RUSSIA/РОССИЯ THREAD—ASSANGE CHRGD W/ SPYING—DJT IMPEACHED TWICE-US TREASURY SANCTS KILIMNIK AS RUSSIAN AGNT
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Mantis Toboggan M.D.
Drink wolf cola
The whole network is probably caught up in it with how they’ve been railing against the investigation since day one. They know exactly what they are, and organizations like them don’t keep their hands clean while serving solely as a megaphone for the ideology.
Dameon Farrow
Superstar
I can only imagine....
THE RUSSIA BANK CONNECTED TO TRUMP TOWER AND THE TRUMP TOWER DEAL IS BEING "SOLD" TO THE KREMLIN!
Kremlin to buy Alfa Bank from oligarch Fridman
Kremlin to buy Alfa Bank from oligarch Fridman
The Kremlin is lining up an audacious deal for one of its proxies to acquire Alfa Bank, Russia’s largest private lender by assets and a vital cornerstone of the nation’s financial scene since the early 1990s, bne IntelliNews can reveal.
Either state-controlled VTB Group or Gazprombank, Russia’s second-largest and third-largest lender, respectively, will be allowed to swallow up Alfa. Mikhail Fridman, the billionaire oligarch founder of the bank who relocated to London in 2015, has agreed in principle to do a deal although the price may still be a sticking point, according to well-placed banking sources.
When asked by a bne IntelliNews correspondent at dinner in the 90s if he would ever sell Alfa Bank, at that time the biggest and most profitable privately owned bank on the market, Fridman replied: “Of course. I will always sell. If the price is right. And for Alfa Bank it will have to be a very good price indeed.”
A plan to sell Alfa to one of the state banks has been across President Vladimir Putin’s desk, the sources claim. The future of Alfa as an independent private player has been in jeopardy ever since Fridman transplanted himself to the UK and opted to invest his $14bn bounty from the $55bn sale of the oil producer TNK-BP to Rosneft in projects outside of Russia.
Following the TNK-BP deal president Vladimir Putin said in a speech shortly afterwards that the oligarchs were free to spend their money as they liked, but added ominously: “I would encourage them to invest it into Russia.”
For some, the last straw for the Kremlin was when Fridman and his partners swooped to buy Holland & Barret, the iconic UK high-street vitamins retailer, a year ago for $1.7bn after a string of other British and overseas acquisitions.
“The ‘For Sale’ sign for Alfa effectively went up when he bought Holland & Barret,” said a Russian investment banking source. “So much for heeding the Kremlin’s call for oligarch to repatriate his wealth, Fridman was spending it anywhere but Russia.”
Fridman’s move out of Russia is not unusual as most of the oligarchs from Yeltsin-sin era have either been forced out, fled into exile, or are gradually winding down their positions in Russia. Notably from the original seven oligarchs that ruled the roost in the 90s, only Vladimir Potanin, who controls Norilsk Nickel, is still active. Fridman owns several other important assets in Russia, most notably the X5 Retail Group, that is currently market leader and still growing.
Officially, Alfa is denying any future sale but banking insiders insist a deal is on the cards.
“The information about possible sale of Alfa Bank is untrue and is not consistent with the reality,” Anastasia Glukhova, a spokeswoman for Alfa Bank in Moscow, told bne IntelliNews.
VTB CEO Andrei Kostin also went on record last week to deny rumours that his bank was in talks to buy Alfa. VTB announced that there were no plans to buy Alfa-Bank or a stake in it in the next three years, Interfax reports, citing Kostin speaking on the side-lines of the VTB annual Russia Calling! investment conference on November 28.
The rumour mill about a potential VTB deal started ticking in July after Alfa hired Vladimir Verkhoshinsky from the state bank in the summer to be its new chief executive. His predecessor Alex Marei had been elbowed last year amid criticism that the bank had been left behind in the fin-tech stakes by its retail rivals Sberbank and the online-only bank Tinkoff.
