Natalia Veselnitskaya

Natalia Veselnitskaya has become a prominent figure in the Trump-Russia investigation. She is a lawyer and lobbyist against the Magnitsky Act, sanctions which threaten the personal fortunes of numerous oligarchs and reportedly even Putin.  She represents Prevezon Holdings, a real estate company, in a money laundering case and hired Fusion GPS, contractor of Orbis for the Steele Dossier. She saw her client Glen Simpson of Fusion GPS over lunch before attending the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower. She tried to recruit one of Switzerland’s top investigators in December 2016, “set up by Russian Deputy Attorney General Saak Albertovich Karapetyan—from the same rogue department that was apparently responsible for offering intel on Hillary Clinton to be shared at the Trump Tower meeting and the Kremlin’s further plots to influence U.S. politics.” The Daily Beast

(CNN)”She’s been called a “Russian government attorney,” a “trusted insider” of the Kremlin, the “go-to lawyer for the Moscow regional government” and an acquaintance of Russia’s powerful prosecutor general.

Natalia Veselnitskaya, 42, rose from obscurity to international notoriety following the disclosure of her June 9, 2016, meeting with Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. She also appears to have amassed considerable wealth in a very short period of time, 14 years ago, when her legal career in the Moscow region (not to be confused with the city of Moscow) was in its infancy and she was just transitioning from being a government employee to a private practitioner.”(CNN)

THE MAGNITSKY ACT: VESELNITSKAYA’S MAIN MISSION

Russia issues new ‘red notice’ request for arrest of British Putin critic Bill Browder Bill Browder gave evidence on Russia to the Senate Judiciary Committee in July The Telegraph UK CREDIT: ANDREW HARRER/BLOOMBERG  

“Previous attempts by Russia to issue a red notice for Mr Browder through Interpol have been blocked amid a public outcry about the use of the international policing network for political purposes – although the recent appointment of a Russian police official as vice president of the body may help Moscow to press its case.

But earlier this month Mr Browder, the founder of a London-based investment firm, was stopped at Heathrow while attempting to fly to the US, due to what officials later described as a “flag by foreign law enforcement” next to his name.  Bill Browder’s lawyer Sergei Magnitsky was found dead in a Russian prison, in what the UK government labelled an “atrocious murder”

Days earlier he had given evidence to the US Senate’s judiciary committee on a controversial meeting Donald Trump Jr held with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer,  during the presidential election campaign. “The Telegraph UK 

Russia puts British Putin critic on Interpol wanted list Vladimir Putin said to have agreed to move against Bill Browder, who has battled Moscow over ‘Magnitsky Act’ The Guardian   October 21, 2017

Bill Browder banned from America after Russia put him in Interpol list 

Hermitage Capital’s Browder Sentenced In Absentia By Moscow Court 

Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty December 29, 2017 “A court in Moscow has sentenced Hermitage Capital head William Browder to nine years in prison in absentia after finding him guilty of deliberate bankruptcy and tax evasion.

Browder, who has led a global push for sanctions against Russian officials implicated in the death of imprisoned Russian whistle-blower Sergei Magnitsky, also was fined 200,000 rubles (about $3,500) and banned from conducting business activities in Russia for three years. Browder’s co-defendant, Ivan Cherkasov, received an eight-year prison term in absentia.”

The Russians Killed My Lawyer. This Is How I Got Congress to Avenge Him. How one man convinced Washington to care about human rights in Putin’s Russia. Politico By BILL BROWDER  February 03, 2015

December 2016, “Mr. K.” in Moscow: Trump Tower Russian Lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, Exposed in Swiss Corruption Case

Natalia Veselnitskaya, who organized the notorious Trump Tower meeting, has been named in an explosive Swiss court case about bribery, corruption, and double-agents.  The Daily Beast

NICO HINES   January 29, 2018   “One of Switzerland’s top investigators has been fired after allegations of bribery, violating secrecy laws, and “unauthorized clandestine behavior” in meeting with the very same Russian actors linked to the Trump Tower encounter.

