Thread by @nimkef

10 Dec 2014

U.S. federal authorities are considering a request to investigate whether a powerful Russian state media boss, Mikhail Lesin, violated U.S. anti-money-laundering laws when he purchased expensive California real estate

rferl.org/a/us-fbi-russi…

RFE/RL has obtained a copy of a December 3 letter from U.S. Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik that says the request by U.S. Senator Roger Wicker was referred to the U.S. Justice Department's criminal division and the FBI.

Lesin, the head of Russian state-owned entertainment conglomerate Gazprom-Media, is a former Russian press minister and is seen as the mastermind behind the Kremlin-funded RT broadcasting network.

Wicker asked DOJ in July to investigate whether Lesin used illicit funds to purchase several multimillion-dollar homes in the LA area

Wicker said while DOJ "does not confirm or deny the existence of an ongoing investigation," he believed Kadzik's letter "is a positive step"

"I am hopeful that the full range of tools available to the agency are being used to look into possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and anti-money-laundering statutes by Mr. Lesin," Wicker said in e-mailed comments.

Documents submitted in unrelated litigation in California Superior Court and obtained by RFE/RL show Lesin is the sole owner of Dastel Corporation, a company incorporated in California in July 2011.

Property registries show that Dastel Corp purchased a 13k-sqft Beverly Hills home in Aug 2011 for $13.8M and a 10,600-sqft Brentwood home for $9M in 2012

Public records and court docs show that two other pricey properties in the LA area are linked to Lesin's immediate family

In his July 29 letter to AG Eric Holder, Wicker said the fact "that a Russian public servant could have amassed the considerable funds required to acquire and maintain" such expensive assets abroad "raises serious questions."

Lesin responded to Wicker's letter in a lengthy interview with the Russian version of "Forbes" magazine in August, claiming that his children took out loans to purchase the real estate in question.

"It certainly is not my property," Lesin said in the interview.

But Dastel president and treasurer Ilya Tsipis said in a July 21 declaration to LA Superior Court that from the company's inception, "the entire issued and outstanding stock of Dastel has been owned by a single person: Mikhail Lesin, a resident of the United States of America."

Tsipis attached to his declaration what he called a "true and correct copy" of Lesin's stock certificate, which corroborates Tsipis's statements. Tsipis added that Dastel "is not owned and has never been owned" by Lesin's son, Anton Lessine, daughter-in-law, or wife.

The declaration was made in connection with a lawsuit filed by a household worker employed by Dastel who claims that the company and Lesin's immediate family members committed numerous labor-law violations.

That lawsuit is set to go to trial in March, according to the U.S. local news site Patch[.]com.

"Anton Lessine is the son of former Kremlin media czar Mikhail Lesin."

patch.com/california/bre…

Anton Lessine is a film producer who served alongside Hollywood star Brad Pitt as an executive producer for the World War II drama "Fury," which starred Pitt and was released in October.

Lesin said in the "Forbes" interview that his daughter heads a bureau for RT, the Kremlin-funded international news network launched in 2005.

Lesin has been widely credited as a mastermind of the RT project, which U.S. officials have accused of disseminating Kremlin "propaganda"

The founder of Video International, one of Russia's largest advertising firms, Lesin served as press minister during Russian President Vladimir Putin's first term, when he played a central role in cementing state control over the independent television channel NTV.

He went on to serve as a Kremlin adviser during Putin's second term and was dismissed from that post in 2009 by then-President Dmitry Medvedev.

Lesin has headed Gazprom-Media, the country's largest media holding, since October 2013.

During her employment, Anton Lessine repeatedly said Americans were “stupid” and were “puritans,” and the couple told Wetherbee “to be sure to not expose their children to the Bible,” according to the lawsuit.

The remarks insulted Wetherbee, an American and a Protestant, the suit states. Anton Lessine and his wife are of Russian and Swiss descent, respectively, and Wetherbee believes they are atheists, according to her suit.

16 March 2019

Prior to the Dupont Circle Hotel, Lesin had spent time at the more upscale Four Seasons Hotel in another part of DC. According to the DC police report, officials at the Four Seasons had called the Secret Service on Nov 3 when...

rferl.org/a/lesin-autops…

Lesin appeared to be heavily intoxicated, and the Secret Service advised that a guard be posted at his door to prevent him from leaving. He checked into the Dupont Circle Hotel a day later.

