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Stringwall 🇺🇸🇺🇸 Profile picture
@StringwallApp
Oct 5, 2021 • 214 tweets • >60 min read • Read on X
Yesterday, I did an in-depth thread on one of the first stories to emerge from the Pandora Papers leak, @OCCRP’s article about Kazakhstan’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, mysterious shell companies linked to his former aides, & the $30 million paid to his third wife.
You can my detailed thread up there ⬆️⬆️ or go directly to the @OCCRP story here:

occrp.org/en/the-pandora…
But let’s start this new thread to analyze the potential significance of the Nursultan Nazarbayev revelations and how they connect to some of the other significant stories that we’ve been following.
First let’s review the basics of the Nursultan Nazarbayev story:
1. Nursultan Nazarbayev was president of mineral-rich Kazakhstan from 1990-2019, during the era in which the Soviet Union was crumbling and former state resources were being privatized.
2. Nursultan Nazarbayev had two close aides, Vladimir Ni and Vladimir Kim, who both ended up leading and owning big chunks of the former state mining operation (Zhezkazgantsvetmet) after it was privatized (and became Kazakhmys).
3. Nursultan Nazarbayev’s unofficial 3rd wife (tokal) is a woman named Assel Kurmanbayeva. They became an item, after she won the 1999 Miss Kazakhstan beauty pageant as a teenager. Their relationship isn’t officially acknowledged, but she has 2 sons with the Nursultanuly surname.
4. And she and Nursultan Nazarbayev also have other business interests together, including a ballet company and a banquet hall.
5. Vladimir Ni, Vladimir Kim, and Assel Kurmanbayeva each own a network of secret shell companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, including one called EMES Holding & Finance SA that, for awhile, was jointly owned by all three of them.
6. None of these shell companies appear to actually engage in any real business activity. Yet in 2010, Ni’s secret shell companies bought out Kurmanbayeva’s secret shell companies for $30 million.
7. Steps were taken to obfuscate all of these financial dealings and keep them all secret. We only know these details as a result of the Pandora Papers leak and the ensuing investigations by anti-corruption journalists.
Now, before we begin putting the Kurmanbayeva affair into context, let’s please clarify that these secret ownership maneuverings involving EMES Holding & Finance took place between 2008 and 2010.
Let’s also please acknowledge what the @OCCRP article refers to as “Kazakhstan’s notoriously corrupt natural resource sector”.
But Kazakhstan’s corruption isn’t just limited to the natural resource industry. Kazakhstan is generally considered to be a hotspot for public corruption and financial crime.
In fact, you might recall the case of former Kazakh minister and banker Mukhtar Ablyazov who committed “fraud at an epic scale”, allegedly embezzling $790 million from BTA Bank between 2006-2009.
It was this embezzled money from Ablyazov that Felix Sater laundered into the Trump SOHO project through the Bayrock investment company.
Side Note: This looting, laundering, and hiding routine is not unique to Kazakhstan. That’s pretty much the modus operandi for post-Soviet Russia and the entire former Soviet region. It’s a kleptocracy.

vice.com/en/article/j5w…
Hey @StuartSyvret, you guys got a mention in this @VICE article! 👏👏🤪 Image
Now before we move on to some specific connections between the Kurmanbayeva affair, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Kazakhstan, Central Asian smuggling, Reza Zarrab, Iranian sanctions evasion, Mike Flynn, & the Trump admin (yes that’s where we’re going) let’s first take a step back.
I want you to think about the Cold War and our 40 year fight against Soviet communism. And how much defeating the Soviet threat came to define what it meant to be a patriot in America.
It was this reality that created the Reagan/Bush despot outreach program of the 1980s.
It was this reality that led former Rohrabacher aide Paul Behrends to work with Russian oligarchs in the 1990s.
It was this reality that led US spy agencies to partner with organized crime throughout the Cold War.
So after decades of this commitment to dismantle the Soviet Union, can you see how certain anti-communist actors in the West may have felt that it was an extension of their patriotic duty to help the oligarchs & crime bosses loot the post-Soviet states…

theguardian.com/news/2018/may/…
…and stash that money in the West? That’s the path to selling public policy to hostile foreign adversaries and global organized crime.
Ok enough of that; let’s get back to Kazakhstan. As noted above, as throughout the former Soviet Union, there is no shortage of corruption in Kazakhstan. However, one case currently has my attention: Reza Zarrab’s cash for gold Iranian sanctions evasion.

theatlantic.com/international/…
Quick review of that: In 2006, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution #1737 which targeted Iran’s energy sector and essentially preventing Iran from getting paid in cash for oil sales, which is obviously the foundation of the Iranian economy.
So, as you would expect, by 2008, Iran’s economy had come to a halt.

