Each day at just after midnight Eastern, a post like this one is created for contributors and readers of this site to upload news links and video links on the issues that concern this site. Most notably, Islam and its effects on Classical Civilization, and various forms of leftism from Soviet era communism, to postmodernism and all the flavours of galloping statism and totalitarianism such as Nazism and Fascism which are increasingly snuffing out the classical liberalism which created our near, miraculous civilization the West has been building since the time of Socrates.
This document was written around the time this site was created, for those who wish to understand what this site is about. And while our understanding of the world and events has grown since then, the basic ideas remain sound and true to the purpose.
So please post all links, thoughts and ideas that you feel will benefit the readers of this site to the comments under this post each day. And thank you all for your contributions.
This is the new Samizdat. We must use it while we can.
Russia orders arrest of Wagner chief amid ‘armed mutiny’: Wh ..
Read more at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/101233454.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
Russian President Vladimir Putin in an emergency televised a ..
Read more at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/101233454.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
The leader of the Wagner private military company, Yevgeny P ..
Read more at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/101233454.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst
Note: we are entering ‘Games of Throne’ territory where heads of mercenary groups can be bought off…but then again, they are mercenaries…
Yes, did western forces out bid for him to turn?
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/wagner-chief-declares-full-coup-against-russian-defense-ministry
That is a to.e honored tactic, so it has to be considered.
And so it begins. — I am waiting to see what will happen with the political driven College of Physicians and Surgeons-their blatant take down of every doctor in Ontario who spoke up against the “The Great Experimemt”
Epoch Times
Over 300 Canadian Armed Forces Members harmed by Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates Launch a $500,000,000 lawsuit against the Canadian Military
The CAF shirked its own purpose and rushed an untested product onto its members, mislabeled this experimental gene therapy a “vaccine”. Knowingly made false statements of safety and effectiveness and facilitated its mandate with no option to refuse except for mandatory permanent removal from service, reads the statement of claim filed June 21, 2023.
The lawsuit states that the CAF focused on “political agendas and taking direction from political leaders, that is detrimental to operational readiness and effectiveness “ when it implemented the Covid-19 vaccine mandates. It sold the CAF gave the plaintiffs no way to meet the mandates by writing the directives in a way that blocked any possible means of complying with them…..
Ty ET.
Putin’s own address to the nation:
https://youtu.be/rDMMAF4Ms1k
Shoplifter Blowtorches Security Measure in Packed Store, Is Openly Stealing Within Seconds
By Mike Landry, The Western Journal Jun. 24, 2023 7:30 am101 Comments
Welcome Walgreens shoplifters.
You’ll see we have new anti-theft devices in order to make the shopping experience pleasant for everyone.
However, if you’re in a hurry, feel free to bring a blowtorch to cut through those security protections.
While you do, one of our associates will be happy to record your shopping experience on their cellphone. Except they know and you know nothing is going to happen to you.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/shoplifter-blowtorches-security-measure-packed-store-openly-stealing/
Ed Dowd 50 min on Kennedy’s run and vaxx stats:
https://youtu.be/Sw5gnFjTfcI
Defender
Documents released by BioNTech to the European Medicines Agency reveals ten of thousands of deaths among people who received the Pfizer- BioNTech mRNA Covid-19 vaccine.
Documents dated August 18, 2020 and marked “confidential”, show that cumulatively, during the clinical trials and post-marketing period up to June 18, 2022, a total of 4,964,106 adverse events were recorded.
Among children under 17, 189 deaths and thousands of serious adverse events were reported.
during this time Pfizer-BioNTech, said it identified almost no safety signals and claimed the vaccine demonstrated over 91% efficacy.
“Off the charts” with myocarditis at over 10,000 and pericarditis reports over 9,000……
He mentions how day after day the MSM showed the number of Covid cases — yes the Globe and Mail showed a runny tally everyday. Has anyone in the real world ever seen any tally of vaccine injured or deaths in the Globe and Mail?
Johnny on a lighter note, the commie core math
Algebra
Pi R Square
No
Pie are round
Cornbread is square.
It took me a second lol.
