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Kazakhstan has accused the former head of its state uranium firm of pocketing resources of the nuclear fuel worth billions of dollars, by transferring them to foreign companies he controlled. The KNB security service arrested the Kazatomprom chief, Mukhtar Dzhakishev, last month along with other officials, accusing them of illegal uranium deals.
Addressing reporters in the Kazakh financial capital, Almaty, relatives of those arrested accused the authorities of holding their family members in secret locations without access to independent lawyers.
"The KNB has no legal grounds in this case. Everything happening right now has been falsified.... Kazatomprom is a state company and all deals are done only with state approval."
The movement adopted a strong anti-Nazarbayev stance and criticized the corruption and nepotism of the president and his clique. Despite repeated attempts, authorities did not register DCK as a political movement.
The KNB had earlier singled out the sale of a 30 percent stake in the Kyzylkum venture, which runs the country's largest uranium mine, Khorasan, as an example of an illegal transaction.
Uranium One Inc. UUU-T says it doesn't know who previously owned the company's stake in a uranium deposit that is now at the centre of a national scandal in Kazakhstan, raising concerns about the miner's ownership of the lucrative property.
Uranium One owns a 30-per-cent stake in the Kyzylkum joint venture, which was purchased for $75-million (U.S.) in 2005 from a privately held company, Jeffcott Group Ltd. But the Vancouver firm says the shareholders behind Jeffcott were never specifically identified, nor does it know how Jeffcott initially obtained rights to the project.
"We dealt with corporations and entities that had title to the assets. In fact, we dealt with their representatives in the case of Kyzylkum. Therefore, we have no knowledge of the beneficiaries or shareholders behind Jeffcott," Chris Sattler, Uranium One's executive vice-president of corporate development and investor relations, said in an interview yesterday.
Mukhtar Dzhakishev was arrested this week and accused of embezzling stakes in major uranium fields and "handing them" to offshore companies. Authorities singled out the sale of a 30-per-cent stake in Kyzylkum that was allegedly sold for little more than $100,000 in 2005.
Uranium One inherited its 30-per-cent share in Kyzylkum in 2007 when it took over UrAsia Energy Ltd. in a deal originally valued at $3.1-billion. UrAsia was founded by Vancouver mining financier and philanthropist Frank Giustra. In 2005, Mr. Giustra and UrAsia officials acquired interests in three Kazakh uranium properties, including the stake in Kyzylkum.
"Jeffcott is owned and controlled by 1900 Trust Company Limited (the "Trustee") acting as trustee of the Jeffcott Family Trust. ... The control of Jeffcott, as shareholder, is carried on by the Board of Directors of the Trustee," the documents say. The filings identified "Eugene Charyshkin" as a Jeffcott director and his signature is on the agreements.
The uranium bubble of 2007 was a period of nearly exponential growth in the price of natural uranium, starting in 2005 and peaking at roughly $300/kg (or ~$135/lb) in mid-2007. This coincided with significant rises of stock price of uranium mining and exploration companies. After mid-2007, the price began to fall again and at the end of 2010, was relatively stable at around $100/kg.
As with other minerals, investment in geological exploration generally results in increased known resources. Over 2005 and 2006 exploration effort resulted in the world’s known uranium resources increasing by 15% in that two years.There is therefore no reason to anticipate any shortage of uranium that would prevent conventional nuclear power from playing an expanding role in providing the world’s energy needs for decades or even centuries to come.