Another comment by Kostin was rather bizarrely carried by Alfa in their website statement regarding the appointment of Verkhoshinksy, who spent almost a decade as a senior executive under Kostin.
“Verkhoshinskiy is a top professional and a talented manager,” Kostin. “It’s a shame he’s leaving VTB Group but the offer he got to run Alfa-Bank is a big opportunity for his further professional and career growth. I think he made the right decision and sincerely wish him success in his new position.”
Some analysts think Verkhoshinsky, who appears on the popular Russian TV quiz show ‘What? Where? When?’ could be “a Trojan horse” so VTB can get an insider’s take on the Alfa books before any formal takeover bid.
At VTB, he was deputy chairman of the board and the Bank of Moscow, the retail lender acquired by the state bank in 2011 for $3.7bn. Since 2016, when the Bank of Moscow was finally merged with VTB, Verkhoshinsky had headed the retail business.
“Verkhoshinsky is a very talented, young employee and grew into a fairly mature independent worker,” added Kostin. “Here he was not on the first, on the second role, and suddenly he was offered this growth. I always support a person who has an elevator, let him ride in it.”
For his part, Verkhoshinsky boasted that he would set himself the ambitious task of “doubling Alfa’s market share and become an undisputed technological leader.”
“This is an exciting challenge,” he added. “There is a huge potential and strong team at the bank. I am certain of our success.”
Analysts have become very dubious about Kostin’s public pronouncements – not least since he rejected a recent Reuters story that VTB secretly financed a recent deal by Qatar to buy a stake in oil giant Rosneft. The nine sources who told Reuters that in fact VTB did provide a loan to Qatar included a source close to VTB management, a Russian central bank official and a Russian government source familiar with foreign investments in Russia
“We have learnt to take Andrey Leonidovich’s with a little more than pinch of a salt and a shot of vodka,” quipped a banking analyst, who covers VTB.
Alfa is Russia’s fifth largest bank after Sberbank, VTB, Gazprom and recently nationalised Otkritie
Founded in 1990, the bank has about 25,000 employees operating in 774 offices in Russia and overseas.
The lender, which has 15.8mn retail clients and 500,000 corporate customers, is on the Central Bank’s “systemically important list” with assets of about 2.5 trillion rubles as of March 31st this year.
As well as lagging Sberbank, Tinkoff in others in adopting technology and finessing its online banking offering, Alfa’s branches look tired and in dire need of an upgrade.
bne IntelliNews recently visited three different branches in Moscow’s Kurskaya, Semyonovskaya and Arbat regions and the format seems jaded and scuffed in comparison to the modern and bright offices of Otkritie, Citigroup or even Sberbank. Several of Moscow’s notorious bomzhi [homeless tramps] had taken up residence in the Semyonovskaya branch next to the ATM machines after hours as the temperature plunged to minus 15.
Fridman, a Ukrainian born hustler who started out selling theatre tickets and washing windows, may finally be losing his prized teflon coating if he is being forced to sell.
The billionaire, along with one of his key lieutenants Alexey Kuzmichev, became a British tax resident in 2015 even after Putin had requested that investors pay Russian taxes on profits they receive on holding companies registered abroad.
The key to Fridman keeping on side of the Kremlin has always been his suave partner Petr Aven, who joined Alfa in 1991 after serving as Russia's foreign minister.
Aven regularly meets with Putin at the President’s Novo-Ogarevo residence and was even conferred with a state award for corporate citizenship personally by Putin in May last year. Boris Berezovsky, who was once known as the Godfather of Kremlin, admitted that it was Aven who introduced him to Putin.
Though Fridman is not in Putin’s inner circle, he has managed to avoid the fate of some other 1990s’-era oligarchs like Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Vladimir Gusinksy, who have had assets seized and have been exiled after failing out of favour.
A former Alfa executive told bne IntelliNews that Fridman and his partners were allowed to keep the $14bn proceeds of their sale of TNK-BP offshore. “Abramovich was allowed to keep his proceeds from the sale of SibAl and Sibneft, and Fridman/Alfa were allowed to too,” said the former Alfa executive. “This is probably driven by their personal relations with Putin.”