Obama Can’t Help Himself-Politicizes OceanGate Sub Tragedy-Ignores Lack of Coverage of Migrant Deaths Under His Watch
By Margaret Flavin Jun. 24, 2023 9:20 am80 Comments
Barrack Obama can’t pass up an opportunity to politicize a tragedy.
While trying to point out that all loss of life matters, he actually underscores that some lives should matter more…..migrants.
In an interview with CNN, Obama suggests there is a double standard in media coverage of the tragedy of the OceanGate Titan submersible versus a migrant boat that sank off the coast of Greece last week.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/obama-cant-help-himself-politicizes-oceangate-sub-tragedy/
Woman and Teen Daughter Take in Migrant as a Host Family – Now He’s on Trial After They Were Nearly Stabbed to Death
By Michael Schwarz, The Western Journal Jun. 24, 2023 9:00 am177 Comments
The fashionable ideas of the modern world continue to place women and girls in harm’s way.
Germany’s Bild reported Tuesday that prosecutors believe a knife-wielding Afghan migrant who allegedly attacked a German mother and daughter in October 2022 acted in a fit of jealousy.
Fuwad O. is on trial this week on two attempted murder charges, the report said.
The mother and daughter, identified as Bettina and Sara A., had opened their home to the defendant, according to a translated report from the Polish site wPolityce.pl.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/woman-teen-daughter-take-migrant-host-family-now/
Illinois Gives $300,000 to BLM Group That Appears to Be Inactive
By Margaret Flavin Jun. 24, 2023 8:40 am81 Comments
Despite being crime ridden, over-taxed and hemorrhaging citizens (and their tax dollars) in favor of red states, Illinois apparently has enough money to provide $300,000 to a BLM group that appears to be mostly inactive.
A recent Wirepoints analysis of Internal Revenue Service migration data shows the exodus from the state.
This comes at a time that Chicago’s public pension system is in dire straits.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/?p=968928
Liberal Utopia Austin, Texas Homeless Map Shows a Shocking 10K Living in Camps
By Margaret Flavin Jun. 24, 2023 8:20 am225 Comments
The liberal, anti-police policies in Austin, Texas have had a devastating human toll.
Local filmmaker Jaime Hammonds chronicled the crisis and created a map of the approximately 168 homeless camps around the city that show up to 10,000 living on the streets.
The filmmaker told The New York Post that the camps are far more prevalent that many people are aware, and have encroached on popular tourist destinations, warning that an “even bigger public safety threat could be looming as the sites remain largely unregulated by the Democratic city’s leadership.”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/shocking-liberal-utopia-austin-texas-homeless-map-shows/
(Richard: This is BS, all states choose two sets of electors, one Republican and one Dem before the election. Smith knows this and is ignoring it for political purposes.)
Exclusive: Special counsel trades immunity for fake elector testimony as Jan 6 probe heats up
By Katelyn Polantz, Sara Murray, Zachary Cohen and Casey Gannon, CNN
Updated 1:51 PM EDT, Fri June 23, 2023
CNN
Washington
CNN
—
Special counsel Jack Smith has compelled at least two Republican fake electors to testify to a federal grand jury in Washington in recent weeks by giving them limited immunity, part of a current push by federal prosecutors to swiftly nail down evidence in the sprawling criminal investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The testimony, described to CNN by people familiar with the situation, comes after a year of relative dormancy around the fake electors portion of the investigation and as a parade of related witnesses are being told to appear before the grand jury with no chance for delay.
That activity could signal that investigators are nearing at least some charging decisions in a part of the 2020 election probe, sources added. It also comes just as the special counsel’s office filed charges against former President Donald Trump for his handling of classified documents.
Prosecutors initially obtained documents and interviews last spring from many of the Republicans who signed false certificates to the federal government, asserting they were the rightful electors for Trump in seven battleground states won by Joe Biden.
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnn.com%2F2023%2F06%2F23%2Fpolitics%2Fspecial-counsel-fake-electors-immunity-testimony-jan-6%2Findex.html
CBDC in Europe: Slovakia adds right to cash payments in constitution over digital euro fears.
https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/slovakia-adds-right-to-cash-payments-in-constitution-over-digital-euro-fears/
Excellent article in the National Post on critical theory, post modernism, social justice and critical race theory:
(Cultural revolution is complete when the new way of thinking simply becomes the way people think).