The latency challenge will grow as more states gain access to either basic or more advanced levels of nuclear technology. Consider the countries that recently have expressed interest in or intent to initiate or expand nuclear energy activities, including in some cases developing an indigenous capability to enrich uranium: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Egypt, the Gulf Cooperation Council states, Indonesia, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Morocco, South Africa, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, Venezuela, and Yemen. Driving these decisions is a dynamic mix of motivations shaped by security, energy,
and science. Anxiety about North Korea and Iran likely is fueling proliferation pressures in East Asia and the Middle East as threat perceptions evolve and concerns grow about the fraying of the international nonproliferation regime. Others may look at these cases and conclude that possessing or seeking nuclear weapons results in enhanced leverage and influence. Energy security is an increasingly salient factor in the appeal of nuclear technology, given the economics of oil and what may become growing pressures to find alternatives to fossil fuels in light of global warming. Additionally, many countries associate nuclear not just with security or energy, but with modernity as well. That is, access to nuclear science and technology is seen by those who consider themselves behind as a powerful means to join the community of
advanced nations. The problem is not limited to states. Small groups or individuals operating outside traditional political boundaries may be capable of assisting states or terror groups in developing or acquiring nuclear capability. In this sense, the A.Q. Khan clandestine nuclear procurement network—to cite only the most prominent nuclear black market activity—is a concrete manifestation of globalization in the security arena. In the future, we may look back at the Khan phenomenon not as an anomaly but as the harbinger of a period in which literally anything could be bought or sold. Certainly, this is a problem that the framers of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), 40 years ago, could not have anticipated.
It is no surprise, then, that the nuclear nonproliferation regime is under great stress. The regime overall has been effective in containing the spread of nuclear weapons, not least by giving governments confidence that restraint is in their self-interest. But the progress of determined, hostile proliferators poses a major threat to the integrity of the regime and the norms that it embodies. Failure to resolve these challenges and delegitimize various models of creeping proliferation could lead to a broad-based loss of faith in the regime and its effectiveness as a security alternative to possessing nuclear
weapons. Increasing global energy demand is a complicating factor not only because nuclear energy is becoming more appealing but also because of the geopolitics of oil. In a time of higher oil prices, it will be difficult to impose
the type of hard sanctions that may be necessary to induce states such as Iran—a major oil exporter that also has the capability to interfere with other exporters’ oil shipments—to limit their nuclear ambitions. China’s rapidly growing need for imported energy is of particular concern here, as Beijing seeks to establish strategic relationships with major oil exporters such as Iran.
But the untold story behind that story is one that involves not just the Russian president, but also a former American president and a woman who would like to be the next one. At the heart of the tale are several men, leaders of the Canadian mining industry, who have been major donors to the charitable endeavors of former President Bill Clinton and his family. Members of that group built, financed and eventually sold off to the Russians a company that would become known as Uranium One.
HUMA ABEDIN in full capacity as Huma Abedin; was officially present at several meetings in Kazahkstan alongside FRANK GIUSTRA and the CLINTON-GIUSTRA ENTERPRISE PARTNERSHIP to take official receipt of an undisclosed backroom deal, involving the mines in the region. As such, this is deemed an official quid-quo pro with grave national security implications which directly affect the interests of the united states.
By the same token we also charge JOHN PODESTA as well as Podesta Group for taking direct part in an illicit and illegal transaction which greatly affected the national interest in severe ways. In addition, we place specific charges of conspiracy against FRANK GIUSTRA and CLINTON-GIUSTRA ENTERPRISE PARTNERSHIP for directing official sale without permission. Due to various damages that were inflicted, we also charge principal HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON; in both public and private: for commissioning this probationary sale and getting involved in mining affairs of a foreign nation which is in violation of both 18 U.S.C Code 96 and §2381. In respect to this, we have no choice except to note FRANK GIUSTRA and JOHN PODESTA are not registered under the required FARA Act. Thereby we have little issue with charging both JOHN PODESTA and FRANK GIUSTRA with 18 U.S.C §2381, which is the applied standard RICO racketeering act of 1961. [see Roviarov. United States, p. 353 U.S. 53 (1957) . ] The deal in question is clearly done on behalf of a Foreign Interest, and neither party in particular the Podesta Group opted to register as a Foreign Agent under FARA as required.
"Russia and Rosatom have a record of supporting nuclear programs in countries that are openly hostile to the United States, such as Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. And now, America’s uranium could find its way to an Iranian or North Korean nuclear reactor and their weapons programs, thanks to Hillary and her brazen contempt for our nation’s interests and security."
