https://www.google.com/amp/amp.thed...merce-secretary-wilbur-ross-and-jared-kushner


BOMBSHELL
Leak Reveals Ties Between Trump Administration and Russia
ANDREW DESIDERIO
11.05.17 2:12 PM ET

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY LYNE LUCIEN/THE DAILY BEAST

A new trove of more than 13 million leaked documents implicates top officials and associates of President Donald Trump—as well as foreign politicians—in shady business relationships tied to offshore financial accounts.

In at least two cases, the documents highlight top administration officials’ previously undisclosed connections to Russia and Kremlin-linked interests.


The so-called Paradise Papers were leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the same publication that obtained the “Panama Papers.” Süddeutsche Zeitung shared the new documents with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which led a global effort of 96 media organizations from 67 countries to pore through the records. The findings were published on Sunday.


The documents show that many of the wealthy individuals Trump brought into his administration have worked to legally store their money in offshore havens where they would be free from taxation in the United States. Trump has promised repeatedly to “drain the swamp,” in condemning the idea that well-connected individuals in Washington, D.C., preserve their own interests at the expense of the rest of the country.

Among the Trump administration officials implicated in the leaks is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who according to the documents concealed his ties to a Russian energy company that is partly owned by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s judo partner Gennady Timchenko and Putin’s son-in-law, Kirill Shamalov. Through offshore investments, Ross held a stake in Navigator Holdings, which had a close business relationship with the Russian firm. Ross did not disclose that connection during his confirmation process on Capitol Hill.

“In concealing his interest in these shipping companies—and his ongoing financial relationship with Russian oligarchs—Secretary Ross misled me, the Senate Commerce Committee, and the American people,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said in a statement on Sunday. He characterized Ross’ financial disclosures as a “Russian nesting doll, with blatant conflicts of interest carefully hidden within seemingly innocuous companies.”

Ross has been linked to Russian interests before; in 2014, he poured hundreds of millions of dollars into a bailout of the Bank of Cyprus, an institution regarded by financial watchdogs as a haven for Russian money laundering. Ross was joined in his investment by the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. A former KGB official was placed on the bank’s board, and former Deutsche Bank executive Josef Ackermann was installed as chairman. Deutsche Bank—one of Trump’s biggest creditors—subsequently paid hundreds of millions to settle disputes that it shipped $10 billion or more to Russia in suspect loans.

Top White House adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is also implicated. The documents reveal that Kremlin-connected Russian tech leader Yuri Milner invested $850,000 in a startup called Cadre that Kushner co-founded in 2014.

Milner has long had a reputation in Silicon Valley as a big-league investor; his firm at one point owned major chunks of both Facebook and Twitter. But Milner was never considered particularly Kremlin-connected. These new documents call that into question. The investing arm of Gazprom, the state-backed energy company, financed a share of Facebook worth up to $1 billion; A Kremlin-owned bank invested $191 million into a Milner firm, and some of that money was then injected into Twitter.


Despite Milner’s investment in his startup, Kushner said in July that he told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a closed-door meeting that he never “relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector.”

Representatives for Sens. Richard Burr (R-NC) and Mark Warner (D-VA), the chairman and vice chairman of the committee, did not immediately return requests for comment. Kushner, who still has a stake in Cadre, did not previously disclose the firm’s other business ties.

The top adviser is already ensnared in the Russia investigations as questions continue to swirl about his meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016 with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya. Kushner attended the meeting alongside Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort, who was indicted last week by the Justice Department’s special counsel, Robert Mueller, in connection with his lobbying work for pro-Russian interests in Ukraine.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, and top economic adviser Gary Cohn are all mentioned in the documents. But some lower-level appointees have more egregious connections to offshore interests—in some cases, directly related to industries they are tasked with regulating.

Randal Quarles, who was confirmed just last month to be vice chairman for supervision at the Federal Reserve, has financial connections to a bank based in Bermuda that is being probed by U.S. officials under suspicion of tax evasion. A Federal Reserve spokesman told The Guardian that Quarles divested from the bank when he assumed his position at the U.S. central bank.