Those personal relations may have broken down irrevocably now that Fridman has put most of his eggs in a Mayfair basket.
LetterOne, his UK-based investment holding, has been busy ploughing the TNK-BP proceeds into overseas energy, telecom and technology assets like ride-sharing app Uber. The fund spent $1.6bn on E.ON’s oil and gas assets in the North Sea only after the UK government forced it to sell its North Sea fields in the country because of the risk of facing Russian sanctions.
Pamplona Capital, a UK private equity fund backed by Fridman, has also been snapping up assets in Europe and the US. The Mayfair-based firm, which also has a New York office, last year closed its fifth buyout fund at €3bn. Current investments from Pamplona’s fourth fund include a majority stake in Hungary-based pet food manufacturer Partner in Pet Food, which the firm bought from rival buyout shop Advent International for €315m in April 2015. It also tried to acquire Dr Martens, the boot maker once favoured by punks and skinheads.
On the side-lines of the Russia Calling! forum, Kostin noted that Alfa Bank is a kind of business card for private banking in Russia its culture is very different from the VTB business culture, so a potential consolidation of the two banks would be "very difficult."
Gazprombank, Russia's third-biggest lender, may ultimately be a better fit for Alfa and may have the war chest to pay for it.
The secretive bank, which is known to be staffed by many former FSB intelligence service operatives, is run by Andrey Akimov, a close St Petersburg ally of Putin since the 1990s.
Akimov, who has never given an interview on the record, likes to drive a Tesla Model S sports car around Vienna, according to a Bloomberg News report.
Gazprombank, which started in 1990 as an institution focused on catering for Gazprom, has grown to serve more than 45,000 corporate clients. The bank does relatively little retail banking so bolting on Alfa’s huge retail portfolio will mean less overlap.
On December 4, the lender raised its 2018 profit forecast to RUB40-45bn from RUB30-35bn rubles.
The bank still has the significant heft of Russia’s gas export monopoly behind it. From January to September 2018, Gazprom, which owns 46% of Gazprombank's ordinary shares, issued unlimited interest-free subordinated deposits to the bank for 15.5bn rubles.
An acquisition of Alfa by a state player could be the final nail in the coffin for independent banking in Russia and would be ruinous for consumers and small to medium-sized businesses
Russia’s financial sector has again been roiled in the past two years by sanctions and a slide in commodity prices. Other major private banks such Bank Otkritie, Promsvyazbank and B&N Bank have blown up and have had to be rescued by the state.
The winner in the shakeout has been the state behemoths Sberbank and VTB, which have seen their market share and profits rocket.
Aven predicts the Central Bank’s clean-up of the sector will see the number of lenders shrink further to about 300 in the next few years from 500 now but he fully realises that Alfa won’t benefit.
“In general, the banking system is healthy - largely thanks to the Central Bank, which provided it,” Aven told a lecture at the prestigious MGIMO university in April this year. “The main problem is the share of state-owned banks, which control 72% of assets.”
Is Harvard Whitewashing a Russian Oligarch’s Fortune?
Len Blavatnik made billions as a Kremlin insider. Now he’s writing huge checks to the university.
Dec. 5, 2018
Len Blavatnik recently pledged $200 million to Harvard Medical School. Joe Giddens/Pa, via Associated Press
Len Blavatnik recently pledged $200 million to Harvard Medical School. Joe Giddens/Pa, via Associated Press
By now, most Americans are aware of the deep and disturbing connections between Russia’s oligarchs and the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, thanks to an onslaught of news coverage and a growing list of sanctions aimed at them and their business empires.
Yet a surprising number of respected American institutions don’t seem to get it, including two that I am connected with: the Hudson Institute and Harvard.