But in the leaked video of him speaking to the authorities, Dzhakishev said a senior Kazakh official told him to look into the deal after then-Sen. Hillary Clinton canceled a meeting with him. Dzhakishev said he was told that "investors who currently work in Kazakhstan and have ties to Clinton have problems and meetings will be resumed only after Kazakhstan resolves the problems." "I called them, and they came. I met them in Astana and then Clinton's aide, Tim Phillips, began to scream that this deal involves Democrats and is financed by them, and that we were hampering the deal," Dzhakishev said. Timothy Phillips, a visiting lecturer at Tufts University and the co-chair of a conflict-resolution project there, served as a senior adviser to the Clinton Foundation, according to the project's Web site, which has been edited to remove the reference to the Clinton Foundation. A Clinton spokesman said Phillips had served as a fundraising consultant to the foundation.
FL Group announces that it has invested $50m in four active US-based real estate development projects alongside Bayrock Group, a US-based international real estate investment and development firm.
These projects are:
• Trump Soho - The development of a 5 star hotel condominium in Soho, Manhattan, in partnership with Donald Trump and the Sapir organization.
• Trump Lauderdale - The development of a 5 star hotel condominium in partnership with Donald Trump situated on Fort Lauderdale beach.
• Whitestone New York - The development of 13 acres of land located along the east river in Whitestone, Queens. Bayrock Group plans to build a number of luxury homes and town homes on this land.
• Camelback - The development of a 5 star hotel and residential condominium in Phoenix.
The lifetime of the projects is expected to be between two to three years. The investment will be funded with own funds and loans. Alfa Investment Consulting were a facilitator to the transaction and advisor to Bayrock Group.
The late Boris Berezovksy, once one of the wealthiest and wiliest of Russia's oligarchs, thought the Russia-Iceland connection was obvious. He told a SkyTV interviewer in 2009 that if you wanted to look for where "Putin and his cronies" might be laundering money, well, "the best example, definitely, is Iceland."
When reporters combed through the Panama Papers last year, they recognized a familiar name cropping up: the FL Group, a now-defunct Icelandic bank that in 2013 had been accused in a lawsuit of developing a scheme, ultimately never realized, to avoid $250 million in taxes on a $2 billion investment in real estate projects, many of them tied to President Donald Trump. The bank began as a holding company for two airlines based in the little Nordic nation, Flugfélag Íslands and Loftleiðir—hence the name—until 2005, when it became its own financial institution with a surprisingly large number of Russian clients.
... FL Group was one of a number of Icelandic banks with surprisingly deep ties to the Russian billionaire class ascendant in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet system, according to Henry. The wealth of the post-USSR oligarch class was so directly tied to the Icelandic economy, in fact, that Russian president Vladimir Putin offered $5.4 billion to bail out Iceland’s banks during the global financial crisis, though the deal never went through.
The Icelandic bank managed to seal a 2007 deal to invest $50 million with the developer Bayrock Group, a firm run by two men convicted of stock fraud in the 1990’s, Felix Sater and Salvatore Lauria, alongside a former Soviet official named Tevfik Arif. A former finance director at Bayrock, Jody Kriss, sued the company in 2010 for allegedly misrepresenting Sater’s role—though the complaint remained sealed by the court until 2016. In an interview with Bloomberg, Kriss said another Icelandic bank called offering a counter investment to FL Group’s proposed $50 million, and Sater and Arif told him to stick with that firm because it was “closer to Putin.”
The small size of the Icelandic economy means that most people who work in the financial sector in that country know each other. Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson, the wealthiest man in Iceland, claimed FL had been infiltrated and taken over by pro-Russian interests, Henry noted. “He ended up owning about 30% of FL Group, and he claimed it had been taken over by hostile people who were channelling Russian money through it,” he recalled.
The Scorpion and the Frog is an animal fable that seems to have first emerged in Russia. On account of its dark morality, there have been many references to it since then in popular culture, including in films, television shows, and books.
A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The frog hesitates, afraid of being stung by the scorpion, but the scorpion argues that if it did that, they would both drown. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. The scorpion climbs onto the frog's back and the frog begins to swim, but midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung the frog, to which the scorpion replies "I couldn't help it. It's in my nature."
