The Alfa Bank?

[kentuck]

How important is this indictment of Alex van der Zwaan? Was there really communication between Alfa Bank and Trump Tower? What was it about? Why did it abruptly end??

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<snip>
The Dutch son-in-law of one of Russia’s wealthiest men pleaded guilty Tuesday in federal court in Washington to making false statements in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Alex van der Zwaan was charged with lying to the FBI about his contacts with Rick Gates, who served as a top official on President Trump’s campaign and a longtime business partner of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Based in London, van der Zwaan worked for the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which worked with Manafort and Gates when they served as political consultants in Ukraine.

Van der Zwaan is the son-in-law of German Khan, a billionaire and an owner of Alfa Group, Russia’s largest financial and industrial investment group.

More....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/mueller-probe-london-based-son-of-russian-businessman-to-plead-guilty-to-false-statements/2018/02/20/142f4d2e-164b-11e8-b681-2d4d462a1921_story.html?utm_term=.df9e028995c6
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<snip>
(older article)

The FBI is examining why a computer server for a Russian bank led by oligarchs with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin had a disproportionate interest in reaching a server used by the Trump Organization during the US presidential campaign.

CNN reported on Thursday that last summer a computer server owned by the Russia-based Alfa Bank "repeatedly looked up the contact information for a computer server being used by the Trump Organization — far more than other companies did, representing 80% of all lookups to the Trump server."

Slate and The New York Times first reported on the unusual server activity, which was akin to looking up someone's phone number thousands of times.

The Times reported on October 31 that the FBI examined the server activity and "ultimately concluded that there could be an innocuous explanation, like a marketing email or spam, for the computer contacts."

more....

http://www.businessinsider.com/fbi-alfa-bank-trump-organization-servers-2017-3

[pnwmom]

1. The communication may have ended because of the news reports in 2016 about the FISA warrant. n/t

[unc70]

2. Communication probably using DNS tunneling to avoid firewall

The type of network traffic detected strongly suggests the use of a program like “Iodine” to circumvent firewall restrictions and logging. Iodine stands for Internet Proticol Over DNS. It hides other Internet messages among normally routine name lookup services messages.

There are methods using Iodine to access ssh or various database systems.

[sarcasmo]

3. The forensic accountants on Mueller's team are earning every penny.