Thread by @karolcummins

Gold in secret vault is traced to Hugo Chávez's former nurse

Díaz allegedly turned to one of the oldest ways of moving vast sums of money anonymously: buying gold. apnews.com/4261ad628fc4e5…

How this case links to TeamTrump:

‼️Huge U.S. money-laundering probe targets widening circle of Venezuelan elites

#Giulani #TeamTrump #Guido #Betancourt #Lopez #PDVSA #Obertobrothers #DeBeaumont #Venezuela #TrumpOrg

https://twitter.com/karolcummins/status/1232770482430042112?s=21

📌A key focus of the Liechtenstein investigation is Swiss banker Charles-Henry de Beaumont, who worked at the Geneva-based Compagnie Bancaire Helvetique SA at the same time Díaz oversaw the OPEC nation's finances.
#DeBeaumont

usnews.com/news/world/art…

📌The Liechtenstein request identifies Beaumont as the person “in charge of transferring the funds of corrupt members of the Venezuelan government to Switzerland.”

usnews.com/news/world/art…

📌Beaumont was allegedly working with Danilo Diazgranados, a Venezuelan financier who generated attention in 2017 for owning the offshore firm that bought Trump aide ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI’s hedge fund when he joined the White House.

#TheMooch

usnews.com/news/world/art…

Scaramucci scores millions from mystery investors

Diazgranados owned as much as 10 percent of SkyBridge through a RON investment vehicle formed in the English Channel island of Jersey.

China’s HNA also bought a stake in SkyBridge.

sltrib.com/news/business/…

📌In 2018, prosecutors in Miami filed their own legal assistance request to Geneva accusing de Beaumont of creating several shell companies to launder as much as $4.5B stolen through fraudulent currency deals with VZ’s state-run oil giant PDVSA.

usnews.com/news/world/art…

The shell companies lent PDVSA bolivars allegedly purchased on the black market, where they were 3x cheaper. But they were repaid in U.S. $$ at the inflated official rate, allowing anyone with a “sham loan contract” to triple their money almost overnight.

usnews.com/news/world/art…

📌U.S. prosecutors contend that Beaumont pocketed $22 million by charging a 0.75% fee for all incoming and outgoing wires routed through CBH to the shell companies he helped set up.

usnews.com/news/world/art…

“Beaumont also used these money brokers to receive and maintain his kickbacks.”

A portion of the funds was allegedly used to purchase a $4.6 million property in Miami and another one worth $1.3 million in the Dominican Republic.

usnews.com/news/world/art…

“The U.S. Authorities have been investigating De Beaumont, Luis, Ignacio and others (...) for their participation in a conspiracy, from approximately 2012 to 2014, to commit wire fraud and launder the proceeds of that fraud ...

usnews.com/news/world/art…

And fraudulent foreign currency exchange schemes to embezzle Venezuela’s foreign currency reserves,”

usnews.com/news/world/art…

Brothers Luis and Ignacio Oberto, served as the beneficiary parties to the multi-billion dollar contract.

miamiherald.com/news/nation-wo…

📌”The investigation indicates that this Venezuelan foreign exchange embezzlement scheme was nothing more than a mechanism to embezzle Venezuela’s foreign currency reserves and launder the proceeds.”

miamiherald.com/news/nation-wo…

📌The Oberto brothers and others are suspected of paying bribes to PDVSA officials to gain access to loan opportunities with the state-owned oil company and to the nation’s favorable currency exchange system, sources said.

miamiherald.com/news/nation-wo…

🔑Other unnamed conspirators in Venezuela, Europe and the United States were also paid as part of the brothers’ alleged bribery, embezzlement and money laundering schemes, sources said.

privateyemiami.com/feds-target-ve…

In total, billions of PDVSA dollars were transferred from Venezuela to Switzerland and then with De Beaumont’s assistance to the US, including millions into the Oberto brothers’ personal bank accounts and real estate investments in Miami & NY.

privateyemiami.com/feds-target-ve…

📌A similar case involving Maduro’s stepchildren as well as Venezuelan businessmen Francisco Convit, Alejandro Betancourt and Raúl Gorrín, involving the smaller amount of $ 1.2 billion, is under federal investigation in South Florida.

miamiherald.com/news/nation-wo…

🔑Giuliani and Gowdy attended the Justice Department meeting to discuss Alejandro Betancourt Lopez, a wealthy Venezuelan business executive.

cnn.com/2020/07/16/pol…

The Washington Post first reported last year that Giuliani was lobbying the Justice Department to argue Betancourt should not face criminal charges in a $1.2 billion Florida money-laundering case.

washingtonpost.com/politics/a-wea…

📌Alejandro Betancourt López hired Giuliani to serve as his lawyer and help argue that he should not be charged in a $1.2 billion money-laundering case in Florida. Lopez hosted Giuliani in Madrid when he met w/ Yermak Zelensky’s aide

google.com/search?q=Wealt…

Betancourt runs Derwick Associates, which attained close to $2 billion in contracts to build power plants for the government of Hugo Chavez.

He is named as an uncharged co-conspirator, & its reported that there are sealed indictments against Betancourt.
nationalreview.com/corner/giulian…

Giuliani’s defense of VZ thuggery will outrage Latino voters.

VZ dissidents & writers have already denounced the president’s lawyer on Twitter.

