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[Discussion of the Banks involved and ties to previous money laundering, Bob Dole (AUB); Putin, Gazprom, Rosneft (Commerzbank) follows the Press Release.]

The Ukrainian MP gives a summary in English at around 9 minutes. Before that is an English translation of the longer Ukrainian version.
Link: http://youtu.be/GgIfKTOZRNk
[Note that despite the title, he makes clear in this and the CNN interview that based on his past experience as a journalist studying corruption that it looks like a case of money-laundering. He not saying that it is, but is calling for an investigation.]
“Serhiy Leshchenko: Payments received by Manafort from Yanukovych are money laundering, Kyiv, March 21, 2017

Ukrainian MP Serhiy Leshchenko presented evidence of illegal financial fraud in Ukraine, which involved a former adviser to Donald Trump, Paul Manafort. This information has once again increased the presence of Manafort in Ukrain’s information field: a week ago Ukrainian media reported the involvement of Paul Manafort in the executions of activists during the events on the Maidan in winter 2014.

Money laundering

Payments received by American lobbyist Paul Manafort from Victor Yanukovych show all indicators of money laundering and fraud. In particular, a tranche of USD 750,000 received on Manafort’s account at Wachovia bank in Virginia, came from an offshore company in Belize for allegedly supplying computers. This was stated by MP of Ukraine Serhiy Leshchenko during a briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center.

“Manafort received the money from the account of the offshore company “NEOCOM Systems Limited” registered in Belize and opened in Bishkek (Kyrgyzstan). He received the money not for political consulting services provided by him to Yanukovych. They concluded a contract of fictitious and fraudulent nature to launder money and falsify payments for allegedly supplying 501 computers,” noted Mr. Leshchenko.

The tranche coincides with the date and the sum that appear in the shadow accounting of the Party of Regions. A handwritten signature of Paul Manafort on the contract corresponds to his signature on the documents in the US Ministry of Justice which he completed during his registration as a lobbyist.

Manafort and Maidan

On March 15, Ukrainian media published information on the possible involvement of Manafort in the killings of Ukrainian activists in the Maidan events. A day earlier, a group of hackers hacked into and released the correspondence between Manafort‘s daughters. In one of the conversations his daughter Andrea expressed suspicion that their father had been involved in the killings and referred to the money their father got from Yanukovych as “blood money”. Emphasis our own. The original mispelled Wachovia. Original press release found here: http://uacrisis.org/53924-sergij-leshhenko-6 Archived here: https://archive.li/NUi75

Note that he says that the FBI must help them because they can’t check the bank account allegedly belonging to Manafort. Perhaps he reported the information because he saw how the FBI was foot-dragging and the House Intell Chair, Nunes, was trying to scuttle the investigation.


Notice that not only AUB is mentioned, but Commerzbank. Commerzbank bought Dresdner Bank which has interesting historic ties to Putin, as well as having ties to Gazprom and Rosneft. Information on this is found after the information on AUB, Bob Dole, Stone and Manafort.

The New York Times explains the case in “Paul Manafort, Former Trump Campaign Chief, Faces New Allegations in Ukraine“: “An invoice seems to show a payment to him of $750,000, disguised as a sale of computers. A spokesman for Mr. Manafort dismissed it all as “baseless.”
This was not the first time Neocom Systems had surfaced in a corruption probe. In a 2012 money laundering and stock fraud case in Kyrgyzstan, the Central Bank listed it as a shell company used for payments by AsiaUniversalBank, a lender seized by Kyrgyzstan’s Central Bank amid money laundering allegations.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/world/europe/paul-manafort-ukraine-allegations-trump.html

“Paul Manafort and the Kyrgyz Connection
Who says a corruption scandal is ever really over? An old Kyrgyz banking scandal shows up in Manafort’s Ukraine dealings“. By Catherine Putz March 22, 2017
http://thediplomat.com/2017/03/paul-manafort-and-the-kyrgyz-connection/

AUB: “Asia Universal Bank was used for income laundering and theft of funds from loans obtained by Kyrgyzstan from foreign states were – Financial Intelligence Chief” The Free Library. 2013 Al Bawaba (Middle East) Ltd. 21 Mar. 2017 Read the article here: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Asia+Universal+Bank+was+used+for+income+laundering+and+theft+of+funds…-a0353714253

Excerpted from a Global Witness study, “Grave Secrecy”: “Of the jurisdictions in which AUB’s correspondent banks listed above are incorporated, the US requires its banks by law to do due diligence on their correspondent banks, as do the member states of the European Union. As of their most recent FATF mutual evaluations, Finland, Switzerland and China had not adopted this standard requiring their banks to do due diligence on their correspondent customers./ Banks in the EU or US entering a correspondent relationship with AUB were therefore required to ask questions about AUB’s due diligence systems and its regulation. If those banks in countries that have not yet adopted the FATF standard into law had a prudent eye to reducing their money laundering risk, they too would have done some due diligence…
One of the most striking features of AUB’s international access was the presence of three former US senators on its board: Bob Dole, J. Bennett Johnston and Donald W. Riegle Jr. How did this happen, particularly after the Russian Central Bank had warned Russian banks about the risks of doing business with AUB? /. The answer is that following the Russian Central Bank’s action in 2006, AUB hired a Washington DC public relations company, APCO Worldwide†,… APCO said it had “secured an agreement with AUB that it would put in place an independent board of directors.” Former US senators J. Bennett Johnston and Bob Dole – the latter a senior counsellor at APCO from 2004 to 2008 and a former presidential candidate – were hired to AUB’s board in June 2007. The following year, in April 2008, Eugene Gourevitch and his wife made a donation of US$4,600 to Elizabeth Dole’s US Senate election campaign. In early 2010 Senator Dole resigned from AUB’s board due to travel obligations and was replaced by another former US senator, Donald W. Riegle Jr, an employee of APCO. Both Riegle Jr and Johnston were still on the board at the time of the uprising in Kyrgyzstan in April 2010./