bbc.com/news/world-mid…
Iran’s economic desperation opened up big opportunities for criminal networks operating in Central Asia, as Shiite Iran was forced to start working with the Sunni Taliban & other criminal orgs in Central Asia in order to keep the lights on.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp actually began trading narcotics with the traditionally adversarial Sunni Taliban.
Trading oil for drugs, cigarettes, weapons, whatever.
Making Iran a major pathway for the flow of narcotics from Central Asia into Europe.
And making Iran a large market for narcotics consumption.
*Side Note: I’m starting to veer off the path here. But I think it’s important to understand how valuable the Central Asian smuggling routes are, and how the sanctions against Iran fuel and enable new levels of criminal activity that are supported by Iranian state resources.
In other words, the criminal networks really want Iran to remain under strict sanctions, because strict sanctions make Iran desperate, and a desperate Iran is good for business. Get it?
So where were we? Ah yes, UN resolution 1737 in 2006. Iranian economic growth grinds to a halt by 2008. Iran gets desperate. Image
But there is a loophole in the 1737 sanctions! So while Iran isn’t allowed to sell oil for cash and collect the revenue in cash, guess what? They ARE allowed to trade the oil revenue for gold. Then they can sell the gold and launder that money back into Iran.
That’s what the Reza Zarrab cash for gold scheme was all about. The government of Turkey was part of the scheme. They sold gold to Iran in exchange for sanctioned oil revenue, and then Turkish banks Halkbank and Aktif Bank helped launder the money.
➡️➡️ Important: We need to take note of the fact that the gold was sold in Dubai in United Arab Emirates, which means that UAE was taking a profitable cut of the scheme. We’re going to be coming back to the UAE connection, so don’t forget!

reuters.com/article/us-ira… Image
Ok let’s stop for just a moment and note some of the important things that happened in 2008.
1. As mentioned already, Iran’s economy grinds to a halt and they get desperate to turn their oil revenue into something that they can eat.
2. As we noted earlier, Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev’s third wife (Kurmanbayeva) and two former top advisers-turned-mining-magnates (Ni & Kim) get involved with a secret shell company called EMES Holding & Finance SA.
3. Reza Zarrab recruits Adem Karahan to help move cash and gold as part of the new cash-for-gold Iranian sanctions evasion scheme.
4. IMPORTANT ➡️ The formerly secular Erdogan suddenly reverses his opinion about Fethullah Gulen, and they become allies. (Foreshadowing: This bromance is only for a short while. It goes south soon.)
4 cont’d. To understand the importance of the Gulen/Erdogan bromance in the context of Reza Zarrab’s cash for gold scheme, we should note that Gulen operates a network of banks throughout Central Asia & the former Soviet “stans” that move $$ between the Middle East and the West.
4 cont’d. In other words, I don’t know who approached whom with the Zarrab scheme, but by 2008, Erdogan and Gulen were partners in the money laundering operation.
5. Speaking of money laundering, 2008 is also when work began on the Trump Tower Istanbul project in Turkey.
6. 2008 is also when Barack Obama is elected President of the United States. (Foreshadowing: Uh oh, what happens if he closes the cash for gold loophole or eases sanctions against Iran??😵😵)

whitehouse.gov/about-the-whit…
I know that we’re covering a lot of ground here, but try to stay with me, because we’re going to be tying back in to Kazakhstan and President Nursultan Nazarbayev very soon!
So the Reza Zarrab cash-for-gold sanctions evasion scheme starts around 2008. It takes a little while to get everyone on board & scale up. But by 2012, it’s worth a lot of money. Turkey exported $6.5 BILLION of gold to Turkey in 2012, with $4.6 billion being exchanged in UAE. Image
I believe that part of this scaling up of the Zarrab scheme included the formation of the Nowruz Commission in 2010/2011 which brought together the diplomatic and business interests necessary to facilitate the scheme.
I’ve come to this conclusion partly based upon the timing and the countries involved (Turkey, Russia, and the Central Asian former Soviet “stans”)…
…and partly based upon the people involved, including Mike Flynn’s former Iranian business partner Bijan Kian (aka Bijan Rafiekian)…
…and Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin.
And the fact that Kian and Alptekin would later be indicted together for acting as unregistered foreign agents for Turkey. (We’ll get more into this later on.)
So as noted above, Bijan Kian was a cofounder of the Nowruz Commission. One of his fellow cofounders was Erlan Idrissov. (Remember how I promised that we’d be getting back to Kazakhstan? Well we’re finally there.)
Erlan Idrissov is a Moscow-educated diplomat from Kazakhstan who has served as Kazakhstan’s ambassador to both the US and UK. (Remember, I’m assuming that Nowruz Commission was a formal alignment of diplomatic & business interests connected to the Zarrab cash for gold scheme.)
Ok now remember how the election of Barack Obama in 2008 is a potential wild card that could screw up the cash for gold loophole and the Iranian sanctions?
➡️ Well in 2011, Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev wrote this somewhat bizarre letter to President Obama apparently imploring him to support the Nowruz Commission.🤔