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/bruce-pardy-how-canada-s-secular-religion-of-cultural-self-hate-took-hold/ar-AA1cYkrH?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=e4d1015393354318abd2bc5a17492266&ei=35
World Health Organization’s ‘Comprehensive Sexuality Education’ Teaches Young Children Masturbation
By Margaret Flavin Jun. 24, 2023 10:15 am175 Comments
The World Health Organization (WHO), that claims their mission is “to promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable” has ‘Comprehensive Sexuality Education’ guidelines that feature adults talking to young children about their genitals and teaching masturbation.
Stop World Control has a comprehensive report on the disturbing activities.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/world-health-organizations-comprehensive-sexuality-education-teaches-young/
Joe Dan Gorman of Intellectual Froglegs Releases His BEST VIDEO EVER—WARNING: Don’t Watch It If You Don’t Want to Laugh!
By Patty McMurray Jun. 24, 2023 9:45 am42 Comments
Joe Dan Gorman is the host, creator, and producer of Intellectual Froglegs.
100 Percent Fed Up reports – The hilarious and insightful Gorman celebrated his birthday earlier this week, and instead of receiving a gift, he’s sharing his gift with America. The Intellectual Froglegs founder has been making videos for over a decade, and the latest video that he’s just released is his best work yet.
The incredible patriot and unapologetic Christian, who is also a talented comedian, can turn current events into an entertaining video that never gets old.
In his latest release, Joe Dan covers the COVID sham that was perpetrated by big Pharma, Dr. Fauci, the lying mainstream media, and big tech, who relied on dishonest third-party “fact-checkers” to punish people who dared to question the authenticity of their coordinated narrative on vaccines and the origins of COVID.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/joe-dan-gorman-intellectual-froglegs-releases-his-best/
PROFESSIONAL BASKETBALL PLAYER DIES OF HEART ATTACK, PREVIOUSLY BLAMED COVID VACCINE FOR MYOCARDITIS
by Amber Harding – June 24, 2023
https://www.outkick.com/professional-basketball-player-dies-of-heart-attack-previously-blamed-covid-vaccine-for-myocarditis/
Train Plunges Into Yellowstone River in Montana After Bridge Collapses; Hazardous Spill Feared
By Cristina Laila Jun. 24, 2023 3:54 pm45 Comments
A train plunged into the Yellowstone River in Montana after a bridge collapsed on Saturday.
According to reports, fuel spilled into the river.
A large federal emergency response is underway after 8 rail cars plunged into the river when the bridge collapsed.
I’m monitoring the train derailment in Stillwater County, and the state is standing by to support as Montana Rail Link and county officials assess their needs,” Montana Governor Greg Gianforte said.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/train-plunges-yellowstone-river-montana-after-bridge-collapses/
Clinton-Appointed Judge Temporarily Blocks DeSantis Drag Show Law
By Cristina Laila Jun. 24, 2023 1:40 pm151 Comments
A Clinton-appointed federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ drag show law aimed at protecting children.
“The state claims that this statute seeks to protect children generally from obscene live performances. Rather, this statute is specifically designed to suppress the speech of drag queen performers,” US District Judge Gregory Presnell wrote.
“Existing obscenity laws provide Defendant with the necessary authority to protect children from any constitutionally unprotected obscene exhibitions or shows.” the judge wrote in response to a request from a lawsuit by the restaurant chain Hamburger Mary’s.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/06/clinton-appointed-judge-temporarily-blocks-desantis-drag-show/
Ellison hints he could use AG powers to ensure Target keeps Pride merch on shelves
Ellison told the Minneapolis-based retail titan to “stand firm in the face” of violence, intimidation and discrimination against its LGBTQAI+ customers, despite not citing any examples.
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison has co-authored a letter to the CEO of Target that suggests he would use the powers of his office to ensure that Target is not intimidated into “pulling some Pride merchandise from stores.”