Moreover, their illicit activities involved four different Italian mafia crime families, as a subsequent grand jury indictment in 2000 stated. Specifically, from March 1993 to October 1996, Frank Coppa Sr., a captain in the Bonnano crime family; Eugene Lombardo, an associate of that family; Daniel Perisco, an associate of the Colombo family; Joseph Polito Sr., an associate of the Gambino family, Ernest “Butch” Montevecchi, a soldier in the Genovese family among others, “devised, implemented and oversaw fraudulent schemes to manipulate the price of securities” of four different companies and “fraudulently induc[ed] investors to buy and hold these securities,” according to the indictment, also filed in the Eastern District of New York. Sater, Klotsman, and Lauria, who had already pleaded guilty to the 1998 complaint, were listed as unindicted co-conspirators in this later case, which clearly netted much bigger fish for the feds based on an accidental haul at the Mini Storage. They all turned on their former mob accomplices, as did Sater’s father, Mikhail Sater, also known as Michael Sheferofsky. The father was indicted in 2000 on two counts by then-U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Loretta Lynch. Sheferofsky’s accomplice in that case was Butch Montevecchi, who also figured in the younger Sater’s case. Both men pleaded guilty to extorting “restaurants, food stores, and a medical clinic” in the Russian enclave of Brighton Beach in Brooklyn through intimidation and violence from December of 1990 to January of 1999. The father got off with three years’ probation in exchange for cooperation that included wearing a wire in a case against a group of Polish immigrants perpetrating major Medicaid fraud in Greenpoint in Brooklyn.
U.S. Attorney Lynch seemed to make ample use of the Saters, who were a unique father and son team, both working as informants with the same Mafia henchmen, but different FBI handlers on different cases.
...As recounted in The Scorpion and the Frog: High Crimes and High Times, a 2003 book Lauria later co-authored with former Associated Press journalist David Barry, the three associates became spies for the CIA, tasked with offering U.S. taxpayer money to buy Stinger anti-aircraft missiles that had gone missing from the covert U.S. campaign to oust the Soviets in Afghanistan. Those missiles, it was feared, were destined for Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda. The idea, according to the book, was to give the Russian government the funds to purchase 10 Stingers on the black market in Afghanistan, and then turn them over to the Sater, Klotsman, and Lauria, who would then relinquish them to their Langley handlers.
... Sater, whom Barry variously described as a “bad guy” and “tough son of a bitch,” returned to the U.S. first, without the ‘Get out of Jail card,’ still facing the possibility of long prison terms. Then came the 9/11 attacks. “Until the tragedy of September 11, the matter of my sentencing was a big weight hanging over my head,” Lauria says in the “as told to” book that Barry wrote. “It was very likely that I would do serious time; the question was how much. But a few days after September 11, I got a call from [Sater], telling me that the information we had provided about Osama bin Laden was now being actively pursued, and our situation had improved. Three days before the attack on the World Trade Center, the Taliban or al Qaeda had assassinated the man we had hoped would be our contact, Ahmad Shah Massoud, the man who had become the Northern Alliance leader.” The book continues, “[Sater] had gotten a call from a boss of a new section in the FBI who wanted to talk to him about the whole Stinger deal. We had done a careful job of putting it together… We had provided the actual serial numbers of the Stingers, which had been available in ’98, and we had passed on what we thought was an active cell phone number for bin Laden.”
By 2002, Sater had reinvented himself yet again, this time as a managing director of a real-estate development firm called the Bayrock Group, founded by the Kazakhstan-born Tevfik Arif. His co-defendant and fellow FBI and CIA informant, Lauria, eventually joined him there. Bayrock’s offices are, conveniently, in Trump Tower, which is how Sater’s checkered path intersected with the current U.S. president. Court papers say that Sater and Trump first met in 2003 through a leasing agent for the tower. Trump professes when asked about Sater in a sworn deposition not to “know him well at all.” Nevertheless, for five years, Sater and Bayrock did deal after licensing deal with the Trump Organization, all over the country. A 2006 Rocky Mountain News article quoted Sater as describing the ideal location for a Trump-named building in Denver, Colorado, while “traveling in Moscow with Trump’s son, Donald, Jr.” Email correspondence obtained by Forbes showed direct contact between Donald, Jr. and Sater in discussions about a Florida high-rise. In the end, another building in SoHo would be the source of the former FBI mole’s unwanted media attention.
