Trumps Longtime Lawyer Is Defending Russias Biggest Bank
One of President Donald Trump’s personal attorneys was just named a lead attorney to defend Russia’s largest state-run bank against claims that it helped a granite-mining company raid and kill off its main competitor in the Russian market.
Marc E. Kasowitz is representing OJSC Sberbank of Russia, which is accused in U.S. federal court of conspiring with granite company executives — including Russia’s former minister of economy and trade — in what the plaintiffs say amounts to a “a textbook case of Russian corporate raiding.”
Kasowitz has served as an attorney for Trump for more than 15 years. He did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.
In 2001, Kasowitz’s firm represented the Trump Organization during a bond restructuring for his Atlantic City Casinos. In 2006, he filed a $5 billion defamation lawsuit against the author of a book about Trump. And twice last year, Kasowitz threatened the New York Times after it published three pages of tax returns and a story about women who claim the president sexually assaulted them.
In December, Trump named another partner at Kasowitz’s firm, David Friedman, to serve as the ambassador to Israel. In a contentious vote earlier this month, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the nomination, which now awaits a full vote in the Senate.
The Sberbank lawsuit was filed in late November in the Southern District of New York and unsealed in January. The complaint claims that a Russian company, P-Granit, was the subject of a hostile takeover by its rivals starting in 2009. By using a series of shell companies and “straw men,” the rivals allegedly began to take control of P-Granit shares and “trapped” the firm’s owner as it tried to refinance loans with Sberbank.
Sometimes, the lawsuit says, the defendants “identified” companies that would win an auction “days before they had even conducted the auction.”
https://www.buzzfeed.com/anthonycormier/trumps-longtime-lawyer-is-defending-russias-biggest-bank?utm_term=.sheq2lgQW#.ngWX5Mrxo
Conflicts of interest and tentacles spread a mile......
