- Must watch: Yesterday’s discussion at the U.S. Helsinki Commission, “Kleptocrats of the Kremlin: Ties Between Business and Power in Russia”. Link to watch the event can be found here.
- Missed the KI event this week? Check out the video recording here, Kleptocracy and Money Laundering: A Conversation with Kendall Day.
U.S.
- U.S. prosecutors filed a civil complaint seeking to seize $144 million in assets, including a $50 million condominium and an $80 million yacht, it says are the proceeds of corruption in Nigeria.
- Who is Rinat Akhmetshin, the Russian-American lobbyist who met with Trump’s son?
- Eighth person in Trump team meeting linked to money laundering investigation-he was named in 2000 by the NYT for using 2,000 shell companies in the U.S. to launder $1.4 billion from Russia and eastern Europe into accounts at Citibank and the Commercial Bank of San Francisco.
- VoA discusses the complicated U.S.-Russia relationship with former Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst and David Satter, senior fellow at Hudson Institute.
- ExxonMobil has been handed a fine of $2 million for breaching anti-Russia sanctions; the oil giant conducted business with Igor Sechin, the head of the Russian state-owned Rosneft in May 2014. [Sechin was among top Russian officials to be blacklisted by the U.S. for Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014].
Russia
- A new investigation details how top Kremlin insiders money laundered capital into navy docks in Merkel’s own constituency in Germany (in Russian).
EU
- Germany’s flagship manufacturing firm Siemens has suspended cooperation with Russian state companies following reports that its electricity turbines were delivered to Crimea, in violation of EU sanctions.
China
- Suning Appliance Group, which made its name worldwide last year by buying Italian soccer club Inter Milan, saw its shares and bonds plummet after the state questioned if Chinese tycoons are taking over loss-making soccer clubs to launder money.
Global
- “The MH17 tragedy illustrates two things:…Second, that we in the west, especially Britain – with a City of London that Russia uses to launder its dirty money – are complicit. According to Ben Judah, author of the Kleptocracy Curse: ‘Two powerful trends meet in London: the rise of the offshore financial system and the rise of globalized authoritarians.'” -The Guardian