Whether or not Trump was lousy at due diligence or his fleet of lawyers simply couldn’t Google the name “Felix Sater” (which would have brought up a 1998 Businessweek article citing his implication in the Mini Storage affair and ensuing fraud case) remains unclear. And Sater’s decision to add a ‘t’ to his given name to make it “Satter” should not have greatly complicated matters. However, the offering plan filed with New York State for the Trump SoHo, averred that there were “no prior felony convictions of Sponsor,” referring to Bayrock and another developer involved in the project known as the Sapir Organization. At this time, Sater had an ownership stake in Bayrock, according to correspondence obtained by Forbes.
In October 2009, 11 years after his indictment, Sater finally faced sentencing for his financial crime in a closed Brooklyn courtroom. He addressed the judge. “Yes, I am guilty of the things that I have done,” he said. “The worst thing that could happen, your honor, despite whatever sentence you impose on me… I went into real estate development and I built a very successful real estate company… a Trump project. I built the whole thing. Years ago, they wrote an article in the newspaper, ‘Executive With Ties to Donald Trump Has Criminal Past.’ The next month, I had to leave my company, the company I had built with my own hands.”
In 2013, Sater’s connection to Trump, who was still two years shy of running for national office, caused the mogul one of his many moments of pique with a member of the international press. Trump stormed out of a BBC Panorama interview when asked by John Sweeney, “Shouldn’t you have said, Felix Sater, you’re connected with the Mafia and you’re fired.” Trump replied by suggesting Sweeney might be “thick” and that he could not break a contract with Bayrock even if Sater’s mob ties were established to his satisfaction.
By 2010, Sater was out at Bayrock—but in at the Trump Organization. He reportedly brandished a business card naming him as a “Senior Advisor to Donald Trump.” He also had a valid email address at the organization, a phone number that had previously belonged to one of Trump’s general counsels, and his own office in Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. Sater’s role as an employee of the Trump Organization also came to light when he was accused of shaking down one of his former colleagues at Bayrock. Jody Kriss, the former finance director of Bayrock, alleged that he was entitled to a share of the $227 million profits in the Trump SoHo project. As reported by The Daily Beast in August 2016, Kriss claimed, in a court case filed in Delaware, that he was owed $7 million for his work on the project but offered a settlement of only half a million dollars. His principal antagonist in recouping his investment, he said, was Felix Sater. In sworn testimony, Kriss stated that his money had become entangled with an Icelandic financial company known as FL Group, which seemed to draw Russian investors “in favor” with Vladimir Putin. (Bayrock founder Tevfik Arif was also part of this deal.) According to Kriss: “Felix Satter [sic] told me that the deal with FL prohibited me from getting the rest in that I could either take the money and shut up or risk being killed if I made trouble. I knew at that time Satter had served a prison sentence for first degree assault (stabbing someone in the face with a wine glass stem) and with learning what would soon become common knowledge, that Satter had had a decades-long involvement with the New York and Russian mafia and had just in 2007 been sued in a civil action in Phoenix.”
In a separate and still-pending suit to which Kriss is a plaintiff, this one filed in New York’s Southern District, he has alleged that “tax evasion and money-laundering are the core of Bayrock’s business model.” The defendants have argued thatthe suit amounts to a shakedown, but the judge has ruled that Kriss has enough of a case to warrant moving forward. As for Sater, he had coffee the other day with the president's personal lawyer and discussed a peace plan for Ukraine.
As Sater became a more controversial figure, Trump did not cut ties. In 2008, Trump’s lawyers asked Sater to testify in Trump’s libel suit against journalist Tim O’Brien, arguing that O’Brien’s book, “Trump Nation,” damaged his reputation and cost him projects that Bayrock and others had been pursuing. The suit was dismissed. At the time, Sater testified he was in the process of leaving Bayrock because of the publicity around his past. During his 2009 sentencing, which had been delayed because of his work as a government witness, Sater bemoaned leaving Bayrock, a company he said he “had built with my own two hands.“
After Sater left Bayrock, he was given Trump Organization business cards and office space so he could continue searching for deals for the company, Garten said. The cards, first reported by the Associated Press, identified Sater as a “senior advisor to Donald Trump.” Garten said Sater was never a Trump Organization employee and was paid nothing during the brief 2010 arrangement. “Nothing came of it, and they went their separate ways,” Garten said.