Much of Lesin's vast wealth came from a private company he set up in the 1990s to sell TV ads in the Russian market. That company, Video International (VI), was later acquired by Yury Kovalchuk, the main shareholder of Bank Rossia, which has been closely linked to the Kremlin

Lesin played a major role in the 1996 election campaign of Boris Yeltsin, and served as his main spokesman in the latter part of Yeltsin's tenure, including during Yeltsin's abrupt decision to resign, announced on December 31, 1999 and the appointment of Putin to be his successor

He lost favor with the Kremlin for unknown reasons sometime between 2012 and 2014, and he largely fell out of the public eye.

In 2014, a year before his death, Lesin had drawn the attention of the US Senate, where Sen. Wicker called on FBI to investigate him for money laundering

Months before his death, Russian media alleged that he was engaged to a Russian model much younger than him, and that she was pregnant with their child.

RFE/RL has been unable to confirm the whereabouts of the woman, identified as Viktoria Rakhimbayeva.

Lesin was not known to be a regular visitor to DC. But shortly after his death, it emerged that one of his reasons for being in the U.S. capital was to attend a scheduled gala fundraiser at the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute on November 3, two days before his body was found.

One of the philanthropists being honored that night was the influential Russian banker Pyotr Aven. Lesin never attended the event.

Aven also attended a private event at the Atlantic Council, on Nov 4. According to a source, Lesin had sought to attend but the organizers declined.

One person in contact with federal law enforcement officials told RFE/RL that Lesin had been in contact with the Justice Department in the months leading up to his death.

March 2018, BuzzFeed quoted unnamed sources as saying that Christopher Steele had given the FBI a report stating that Lesin was bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for an oligarch close to Putin. The identity of the oligarch was not revealed in the BuzzFeed report.

27 March 2018
Updated 3 July 2018

Steele provided a secret report to the FBI asserting that RT founder Mikhail Lesin was bludgeoned to death by thugs hired by an oligarch close to Putin.

buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonl…

Three other sources independently told the FBI the same basic story, contradicting the government’s finding that Lesin’s death was accidental.

FBI received his report while it was helping the Washington, DC, Metropolitan Police Department investigate the Russian media baron’s death, the sources said

FBI spokesperson Andrew Ames declined to confirm or deny the existence of the report and would not comment for this story

The BuzzFeed News series also revealed new details about Lesin — including that he died on the eve of a scheduled meeting with US Justice Department officials. They had planned to interview Lesin about the inner workings of RT, the Kremlin-funded network that he founded.

Steele’s report says that Lesin was bludgeoned to death by enforcers working for an oligarch close to Putin, the four sources said.

The thugs had been instructed to beat Lesin, not kill him, but they went too far, the sources said Steele wrote.

Three of the sources said that the report described the killers as Russian state security agents moonlighting for the oligarch

“It’s really hard to imagine that it was an innocent death,” said former CIA intelligence officer John Sipher, who worked for years on Russia matters. “Everybody I know who’s a professional and dealt with Russia — the immediate assumption is that he was murdered.”

Details about Steele’s Lesin report are based on interviews with 11 sources, almost all of whom are current or former FBI agents or US intelligence officials. Two sources said they had read the whole report, while two other sources each said they read about half of it.

For his report to the FBI about Lesin, Steele gathered intelligence from high-level sources in Moscow, according to the two sources who read the whole report.

All four of the people who read Steele’s report said it pins Lesin’s murder on a professional relationship gone lethally awry. According to the report, they said, Lesin fell out with a powerful oligarch close to Putin.

Wanting to intimidate Lesin, the oligarch then contracted with Russian state security agents to beat up Lesin, the report states, according to three of the sources. The goal was not to kill Lesin, all four sources said Steele wrote, but Lesin died from the attack.

Lesin’s yacht Serenity, which he purchased in 2011, was reportedly valued at $40 million. He spent more and more time in the United States, and he was dating a Siberian model at the time of his death.

Property records show that companies he was associated with spent at least $28M on luxury real estate, purchasing sprawling estates in LA, Beverly Hills & Brentwood for himself; his daughter, Ekaterina Lesina, an RT bureau chief; and his son, Anton Lessine, a Hollywood producer.

6 Nov 2015

Former Russian press minister Mikhail Lesin, who once headed state-controlled media giant Gazprom-Media, died of a heart attack in Washington, local and Russian media reported on Friday.

reuters.com/article/people…

ABC quoted a Russian and a U.S. official as saying Lesin was found dead inside a hotel room in Washington’s Dupont Circle area on Thursday.

Russia Today (RT) quoted family members as saying Lesin died of a heart attack [4 Nov 2015].

RT quoted TASS as saying police had found no signs of foul play but that a formal investigation into his death had been launched.

ABC said Lesin, who was Russia’s Minister of Press from 1999 to 2004. He became head of Gazprom-Media Holding in 2013 but resigned the following year

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