never raised to me,” Hudson said.
Experts say it’s unclear whether this should have raised concerns to investigators providing a government security clearance to Hudson.
“It’s a little unique. But lots of people have relationships with foreign family members one step removed that sometimes catch the eye of investigators,” said Brian McKeon, former chief of staff for the National Security Council. Hudson left his post at the Department of Energy soon after he first turned over documents to lawyers for the bank in the related federal case in New York. The job had capped off more than two decades of government service and was a “career goal” according to his social-media postings, but he left the position after only four months for a job with the healthcare company Kaiser Permanente.
Hudson insisted that his departure had nothing to do with the impending case. “I got a nice attractive offer from the private sector and it was an offer I couldn’t turn down,” Hudson said. “There’s absolutely no connection between my leaving the Department of Energy and this case.” The Energy Department confirmed that Hudson left the agency voluntarily.
Very little is known about Kussainova, who does not appear to have her own social media pages and keeps a low profile. Published reports have said she became a U.S. citizen around 2004. The State Department denied a request under the Freedom of Information Act for details such as whether she was granted political asylum or refugee status. Hudson said he was unfamiliar with those matters. Kussainova’s recent naturalization might have caught the attention of investigators had she been married to Hudson, he added.
What Kussainova has done for a living is also unclear, and Hudson declined to discuss that matterahead of the trial. Of interest is her business association with Col. Kantzhan “Kanat” Alibekov, with whom she formed a pharmaceutical business that was allegedly funded by her brother’s money, according to the bank.
Now known by the Americanized name Kenneth Alibek, he achieved a measure of international fame as a defector who in 1992 brought secrets about the bio-weapons he created for the Soviet Union and Cuba, including a so-called battle strain of anthrax.
Alibek was born in then-Soviet-controlled Kazakhstan and defected to the United States shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, becoming a consultant and frequent witness before the U.S. Congress. In 2006 Alibek became a businessman, creating a company called AFG Biosolutions for microbiological research. He then formed Maxwell Bio-corporation, to manufacture cancer medicines for Eastern Europe. These companies were both domiciled in low-tax Delaware, and a company controlled by Kussainova, Akem LLC, appears on the incorporation and tax documents associated with Maxwell’s U.S. affiliate.
Many Alibek ventures met with eventual failure and in 2010 he began teaching at Kazakhstan’s main university. In February 2018, Ukrainian prosecutors in Kiev brought charges against him, alleging he was an accessory to money laundering. They accused Alibek of using money stolen from BTA Bank to build his businesses in Ukraine. Hudson declined to discuss details of his girlfriend’s past businesses but said he didn’t think she had a business relationship with Alibek. “I know she was just a casual friend with his wife,” Hudson said of Alibek.
Kussainova appears on New York property records for a property in Hewlett, on the south shore of Long Island. Public records show the home was purchased in May 1999, and Nassau County records show that the house was transferred between relatives in 2004 and sold outright in 2006 by Kussainova.
Other public records place her at an address on Manhattan’s East Side in the posh Vanderbilt building near Grand Central Station.
Adding to an already intriguing saga, Kussainova is the aunt to another Ablyazov family member being pursued by Kazakhstan. Ablyazov’s daughter Medina is married to Ilyas Khrapunov, himself the son of a financial fugitive, former energy minister and and ex-mayor of Almaty, the most populous city in Kazakhstan.
The city of Almaty has sought the Khrapunovs extradition from Switzerland, and has sued them in New York and California. City officials allege some of the stolen Khrapunov money, obtained through rigged auctions of state property, flowed through three condos in what at the time was the posh new Trump Soho development in Manhattan. Its developer Tevfik Arif and a high-profile financier, Alexander Mashkevich, were both prominent Kazakhs.
In California, lawyers for the city of Almaty allege the Khrapunovs’ daughter, Elvira Kudryashova, used allegedly stolen money to purchase a Studio City mansion, later sold to singer Bruno Mars and other Southern California properties.