We have seen a shift from regional families with a clear structure, to flat, fluid networks with global reach. These international enterprises are more anonymous and more sophisticated. Rather than running discrete operations, on their own turf, they are running multi-national, multi-billion dollar schemes from start to finish. We are investigating groups in Asia, Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East. And we are seeing cross-pollination between groups that historically have not worked together. Criminals who may never meet, but who share one thing in common: greed. They may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military. These individuals know who and what to target, and how best to do it. They are capitalists and entrepreneurs. But they are also master criminals who move easily between the licit and illicit worlds. And in some cases, these organizations are as forward-leaning as Fortune 500 companies. This is not “The Sopranos,” with six guys sitting in a diner, shaking down a local business owner for $50 dollars a week. These criminal enterprises are making billions of dollars from human trafficking, health care fraud, computer intrusions, and copyright infringement. They are cornering the market on natural gas, oil, and precious metals, and selling to the highest bidder. These crimes are not easily categorized. Nor can the damage, the dollar loss, or the ripple effects be easily calculated. It is much like a Venn diagram, where one crime intersects with another, in different jurisdictions, and with different groups. How does this impact you? You may not recognize the source, but you will feel the effects. You might pay more for a gallon of gas. You might pay more for a luxury car from overseas. You will pay more for health care, mortgages, clothes, and food. Yet we are concerned with more than just the financial impact. These groups may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called “iron triangles” of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat. Let us turn for a moment to the link between transnational organized crime and terrorism. If a terrorist cannot obtain a passport, for example, he will find someone who can. Terrorists may turn to street crime—and, by extension, organized crime—to raise money, as did the 2004 Madrid bombers. Organized criminals have become “service providers.” Could a Mexican group move a terrorist across the border? Could an Eastern European enterprise sell a Weapon of Mass Destruction to a terrorist cell? Likely, yes. Criminal enterprises are motivated by money, not ideology. But they have no scruples about helping those who are, for the right price. Intelligence and partnerships are key to our success in countering these threats. In the past nine years, we in the FBI have shifted from a law enforcement agency to a national security service that is threat-driven and intelligence-led. With organized crime, we are using intelligence to expand upon what we already know, from phone, travel, and financial records to extensive biographies of key players. And we are sharing this information with our partners around the world. But we are also building a long-term strategy for dismantling these enterprises.
The Iron Triangle formula once included a separate category for the bureaucracy, but that’s now easily lumped with Congress. After all, as Reagan noted, even the Supreme Soviet has more turnover than the House. Administrations come and go, but a high-flying Congress and its faceless partners in the bowels of government keep spending up and efficiency down, In 1987 alone, 535 Capitol Hill politicians managed to mail more than 494 million newsletters, press releases, and other puff pieces without paying a penny in postage. We taxpayers pay for that and zillions of other perks.
The partisan media also contribute to skewering the balance of power. According to The Media Elite, a survey of 240 top print and electronic media people revealed that 54% placed themselves on the political left, 90% advocate abortion on demand, 80% never voted for a Republican presidential candidate, 56% believes the USA regularly exploits Third World nations. Do those numbers correspond with any poll of middle class thinking in, say, the last 10 years?
Felix Sater, the man at the center of a controversial email "tying" President Trump to Russia while trying to work a business deal, has come forward in a comprehensive BuzzFeed News Exposé, which if Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Anthony Cormier and co-author Jason Leopold hadn't verified - nobody would believe.
Sater - whose code name was "The Quarterback," ended up providing such valuable information to U.S. intelligence agencies - such as five of Osama bin Laden's satellite phone numbers (by flipping Mullah Omar's personal secretary, "who was living inside a cave with bin Laden") - that the FBI and two federal prosecutors showed up at his trial after the $40 million stock scheme caught up with Sater - and vouched for him.
In 2009, 11 years after he formally started cooperating, the US government was finally going to hold up its end of the bargain. Sater headed to a federal courthouse in Brooklyn in October 2009 for his sentencing in the stock fraud scheme.
Two federal prosecutors and four FBI agents showed up to vouch for him. A transcript of that hearing is heavily redacted, but it makes clear that Sater was no ordinary cooperating witness.