nowruzcommission.org/wp-content/upl… Image
Backtracking just a bit here, because I forgot to mention something important. Remember how I’m basing my analysis of the Nowruz Commission upon the people involved? Well one of those people is the Nowruz ambassador for Turkey, Ahmet Calik.
And his bank, Aktif Bank, run by Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak, helped Zarrab launder the money from the cash for gold scheme. We’ll get back to this again later on.
Also, this is probably jumping ahead just a bit, but…remember how Trump Tower Istanbul started in 2008?
Do you want to take a wild guess who rented office space there later on?
So anyway, circa 2011, Nowruz Commission forms, Kazakhstan’s president Nursultan Nazarbayev is writing letters to Obama, and by 2012, the Zarrab operation is making some serious money!
But all of that is about to change.
Perhaps Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s letter to Obama didn’t have the intended effect, but by February 2013, the Obama administration had acted to close the cash for gold loophole.

reuters.com/article/us-ira…
And if that weren’t already bad enough, it was about to get even worse…
In Dec 2013, Reza Zarrab is detained by Turkish authorities, and the resulting corruption investigation implicates Erdogan & other senior members of the Turkish govt & business establishment. The resulting public protests put not only the scheme at risk but also Erdogan’s future!
“The Iran gold case has been the main focus of interest in the graft scandal, given its international dimension and the alleged involvement of three former ministers and the head of a public bank. Those accused have denied wrongdoing.”

mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/id…
Having been caught, Erdogan blames the entire scandal on Gulen to save himself and his family members & associates who were implicated in the corruption investigation. He invents the Gulen coup story as cover to kill the investigation.
And thus ends the bromance.
So Erdogan is successful in killing the corruption investigation. He fires and punishes many of the police investigators, and Zarrab is released, after 70 days of detention (March 2014). However, the investigation in the US is just beginning.
So now Erdogan has a real problem. Gulen has been living in Pennsylvania, since 1999, and Erdogan believes that Gulen is cooperating with US investigators.
If Obama decides to pursue this, or if the next US administration decides to pursue it, then things could get ugly for Erdogan. He needs to discredit Gulen, get him away from US investigators, & lobby hard to kill the US Investigation & insulate himself & Turkey from the fallout.
Now remember how I mentioned earlier that Ekim Alptekin was once the vice chairman and a board member of the Nowruz Commission? And that he and Kian had been indicted together for working as unregistered foreign agents for Turkey?
Well now would probably be a good time to mention that Alptekin has had business dealings with Vladimir Putin. In fact, Putin had personally approved a loan for Alptekin’s company, Eclipse Aviation, to build a factory in Russia.
And of course, that happened in 2008, right as the Zarrab cash for gold Iranian sanctions evasion scheme was getting off the ground.
The reason that I mention this now is because of what happens next: Circa 2015, Alptekin and a Russian businessman with Kremlin connections named Dmitri Zaikin collaborate to form and fund an extensive network of pro-Turkish lobbying efforts.
Then in late January or early February 2016, Mike Flynn signs a $600,000 lobbying deal with Alptekin.
In July 2016, Erdogan arrested an American evangelical pastor (named Brunson) and imprisoned him on terrorism charges. (He would later try to use Brunson’s release as a bargaining chip to kill the Halkbank investigation.)

occrp.org/en/investigati… Image
How did Erdogan know that he was going to need to bargain his way out of trouble. Because of this: In March 2016, Reza Zarrab “inexplicably” decided to take his family to DisneyWorld. He was arrested by US authorities at Miami International Airport.
*Side Note: I don’t think it was inexplicable at all. I suspect that by this time, Zarrab was smart enough to figure out that Erdogan was desperate and ruthless. And that Zarrab was the man who knew too much.
Zarrab could either cooperate with US investigators and go into the witness protection program, or else risk suffering from a case of Kremlin window cancer.
So remember how earlier in this thread, I told you to remember that the UAE was getting their cut of the gold sold in Dubai as part of the cash for gold Iranian sanctions evasion scheme, because it would become important later on? We’ve now reached that point in the story.
The gold that Iran was buying from Turkey was being moved through Dubai in UAE, where most of it was sold & exchanged for foreign currency. So UAE was getting a cut of this action, plus any other related smuggling & money laundering activity. Thus UAE was profiting from sanctions
In 2012 alone, UAE had exchanged $4.6 billion in gold that Turkey had sold to Iran. (Please excuse the typo in this original tweet, where I inadvertently tweeted that Turkey sold the gold to Turkey. Obviously, I meant that Turkey sold $6.5 billion in gold to Iran! 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️)
So UAE had several billion reasons to be unhappy about the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran that resulted in the easing of sanctions targeting Iran’s energy sector and went into effect in January 2016.

obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/foreign…
But what could they do about it? Well remember how the Republican nominee for President, Donald J Trump, was presumably part of the money laundering operation through Trump Tower Istanbul? Well…
According to Andy Khawaja, UAE had fact made a deal with the Trump campaign to back out of the Obama nuke deal and reimpose strict sanctions against Iranian oil.
Khawaja alleges that he taught George Nader how to create a campaign donation scheme in which the UAE would use Saudi money and Russian banks to fund the 2016 Trump campaign using prepaid gift cards & aggregated (non-itemized) small donations beneath the $200 reporting threshold.
Khawaja claims that the Emiratis would run the operation, the Saudis would provide the money, China would provide the hacked donor identity data, and the Russians were “on board” too.
So did they actually carry out the small donation scheme that Khawaja alleged? Well it sure looks like it. From May through September of 2016, there were thousands of unexplained secret data transfers to servers belonging to the Trump Organization.
These data transfers appeared to be some sort of database replication process.
And this data replication process was being executed with Trump Org by three other entities, including Russia’s Alfa Bank and two businesses that are closely connected to Alfa Bank (Heartland Payment Systems and Spectrum Health).
Alfa Bank itself is reportedly a criminal enterprise, having been founded by rogue KGB personnel with links to organized crime. And it has reportedly been used to traffic narcotics and launder money, ever since the late 1980s/early 1990s.

publicintegrity.org/politics/chene… Image
Heartland Payment Systems is owned by Global Payments, who in 2011 had also acquired Alfa Bank’s credit card processing unit.
As you might expect, Heartland Payment Systems has a prepaid gift card program, which is what Khawaja alleges was used to make the fraudulent campaign donations with Saudi money.
As for Spectrum Health, its connections to Alfa Bank actually go through Amway. Because Amway heir Dick DeVos is the Chairman of the Board at Spectrum Health, and Amway Vice Chairman Bill Payne also sits on the board at Spectrum Health.
Amway has significant business operations in Russia, where they opened a separate division in 2005.
As part of that, Amway and Alfa Bank partnered in 2014 to create the Alfa-Amway loyalty card program, which is a prepaid payment card. And as you know, Khawaja alleges that these prepaid cash cards were used to make fraudulent donations to the Trump campaign funded by Saudi cash.
*Side Note: Proctor & Gamble sued Amway in the mid 1990s. As part of that, they hired an organized crime expert named Robert Blakey who issued a report stating, “…the Amway business is run in a manner parallel to that of major organized crime groups, in particular the mafia.”
Amway also has a prepaid payment card program in North America through Citi.
So where are we in the story? We’ve established that UAE was part of the Iranian cash for gold sanctions evasion scheme. We’ve established that they allegedly had an arrangement with the Trump campaign to back out of the Obama nuke deal with Iran and to reimpose strict sanctions.
We’ve established that UAE was allegedly endeavoring to help get Trump elected by funding his campaign through fake unitemized small donations using Saudi money, stolen donor identities, prepaid gift cards, and Russian banks.
We’ve established that between June and September of 2016, Trump Org servers exchanged data thousands of times as part of an apparent database replication process involving entities that issue prepaid gift cards that are associated with Russia’s Alfa Bank.
We’ve established that both Alfa Bank and Amway have been accused of being either directly associated with or operating in parallel with organized crime. But did any of this money every find its way into the Trump campaign?
Well it appears so. The mysterious database replication process occurred between May-September 2016. During this same period, June-September 2016, the Trump campaign received a miraculous record-setting rush of small donations amounting to over $100 million.
So it appears that UAE got their guy elected, as Trump was sworn in as POTUS in January 2017. And as Khawaja predicted, in September of 2020, Trump defied most UN members and reimposed strict sanctions against Iran.

apnews.com/article/iran-i…
But while getting Trump elected was certainly an important step in the effort to kill the Zarrab investigation & cover up the entire exposed operation, it may have been too little too late. Because remember how Zarrab was arrested in Miami in March 2016?

justice.gov/opa/pr/turkish…
Because by 2017, Reza Zarrab and his money mule, Adem Karahan, were already spilling their guts to prosecutors from the US District Court of the Southern District of New York.

courthousenews.com/the-government… Image
Zarrab testified that Erdogan had ordered the illicit cash-for-gold trade and that other senior Turkish officials had accepted enormous bribes to look the other way.
Zarrab’s money mule/laundering accomplice, Adem Karahan, alleges that Erdogan’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak helped Zarrab open the accounts at Turkish Aktif Bank.
Albayrak, at that time, was CEO of Aktif Bank’s parent company, Calik Holding. He was also implicated in the indictment of Turkish state bank Halkbank.
Aktif Bank is suspected of money laundering on a grand scale for a customer network that includes collapsed German payment processor Wirecard and shady figures from the porn industry.
*Side Note: You remember Wirecard, right? The German payment processor who collapsed after it was discovered that $2 billion was missing and whose COO, Jan Marsalek, had close ties to Russian intelligence services and who is currently hiding in Russia.

