LONDON – A company recently approved by the US over the poisoning attack of Alexei Navalny has been linked to the money laundering network that Natalia Veselnitskaya tried to cover up during the infamous Trump Tower meeting in 2016, according to financial records obtained by The Daily Beast has.
Now we know why Vladimir Putin was so desperate to dismiss the international corruption scandals that began when Sergei Magnitsky had a $ 230 million fraud against the Russian people. For the first time, that dark money network could be linked to the murderous chemical weapons program run by Russia’s notorious intelligence services.
After exposing the massive theft of state money, Magnitsky ends up in a Russian prison cell. Legislation in his name has been introduced around the world by governments seeking to combat corruption, including the US Magnitsky Act. Despite the interventions of Veselnitskaya – a Russian lawyer sent to the US to persuade the Trump campaign to withdraw the law – investigation into the stolen money is still exposed to an international web of bank accounts related to alleged violations .
The Biden government said this month that it was approving a German chemical company called Riol-Chemie, because of its “activities in support of Russia’s weapons of mass destruction programs.”
It was part of the government’s response to the assassination attempt on Putin’s nemesis Navalny. The anti-corruption campaigner survived a chemical weapons attack after a plane that took him on a long flight home diverted to Moscow and he was able to receive medical care – first in a Siberian hospital and then in Germany, where he was transported by helicopter for further treatment.
After waking up from a week-long coma, Navalny outwitted a member of the assassination squad by introducing him as a senior FSB official and tricking his prospective killer into explaining over the phone how the murder group the Novichok nerve agent rubbed into the seams of. Navalny’s underpants.
President Trump shook off the attack, but on March 2, the Biden team announced sanctions against seven senior Russian officials and 14 other entities involved in the production of chemical and biological weapons.
One of the institutions singled out by the US government as a cog in the Russian mass destruction program for Russia was Riol-Chemie. Investigative files compiled by the Lithuanian authorities – and reviewed by The Daily Beast – show that Riol Chemistry has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from a company registered in the British Virgin Islands, which is accused of being a part of of the stolen money that Magnitsky exposed has money laundering.
According to sources close to a separate investigation by the French government, financial records show that two New Zealand registered companies, which also received money from the $ 230 million fraud, wired more than $ 1 million to Riol-Chemie.
Riol-Chemie did not respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.
The United States’ formal designation of Riol Chemistry as a sanctioning entity does not give details about its role in the Russian weapons program, but orders and invoices seen by The Daily Beast show that the company has components from a US manufacturer which has now expired. Called Aeroflex. According to records, Aeroflex, then based in New York, took orders for radiation-hardened semiconductors and regulators in 2007. These components are often used to build missiles and satellites.
The orders were to be sent to Riol-Chemie in northern Germany, but the reports show that the strictly controlled radiation chips were paid for by yet another entity accused of being the stolen Russian money. According to the paperwork, the invoice was to Tolbrist Alliance Inc., a shell company listed in the Offshore Leaks Database by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists registered as a post office in the British Virgin Islands.
According to bank records checked by The Daily Beast, Lithuanian authorities have discovered that Tolbrist Alliance Inc. received about $ 50 million from companies related to the fraud that Magnitsky discovered.
‘This clearly shows why Putin became unfit due to the Magnitsky investigation.”
– Bill Browder, CEO of Hermitage Capital, struck by $ 230 million in fraud.
Financial records show that Tolbrist spent at least $ 1.5 million on Aeroflex.
Aeroflex, which no longer trades, has been sued by the State Department for hundreds of violations of International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) “which largely consist of unauthorized exports.” There is no indication that the company violated the law by supplying the rad chips to Riol-Chemie – the transactions took place years before the US government announced that the German company was a secret part of Putin’s illegal arms smuggling operation.
The repeated ties between companies accused of laundering $ 230 million and Riol-Chemie may point to a broader, calculated scheme with far-reaching political implications. Money stolen from the Russian people – while the authorities turned over cloths – was apparently channeled into a black arms program. Whoever led the distribution of the stolen funds also played a top secret role in Russian national security.
“This clearly shows why Putin became unfit because of the Magnitsky investigation,” said Bill Browder, who led the anti-corruption campaign on behalf of his former lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky. “Every layer of this onion that is peeled, more and more dirty and dangerous information emerges.”
Previous reports have also claimed that some of the stolen funds ended up in the hands of people connected to Syria’s chemical weapons program.
The man tasked with halting the Magnitsky-inspired investigations that flourished around the world was Yury Chaika, one of Putin’s top judges and the Russian prosecutor general until last year. President Obama signed the anti-corruption law on Magnitsky in 2012, and Chaika’s protégée, Veselnitskaya, was sent to speak out against the law during the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort in 2016.
Putin raised the issue with Trump himself during the Helsinki summit in 2018. The former president listened as he nodded during a joint press conference with a group of perverts over election interference, the Crimea and Browder.
Veselnitskaya was also part of the legal team defending Prevezon, another of the companies accused of stealing the stolen money, which is being investigated in the southern district of New York. The case was eventually settled out of court with Prevezon paying $ 6 million. Veselnitskaya is charged with obstruction of justice for collaborating with Chaika’s Moscow office on medical evidence submitted to the court.
While the speculation of Trump and Russia was at its peak, Veselnitskaya always insisted that she was not at Trump Tower trying to help the election; she was there to put the case against the Magnitsky investigation.
“To sum up, these were not the happiest days of my life,” Veselnitskaya told NBC News amid the setback around the Trump Tower meeting.
Despite the personal costs, it appears that Putin and his cronies will do nothing to stop the investigation into fraud. But the US government’s sanction against Riol Chemistry could provide an important lesson for the Kremlin: even dark money can be followed.