Meanwhile, Sater is still working for the FBI, according to two current FBI agents. Moreover, he has relationships with at least six members of Robert Mueller's team, "some going back more than 10 years."
To this day, Sater continues to cooperate with the FBI and Justice Department, he said in his statement to the House Intelligence Committee. He wouldn't disclose additional details, except to say that he works on “international matters.” Two US officials confirmed Sater continues to be a reliable asset.
As for his regular life, when he relocated back to the US in 2010, he recalled, “Donald said, ‘Where have you been?’” Sater said Trump asked him to join the Trump Organization. “That's when I became senior advisor to him,” he said. The Trump Organization and the White House declined to comment. -BuzzFeed
In effect, Sater - at least according to BuzzFeed, is more or less a rockstar opportunist spy with a shady past, who redeemed himself as an asset for the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the FBI.
Sater has been summoned to discuss his affairs with congressional investigators - and is scheduled to speak with the Senate Intelligence Committee in April. Moreover, he's been questioned by Mueller's team - "several of whom he knows from his past undercover work." Of note, Mueller was the FBI director for most of the time Sater was providing undercover information.
1 There is no evidence Trump took any part in, or knew of, their racketeering. Any contrary inference would be unjust.
2 Arif, Satter, and Schwarz intentionally omitted any mention of Satter, his shared, substantial ownership in and control
of Bayrock Group LLC, Exh. D, his majority ownership of the whole Bayrock Organization, Exh. D, and his conviction
for racketeering predicated on securities fraud, Exh. A, from the offering documents, falsely stating Arif “owned”
Bayrock Group LLC when he owned little more than half, and only about 18% of the entire Bayrock Organization.
emphasis mine
A full copy of the New York court action will be available at www.glitnirbank.com.... It accuses Jon Asgeir Johannesson, who controlled around 39% of Glitnir's shares via various entities, of seizing effective executive control of the Bank in April 2007, by ousting Glitnir's directors and senior management and replacing them with Welding, Jonsson and other accomplices. Johannesson and the other named Defendants then used their control over the Bank to issue massive loans to, and fund a series of transactions with, other companies they controlled. In doing so, they flouted the Bank's internal risk policies, as well as Iceland's laws and financial regulations governing large exposure to connected parties. To finance these diversions, the individual Defendants relied heavily on funds which Glitnir raised in the United States throughout 2007 and, in particular, through the $1bn sale of Bonds to investors located in New York and elsewhere in the United States in September 2007. The extent of Glitnir's financial exposure to Johannesson and the companies and individuals who were connected to him was fraudulently hidden from US investors at the time of this fundraising. In the event, Johannesson's looting of Glitnir Bank failed to save Baugur, his own company, from failure; nor have the sums the individual Defendants siphoned from Glitnir ever been repaid to the Bank. The transactions made no economic sense for Glitnir, and put the Bank - and, by extension, its creditors - in extreme financial peril. Having depleted Glitnir's cash reserves, the individual Defendants left the Bank heavily exposed to the global credit crunch which struck Iceland's markets during the summer of 2007, and contributed significantly to its eventual bankruptcy. Johannesson and the other individual Defendants could not have succeeded in their schemes without the complicity of PwC. PwC knew about Glitnir's irregular related party exposures, reviewed and signed off on Glitnir financial statements which grossly misrepresented these exposures, and facilitated Glitnir's fraudulent fundraising in New York.
They hosted an impromptu get-together for friends at Hotel 101 on Friday night as their island nation effectively went bankrupt, owing Britain £20billion and others £15billion. That is £116,000 for every one of its 320,000 inhabitants. ‘It is like being in Hell and watching all the little devils enjoying the last days of normal life in Iceland,’ said an elderly diner.
The Trump Tower project, along with other US based real estate projects, were moved to a subsidiary of FL Group called FL Bayrock Holdco.
Jón Ásgeir stepped down as Chairman later that month after a conviction for breaking accounting laws. His wife Ingibjorg Stefania Palmadottir was elected as his replacement. On July 4, FL Group announced both that it had changed its name to Stodir and acquired a 39% stake in retail holding company Baugur Group.