WASHINGTON, D.C. – With Special Counselor Robert Mueller indicting former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for money-laundering activities involving Ukraine, the Trump administration should appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate evidence that Viktor Vekselberg, a Russian billionaire with close ties to Putin, laundered money to Hillary Clinton and John Podesta through Metcombank, a Russian bank owned by Vekselberg.
On Feb. 21, 2017, Infowars.com published documentation Vekselberg paid Clinton and Podesta through a complicated money laundering scheme involving Metcombank in Russia, with payments tracing back to the Renova Group, a Russia-based energy and investment international conglomerate also owned by Vekselberg.
The money Vekselberg laundered to Clinton and Podesta via Metcombank originated in large part from Rusnano, a state-owned investment fund owned by the Russian bank that has a history of investing alongside the Renova Group.
The Renova Group owns and operates Renova Assets Ltd., a private investment company headquartered in the Bahamas that no key executives, board members, or members of the executive committee.
Vekselberg’s money-laundering scheme involved paying Podesta through a Netherlands-listed private company that plays prominently into the international money laundering the Russian government has been conducting through offshore entities in the Cayman Islands, as documented by the Panama Papers.
In 2011, Vekselberg directed Rusnano to make a $35 million investment into Joule Unlimited, a small Massachusetts-based energy company owned by Joule Global Holdings, N.V., in the Netherlands, with Joule Global Stichting in the Netherlands listed as the ultimate controlling entity in the Russian-created money-laundering shell game.
In the summer of 2011, while he was advising then-Secretary Clinton on State Department policy, John Podesta joined the board of three Joule entities: Joule Unlimited, a small Massachusetts-based energy company; its holding company, Joule Global Holdings, N.., which is based in the Netherlands; and Joule Global Stichting, which appears to be the ultimate controlling entity.
Podesta, it turns out, has been paid an undisclosed amount, starting in 2011, for serving on the executive board of Joule Unlimited that he neglected to report to regulatory authorities in the U.S., as well consulting fees from the Wyss Foundation, a group controlled by Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, an investor in Joule Energy.
In an Aug. 2016 report entitled “From Russia with Money,” the Government Accountability Institute noted that Podesta consulted for a foundation run by one of the investors in Joule Energy, Hansjörg Wyss, who in turn was a major Clinton Foundation donor.
Podesta was evidently paid $87,000 by the Wyss Foundation in 2013, according to federal tax records.
The GAI report also documented the Wyss Charitable Foundation has given between $1 million to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation.
Joule Global Stichting was established in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, on March 14, 2011.
John Podesta joined the Joule Global Stichting’s executive board on June 25, 2011. The Joule Global Stichting is a foundation, but it’s not strictly a foundation in the charitable sense.
A foundation of this type, a Dutch stichting, is a popular means of reducing one’s tax burden, as noted on the website of the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, which is at the heart of the Panama Papers investigation into offshore banking and money-laundering operations as archived and released by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.
The Government Accountability Institute concluded that although Podesta is listed on the corporate records, he failed to disclose his membership on the board of Joule Global Stichting in his federal financial disclosure forms when he joined the Obama White House as a senior advisor.
To complete the circle, Vekselberg, the Renova Group, the Skolkovo Foundation, and Hansjörg Wyss all have ties to the Clinton Foundation, either as substantial donors or as participants in the Clinton Global Initiative.
Metcombank appears to be the bank Vekselberg has used to make transfers to the Clinton Foundation, with the money flowing first through the Moscow branch of Metcombank, and from there into Deutsche Bank and Trust Company Americas, finally ending up in a private bank account in the Bank of America in New York City that is operated by the Clinton Foundation.
Joule Global Stichting and Joule Global Holdings, N.V., also figure prominently as a client of Mossack Fonseca.
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