If Trump continues to retain Giuliani’s services, he will be seen as condoning corruption of the worst order.
nationalreview.com/corner/giulian…

‼️At least half a dozen Venezuelans linked to either Maduro or his predecessor, dictator Hugo Chavez, purchased Trump condos in New York City and South Florida prior to Trump becoming president.

politico.com/story/2019/08/…

🔑They noted that many of the purchases were made above the apparent market value, fully in cash or using shell companies to obscure identities — all potential signs of money laundering, the experts said.

politico.com/story/2019/08/…

The sales have raised questions about whether some of these Venezuelan purchasers were buying Trump properties in order to store ill-gotten gains offshore

politico.com/story/2019/08/…

🔑The Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama, for instance, identified Venezuela as one of the club's “main feeding countries,” according to court documents.

politico.com/story/2019/08/…

💰💦Narco-a-lago: 💦💰

https://twitter.com/karolcummins/status/1104502631802724352?s=21

How do VZ, Turkey & Iran connect?

Turkey has increasingly found common interests with authoritarian countries such as Russia, China, Iran & VZ.

When Juan Guaido declared himself VZ's rightful president, Turkey aligned itself with those behind Maduro.
arkansasonline.com/news/2019/feb/…

📌Two months after Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro visited his counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, a mysterious company called Sardes sprang into existence.

arkansasonline.com/news/2019/feb/…

📌The firm started business with a bang in January 2018, when it imported about $41 million worth of gold from Venezuela, the first such transaction between the two countries in records that go back 50 years.

arkansasonline.com/news/2019/feb/…

🔑The next month its volume more than doubled, with Sardes transporting almost $100 million worth to Turkey.

arkansasonline.com/news/2019/feb/…

By November, when Trump signed an EO authorizing sanctions on Venezuelan gold --Sardes had shuttled $900 million of the precious metal out of Venezuela.

Not bad for a company with just $1 million in capital.

arkansasonline.com/news/2019/feb/…

🔑It's not the first time that Turkey has positioned itself as a work-around for countries facing U.S. sanctions, potentially undermining Washington's efforts to isolate governments it considers hostile or corrupt. #Halkbank

arkansasonline.com/news/2019/feb/…

📌Under the sanctions, Iran sells billions of dollars of fuel to Turkey every year, but then finds most of its money trapped in Turkish bank accounts because of international restrictions on wiring the money back to Tehran.

arkansasonline.com/news/2019/feb/…

Elaborate schemes entailing the use of physical gold have in the past allowed the Islamic Republic to finance its foreign trade.

arkansasonline.com/news/2019/feb/…

Mehmet Hakan Atilla, the former head of international banking at Turkish state-owned lender
Halkbank, was convicted last year in a New York court of participation in such a scheme.

arkansasonline.com/news/2019/feb/…

📌Released from jail, Mehmet Hakan Atilla has been appointed head of the Istanbul Stock Market...

You can’t make this stuff up...🙄

amp.ft.com/content/31e25d…

🔑Halkbank Timeline

Excellent overview of the Halkbank case.

justsecurity.org/71694/trump-ba…

Paraphrasing Berman: ‘If Giuliani & Mukasey’s efforts succeeded in dropping the US case against Zarrab they would have helped Iran evade US sanctions.’

See Full quote below:

📌Get it folks? TeamTrump is actively assisting Iran evade US sanctions & freed them from the Nuke deal

Trump pressed then-SOS Tillerson to help persuade the DOJ to drop a criminal case against Rudy’s client Zarrab an Iranian-Turkish gold trader, in a 2017 meeting in the Oval Office.

Tillerson declined & said the request would be illegal.

bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

📌A spike in Turkey’s gold trades with the United Arab Emirates has aroused suspicion that Turkey is “sending the gold to UAE that they imported from Venezuela and turning it into liquidity.”

ahvalnews.com/venezuela-turk…

The con:

“Moreover, Turkey has recently started to supply the basic products for Venezuela’s government-subsidized food program CLAP, appearing to create a gold-for-food mechanism between Ankara and Caracas,” Öner said.

ahvalnews.com/venezuela-turk…

🔑The above set up echoes a mechanism previously set up through the Turkish state-run Halkbank, which used gold and fictitious food trades to move billions of dollars past U.S. sanctions for Iran.

ahvalnews.com/venezuela-turk…

“Suffice it to say, a vast bribery and corruption mechanism that would benefit government officials of the two countries (Venezuela and Turkey) may play an important role as it was witnessed in the case of Iran,” Öner said.

ahvalnews.com/venezuela-turk…

📌If a similar sanctions-busting scheme is discovered with Venezuela then the costs, warned the Turkish former diplomat, could be extremely heavy for Ankara.
#Halkbank

ahvalnews.com/venezuela-turk…

The Turkey story — featuring the American president assuring Erdogan he would “take care of things” in an ongoing federal criminal investigation — may be the clearest, most continuous narrative of misconduct by Trump that has yet surfaced.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/globa…

📌It’s a tale that connects some of Trump’s closest advisers: former national security adviser Michael Flynn, personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, and senior adviser and son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

washingtonpost.com/opinions/globa…

📌Bolton says he warned Attorney General William P. Barr in April 2019 that Trump’s repeated efforts to help Erdogan showed his “penchant to, in effect, give personal favors to dictators he liked.”

washingtonpost.com/opinions/globa…

📌Side note: Over the past decade, China has given Venezuela $65 billion in loans, cash and investment.

Venezuela owes China more than $20 billion.

arkansasonline.com/news/2019/feb/…

Thank you @ericgarland for the point to the unholy alliance between Iran, Turkey & Maduro’s VZ.

UAE's Noor Capital says it bought 3 tonnes of gold from Venezuela

Mr. Mohammed Ghosheh [CEO]

Abdulla Al Suwaidi [ED]

Muhammad Al Zoubi [GM]

Sher Ali [Head of Investment Banking]

Adel M. El-Hassan [Legal Dept Manager & BOD Reporter]

reuters.com/article/us-ven…

US indicts Venezuela’s Maduro on charges of 'narco terrorism'

Washington has offered $15 million bounty on his arrest

thenational.ae/world/the-amer…