businessinsider.com/wirecard-why-r…
Anyway, remember how I mentioned further up thread that Nowruz Commission appears to be the gathering of diplomatic and business resources that would be necessary to enable the scale of the Zarrab/Turkey cash-for-gold Iranian sanctions evasion scheme?
Well factoring into that assessment is the fact that Ahmet Calik, the chairman of Calik Holding (parent company of Aktif Bank) is Turkey’s ambassador to the Nowruz Commission.
Ok, now we’re going to get back to the Nowruz Commission in just a bit. But first, let’s review the timeline so far and make sure that we all end up on the same page, somewhere in 2017.
Ok let’s see:
1989: Russia’s Alfa Group is founded with the help of KGB personnel linked to organized crime.
1990: Nursultan Nazarbayev becomes president of Kazakhstan.
Early 1990s: Alfa Group is reportedly involved with narcotics trafficking & money laundering.
1991: Soviet Union officially collapses. Privatization of state entities results is oligarchy, criminal looting, laundering & hiding money in western investments.
Mid 1990s: Proctor & Gamble sues Amway, hires organized crime expert who compares Amway to criminal enterprise.
1999: Assel Kurmanbayeva wins Miss Kazakhstan title, begins relationship with Nursultan Nazarbayev.
2006: Mukhtar Ablyazov steals billions from Kazakhstan’s BTA Bank with the help of govt officials close to President Nursultan Nazarbaev.

rferl.org/a/british-cour…
2006: United Nations Security Council passes resolution #1737 imposing strict sanctions on Iran’s energy industry (essentially preventing them from getting paid for oil & gas sales).
2007: Erdogan gets re-elected in Turkey.
Let’s clarify that last one just a bit…
2007: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gets re-elected to a second term as prime minister of Turkey on a secular anti-Gulen platform.
Now a whole bunch of important stuff happens in 2008…
2008: Iran’s economy collapses due to the UN Res 1737 sanctions, Iran becomes a state partner in Central Asian smuggling operations and criminal activity.
2008: Turkey begins selling large amounts of gold to Iran.
2008: Zarrab recruits his money mule & begins moving the money
2008: Erdogan reverses his opinion about Gulen (who conveniently owns a network of banks) and they become allies.
2008: Work begins on the Trump Tower Istanbul project in Turkey.
2008: Kurmanbayeva, Ni, & Kim all share interest in the EMES Holding & Finance SA shell company.
2008: Obama wins the November election.
2009: Obama sworn in as POTUS in Jan 2009, begins new administration lasting two terms.
2010: Nowruz Commission is founded by three men: Iranian-American businessman Nasser Kazeminy, Mike Flynn’s twice-indicted business partner Bijan Kian, and Kazakhstan’s foreign minister Erlan Idrissov.
2010 Nowruz cont’d: Ekim Alptekin is the Nowruz Commission vice chairman. (Probably should have noted that in 2008, Putin was personally arranging Russian state financing for Alptekin’s aviation company.)
2011: Nursultan Nazarbayev, President of Kazakhstan, writes a letter to President Obama imploring him to “support” the Nowruz Commission.
2012: Felix Sater launders money from the Mukhtar Ablyazov/BTA Bank embezzlement into Bayrock and Trump Tower SOHO.
2012: The cash-for-gold sanctions evasion scheme hits full stride. Turkey sells $6.5 billion of gold to Iran in 2012 alone. $4.6 billion of this is exchanged for foreign currency in Dubai (UAE). Narcotics smuggling & criminal activity booms throughout Iran and Central Asia.
2013: Reza Zarrab gets arrested by Turkish authorities. Evidence begins pointing to Erdogan, senior members of the Turkish govt, and prominent business leaders as being involved with the scheme.
2013: Obama closes the cash-for-gold loophole built into the 2006 UN 1737 sanctions.
2014: Erdogan tries to quash the Zarrab investigation in Turkey. Zarrab released from jail in March.
2014: News of the corruption scandal spreads throughout Turkey, resulting in public protests, anti-Erdogan sentiment, & a brutal crackdown against protesters by Erdogan.
2014: Erdogan blames the entire scheme on Gulen, reverses his own 2008 Gulen alliance, and begins new campaign against Gulenists.
2014: US investigators start looking into the Zarrab cash-for-gold sanctions evasion scheme.
2014: Erdogan becomes convinced that Gulen (who lives in Pennsylvania) is cooperating with US investigators.
2014: Amway partners with Russian Alfa Bank to create the Amway Rewards Card, a prepaid payment card.
2015: Turkish businessman Ekim Alptekin and Russian businessman Dmitry Zaikin (both connected to Putin) begin funding and organizing a massive pro-Turkey lobbying effort to kill the Zarrab investigation and insulate Turkey and Erdogan from any potential legal/political fallout.
Ok now 2016 was another pivotal year in which a bunch of important things happened. Let’s see if we can keep it all straight. (Seriously, I don’t know that I’m smart enough for this, but here we go…)
2016 Jan: Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran goes into effect, essentially easing sanctions against Iran’s energy sector & allowing them to bank the revenue earned from oil sales. Thus reducing Iran’s incentive to share this revenue with Turkey, UAE, or the criminal networks who…
…had facilitated and profited from the cash for gold sanctions evasion scheme (and whatever other related criminal activities were associated with it).
2016 Feb: Mike Flynn signs lobbying/consulting deal with Alptekin (aka=>Putin connected businessman and former vice chairman of Nowruz Commission). Flynn reportedly suggests kidnapping Gulen and smuggling him back to Turkey.
2016 Mar: Zarrab takes his family to visit DisneyWorld in Florida. Immediately gets arrested by US authorities at the Miami airport. He explains in detail how the cash-for-gold scheme worked. Implicates senior members of the Turkish govt, Erdogan, Erdogan’s family, Aktif Bank…
…and Halkbank.
2016: UAE allegedly hires George Nader to help them engineer campaign finance scheme to get Trump elected in order to end the Obama nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose strict sanctions.
2016: Andy Khawaja allegedly teaches Nader how to engineer the campaign finance fraud system using small donations beneath the $200 individual itemization threshold, prepaid gift cards, stolen donor identities, Saudi cash, and Russian banks.
2016 May-Sept: Thousands of mysterious data transfers that appear to be database replication occur between servers belonging to Trump Org, Alfa Bank, Spectrum Health, and Heartland Payment Systems.
2016 June-Sept: Trump campaign goes from being on the verge of bankruptcy to raising $100+ million, thanks to a miraculous wave of record setting small donations beneath the $200 individual itemized reporting threshold.
2016 July: Factions within the Turkish military attempt a failed coup against the Erdogan government. Gulen accuses Erdogan of staging the coup attempt himself. Erdogan (of course) blames Gulen. Erdogan uses the coup as further justification to purge Turkish govt institutions…
2016: The official investigation into the coup attempt was less than sincere, omitting testimony from key players and suggesting that the coup had no success plan in place to even enable ongoing governance.
2016: Erdogan uses the coup attempt as justification to continue purging Gulenists from the Turkish government and install replacements who are loyal to Erdogan.
2016 Oct: Erdogan arrests Presbyterian pastor Andrew Brunson on terrorism charges and uses his potential release as a bargaining chip over the Zarrab/Aktif Bank/Halkbank cash-for-gold scheme investigation.
*Side Note: Let’s spend the next few tweets exploring why I believe that the Brunson debacle was engineered as a negotiation ploy, because you might be legitimately questioning this apparent logic jump.
Most importantly is the fact that Erdogan has essentially admitted it, telling US negotiators that he would release Brunson if and when the US extradited Gulen.