On Tuesday, the founder, director and sole funder of the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative, Charles Davidson, announced that he was leaving his position at the head of the initiative because Hudson had accepted a $50,000 donation for a table at its annual gala from Leonard Blavatnik, a Soviet-born dual British-American citizen who made his money in the rough and tumble of Russia’s commodities privatizations during the 1990s and now owns, among other properties, Warner Music Group.
“Russian kleptocracy has entered the donor pool of Hudson Institute,” he told The New York Post. “Blavatnik is precisely what the Kleptocracy Initiative is fighting against — the influence of Putin’s oligarchs on America’s political system and society — and the importation of corrupt Russian business practices and values.”
Sources at the Hudson Institute said that Kleptocracy Initiative would continue, but did not comment on the Blavatnik gift. (Disclosure: I am a visiting fellow at Hudson, but it is an honorary position, and I have neither received money from the institute nor performed work for it.)
Mr. Blavatnik’s glory at Hudson largely lasted just one night. But he did succeed in attaching his name to Harvard for generations to come. On Nov. 8, Harvard Medical School announced that the Blavatnik Family Foundation had pledged $200 million to the institution, creating the Blavatnik Institute and Blavatnik Harvard Life Lab. This follows on a $50 million gift by the foundation to the university in 2013. (Asked for comment, a Harvard spokeswoman referred me to someone who handles media relations for the foundation.)
As a Harvard alumna, I find this appalling. Mr. Blavatnik — who, with a net worth of over $20 billion, is the richest man in Britain and the 29th-richest in America — cut his teeth in the brutal aluminum wars in 1990s Russia alongside Oleg Deripaska and Roman Abramovich, who has estimated that every three days someone in the business was murdered. Together, they acquired an empire of recently privatized metals and energy companies, often for outrageously low prices.
Those deals, and others, involved a series of transactions with individuals with checkered pasts, deep Kremlin ties and a reputation for corruption. Though Mr. Blavatnik is not under American sanctions himself, many of his associates are, including Mr. Deripaska. The aluminum giant Rusal, where he is a major shareholder, is facing direct sanctions due to go into effect soon; Rosneft, an energy company owned by the Russian government where he also made millions, expects the ax to fall shortly.
One of Mr. Blavatnik’s early investments, United Trading Company, which he owned with Viktor Vekselberg, another oligarch also under American sanctions, brought him censure from the Russian government.
In 2004 the pair had to give up ownership of United Trading after the Russian government charged it with anti-competitive actions; they sold their shares to three other Kremlin-linked investors, Dmitri Pyatkin, Aleksandr Fraiman and Igor Annensky.
In 1996, Mr. Blavatnik and Mr. Vekselberg helped found SUAL, a large aluminum producer; through it, they own over a quarter of Rusal. The other big shareholder in Rusal is Mr. Deripaska’s En+ Group, which controls 48 percent.
Mr. Blavatnik’s biggest deal involved selling his stake in the Russian oil company TNK-BP to Rosneft in March 2013; he and his partners, including Mr. Vekselberg, together made $27.7 billion. The deal was arranged at the top levels of the Russian government; since 2004, Rosneft has been run by a close ally of Mr. Putin, Igor Sechin, a former deputy prime minister.
To be clear, Mr. Blavatnik is not accused of any crimes, in the United States or in Russia. But he is undoubtedly a Kremlin insider, someone who has made an enormous fortune trading on his political connections to a deeply corrupt circle of oligarchs and a criminal Russian state.
Mr. Blavatnik is entitled to spend his money how he pleases. But institutions like the Hudson Institute and Harvard, which at least in principle stand for the ethical pursuit of knowledge, sully themselves by accepting it.
Accepting gifts — especially naming gifts — from people with dubious sources of funds or close ties to despotic regimes encourages the view that dirty money can be cleansed by charity. What lessons does that teach Harvard students? And what message does it send to citizens of countries troubled by kleptocracy and corruption?
One of the gates to Harvard Yard has a celebrated inscription: “Enter to grow in wisdom. Depart to serve better thy country and thy kind.”
I still remember that. I wonder if Harvard does.