It isn’t just American officials who are implicated in the document dump. A substantial portion of Queen Elizabeth II’s private estate—around 10 million pounds—resides in offshore accounts based in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. Some of the money has been invested in companies with allegedly shady business practices.

A significant number of the leaked documents came from a law firm based in Bermuda called Appleby, which helps its clients set up offshore financial accounts with the goal of avoiding taxes on certain assets. Appleby has maintained that “there is no evidence of any wrongdoing, either on the part of ourselves or our clients.”

 

But according to people on this forum, Russia doesn't exist. Fake news, libtard!

 

You people(both conservatives and liberals) make me laugh.

It's cute that you think you know the truth when it comes to anything that happens in the government.

 

But I thought I was part of the shadow government, but simultaneously an incompetent government employee, yet also unemployed?


You guys need to compare notes.

 

And one thing Robert Mueller has already proven is he is following the money. And a lot of it will lead right back to Russian money laundering.

 

We can only hope.

 

So what.

None of this amounts to a hill of beans.

Tax havens are legal..

Starting up business oppurtunities are legal.

Or Queen Elizabeth wouldn't be in the same boat, even the law firm Appleby has stated that there is NO EVIDENCE of wrong doing.

 

no ,
no evidence of wrongdoing ,
Yet.
But , plenty of evidence of double standards , fishy business , lack of moral fortitude , hypocrisy , and so on.
The old "do as I say , not as I do" syndrome is very much alive and kicking.

Nothing surprising though really.

amazing , smoke on the swamp ,
and where there's smoke , there's fire.

Must be a peat bog

 

Donald Trump - Wilbur Ross - Russian Oligarchs? This might be entertaining.

 

It’s funny. The more the media and investigators try to connect Trump to Russia, the more evidence comes out on Hillary.

 

Wilbur Ross was just interviewed on Bloomberg. Mueller has nothing on him.

 

Another flop-o-la!
Nobody cares about tax havens. What do you think Swiss bank accounts are for? Dumb leftist!
Keep crying about losing the presidential election though.
Only 2 more days until you get to scream into the sky and let out your frustrations as a person LMAO!!!

 

How? Don Jr literally did absolutely nothing!
Stop spreading false propaganda....Oh wait. False propaganda is the liberal code of conduct

 

Justin Trudeau's chief fundraiser, who helped him rise to power, moved millions of dollars into offshore tax haven, Paradise Papers reveal

Canadian businessman Stephen Bronfman, a close friend of and fundraiser for Justin Trudeau, identified in the Paradise Papers
Papers suggest he used his family investment firm to move millions of dollars into an offshore trust owned by the Kolber family, which also has links to Trudeau
Such schemes may have cost the Canadian taxman millions of dollars

Trudeau is a front man for Bronfman - No wonder he clowns around like Barack Obama in unmatched socks. The main distraction, get people arguing about anything but what's going on financially.

 

Failure to disclose their financial ties is the same as lying to the FBI. That's a felony. The ties may not be illegal, but hiding them is.

 

the truth is this was disclosed-----it is a public known company----

 

It wasn't immediately clear exactly how much of Navigator, which is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, Ross personally owns. ICIJ reported that Ross and other investors own four Cayman Island entities that in turn own 31.5 percent of Navigator, a stake worth $176 million at Friday's closing stock price.

Ross' stake in Navigator is likely a small fraction of that.

In financial disclosure forms he filed with the government this year,
Ross valued his holdings in the Cayman Island entities, which include other companies besides Navigator, at no more than $10.1 million.

http://www.businessinsider.com/ap-report-commerce-head-has-stake-in-firm-tied-to-putin-orbit-2017-11

 

After 30 years of investigations into the Clinton's, I'm sure this will be the thing that sinks them because their 2016 campaign manager just got indicted.

 

Lying on government forms, especially the forms about your background, is a crime.

P.S. I made the key parts big for you so that you can see them. This article hurts your point.