So I was looking for information about Sergei Leontyev’s lawyer, who apparently devised the defense strategy with publications in the business press ahead of trials in Western countries — Jonathan Reich, an employee of Grid Market Research owned by Leontyev.
And in his LinkedIn I found a link to a podcast by Free Russia’s Director of Special Investigations, Michael Weiss.
In the podcast, Reich talks about his “clients,” who, judging by the case descriptions, are literally the same banker.
Reich openly believes that money laundered and stolen in Russia should not be considered such in the West, mentioning Switzerland — one of the jurisdictions where funds siphoned from Probusinessbank ended up. He is deliberately attacking one of the few institutions that stand in the way of crooks enriching themselves abroad at the expense of ordinary people and the further plundering of the country. He accuses the existing anti–money laundering system — the network of national Financial Intelligence Units — of the possibility that the goal of their heads in the future is to work for Putin.
According to him, money laundering is a kind of amorphous crime, because essentially it is just the movement of funds obtained from a criminal act. Allegedly, the transfer of money itself is not an obviously criminal act. He thinks what makes the transfer criminal is the fact that the money was “tainted” from the outset — and that is precisely what turns it into money laundering.
During a mass campaign to whitewash reputations and provide political cover for stolen money, it is perfectly understandable that Leontyev’s lawyer would look for every possible way to legitimize the client’s position. However, the question arises: why did specialist and investigator Weiss not spot the catch in Reich’s words?
This question was answered for me when I discovered that Michael co-authored the “Ice Axe” article in The Insider.
I have already written that a number of investigative experts commented on the low quality of that piece. And the segment about Zheleznyak was pushed with great fanfare by Maria Pevchikh and Leonid Volkov. The connection between Dobrokhotov and FBK (one could even say dependency on it), in light of recent events, became quite obvious to me.
I reached this conclusion because of the following details:
Ashurkov and Dobrokhotov are employees of Sloane Services and friends (which many people consider not that important a factor).
A fragment of Maria Lekukh’s post on her Facebook regarding an elf factory.
The saga of silently scrubbing the text of The Insider’s article about FBK’s investigation in the section about Ashurkov, and then subsequent attempts to present it as something that did not concern The Insider. And other, less significant symptoms.
By the way, read the thread about PNB and BIB. It looks like Ashurkov has been, or will be, firmly pressed by Latvian law enforcement over aiding the siphoning of bank assets. Konstantin Pevchikh (you-know-whose father) is partially involved there as well.
Something amusing
They all showed up here
