by Craig Unger
* The Alfa Group has interests in oil and gas, commercial and investment banking, asset management, insurance, retail trade, telecommunications, water utilities, and special situation investments.
* William Sessions is not related to Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He is, however, the father of Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX) who, interestingly, given his father’s representation of Russia’s most powerful Mafia boss, was one of the most vocal opponents in the House of Representatives of sanctions against Russia. It is worth pointing out that, according to Canada’s National Post, earlier, Mogilevich had hired another important figure in American law enforcement as his attorney, namely, Richard Crane Jr., former head of the US Justice Department’s Organized Crime Strike Force for the Western United States.
* Trump’s bankruptcies notwithstanding, the Trump Taj Mahal continued to operate in what is known as a “prepackaged bankruptcy” in which Trump gave a 50 percent stake in the business to its bondholders in exchange for lowered interest rates and a longer payoff schedule.
* As with other buildings he developed, Trump deliberately mislabeled the floors in Trump World Tower to make it seem higher. As a result, it was possible for Eduard Nektalov to live on the seventy-ninth floor of the seventy-two-story Trump World Tower.
* According to the Washington Post, the Conways caught Trump’s attention during a condo board battle in which various residents wanted Trump’s name stripped from the building’s exterior. George Conway was one of the pro-Trump leaders, and his wife, Kellyanne, took a seat on the condo board and became friendly with Trump as a result.
Like so many Trump associates, Kellyanne was not without ties to the Mafia. According to the New York Daily News, her late grandfather Jimmy “the Brute” DiNatale was described by law enforcement authorities as a “significant criminal associate” of Nicodemo “Little Nicky” Scarfo, the heir apparent to a Philadelphia-based crime family.
* The estimate comes from a BuzzFeed investigation that concluded that more than 1,300 of Trump’s 6,400 condos sold in the US had the characteristics of money-laundering deals (all cash, bought through a shell company). The condos sold for an average of $1.2 million.
* Sater’s father is most frequently referred to in the press by the name Sheferovsky, but there are many conflicting spellings of his real name. According to an article by Vladimir Kozlovsky for BBC’s Russian Service, the real family name in Russia was actually Saterov. As for Felix, court documents show that he also went by the names of Satter, Slater, Sader, Haim F. Sater, Hai Ying Sater, and his putative birth name of Sheferovsky.
* In an email to the author, Sater’s attorney Robert S. Wolf disputed allegations made in The Scorpion and the Frog, and asserted that it was “a work of fiction” and that “Mr. Sater was not a character in the book.” However, David S. Barry, the book’s coauthor, has said the book is entirely factual, and its publisher, New Millennium, has marketed the book as nonfiction.
* Blane died in 2016.
* In 2016, Trump denied wrongdoing but agreed to pay $25 million to Trump University students who had filed a class action suit. New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman called it “a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent university.”
* Sapir agreed to pay $150,000 for violations of the Endangered Species Act.
* Four years after the building was finished in 2012, it went into receivership due to poor sales. Trump’s name was later removed from the building.
* In November 2017, the Trump Organization announced that it was going to end its affiliation with the Trump SoHo by the end of the year. The building was subsequently renamed the Dominick.
* In response, Jan Lawrence Handzlik, an attorney for Khrapunov, issued a statement saying, “These allegations are more than a decade old. . . . For seven years ending in 2004, Viktor served with honor and distinction as administrator, or akim, of Almaty, a political subdivision of the Nazarbayev government. He then served as Nazarbayev’s administrator of the East Kazakh Region until 2007. It was then that Viktor had a political falling-out with the Nazarbayev regime. Since then, Viktor has been relentlessly pursued by the regime, which has sought to discredit him in the eyes of the Kazakh people. Now persona non grata in their own country, Viktor and his family look forward to refuting these old allegations in a fair public trial in a country that guarantees justice to those who come before its courts.”
* In his attempt to win influence, Kislin’s donations were not partisan, and he contributed to Democrats as well, including New York senator Chuck Schumer.
* On March 9, 2015, just after the UK’s Litvinenko Inquiry had put together substantial evidence implicating Lugovoy in the murder, President Putin granted Lugovoy a medal for “services to the motherland.” According to Ben Emmerson, the queen’s counsel for Litvinenko’s widow, Marina, the timing of Putin’s decision was no coincidence. “[It] is clearly both a provocation from president Putin and the clearest possible message he identifies himself with Mr Lugovoy.”
* In 2017 and 2018, Manafort and Gates were indicted on a total of forty-four counts of money laundering, bank fraud, and tax charges.
* It is worth noting that after the term “Gerasimov Doctrine” became popular in foreign policy circles, Mark Galeotti, a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague who coined the term, disavowed it, and asserted that there is no single Russian doctrine and no single organizing principle. Instead, he wrote, “There is a broad political objective—to distract, divide, and demoralize—but otherwise it is largely opportunistic, fragmented, even sometimes contradictory.”
* Russians always had more success with Republicans than Democrats, but it wasn’t for want of trying. In 1993, Gregori Loutchansky, an alleged former Mogilevich associate, was invited to a Democratic National Committee fund-raising dinner for Bill Clinton, during which President Clinton, unaware of Loutchansky’s résumé, asked him to please tell the Ukrainian government that it would be great if it reduced its nuclear stockpile. Afterward, Clinton posed for a photo with Loutchansky, which the alleged mobster passed out to enhance his stature. When the photo was eventually published, the CIA did a double take before realizing it was genuine. “Loutchansky had one thing in mind: legitimization,” a congressional investigator probing Russian organized crime explained. “He wanted U.S. citizenship and he wanted to buy a U.S. bank.” Loutchansky has repeatedly denied any ties to the Russian Mafia, but he has been identified by law-enforcement authorities as a figure in the Russian crime network.24
* The title “crown prosecutor” does not exist in Russia, but in a number of jurisdictions in the British Commonwealth, it is the title given to the state prosecutor presenting a case against an individual in a criminal trial. Goldstone was presumably referring to the office of the prosecutor general, the head of Russia’s judiciary.
* “Rhona” appears to be a reference to Rhona Graff, Trump’s longtime assistant.
* Ziff Brothers Investments LLC has made donations to both Republicans and Democrats since the 2012 election cycle, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. It gave between $50,000 and $100,000 to the Clinton Global Initiative and made modest donations to the presidential campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
* As noted by the Washington Post, “Joanna Glover” is likely a reference to Juleanna Glover, who worked with Browder in promoting the Magnitsky Act and also worked for Dick Cheney at one time.
* In 1999, Brooke Group became Vector Group.