In a June 20 letter Ellison and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell wrote to Brian Cornell, chairman and CEO the Minneapolis-based retail titan, they expressed concern over Target’s “choice to pull Pride merchandise,” which Ellison and Campbell said “demonstrates that intentional violence and intimidation can set back the march for social progress and LGBTQIA+ equality which as we have noted is already under intense attack nationwide.”
Additional attorneys general who signed onto the letter include those from: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Ellison used the communication to Target’s top executive officer to summarize what he describes as an “increasing number of politically motivated attacks over the past two years against the LGBTQ+ community.”
Ellison and Campbell told Cornell that several states “have now adopted laws barring public schools from discussing LGBTQ+ identity, limiting gender-affirming
https://alphanews.org/ellison-hints-he-could-use-ag-powers-to-ensure-target-keeps-pride-merchandise-on-shelves/
Officers Find Body of Alleged Intruder After Female Homeowner Opened Fire
Self defense gun
Officers responding to a burglary call in Amarillo, Texas, arrived at the scene and found the body of a 53-year-old alleged home intruder.
ABC 7 reported that the incident occurred at about 5:30 a.m. Thursday.
Police arrived and found the body of 53-year-old Cedric Milligan, whom they believe was trying to force his way into the back door of the home when the female homeowner opened fire.
News Channel 10 noted that the Amarillo homicide unit is investigating the incident.
Watch: AWR Hawkins’ Tips on Exercising Self Defense
ahawkins
Texas is one of many states with “Castle Doctrine” laws which allow homeowners to use deadly force in self-defense in their residence without any duty to first attempt to retreat.
There was an effort to add a duty to retreat to the state’s Castle Doctrine in December 2020, but Gov. Greg Abbot (R) shot it down: “Let me be clear. The Castle Doctrine will not be reduced. We won’t force Texas homeowners to retreat. Especially with the crazy ‘defund police’ ideas, homeowners need to protect themselves now more than ever,” he asserted. “We will protect 2nd Amendment rights.”
Watch — AWR Hawkins: “The Central Component” of the 2nd Amendment Is “Self-Defense”
https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Fcrime%2F2023%2F06%2F24%2Fofficers-find-body-of-alleged-intruder-after-female-homeowner-opened-fire%2F
Bridge collapse launches freight carrying contaminants into Yellowstone River
By Deirdre Bardolf
June 24, 2023 4:13pm Updated
A freight train has caused a fright in Montana after derailing into the Yellowstone River following an overnight bridge collapse.
The bridge crumbled and sent portions of the train, including some cars potentially carrying hazardous material, plunging into the water below.
I’m monitoring the train derailment in Stillwater County, and the state is standing by to support as Montana Rail Link and county officials assess their needs,” Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte said Saturday on Twitter.
“There is no immediate threat to Yellowstone County,” the Yellowstone County Sheriff’s Office posted to social media, adding, “Precautions are being put in place.”
A total of eight rail cars were involved and, despite initial reports, none contained oil, the Stillwater County News reported.
https://nypost.com/2023/06/24/yellowstone-bridge-collapses-sends-freight-train-into-river/
The Optimistic Conservative
The Baturina Chronicles
Making the world go around, one transfer at a time.
The tangled epic of the Biden family and funny foreign money won’t be getting untangled any time soon. Each fresh revelation seems to add a new knot, rather than simplifying the analytical problem.
But we have enough context now to take a walk through it in relation to the Elena Baturina chapter in the saga. When the Senate issued its initial report on the Baturina transactions in 2020, not enough context had been assembled to suggest likely characterizations (other than that it was all bound to look suspicious). But there’s a lot more to work with now.
What follows here can’t be comprehensive, partly because we still don’t know enough to tie everything together with a neat bow. (Party, of course, because there’s just so darn much involved.) But laying out a series of bare facts will be indicative, if not conclusive.
The method will be a few basic vignettes over time, in which we observe things that happened at the same time, and what they were preceded by. The timeframes are 2010-2014, 2014 itself, and 2015-2016.
The most recent “hook” has been the announced revelation that Mykola Zlochevsky, nominal owner of Burisma, was an asset of Russia’s SVR, or foreign intelligence service (the counterpart of the American CIA).