Details of the explosive case have been published by investigative reporters for the Tribune de Genève and Tages-Anzeiger newspapers in Switzerland. The officer, identified only as Victor K., traveled to Moscow—against the expressed wishes of his superiors—where he spoke to Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who met with Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner at Trump Tower.

The meeting was reportedly set up by Russian Deputy Attorney General Saak Albertovich Karapetyan—from the same rogue department that was apparently responsible for offering intel on Hillary Clinton to be shared at the Trump Tower meeting and the Kremlin’s further plots to influence U.S. politics.

The reports, which are based on Swiss court papers, describe how K. was lured to Moscow during a call from Karapetyan before Christmas 2016. He was told not to go by his boss, ostensibly because he was working too much overtime, but he made the trip anyway, using his diplomatic passport to fly to the Russian capital. There, he was put up in a luxury hotel and asked to attend an unexpected meeting with Veselnitskaya.” The Daily Beast

Was Yury Chaika, a Putin Loyalist Accused of Corruption, Behind the Don Jr. Meeting?  Emails published by Trump’s son suggest he was meeting a Russian go-between for information that came from Yury Chaika. The Daily Beast KATIE ZAVADSKI  July 12, 2017

Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting to get kompromat on Hillary Clinton may have been arranged by an allegedly corrupt Putin loyalist with an affinity for nepotism and shutting down opponents. The meeting was orchestrated at the behest of Russia’s “crown prosecutor”—a non-existent position that seems to refer to the country’s Prosecutor General, according to e-mails obtained by the New York Times.

That reference would appear to point to a man named Yury Chaika, a longtime ally of the Putin regime who is tight with Trump’s failed business partner, Aras Agalarov.

In June, Chaika relaunched a vicious attack against Browder, saying that his goals are to destroy Russia’s credibility. Browder has campaigned to bring to justice those responsible for Magnitsky’s death in a Russian prison, culminating in an act barring numerous officials from entering the U.S. for their involvement in the Magnitsky case or other alleged corrupt practices.

In fact, when anti-corruption campaigner Alexander Navalny shed a light on Chaika’s alleged misdeeds in a 2015 documentary, Russia’s top prosecutor tried to shift the blame to Browder. The documentary accused Chaika’s sons of using the prosecutor’s political connections to get rich, and of being involved in illicit businesses like gambling. The sons have amassed fortunes, with properties in Greece and Switzerland; Navalny’s anti-corruption organization also says Chaika’s underlings have ties to organized crime.

“As the Nazi criminal and propaganda minister in Hitler’s Germany, [Joseph] Goebbels, said, a lie repeated a thousand times becomes true,” Agalarovwrote. “I don’t want to draw any parallels. Let’s just think about it.”

(Navalny responded by pointing out Agalarov’s strong government ties.)

“[The] chain of transmission of information from Putin to Chaika to Agalarov to Trump looks entirely possible, it’s not far-fetched,” Navalny wrote after news of the e-mail broke Tuesday.”The Daily Beast 

 *Prevezon:”Former FBI director represented Russian firm at center of major money-laundering probe Business Insider  Natasha Bertrand  November 16, 2017
  • The Russian-owned real-estate firm Prevezon earlier this year hired former FBI Director Louis Freeh to help settle a major money-laundering case with the US government.

“Freeh, who was the director of the FBI from 1993 to 2001, has been known to take on controversial clients since entering the private sector in the early 2000s. In 2015, for instance, he represented an Israeli billionaire accused of bribing the government of Guinea for a stake in an iron mine.

Prosecutors are now trying to get Prevezon to pay the $5.9 million it was supposed to turn over by October 31.

Prevezon has argued that the funds it would use to pay the settlement are tied up in the Netherlands with a company called AFI Europe, which Prevezon says froze a payment of more than $3 million as part of the US litigation against the Russian-owned firm. But the government has balked at Prevezon’s excuse.

“If Prevezon’s payment is not due until Prevezon obtains the debt from the Netherlands, this case could stay open – and Prevezon’s US assets could stay frozen – for years,” Kim wrote.

