Money Laundering: What Putin May Really Have on Trump
BY OWEN MATTHEWS ON 1/28/18 AT 11:16 AM
At the end of January, on orders from Congress, the U.S. Treasury will publish a list of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “close associates”—from oligarchs to leading officials. There won’t be any sanctions attached to this list—for now. But eventually, the people on the list will likely join dozens of top Putin lieutenants already banned from traveling or doing business in the West. Meanwhile, forensic accountants from the intelligence unit of the U.S. Treasury Department will start scrutinizing their finances.
It’s unclear if such a move would damage Putin, whose approval ratings continue to soar despite multiple rounds of sanctions. But if Treasury inspects the Kremlin’s breadcrumbs abroad, it may lead them to President Donald Trump—and ultimately help special counsel Robert Mueller.
In Fire and Fury, Michael Wolff’s scandalous new book about the White House, Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, warned that Mueller’s investigation will focus on money laundering. He predicted that the special counsel was going to “crack Don [Trump] Jr. like an egg on national TV.” A new sanctions-related spotlight on the business dealings of top Russian oligarchs’ will only add to Mueller’s ongoing scrutiny.
Take Deutsche Bank, for instance, which U.S. and European regulators fined last year for helping Russian oligarchs move their money offshore. Deutsche has also been a long-time creditor of the Trump business empire. Last December, it was reportedly subpoenaed by Mueller, who is trying to determine if Russia—as it interfered in the presidential election—coordinated its efforts with the Trump Team. In January 2017, the bank was hit with hundreds of millions in penalties by the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS) for violating anti-money laundering laws following a “mirror trading” scheme that shifted billions from the bank’s Moscow branch to New York and London and then onto the British Virgin Islands and other tax havens, according to DFS Superintendent Maria Vullo.
“Basically, DB was putting money from [Russian] oligarchs into one pocket and lending the Trump Organization hundreds of millions from the other,” says Tim Brown, a London-based financial investigator who has done Russia-related work for Kroll Associates and other asset-tracing companies. “So far, there’s no proven connection between those pockets…In large banks like DB, it’s quite plausible that the guys at those two departments have never even met. But [the FBI and Treasury] will also be looking at the oligarchs’ private investments. Any of that money finds its way into Trump businesses and bam, you got a smoking gun…on money laundering.”
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