Although that might not seem directly relevant, the likelihood that Elena Baturina was acting on behalf of Kremlin objectives in her monetary connection to the Bidens would constitute a significant Baturina-Zlochevsky overlap on a Venn diagram.
The whole matter is illuminated by being laid out in cintext,
A small amount of parsing is proper for Zlochevsky information droplet. Basically, the keyword in it is “asset.” An “asset” isn’t necessarily an institutional employee of the SVR, whether engaged in espionage or analysis. An “asset” isn’t an agent of influence. An agent of influence doesn’t observe passively and report to a handler, or merely execute rote tasks for the intel agency; he seeks and gains a trust relationship with targeted foreigners on their turf, and his long-term job is to influence them.
An ”asset” can come from a more than one provenance, but if intelligence leakers are using the word correctly, an asset is someone handled and cultivated by the intel agency (the SVR, in this case), who provides information and convenient services from the kinds of human interactions he participates in through his profession. He can do that a lot, or a little.
The U.S. intel “disclosure” didn’t say Zlochevsky is or was an SVR employee with civil service status and official rank. So I’m going with “Zlochevksy is being handled as a third-party asset of the SVR, and stays in contact with it and executes a limited set of tasks at its instigation.”
He’s probably used to throw out bait to foreigners (like Hunter Biden and Devon Archer), and move money around to dirty them up, with the intelligence work of intrusive tracking of them, and plotting corruption campaigns against them, done by the SVR.
The SVR has what we formally designate a “butt-ton-load” of assets around the globe, and especially in the former USSR “republics.” The ones in Ukraine are wielded as much against Ukraine as they are against other-party foreigners. Zlochevsky would have been very useful to Russia in his roles with the Ukrainian government before and during the period of Burisma’s engagement with Hunter Biden.
Mykola Zlochevsky as Minister of Ecology of Ukraine. Wikipedia: Svetlana.pashko – Own work
In light of this parsed, informed perspective, one thing it’s possible to do is try to measure Zlochevsky’s known activities against a standard of performance for an SVR “asset.” I won’t be attempting that in this article, but I will observe that nothing we’ve seen to date appears to indicate that Zlochevsky is a rank-holding SVR employee.
On to the vignettes
The first vignette – again, the context is Elena Baturina’s transactions with Biden, Inc. – starts back before the period many readers may have in mind.
It starts before that February 2014 transfer of $3.5 million to Hunter’s investment company, Rosemont Seneca Thornton (RST).
It centers on the investment we found out about later, an injection of some $40 million into RST real estate investments in 2012.
It would be exhausting to try to take in, in one gulp, everything contextually relevant to that transaction. But in my view, there is a set of circumstances that is most relevant to how we may interpret Baturina’s involvement with the Bidens. It starts in 2009.
June of 2009 is when Hunter and Devon Archer set up Rosemont Seneca, along with Christopher Heinz, John Kerry’s stepson. This event would naturally have been of interest to intelligence services around the world, regardless of how innocent it might have been. (Given Hunter and Joe Biden’s earlier history with Delaware finance company MBNA, foreign intel services had no reason to assume it was innocent.)
Foreign agencies’ interest would have intensified with Hunter’s April 2010 trip to China, in which, as a representative of Rosemont Seneca, he “gained audiences with top officials of influential state-linked enterprises including the Postal Savings Bank, China Investment Corp., and Founder Group.”
Levine and Linge note at the NY Post article that Hunter “was joined on the trip by James Bulger, the politically connected co-founder of the Thornton Group, an Asia-oriented financial services firm.”
Keep in mind that Russian intelligence was in no doubt about Hunter Biden’s lifestyle or apparent character in 2010 – however little the average American knew about it. Spying on and developing, as targets, the family and associates of high-ranking government officials is what national intel agencies do for a living.
Hunter Biden was not ready for prime time, as the saying goes, for either intelligently navigating the whitewater of foreign investment or dealing for any purpose, but especially for exchanging money and assets, with front companies for the Chinese Communist Party. Hardly anyone in the U.S. had any idea he was embarking on this adventure, but I guarantee you the intelligence agencies of Russia were all over it.