theatlantic.com/amp/article/55…
For Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the president of Turkey, Brunson’s case offered a chance to engage in a sort of hostage diplomacy. Image
In a speech last fall, Erdogan appeared to link Brunson’s release to his demands for the extradition of Gulen by the Trump administration. (U.S. officials claim they have yet to receive adequate evidence to fulfill the request.) Image
“‘Give us the pastor back,’ they say. You have one pastor as well. Give him to us,” Erdogan said, referring to Gulen. “Then we will try him [Brunson] and give him to you.” Image
The prosecution case against Brunson is primarily based upon testimony from anonymous witnesses who “testified through video monitors that distorted their faces and voices in order to conceal their identities.” Image
And Brunson’s lawyer says that, “In Turkey, if there’s an investigation that lacks evidence, it’s kind of the custom now to fortify the case with secret witnesses that have no credibility, no link to reality.” Image
The charges against Brunson include meeting with high ranking officials of the Gulen movement and allegedly trying to leverage PKK militants (whom Erdogan has attempted to link to Gulen) to divide the Turkish state. But… Image
…as noted earlier, Erdogan appears to be using Gulen as a scapegoat to deflect from his own corruption & involvement with the Zarrab cash-for-gold scandal. Which suggests that, if Gulen is a scapegoat to avoid responsibility for the scandal, and if Brunson is falsely charged…
…for alleged links to Gulen, then therefore the Brunson spectacle is likely another attempt for Erdogan to avoid consequences for his role in the Zarrab cash-for-gold scheme.
Erdogan has pulled other similar stunts. One of the witnesses in the US case against Halkbank for its involvement with the Zarrab cash for gold scheme is Huseyin Korkmaz, a former Turkish police investigator. Erdogan labeled him as a terrorist & wants him extradited to Turkey.
➡️ Important: Don’t confuse Huseyin Korkmaz (the Turkish police investigator) with Sezgin Baran Korkmaz (the Turkish mobster wanted on fraud and money laundering charges related to fake biofuel tax credits in the Jacob and Isaiah Kingston case).
According to his indictment, Korkmaz laundered over $133 million in fraud proceeds through bank accounts that he controlled in Turkey & Luxembourg. The proceeds resulted from a scheme by Jacob Kingston, Isaiah Kingston, and Levon Termendzhyan to defraud the U.S. Treasury…
…by filing false claims for over $1 billion in refundable renewable fuel tax credits for the production and sale of biodiesel by their company, Washakie Renewable Energy LLC, in Plymouth, Utah. See:

