The headlines all week have been about the Trump dossier which is a memo by ex-MI6 officer Christopher Steele containing unverified information that the Putin Regime has been blackmailing Donald Trump to allow Russia to attack Ukraine.
Part of the memo is about Alfa Group of Russia, which was closely linked to Parex Bank of Latvia. Alfa Group oligarchs Mihail Fridman and Piotr Aven are close friends with Parex oligarchs Valery Kargin and Viktor Krasovitsky. According to the media, Alfa was negotiating a purchase of Parex in 2007. Alfa apparently decided not to purchase Parex and instead a billion euros of Parex assets disappeared and Parex liabilities were handed to Latvian taxpayers in 2008 as Parex’s offshore banking employees and clients were shifted to Citadele Bank and AB.LV. The government made no attempt to recover the missing billion and didn’t bother to prosecute anyone despite clear evidence of massive frauds.
Aven in particular is well known in Latvia because he together with Russian oligarch Yuri Shefler control Latvijas Balzams. When Latvian oligarch Andris Skele invited them to Latvia to become owners of this state company, there were approximately seven assassinations of Latvian citizens linked to the transaction. Parex made illegal fraudulent loans to Latvijas Balzams which were never investigated.
The memo names Latvia as a country where Russia is bribing people. This is consistent with the fact that Latvian politicians decided to give a quarter of the national budget to Parex in 2008/2009 thus causing the economic and demographic collapse of Latvia. Still today there has been no investigation and the government is still lying that “Sweden” caused the collapse.
We welcome a whistleblower from within the UK/US intelligence agencies. For many years, the UK/US intelligence agencies have been protecting Putin’s oligarchs by keeping information about their crimes secret. Maybe now they can arrest the criminals instead of protecting them.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/12/intelligence-sources-vouch-credibility-donald-trump-russia-dossier-author