Meanwhile, Russia had drama of its own going on. Elena Baturina was a billionaire and the richest woman in the country at the time. (Dossiers here and here.) She was still, for a few more months, the wife of Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. She had been since Luzhkov became mayor in 1992, and Russians had no illusions about how she became a billionaire off of real estate and infrastructure development enterprises in Moscow and other parts of the country.
Already, by 2010, Baturina’s Inteco Group conglomerate was undergoing investigations, and a few prosecutions, by the state. Most readers are probably familiar with the pattern of such forms of leverage used by the Russian government (pretty much any Russian government, ever, regardless of what ideological name it slaps on itself).
It’s also well to remember that Baturina could not have accumulated a high-count net worth of $4.2 billion, operating almost exclusively inside Russia, without essentially cooperating with the politically powerful at the national and Moscow-urban level. Back-scratching, on the state’s side with a cattle prod, is ops normal in Russia.
So it’s not any surprising sort of one-off that in 2010, Baturina’s circumstances fit those of the Russian state’s gently and persistently developed potential assets. I treat her as such with high confidence. The “one-off” aspect of Baturina was not her wealth or her company’s inevitable history of investigations; it’s that she was the mayor of Moscow’s wife.
In targeting Hunter Biden two years later, I have no doubt she was acting at the behest of the Russian government. The prospect of investment with Hunter being a profitable venture was poor, at a minimum because there was no track record. She had no other reason to approach him, in particular, with the goal of “real estate investment” in the U.S.
Notably, meanwhile, Baturina’s bank, a part of her Inteco conglomerate, was under investigation by Russian authorities as early as 2009. The bank was named Russian Zemelny Bank (Russian Land Bank), or RZB as abbreviated in Russian. We’ll refer to it as RZB.
In 2010, Mayor Luzhkov’s status as a longstanding political irritant boiled over. Dmitry Medvedev was the Russian premier at the time, but Vladimir Putin’s approval was clearly necessary to effect Luzhkov’s termination in the role of mayor in the capital city. In September of 2010, Luzhkov was forced out. He ended up moving abroad, probably not as much to flee retaliation inside Russia as to neutralize his potential as a political threat, and thus reduce any reason for making him a target. After a couple of way-point stops in Europe, he lived out his remaining days in the UK, and passed away in 2019.
Elena Baturina. Wikipedia: By Pinskibob, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33297285
Everything began to change for Elena Baturina in late 2010: she sold off virtually all her Russian Inteco assets fairly rapidly over the next couple of years, and herself moved to London. But there’s a strong indicator that she remained available to the Russian government for tasking, in the fact that she was allowed to retain the amounts for which she sold her Russian Inteco assets. She had capital to invest outside Russia (and she continued to invest in the hospitality industry inside Russia, in and around the Black Sea resort area of Sochi).
The asset we are most interested in is RZB. In late 2010 Baturina was in negotiations to sell it off – negotiations which we can confidently assume were under the strong hand of the Russian government – and in 2011 she sold over 98% of the shares to a consortium of six Cyprus-based shell companies.
Laundry Day
Two of those companies, Boaden Limited and Kourinio (or Curinio) Limited, were by far the biggest shareholders. And they used Baturina’s RZB to become the major players in a colossal, Russian-directed money-laundering scheme still infamous in Europe as the “Laundromat.”
The activities of the Laundromat started as early as 2010, involving other banks. Geographically, the participants operated around a hub in Moldova, with primary connections in Russia, Latvia, and the UK, and numerous secondary links in other countries. Cyprus-based shell companies figured prominently in the mix, serving to obscure most of those secondary links. Chinese entities were prominent among the recipients of laundered funds.
The American public hasn’t been privy to exact information about the movement of funds in Baturina’s $40 million 2012 “investment” in U.S. real estate with Rosemont Seneca, which by then had become Rosemont Seneca Thornton.
But one thing is virtually certain: in spite of having sold off her ownership of RZB, Baturina probably still had an account or accounts there. She may or may not have used them in any particular transactions, including the funds sent to Rosemont Seneca, but she was connected to the bank that was making a name as a giant washing machine. (It’s quite possible that funds were cycled through an account in her name in the laundering process, whether she was consciously involved or not. In hindsight, these circumstances would be indicators that she had been set up to provide services to a larger “RICO”-type operation of the Russian government.)
