Money laundering for Russians, of course!

A Congressional inquiry has found that it is ”relatively easy” for foreigners to hide their identities and form shell companies here that can launder money through American banks.

In a a nine-month inquiry that subpoenaed bank records, the investigators found that an unknown number of Russians and other East Europeans moved more than $1.4 billion through accounts at Citibank of New York and the Commercial Bank of San Francisco.

The accounts had been opened by Irakly Kaveladze, who immigrated to the United States from Russia in 1991, according to Citibank and Mr. Kaveladze. He set up more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware for Russian brokers and then opened the bank accounts for them, without knowing who owned the corporations, according to the report by the General Accounting Office, which has not been made public.

The report said the banks had failed to conduct any ”due diligence” into identifying the owners of the accounts.

Late this afternoon, Citibank sent a 15-page letter to the G.A.O., saying that it had closed the accounts after being contacted by G.A.O. investigators earlier this year.

http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-jr-russian-meeting-ike-kaveladze-natalie-veselnitskaya-638418

Kaveladze is an American citizen and has lived in the U.S. for many years, Balber told the Post. A LinkedIn account that appears to be for Kaveladze says he has 10 years of financial management experience. The account says that the Crocus Group hired him in 2004 as an analyst and that he was promoted to vice president five years later. He handles investment project development, regional business planning and tax preparation, according to the account. He apparently helped secure the company $20 million in annual savings. He lives in Huntington Beach, California, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Before joining the Crocus Group, Kaveladze was part of a nine-month congressional inquiry into foreigners hiding their identities behind shell companies and laundering money. According to a report in The New York Times about the probe, Kaveladze was born in the former Soviet republic of Georgia and immigrated to the U.S. in 1991. He started the companies International Business Creations and Euro-American Corporate Services, established more than 2,000 corporations in Delaware on behalf of Russian brokers and opened up bank accounts for them.

Of course laundering russian money is nothing new for our president:

The Russian plunked down $6 million to buy not one or two, but five luxury condos. The big check apparently caught the attention of the owner. According to Wayne Barrett, who investigated the deal for the Village Voice, Trump personally attended the closing, along with Bogatin.
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In 1987, just three years after he attended the closing with Trump, Bogatin pleaded guilty to taking part in a massive gasoline-bootlegging scheme with Russian mobsters. After he fled the country, the government seized his five condos at Trump Tower, saying that he had purchased them to “launder money, to shelter and hide assets.” A Senate investigation into organized crime later revealed that Bogatin was a leading figure in the Russian mob in New York. His family ties, in fact, led straight to the top: His brother ran a $150 million stock scam with none other than Semion Mogilevich, whom the FBI considers the “boss of bosses” of the Russian mafia. At the time, Mogilevich—feared even by his fellow gangsters as “the most powerful mobster in the world”—was expanding his multibillion-dollar international criminal syndicate into America.
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The feds wanted to arrest Ivankov, but he kept vanishing. “He was like a ghost to the FBI,” one agent recalls. Agents spotted him meeting with other Russian crime figures in Miami, Los Angeles, Boston, and Toronto. They also found he made frequent visits to Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, which mobsters routinely used to launder huge sums of money. In 2015, the Taj Mahal was fined $10 million—the highest penalty ever levied by the feds against a casino—and admitted to having “willfully violated” anti-money-laundering regulations for years.

The FBI also struggled to figure out where Ivankov lived. “We were looking around, looking around, looking around,” James Moody, chief of the bureau’s organized crime section, told Friedman. “We had to go out and really beat the bushes. And then we found out that he was living in a luxury condo in Trump Tower.”

There is no evidence that Trump knew Ivankov personally, even if they were neighbors. But the fact that a top Russian mafia boss lived and worked in Trump’s own building indicates just how much high-level Russian mobsters came to view the future president’s properties as a home away from home.
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But even if Trump has no memory of the many deals that he and his business made with Russian investors, he certainly did not “stay away” from Russia. For decades, he and his organization have aggressively promoted his business there, seeking to entice investors and buyers for some of his most high-profile developments. Whether Trump knew it or not, Russian mobsters and corrupt oligarchs used his properties not only to launder vast sums of money from extortion, drugs, gambling, and racketeering, but even as a base of operations for their criminal activities. In the process, they propped up Trump’s business and enabled him to reinvent his image. Without the Russian mafia, it is fair to say, Donald Trump would not be president of the United States.