“I think it [hiring APCO] made it difference. Before it was like ‘Kyrgyzstan, where’s that?’ Then it was, ‘Bob Dole is a board member? Interesting, tell us more.’” AUB’s Denis Slobodyan” https://www.globalwitness.org/sites/default/files/library/GraveSecrecy_singlepagefinal.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APCO_Worldwide

Russian Oligarch Deripaska Tied to Manafort Also Has Past Links to Bob Dole

The Evil Trio from McCarthy to Trump via Watergate, Reagan, Bush: Cohn-Stone-Manafort

Paul Manafort, used to be in business with Roger Stone. Both have apparently worked for Bob Dole. Both have apparently known Trump for decades and were introduced via Joe McCarthy’s pitbull lawyer, later mob and Trump lawyer, Roy Cohn.

Manafort “was an adviser to the U.S. presidential campaigns of Republicans Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, and was the national chairman of the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, as well as being a senior partner in the firm Davis, Manafort, and Freedman. It was confirmed in The New York Times on the eve of the 2017 Presidential Inauguration that Manafort is under active investigation by the CIA, NSA, FBI, ODNI and FinCEN… In 2007 and 2008 Manafort was involved in investment projects with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (the acquisition of a Ukrainian telecoms company) and Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash (redevelopment of the site of the former Drake Hotel in New York City).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Manafort

Roger Stone worked for Dole: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Stone
1980- 96: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black,_Manafort,_Stone_and_Kelly
1996- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BKSH_%26_Associates_Worldwide
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/BKSH_%26_Associates_Worldwide

As people noted about Trump: “Dole often refers to himself in the third person in conversation.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Dole So, did Manafort teach Trump? Or both of them? Or did Roy Cohn teach Stone, Trump and Manafort this habit and they taught Dole?

Commerzbank Admits to Criminal Actions which Facilitated Olympus Accounting Fraud & Money-Laundering; Possibly Contributing to Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Dresdner Bank was bought by Commerzbank. The Dresdner Bank’s relationship with Russian President Putin is said to go back to when “Dresdner Bank attempted to get a banking operating license in Saint Petersburg, where former KGB agent Vladimir Putin was in charge of foreign economic relations. Dresdner Bank appointed Matthias Warnig, a former Stasi agent and Vladimir Putin’s former KGB contact, to negotiate with Putin. The office was opened in 1991.[6][7] Warnig became Chairman of the Board of Directors of Dresdner Bank ZAO, Dresdner Bank Russian subsidiary.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresdner_Bank Recall that Putin lived in Germany and knows German. In fact, he lived in Dresden, where this bank got its name and its start: “From 1985 to 1990, the KGB stationed Putin in Dresden, East Germany. During that time, Putin was assigned to Directorate S, the illegal intelligence-gathering unit (the KGB’s classification for agents who used falsified identities) where he was given cover as a translator and interpreter“.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin

Although Dresdner Bank was absorbed as a subsidiary of the German Commerzbank, it appears that its “lucrative business relationship with Gazprom and the state oil company Rosneft,” has continued. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresdner_Bank In April of 2013, Commerzbank facilitated a $1 billion USD loan to GazpromNeft and 7 months later (Nov, 2013), Commerzbank coordinated another $2.15 billion loan, from 14 leading banks, for GazpromNeft. The deal was Gazprom Neft’s largest loan facility in recent years. GazpromNeft focuses on the exploration and sale of crude oil and gas; oil refining, and marketing of petroleum products. Commerzbank also appears to be selling Rosneft shares, which is majority Russian State owned (69.5%) and 19.75% BP owned. See: https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/german-dresdner-bank-commerzbank-putin-and-russian-state-owned-gazprom-rosneft (Wikipedia excerpts Creative Commons and last accessed in 2014).

Since around the time (now former) Exxon CEO Tillerson was announced as Sec of State pick:
“UPDATE 2-Russia signs Rosneft deal with Qatar, Glencore
Posted:Sun, 11 Dec 2016 06:14:02 -0500
MOSCOW, Dec 11 (Reuters) – Russian state holding company Rosneftegaz on Saturday signed a deal with the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) and commodities trader Glencore to sell a 19.5 percent stake in state-owned oil major Rosneft, Rosneft said. ” http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/basicmaterialsNews/~3/lVhXLjCxS4U/russia-rosneft-privatisation-idUSL5N1E50TF

“RPT-INSIGHT-How Russia sold its oil jewel — without saying who bought it
Posted:Wed, 25 Jan 2017 03:51:27 -0500
MOSCOW/LONDON/MILAN, Jan 24 (Reuters) – More than a month after Russia announced one of its biggest privatisations since the 1990s, selling a 19.5 percent stake in its giant oil company Rosneft, it still isn’t possible to determine from public records the full identities of those who bought it.”
http://feeds.reuters.com/~r/reuters/basicmaterialsNews/~3/R2jyoa8GyMg/russia-rosneft-privatisation-repeat-insi-idUSL5N1FF1X4