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| Irakly Kaveladze |
A Russian American businessman once accused of laundering more than $1.4bn into the US from eastern Europe attended the meeting where Donald Trump’s son expected to receive secret information from Moscow.
Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze was the eighth participant in the notorious get-together at Trump Tower in Manhattan on 9 June 2016, his attorney Scott Balber confirmed to the Guardian on Tuesday. Kaveladze’s attendance was first reported by CNN.
Kaveladze, 52, is an executive at a Moscow-based property firm owned by Aras Agalarov, a business associate of Trump who is also enmeshed in the controversy over the meeting during last year’s presidential election campaign.
At first this Kaveladze fellow seems fairly unassuming, but this is the Trump campaign so of course he is anything but.
Courtesy of TPM:
A New York Times report published in 2000 identified a Georgian immigrant named Irakly Kaveladze as a key player in an alleged $1.4 billion money laundering plot uncovered by what was then known as the General Accounting Office. Over $800 million in foreign cash passed through 136 accounts Kaveladze opened for Russian clients, according to a report GAO produced on its investigation. While the GAO report did not name Kaveladze, he told the New York Times that he helped set up Delaware corporations and open scores of bank accounts for Russian nationals.
A lawyer representing Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze confirmed to the Washington Post on Tuesday that his client was the same individual involved. The attorney, Scott Balber, also confirmed to the Post and the Los Angeles Times thatKaveladze attended a meeting in June 2016 with Donald Trump, Jr. and two others from the campaign, then-chairman Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law. Also in attendance were music publicist Rob Goldstone; Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-linked lawyer; Rinat Akhmetshin, a longtime D.C. lobbyist allegedly connected to Russian military intelligence; and a translator, Anatoli Samochornov.
Kaveladze attended the meeting on behalf of Aras and Emin Agalarov, Russian real estate barons close to the Trump Organization who helped to bring Trump’s Miss Universe beauty pageant to Moscow in 2013, Balber, confirmed to news outlets. Goldstone, who arranged the meeting, works as a publicist for Emin Agalarov, who is an aspiring pop singer.
So, he's an accused money launderer. And why is that significant?
Funny you should ask.
Courtesy of the New Republic:
But even without an investigation by Congress or a special prosecutor, there is much we already know about the president’s debt to Russia. A review of the public record reveals a clear and disturbing pattern: Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia. Over the past three decades, at least 13 people with known or alleged links to Russian mobsters or oligarchs have owned, lived in, and even run criminal activities out of Trump Tower and other Trump properties. Many used his apartments and casinos to launder untold millions in dirty money. Some ran a worldwide high-stakes gambling ring out of Trump Tower—in a unit directly below one owned by Trump. Others provided Trump with lucrative branding deals that required no investment on his part. Taken together, the flow of money from Russia provided Trump with a crucial infusion of financing that helped rescue his empire from ruin, burnish his image, and launch his career in television and politics. “They saved his bacon,” says Kenneth McCallion, a former assistant U.S. attorney in the Reagan administration who investigated ties between organized crime and Trump’s developments in the 1980s.
It’s entirely possible that Trump was never more than a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters, with his casinos and condos providing easy pass-throughs for their illicit riches. At the very least, with his constant need for new infusions of cash and his well-documented troubles with creditors, Trump made an easy “mark” for anyone looking to launder money. But whatever his knowledge about the source of his wealth, the public record makes clear that Trump built his business empire in no small part with a lot of dirty money from a lot of dirty Russians—including the dirtiest and most feared of them all.
There was an interesting story in Vox the other day where a Russian expert stated that Trump has essentially been colluding with Russian oligarchs and mobsters (Assuming there is a difference) for over forty years.
In that expert's (Seva Gunitsky) opinion Trump was compromised by the Russians well before he ever had any serious political aspirations, which essentially explains why the Russians were so keen to help him win at all cost.
He is their poodle.
They own him.
And eventually he will deliver to them what they want.
Source http://ift.tt/2u63vJP