Ann Marlowe is a writer and consultant who specializes in investigating corruption.
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They won’t, as his show gets huge ratings. Hannity even campaigned for Trump with no repercussions
If Fox News (Hannity, Ingrahm, Carlson, etc.) ever had any credibility before, they do not anymore. They went from a law and order, fiscal conservative, no new taxes or tariffs, pro law enforcement, and no bailouts platform to the exact opposite. The exact opposite! Any person with any amount a sense can see this blatant hypocrisy.
I can’t even understand how ANY pro Trump republicans justify any and all of this. It is the exact opposite of what the supposedly believed with Reagan and Bush. It’s mind boggling. shyt like, Clinton should have been impeached for cheating on his wife. All those women can’t be lying. To, being okay with Trump cheating on all of his wives, and that we shouldn’t believe any of the women who accused him of sexual harassment. Went from taxes are bad to supporting tariffs and bailouts. Went from putting all of your faith in law and order to the president and his cronies basically going on a stop snitching campaign.
I can’t believe the hoops and delusions that republicans go through to accept Trump’s actions. It’s like a mass delusion that is being promoted by Fox News by their use of psyops and propaganda. It is ideological warfare. Fox News is conducting warfare on the American public, and all of them should be punished to the greatest extent of the law. It’s straight up treason.
We, as a society, are in major trouble. This Trump informational and ideological warfare is creating a terrible disease that, I’m afraid, will spread like cancer. We need to treat this aggression, by cutting out the infected area. We need to do everything possible to stop the growth. Up is turning into down, fake is turning to real, truth isn’t truth. This is super damaging to society's well-being. This shyt isn’t a game at all, isn’t entertainment, isn’t just a shyt show to enjoy. This is real fukking life. Society is going in an unknown direction that is bound to be fraught with pain, sadness, poverty and extreme negativity. I am very concerned (and I don’t get very concerned easily).
At this point somebody needs to do something drastic. I’m not talking violence. I’m saying we need to fight this ideological warfare, counter the attacks, and respond accordingly. We need to use their logic against them. We need to call them out every single time they lie. We need to actively expose the psyops and propaganda. We need to spread the truth to others, even if it is uncomfortable and results in conflict. We need a leader(s) to step up, make a plan, “focus group” the outcomes, and wage the counter attack and resistance. There will be casualties, but that happens in times of war.
Who is going to step up? Who will undertake this necessary aggression? Who will fight the cancer infecting our society? Who will weather the negative consequences? Who will ensure that future generations will have a better reality than what we see today? Who?
INVASION OF THE OLIGARCHS!
Ukrainian-Russian OLIGARCH GIVES MONEY TO BOARD OF ANTI-RUSSIAN ANTI-CORRUPTION CONSERVATIVE THNK-TANK
...which was hacked by Russia months ago 
https://nypost.com/2018/12/04/chaos...er-donor-revealed-as-ukrainian-born-oligarch/
Chaos at conservative think tank after donor revealed as Ukrainian-born ‘oligarch’
By Jennifer Gould Keil
Chaos has erupted at a conservative think tank after it was revealed that one of its new donors is Len Blavatnik, the Ukrainian-born billionaire who owns the Warner Music record label.
Charles Davidson — the founder of the Hudson Institute’s Kleptocracy Initiative
:moscowmjpls::PutinTrollFace:, a group dedicated to exposing threats by authoritarian regimes to US democracy — said he quit as its executive director upon learning that the Hudson Institute had accepted a $50,000 donation from Blavatnik.“Russian kleptocracy has entered the donor pool of Hudson Institute,” Davidson said in an exclusive interview with The Post. “Blavatnik is precisely what the Kleptocracy Initiative is fighting against — the influence of Putin’s oligarchs on America’s political system and society — and the importation of corrupt Russian business practices and values.”
Blavatnik — long friendly with bigwig politicians like Bill Clinton and movie makers like Martin Scorsese — made his fortune in the controversial privatization auctions of 1990s post-Soviet Russia, scooping up valuable aluminum companies on the cheap.
