A Series Of Suspicious Money Transfers Followed The Trump Tower Meeting
Investigators are focused on two bursts of banking activity — one shortly after the June 2016 meeting, the other immediately after the presidential election.
Anthony Cormier
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Jason Leopold
BuzzFeed News Reporter
Posted on September 12, 2018, at 9:51 a.m. ET
The June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower has become one of the most famous gatherings in American political history: a flashpoint for allegations of collusion, the subject of shifting explanations by the president and his son, countless hair-on-fire tweets, and boundless speculation by the press.
But secret documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News reveal a previously undisclosed aspect of the meeting: a complex web of financial transactions among
some of the planners and participants who moved money from Russia and Switzerland to the British Virgin Islands, Bangkok, and a small office park in New Jersey.
The documents show Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, at the center of this vast network and how he used accounts overseas to filter money to himself, his son, and at least two people who attended the Trump Tower meeting. The records also offer new insight into the murky financial world inhabited by many of Trump’s associates, who use shell companies and secret bank accounts to quickly and quietly move money across the globe.
Mikhail Svetlov / Getty Images
Aras Agalarov
Now, four federal law enforcement officials told BuzzFeed News, investigators are focused on two bursts of transactions that bank examiners deemed suspicious: one a short time after the meeting and another immediately after the November 2016 presidential election.
The first set came j
ust 11 days after the June 9 meeting, when an offshore company controlled by Agalarov wired more than $19.5 million to his account at a bank in New York.
The second flurry began shortly after Trump was elected.
The Agalarov family started sending what would amount to $1.2 million from their bank in Russia to an account in New Jersey controlled by the billionaire’s son, pop singer Emin Agalarov, and two of his friends. The account had been virtually dormant since the summer of 2015, according to records reviewed by BuzzFeed News, and bankers found it strange that
activity in Emin Agalarov’s checking account surged after Trump’s victory.
After the election,
that New Jersey account sent money to a company controlled by Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime business associate of the Agalarovs and their representative at the Trump Tower meeting. Kaveladze’s company, meanwhile, had long funded a music business set up by the person who first proposed the meeting to the Trump camp, Emin Agalarov’s brash British publicist, Rob Goldstone.
Mark Wilson / Getty Images
Ike Kaveladze (left) spoke to congressional investigators in November 2017.
Scott Balber, an attorney representing the Agalarovs and Kaveladze, said their transactions were wholly above board. “I’m actually perplexed why anybody is interested in this or why anybody in their right mind would treat this as suspicious,” he said. “These are all transactions either between one of Mr. Agalarov’s accounts and another of Mr. Agalarov’s accounts or one of Mr. Agalarov’s accounts and an account in the name of one of his employees.”
Goldstone’s spokesperson, David Wilson, dismissed the notion that his client’s transactions were suspicious as “ridiculous.” Prosecutors have not charged the Agalarovs, Kaveladze, or Goldstone with any wrongdoing.
The transactions came to light after law enforcement officials instructed financial institutions in mid-2017 to go back through their records to look for suspicious behavior by people connected to the broader Trump-Russia investigation. The bankers filed “suspicious activity reports” to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, which in turn shared them with the FBI, the IRS, congressional committees investigating Russian interference, and members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.
Suspicious activity reports are not evidence of wrongdoing, but they can provide clues to investigators looking into possible money laundering, tax evasion, or other misconduct. In the case of the Agalarovs and their associates, bankers raised red flags about the transactions but were unable to definitively say how the funds were used.
Federal prosecutors have used suspicious activity reports not only to investigate possible election interference and collusion, but also to charge people, such as Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, with financial and other white-collar crimes. Manafort was convicted last month of bank and tax fraud, and Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russia.
Over the past nine months, BuzzFeed News has reported on the financial behavior of Manafort, former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, accused foreign agent Maria Butina, GOP operative Peter W. Smith, and others.
In the case of the Agalarovs and their associates, the documents show funds moving quickly between accounts across the globe, often, bankers said, with no clear reason and with no clear purpose for how the money was supposed to be used. By collecting such detailed banking records, US law enforcement officials are trying to figure out how Russia’s interference campaign was financed — but in doing so, they are also pulling back the curtain on an opaque financial system controlled by the world’s wealthiest people.
Ethan Miller / Getty Images
From left: Donald Trump, Aras Agalarov, Miss Universe 2012 Olivia Culpo, and Emin Agalarov
A Swiss account and an offshore company
When Donald Trump hosted the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013, Aras Agalarov was his host. The two men toured the capital and
hatched plans to build the tallest building in Russia together, a gleaming new Trump Tower in Moscow. The Agalarovs spent about $20 million to host the pageant at Crocus City Hall, their glitzy mega-mall, and Emin Agalarov, a part-time pop singer, scored a coup when Trump agreed to film a cameo for one of his music videos.
Given these close ties, it wasn’t difficult for Goldstone, Emin’s publicist, to line up a meeting in the midst of the presidential campaign. On June 3, 2016, Goldstone sent Donald Trump Jr. an email asking to get together. Goldstone was explicit: A top Russian prosecutor had given Aras Agalarov damning information about Hillary Clinton — “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” he wrote.
Agalarov is one of the Kremlin’s favored developers, having tackled complicated and costly projects, such as a superhighway ringing the capital and two soccer stadiums built for the 2018 World Cup.
In 2013, Putin awarded Aras Agalarov the Order of Honor, one of Russia’s highest civilian awards.
After Trump Jr. spoke by phone with Emin Agalarov, the meeting was set. At about 4 p.m. on June 9, Goldstone, Kaveladze, a Russian lawyer with ties to the Kremlin, and at least two others arrived at Trump Tower. In a conference room on the 25th floor with sweeping views of Midtown Manhattan, they met with Trump Jr., Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, and Manafort, then an adviser to the campaign.
By most accounts, the 40-minute meeting, during which Manafort checked his phone and Kushner emailed his assistant, didn’t result in usable information on Trump’s rival. In fact, the Kremlin-connected attorney, Natalia Veselnitskaya, pivoted off Clinton and spoke at length about overturning US laws meant to stop Russian financial misconduct.
“Look,” Trump Jr. reportedly told the group, “we’re not in power. When we win, come back and see us again.”
Eleven days later — on June 20, the day Trump fired campaign chief Corey Lewandowski and put Manafort in charge — Aras Agalarov used a company called Silver Valley Consulting to move millions that bankers flagged as suspicious.
BuzzFeed News; Getty Images