McClatchy reported exclusively in July 2017 that now-embattled Trump associate Felix Sater helped bring the Khrapunov money into Trump Soho and helped the family invest in other projects in Ohio and Syracuse, New York. Sater also helped Kudryashova seek a U.S. visa. https://www.mcclatchydc.com/latest-news/article227265809.html
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Sater’s Bayrock Group built Trump Soho in partnership with the Sapir Organization and leased the Trump name for the property. Trump hired him as a “senior adviser” in 2010 and gave him a Trump Organization business card. That year the three companies were sued for allegedly lying about sales at trump SoHo....
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Prior to becoming the Deputy CHCO at NRC, Mr. Hudson was the agency’s Chief Learning Officer for three years. Before joining the NRC, Mr. Hudson had also served as the U.S. Department of Energy’s first Chief Learning Officer for four years.
Before finding his true passion of helping people and organizations learn and improve their performance, Mr. Hudson worked for over twenty years at the US Environmental Protection Agency in a number of scientific, technical and administrative leadership roles.
Mr. Hudson earned a BS Degree in Environmental Chemistry from Missouri State University and has completed graduate studies in IT Management at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, Missouri and at National Defense University in Washington DC. He is currently working on a MS degree in Organizational Development and Knowledge Management at George Mason University in Virginia. https://webcasts.td.org/profile/1816
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Even when the Russian banking sector was in its infancy under Communism the relevant operatives knew how to obscure their money’s provenance through labyrinthine networks of offshore accounts. In the decades since, money launderers and financial obfuscators have honed their craft using anonymous shell companies, nominee accounts, offshore secrecy havens and creative transaction structuring.38 For example, where so-called mirror trades were once a preferred means of moving money out of Russia and into the global financial system, launderers now reportedly favor illicit reinsurance contracts and falsified court judgments.39 They also exploit weak regulatory environments in the post-Soviet space--what Russia has termed the “near abroad”--particularly in the Baltics and Moldova, to covertly place and layer funds.40 ...
The financial element of the Kremlin’s active measures continues to enable it to penetrate domestic European elections. It has clandestinely supported favored candidates through a fostered “opaque network of patronage across the region that it uses to influence and direct decision-making,” according to “The Kremlin Playbook,” a 2016 study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).44 The study argues that the Kremlin has manipulated its deep economic and financial ties with its trade partners, particularly its neighbors in Central and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus,45 to penetrate and corrupt local governments. “Corruption is the lubricant on which this system operates, concentrating on the exploitation of state resources to further Russia’s networks of influence,” the report posits.46 ...
At the beginning of the 1990s Trump’s corporate empire owed a combined $4 billion to more than 70 banks....At the beginning of the 1990s, Trump’s corporate empire owed a combined $4 billion to more than 70 banks. ...
Trump SoHo was reportedly financed and developed by the Bayrock Group, a company with shareholders and executives from the former Soviet Union, including Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater.88 https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2018/02/13/446576/cracking-the-shell/
The financial element of the Kremlin’s active measures continues to enable it to penetrate domestic European elections. It has clandestinely supported favored candidates through a fostered “opaque network of patronage across the region that it uses to influence and direct decision-making,” according to “The Kremlin Playbook,” a 2016 study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).44 The study argues that the Kremlin has manipulated its deep economic and financial ties with its trade partners, particularly its neighbors in Central and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus,45 to penetrate and corrupt local governments. “Corruption is the lubricant on which this system operates, concentrating on the exploitation of state resources to further Russia’s networks of influence,” the report posits.46 ...
At the beginning of the 1990s Trump’s corporate empire owed a combined $4 billion to more than 70 banks....At the beginning of the 1990s, Trump’s corporate empire owed a combined $4 billion to more than 70 banks. ...
Trump SoHo was reportedly financed and developed by the Bayrock Group, a company with shareholders and executives from the former Soviet Union, including Tevfik Arif and Felix Sater.88 https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2018/02/13/446576/cracking-the-shell/
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A 2017 New Yorker investigation by Davidson unearthed evidence of potential money laundering at another Trump-name property, in Azerbaijan, but Sater dismissed the suggestion that the President was in on the game. “There were some pretty hairy characters involved. Did they use laundered money? I would guess yes,” Sater said. “Was Donald Trump involved with helping them launder the money? I don’t think he was involved, I think he just didn’t care.” https://therealdeal.com/2018/10/09/felix-sater-on-money-laundering-at-trump-properties-i-think-he-just-didnt-care/
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