He added that Prevezon had even prepared for the possibility that it would never be paid by AFI Europe.

“During settlement negotiations in 2015 and again in 2017, Prevezon repeatedly requested various protections for Prevezon in the event that the Netherlands announced or manifested its intent to retain the AFI Europe Debt following its release of the US-requested restraint,” the memorandum says.

A federal judge in New York who earlier this month denied Prevazon’s request to let Veselnitskaya enter the US to represent it in court argued that the firm should have been eager to pay the $5.9 million because, absent settlement, “the trial would have showcased a tale of international intrigue – a massive tax fraud in Russia resulting in the transfer of $230 million through a Byzantine web of shell companies.” Business Insider

The curious rise of Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who met Team Trump CNN By Michael Weiss   Updated 4:44 PM EDT, Sat September 16, 2017 (CNN)She’s been called a “Russian government attorney,” a “trusted insider” of the Kremlin, the “go-to lawyer for the Moscow regional government” and an acquaintance of Russia’s powerful prosecutor general.

Natalia Veselnitskaya, 42, rose from obscurity to international notoriety following the disclosure of her June 9, 2016, meeting with Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. She also appears to have amassed considerable wealth in a very short period of time, 14 years ago, when her legal career in the Moscow region (not to be confused with the city of Moscow) was in its infancy and she was just transitioning from being a government employee to a private practitioner.

Her partner in counter-Magnitsky agitating is Rinat Akhmetshin, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist who, The New York Times has reported, maintains an “association” with Viktor Ivanov, the former deputy head of Russia’s domestic spy agency, the FSB. Akhmetshin was an officer in a Soviet military intelligence unit, according to the Times. He, too, attended the meeting with the Trump camp in New York in June 2016.

The windfall

It’s not clear why, according to Russian financial databases, Veselnitskaya’s income increased at around the same time as she purchased the two land parcels in 2003.

While there is no way of determining whether these financial disclosures are entirely accurate or comprehensive, the two databases from which I requested them are frequently used by Russian journalists researching Moscow government officials.

One of them, Larix, is run by the Moscow Center for Economic Security, a private intelligence firm, which has previously come under scrutiny for selling the passport information of millions of current and former residents of the Russian capital. The other database, Cronos, says it draws financial information from the Russian Pension Fund, the country’s version of Social Security, which applies to all tax-paying citizens.

Both sets of financial records for Veselnitskaya’s income between the years 1999 and 2003 match exactly. The employers listed in either are indeed those for which she is known to have worked, according to international press reports and her own declarations in US court.

These records show that in 2003, she made around $54,000, the vast majority of it after she purchased the aforementioned property, considered to be worth more than $1 million. At that price, she clearly wouldn’t have had enough collateral for a mortgage, so where did the money come from?

Anya Levitov, a Russian broker formerly with Evans Property Services, laughed when I asked if such modest incomes were typical for the average landowner in DSK Riita, the tony forested community where Veselnitskaya invested in 2003.

The area is a “closed club village in the old-fashioned style,” as its website advertises, constructed in the middle of a pine forest along the Rublevo-Uspensky highway, with fenced-in lots and bespoke building options. “The cost of developing completed houses in that community in 2006 were in the ballpark of $10 to $12 million,” says Levitov. 

Now based in New York, where she is the managing partner of Versus Real Estate, Levitov has facilitated property transactions in DSK Riita in the past decade and she says that two lots in that community of comparable square footage, sold at around the time Veselnitskaya bought hers, would have gone for anywhere between $500,000 and $800,000 per lot.

Each “cottage” in the gated enclave features “rooms for staff,” the DSK Riita website informs us, suggesting the type of homeowner the community seeks to attract. The area is just a short car ride away from Vladimir Putin’s presidential residence at Novo-Ogaryovo and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s own dacha.

The cottage

Veselnitskaya has built a comfortable 8,000 square-foot “cottage” in DSK Riita. A photograph of one wall of the house became famous for a hot minute in July when it was exhibited in a tranche of hacked emails belonging to a senior State Department official who works in the department’s secretive intelligence wing.(CNN)