From the article:
“For instance, we can bring up Mr. Browder, in this particular case. Business associates of Mr. Browder have earned over $1.5 billion in Russia and never paid any taxes neither in Russia or the United States and yet the money escaped the country. They were transferred to the United States. They sent [a] huge amount of money, $400,000,000, as a contribution to the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Well that’s their personal case.
It might have been legal, the contribution itself but the way the money was earned was illegal. So we have solid reason to believe that some [US] intelligence officers accompanied and guided these transactions. So we have an interest in questioning them.”
Uh-oh...This makes it a little more clear why all the usual suspects are hissing and going all Linda Blair pea soup spewing.
No kidding! I never did fully understand the Maginsky Act part of the tale, but now I do! This is the best movie of all time. Trump is not only the best troll ever, he’s the most stable genius ever. There are so many moving parts in the Clinton/0bama scandals but Trump has zeroed in and gotten a radar lock. Missiles next.
:: So we have solid reason to believe that some [US] intelligence officers accompanied and guided these transactions. So we have an interest in questioning them. ::
The quid-pro-quo offer from Putin. Y’all come on over and I’ll let you question those 12 GRU officers
IF
you bring the US “officers” that ‘accompanied and guided these transactions’ so we, too, may question them.
Win, win winning?
more Browder info, his Company is called Hermitage Capital (lol subtle)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermitage_Capital_Management
Hermitage Capital Management is an investment fund and asset management company specializing in Russian markets founded by Bill Browder and Edmond Safra. Chief Operating Officer is Ivan Cherkasov
Hermitage describe themselves as an activist fund. Its main tactics include the exposure of corporate corruption in the companies it is holding, in the hope of improving managerial behaviour and lessen the significant discount that corruption has on share prices. Most famously, Hermitage has helped to expose several high-profile cases of corruption in Russia’s largest company Gazprom between 1998 and 2000. In October 2000, Hermitage reported that “investors are valuing this company as if 99 percent of its assets have been stolen. The real figure is around 10 percent so that’s good news.”
In April 2007, the firm launched Hermitage Global, an activist fund focused on global emerging markets.
Since 2015, Hermitage has operated as a family office hedge fund based in London, having returned outside capital to investors. The focus of the fund is still in emerging markets.
Conflict with Russian government
Although the fund’s founder William Browder was a supporter of Russian president Vladimir Putin, in November 2005 he was blacklisted by the Russian government as a “threat to national security” and denied entry to the country. According to publication in The Economist, the fund was blacklisted because its management interfered with the flow of money to “corrupt bureaucrats and their businessmen accomplices” in Russia.
As the New York Times reported in 2008, over the next two years, several of his associates and lawyers, as well as their relatives, were victims of crimes, including severe beatings and robberies during which documents were taken. In June 2007 dozens of police officers raided the Moscow offices of Hermitage and its law firm, confiscating documents and computers. When a member of the firm protested that the search was illegal, he was beaten by officers and hospitalized for two weeks. Hermitage became victim of what is known in Russia as “corporate raiding”: seizing companies and other assets with the aid of corrupt law enforcement officials and judges. Three Hermitage holdings companies were seized on what the company’s lawyers insist are bogus charges.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmond_Safra
Edmond J. Safra 6 August 1932 – 3 December 1999) was a Lebanese Brazilian Jewish banker who continued the family tradition of banking in Syria, Lebanon, Brazil and Switzerland. He was married to Lily Watkins from 1976 until his death. He died in a fire that attracted wide media interest and was judicially determined to be due to arson.
In December 1999, Safra and nurse Vivian Torrente were suffocated by fumes in a fire deliberately lit at the billionaire’s Monaco home, where he apparently felt so safe that he did not have his bodyguards stay the night.
Another bodyguard and nurse, American Ted Maher, who was sharing the night shift with Torrente at the time, was arrested under suspicion of starting the fire, and was convicted of the crime in 2002 by the Monaco Court. He claims that he was attacked by two masked men and, unable to figure out how to trigger the Safra’s complex security system, started the fire in an attempt to trigger the system. The prosecution argued he was attempting to carry out a daring rescue, and thus increase his standing in the Safra family’s eyes, but lost control of the fire unintentionally.
Maher’s lawyer, Michael Griffith, said that Maher did indeed start the fire in order to gain acceptance from Safra and that “It was a stupid, most insane thing a human being could do,” said Griffith. “He did not intend to kill Mr. Safra. He just wanted Mr. Safra to appreciate him more. He loved Mr. Safra. This was the best job of his life.” Safra left 50% of his assets to several charities. The details of Safra’s death were discussed by media outlets including 60 Minutes, CBS 48 Hours, Dateline NBC and Dominick Dunne in Vanity Fair.
BROWDER RESPONDS TO PUTIN ACCUSATIONS
I read Browder's book, "Red Notice," several years ago. I've forgotten many of the details, but it was a compelling book, and plausible. He was running a hedge fund investing in the breakup of the Russian government owned enterprises, whose shares had been distributed and were being reacquired by large interests. Most of them were well-connected Russians, who became the oligarchs. Browder's investors were international.
According to the story, they did very well, but out of the blue, they were told to leave, and they uncovered evidence of Russian Government misdeeds. Their lawyer, Magnitsky, was pressured to give false testimony incriminating Browder, but refused to do so, even after imprisonment and maltreatment.
It because of the Magnitsky story as told by Browder that Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, and strangely, what Soviet Attorney Velitskaya really wanted to talk to Donald Trump Jr. about, although she used the excuse of dirt on Hillary as the come-on for the meeting.
I could believe almost anything--both of Putin and of those against him. But, here's one thing that strikes me as strange: Big players are often involved in heavy political investment. But if the amount of the purported gain that escaped taxes was $1.5 Billion, $400 million is an awful big cut for a political contribution. And, if the money was earned through trading of Russian stocks, how did it get turned into transportable, escorted cash? That kind of money tends to stay in the banking system, even the Russian banking system.
I read elsewhere that the translator made a mistake on the amount and Putin said $400,000d not $400 M dollars.