justice.gov/opa/pr/turkish…
Korkmaz was arrested in Austria in June 2021, and both US & Turkish authorities were lobbying Austrian officials for the right to extradite him. Unfortunately, in late August, Austria decided to extradite him to Turkey, where Erdogan can bury the case.

dailysabah.com/turkey/investi…
But mobster Korkmaz is the main tip-off to the idea that Brunson is being leveraged against the Zarrab investigation. Because in Sept 2018, mobster Korkmaz (who is buddies with Erdogan) flew James Woolsey, Tommy Hicks, & a Catholic priest to Turkey to negotiate over Brunson.
Woolsey and co actually flew to Turkey on a private jet owned by Korkmaz. And the trip was arranged by Woolsey’s dying wife, Turkish lobbyist Nancye Miller.

occrp.org/en/investigati…
Note that Korkmaz and his biofuel tax credit scheme is another criminal conspiracy involving Erdogan and senior members of the Turkish government. Image
But the Korkmaz biofuel case didn’t break until Aug/Sept 2018. And remember that Brunson was arrested by Turkish authorities in 2016. So it wasn’t the Korkmaz ordeal that inspired Erdogan to kidnap Brunson; it was something else. Image
The key is this: Remember how I’m assuming that Nowruz Commission was the assembly of business & diplomatic resources necessary to facilitate the Zarrab cash for gold sanctions evasion scheme because of the involvement of Kian, Alptekin, and Calik (among others)? Well…
James Woolsey and his deceased wife Nancye Miller were smack dab in the middle of the Nowruz Commission and NC cofounder Nasser Kazeminy. Woolsey worked (along with Flynn & Kian) for a Kazeminy-owned company called GreenZone Systems.
And Nancye Miller was not only a registered foreign agent for Turkey but also a Nowruz Commission ambassador!
So if you agree that Nowruz Commission appears to have been created to facilitate the Zarrab cash for gold sanctions evasion scheme, and if Woolsey & Miller are both involved with Nowruz, then their involvement in the Brunson negotiations suggests that Brunson was about Zarrab.
Plus there is a simple matter of timing. Zarrab was arrested in Miami and began cooperating with US investigators in March 2016.
And Brunson was detained by Turkish authorities in October 2016. Image
Ok now where were we? First of all, if you’ve managed to follow this tweet this far, then congratulations! You deserve a medal.
But all of this Brunson/Korkmaz/Woolsey stuff was just a brief diversion, because I felt bad about leaving a potentially unsupported assertion about Erdogan’s motives for kidnapping Brunson hanging out there. So I presented my case.
But what we’re REALLY supposed to be doing is working our way through the 2016 timeline so that we can reconvene circa 2017. So let’s get back to that!
2016 Nov: Trump is declared the winner of the 2016 election. Mike Flynn discusses “sanctions” with Russian ambassador Kislyak. (We all assumed these to be the Russian sanctions, but sometimes I wonder…)
Ok now speaking of the timeline, let’s backtrack real quick to 2010, because I left something out. 🤦‍♂️
Remember how 2010 was when Kazakh ambassador Idrissov cofounded the Nowruz Commission along with Kazeminy and Kian?
And remember how this thread started with Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev and the mysterious $30 million payment for his third wife’s empty shell company?
Well that payment occurred in 2010. 🤔🤔
Ok now let’s move on to 2017, because some important things happened here relating to the Nowruz Commission and the ongoing attack against western democracy.
Of course, as you surely know, Trump was sworn in as POTUS in January 2017.

nytimes.com/2017/01/20/us/…
In May 2017, Trump took his first official foreign trip. Inexplicably, he chose Saudi Arabia as the destination. It was on this trip that he did the glowing orb stunt with Saudi King Salman and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi.

nymag.com/intelligencer/…
If you think it’s strange that Trump used his first official foreign trip to visit Saudi King Salman and Egyptian President Fattah el-Sisi, please allow me to remind you that Khawaja claims that the small donor scheme was using Saudi cash.
Let me also please remind you that intelligence gathered in 2016 suggested that Egypt was illegally funneling money into the the 2016 Trump campaign.
Federal law enforcement officials suspected, in part because of intelligence information, that there was money moving through the Egyptian bank that could connect to Trump's campaign donation, according to the sources.

amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/10/14… Image
The Mueller investigation tried to connect this Egyptian money to the $10 mil loan that Trump made to his own campaign 2 weeks before Election Day. But they reportedly couldn’t find the connection. Do you suppose this money actually flowed through gift card micro donations? 🤷‍♂️
Whatever the case may be, while Trump was “inexplicably” traveling to Saudi Arabia in 2017 to thank the Saudis & Egyptians, Zarrab and Karahan were continuing to cooperate with US investigators.
And by the end of 2017, Michael Flynn was pleading guilty to lying to the FBI.

npr.org/2017/12/01/561…
But where I’m really going with regard to the events of 2017 is the formation of the Qanon disinformation cult and how it connects to Iranian sanctions evasion & Central Asian smuggling through the Nowruz Commission and a character named Thomas Schoenberger.
According to reporting by @HeavySan, by March of 2017, Thomas Schoenberger and his network of trolls combined forces with a group of “disaffected” former government officials to form the network that became Qanon.
Schoenberger is reportedly a problematic individual with an extensive criminal record that includes felony stalking.
And he is allegedly a skilled manipulator who has managed to convince members of the IAM cult (to which Schoenberger reportedly belongs) that he is a time traveler, an alchemist, and a reincarnation of Saint Germain.
But what makes Schoenberger interesting is his connection to Nowruz Commission (and thus the cash-for-gold Iranian sanctions evasion scheme & Central Asian smuggling operations). Remember how the Nowruz Commission is compromised of people who can facilitate Zarrab’s operation?
Including Ekim Alptekin…
…and Ahmet Calik.
And remember how Nowruz Commission was founded by these 3 dudes: Nasser Kazeminy (Iranian-American businessman with a shady history), Bijan Kian (Mike Flynn’s former business partner twice-indicted illegal agent for Turkey), and Erlan Idrissov (Moscow-educated Kazakh diplomat)?
Well Schoenberger is closely connected to both Kazeminy and Kian. In fact, he was previously married to Kazeminy’s cousin, Faranak Shahroozi.
And Kazeminy is reportedly the godfather to Schoenberger’s adult son, Wolfgang.
And in 2005, Kazeminy and Schoenberger reportedly formed a business together called Amadeus Investors LLC.
Schoenberger has also implicated both himself and Bijan Kian in Central Asian smuggling activity, claiming in a 2015 legal deposition that he and Kian had planned “covert operations for Afghanistan” together in 2011.
Reminder: Kian and Alptekin were indicted TOGETHER for acting as illegal foreign agents for Turkey.
So why does all of this matter? It matters because if Kazeminy & Kian are part of the criminal enterprise that orchestrated the Zarrab cash-for-gold scheme, and if Schoenberger is working with both Kazeminy & Kian, and if Schoenberger is an original organizer of the Qanon op…
…then it stands to reason that the entire Qanon operation is at least partly organized and supported by the same criminal enterprise that orchestrated the Zarrab cash-for-gold Iranian sanctions evasion scheme, including corrupt officials from Turkey and UAE.
There are also direct connections between Nowruz Commission & Nasser Kazeminy to Qanon through Mike Flynn. Flynn is a Qanon promoter who posted a video of himself taking the oath to Q in July 2020.
But remember that Nowruz Commission cofounder (and twice-indicted unregistered foreign agent for Turkey) Bijan Kian (aka Bijan Rafiekian) is Mike Flynn’s former business partner.
And the former in-house counsel for Flynn Intel Group, Robert Kelley, is the Nowruz Commission’s Secretary General.
Flynn had a $600,000 consulting contract with Ekim Alptekin…
…who at one time served as a member of the board and vice chairman of the Nowruz Commission.
Reminder: Alptekin also worked with Kremlin-connected Russian businessman Dmitry Zaikin to organize the massive lobbying effort to protect Turkey and Erdogan from the legal & political fallout of the Zarrab cash-for-gold Iranian sanctions evasion investigation.
And Alptekin has his own business connections to Putin, as Putin personally approved the financing for Alptekin’s Eclipse Aviation company.
Flynn also has multiple relationships with Nowruz Commission cofounder Nasser Kazeminy, including a consulting arrangement with Kazeminy’s private equity firm, NJK Holding Corporation…
…and Flynn served as vice chairman for a Kazeminy/NJK company called GreenZone Systems, which was run by Flynn’s business partner Bijan Kian.
🔥🔥🔥Which means that you can draw a straight line from the Turkey cash-for-gold Iranian sanctions evasion & Central Asian smuggling operation to Qanon through Alptekin, Kian, Kazeminy, Nowruz Commission, Flynn, and Schoenberger! ⬅️⬅️

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