Maria Butina story gets stranger
BY TINA NGUYEN
AUGUST 1, 2018 2:17 PM
... Much of the interest in Butina centers on her relationship with Paul Erickson, an unmarried, well-connected Republican activist nearly twice her age ... Last month, a Daily Beast report portrayed him as a balding, lonely fool in love. (In the indictment filed against Butina last month, prosecutors alleged that she had “expressed disdain for continuing to cohabitate” with Erickson.) ... Erickson — whose résumé includes stints representing a Congolese dictator, running P.R. for a man whose wife infamously cut off his penis, and working for Pat Buchanan — seemed an unlikely match for a college student ...
... Bank activity flagged by anti-fraud investigators at Wells Fargo shows the two sent hundreds of thousands of dollars back and forth between their accounts — Butina’s at Alfa Bank in Russia, Erickson’s at Wells Fargo — to conduct what Butina referred to in an e-mail as her “special project” ...
In a 2017 report to the F.B.I. and the Treasury Department, Wells Fargo investigators said that they could find no “apparent economic, business, or lawful purpose” for the numerous transactions, nor could they figure out why Erickson, who frequently overdrew his own personal and business accounts, had “significant control” over Butina’s. Counter-intelligence officials told BuzzFeed that the transactions “could provide a road map” to Butina’s infiltration of right-wing groups including the National Rifle Association, as well as Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election ...
... On Tuesday night, the Daily Beast reported that Butina had also helped direct the flow of American money back toward Russia. In 2015, shortly before she began her graduate studies at American University, Butina reportedly made an overture to Starr Russia Investments III, an investment firm run by American financier and former Federal Reserve Bank chair Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, to double down on his investment in Investtorgbank, a floundering Russian bank. At the time, sources familiar with the proposal said, Butina’s request raised eyebrows. Although Butina was known to be an associate of Alexander Torshin—the deputy governor of the Central Bank of Russia—it seemed strange that a twentysomething expat would take such an interest in keeping Investtorgbank solvent ...
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/08/maria-butina-russia-spy-financial-investigation
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