Since then, Blavatnik has aggressively sought respectability in the West. In addition to buying Warner Music, Blavatnik has donated more than $100 million to Oxford University and $50 million to Harvard.
On Tuesday, a spokesman for Blavatnik referred questions to the Hudson Institute, whose remaining directors and advisers appeared to side with their new donor.
“The Blavatnik Family Foundation sponsored a table to our annual gala. We are grateful for all those who are supporting Hudson’s work tonight,” the Hudson Institute said in an emailed statement.
However, Ilya Zaslavskiy, an Oxford-educated policy wonk who also sits on the Kleptocracy Initiative’s advisory council, griped that Blavatnik’s business partners Viktor Vekselberg and Oleg Deripaska have been sanctioned by the US government.
“Blavatnik is an oligarch,” Zaslavskiy told The Post, using a term that has long drawn strenuous objections from Blavatnik’s public relations team.
“It’s amazing how Blavatnik converts philanthropy into political access and influence,” Zaslavskiy said, adding, “It’s a philosophical question: Can you do good things with bad money?”
The fracas emerged ahead of the Hudson Institute’s annual gala in New York on Monday, which honored outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan — who accepted an award via video — and departing UN Ambassador Nikki Haley.
Blavatnik did not attend, but at Monday’s event, Haley harshly criticized Russia for seizing three Ukrainian ships last month, calling the move an “outrageous, blatant provocation.”
The Hudson Institute most recently made headlines in August, when its computers were attacked by elite Russian hackers known as Fancy Bear.:unimpressedputin:
At the time, Hudson Institute’s president and chief executive, Ken Weinstein, told Fancy Bear in a Wall Street Journal op-ed to “get stuffed.”:PutinTrollFace:
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FYI, this is the guy under fire for diamond smuggling in Israel RIGHT. NOW.
ITS ALL CONNECTED!!!!
KUSHNER. ISRAELIS. RUSSIANS.
ITS ALL CONNECTED!!!!
KUSHNER. ISRAELIS. RUSSIANS.
:ALERTRED:
Napolitano connects Deutsche Bank to the Trump corruption and Donald Jr being indicted
Napolitano connects Deutsche Bank to the Trump corruption and Donald Jr being indicted
:ALERTRED:
makes me wonder if Flynn will face charges in this...
...or ERIK PRINCE 
As Flynn Case Winds Down, Investigation of Turkish Lobbying Persists
As Flynn Case Winds Down, Investigation of Turkish Lobbying Persists
Dec. 5, 2018
Prosecutors have recommended a light sentence for Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. agents about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to Washington.Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
Prosecutors have recommended a light sentence for Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to F.B.I. agents about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to Washington.Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Federal prosecutors in Virginia are investigating a secret Turkish lobbying effort that once involved Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, even as Mr. Flynn’s role in the special counsel’s investigation winds down, according to people familiar with the inquiry.
Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, had been handling the case and at some point referred it back to prosecutors in Alexandria, Va., who had originally opened the investigation, the people said. A veteran national security prosecutor is overseeing the case, and a grand jury has been empaneled to hear evidence.
Prosecutors for Mr. Mueller appeared to make reference to the investigation in documents released on Tuesday that enumerated Mr. Flynn’s cooperation in the Russia inquiry. The heavily redacted documents created an air of mystery about Mr. Flynn’s “substantial help” in several unspecified but continuing investigations. Prosecutors cited Mr. Flynn’s assistance as grounds for leniency when a judge sentences him on Dec. 18.
The Turkey case appears to fit as one of those inquiries because Mr. Flynn has direct knowledge of aspects under scrutiny. Prosecutors are examining Mr. Flynn’s former business partners and clients who financed a campaign against Fethullah Gulen, a cleric living in Pennsylvania whom the Turkish government has accused of helping instigate a failed coup.
Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors also mentioned Mr. Flynn’s help in their own investigation and in a third matter. Details about it were blacked out in court papers, so it was unclear whether Mr. Mueller’s team was describing additional details about its own inquiry, which also includes an examination of whether President Trump tried to obstruct it; citing investigations it has referred to other federal prosecutors’ offices, like the case in Manhattan against Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen; or describing a third investigation unknown to the public.
Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty last year to lying to F.B.I. agents about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador to Washington. Prosecutors asked Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to sentence Mr. Flynn to little to no time in prison, noting that his military service of more than 33 years and public record “distinguish him from every other person” charged in the special counsel’s investigation.
Federal prosecutors had begun investigating Mr. Flynn after he wrote an op-ed for The Hill newspaper on Election Day 2016 attacking Mr. Gulen as a “radical Islamist” and a “shady Islamic mullah.” The prosecutors began examining whether Mr. Flynn was working as a paid lobbyist for Turkey.
Investigators later learned the op-ed was part of a larger effort by Mr. Flynn on behalf of Turkey. Mr. Flynn’s company was ultimately paid $530,000 to investigate Mr. Gulen by a company run by Ekim Alptekin, a Turkish businessman close to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.
In an op-ed, Mr. Flynn called Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who lives in Pennsylvania, a “radical Islamist” and a “shady Islamic mullah.”Selahattin Sevi/Zaman, via Associated Press
In an op-ed, Mr. Flynn called Fethullah Gulen, a cleric who lives in Pennsylvania, a “radical Islamist” and a “shady Islamic mullah.”Selahattin Sevi/Zaman, via Associated Press
In his first days as president, Mr. Trump asked the F.B.I. director James B. Comey that law enforcement officials drop the inquiry into Mr. Flynn. “I hope you can let this go,” the president said, according to Mr. Comey. The revelation helped prompt the appointment of Mr. Mueller to oversee the investigation into Russia’s election interference and whether any Trump associates conspired, as well as whether Mr. Trump himself tried to impede the inquiry.
As part of his work for Turkey, Mr. Flynn’s company sought to persuade members of Congress that Mr. Gulen ought to be extradited. Mr. Flynn also commissioned a lengthy dossier titled “Fethullah Gulen: A Primer for Investigators,” which was written by Thomas Neer, a former F.B.I. agent.
Mr. Mueller took over that aspect of the inquiry in 2017.
A spokesman for Mr. Mueller declined to comment. A spokesman for federal prosecutors in Virginia did not respond to a message seeking comment.
Many specifics of the Virginia investigation are unclear, but it could involve whether anyone associated with Mr. Flynn or his company failed to comply with the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the law requiring disclosures to the Justice Department about lobbying on behalf of foreign interests.
Mr. Flynn admitted to prosecutors last year that he had repeatedly violated that law. He had said he wrote the op-ed at his own initiative, concealing that he did so at the direction of Turkey. On Tuesday, prosecutors on Mr. Mueller’s team wrote that Mr. Flynn’s op-ed “was valuable to the Republic of Turkey’s efforts to shape public opinion.”
In 2017, Mr. Flynn and his business partner, Bijan Kian, filed additional lobbying disclosures acknowledging that the Gulen project “could be construed to have principally benefited the Republic of Turkey.” They detailed payments to roughly a dozen other people and firms associated with the Gulen project.
Prosecutors could also be investigating reports that Mr. Flynn discussed kidnapping the cleric as part of a plan to forcibly return him to Turkey. Mr. Flynn’s lawyer has denied his client considered kidnapping Mr. Gulen.
Last year, Mr. Alptekin told The New York Times that he wanted to hire a credible American company to lead an influence campaign against the Gulenists. He said Mr. Kian suggested Mr. Flynn’s company, Flynn Intel Group.
“You need independent work; you need research that is done by Americans,” Mr. Alptekin said in an interview.
Mr. Kian’s lawyer declined to comment.
Matthew Rosenberg contributed reporting.
A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 6, 2018, on Page A20 of the New York edition with the headline: Flynn Inquiry Is Winding Down, but Investigators Are Still Following One Thread. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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