It turns out that 2012 was the year when RZB became the bank of banks for running the Laundromat. Oddly enough, to engage in a bit of light facetiousness, Igor Putin, a cousin of Vladimir Putin, was put on the RZB board of directors by Alexander Grigoriev of Boaden and Beslan Bulguchev of Kourinio, the major shareholders.
Putin video address 21 Feb 2022. Sky News video, YouTube
The Baturina investment, which represented $40 million of a near-$70 million investment plan by Rosemont Seneca Thornton, was discussed in an email series in May 2012, according to information obtained by the Daily Mail in October 2022. The investing entity was a Swiss branch of Inteco owned by Baturina: Inteco Management AG.
Here we must note the one-off of a meeting between Hunter Biden and Russian oligarch Vladimir Yevtushenkov in New York, on 14 March 2012. A source cited by the NY Post in 2022, from Yevtushenkov’s defense technology company Sistema, confirmed that this meeting took place on the date indicated.
According to the Post, “‘There was no follow-up from the meeting and Mr. Yevtushenkov has not met or had any contact with Hunter Biden since then,’ the spokesman said in an email.” If that’s true, it doesn’t sound as if Yevtushenkov himself had an interested connection to the Baturina investment or fund transfers, at least not at that point.
But a follow-on report by the Post in 2023 indicates another Hunter-Yevtushenkov dinner meeting was scheduled on 27 January 2013, prior to “looking at a commercial real estate development the next day near Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.” With no further information available, we can’t say that the dinner actually occurred, or that Yevtushenkov’s real estate interest was linked to the investment Baturina supposedly signed up for. But it all adds to the perspective of context.
On Rosemont Seneca’s end, meanwhile, the partnership corporation for the real estate investment was RREAF Diversified GP LLC, which Daily Mail says was registered in Delaware in March 2012.
The Delaware business record for RREAF Diversified GP LLC (via Open Corporates) reflects an incorporation date of 7 June 2012, however. A possible – and common – reconciliation of this discrepancy would be that the application was dated by RREAF’s agent in March 2012, but wasn’t registered by the state of Delaware until June. We can’t be sure without spending money to obtain copies of the original records (which Daily Mail may have done).
Click to enlarge for legibility (all images)
An apparently related company, RREAF Diversified II GP LLC, was incorporated in Delaware on the charmed date of 12 December 2012.
Note that, as described by the Daily Mail, other participants in the email loop for the investment plan were the Bidens’ pals from Kazakhstan, including Kenes Rakishev.
(As an aside, Baturina had a preexisting connection to Kazakhstan. In 2010 Inteco built a massive urban high-rise complex for the capital city of Astana. Inteco had received an award for the project, which was commemorated in a ceremony in Astana in 2019. See here as well. Biden cronies Rakishev and Karim Massimov would both have inevitably been involved in and profited from that venture.)
Curiously, to continue, Russian researchers tracking official documents on the Laundromat case in 2020 found that the Cyprus registrations of RZB owners Boaden and Kourinio dated to 15 March 2012.
Igor Putin’s presence on the bank’s board reportedly began in June 2012.
That’s a tight grouping of coincidences center-mass.
A risk analysis done for the National Bank of Moldova (the authority over the three Moldovan banks principally involved in the Laundromat; see PDF link at above) showed January 2012 to November 2014 as the high-water activity period for the money-laundering scheme. RZB, the main Russian bank involved, was in the hands of the new six-company consortium at that point, and was noted in money-laundering via the Laundromat that year.
The risk analysis notes that one of the three Moldovan banks underwent a complete change of ownership in August 2012, acquiring 21 new shareholders with approximately equal holdings of just under 5% each. The funding for share purchases appeared to come mostly from Latvian sources acting through UK shell companies. (It’s quite reasonable to keep in our mix a theory that the Latvian funds in the overall enterprise were already-laundered Russian or other-source money. At least some cognizant Latvians would have been profiting off the scheme as facilitators.)
The Russian researchers cited above indicate that the period of maximum Laundromat activity for RZB itself commenced in June 2013.
None of this is a smoking gun, by any means, to implicate either Baturina or the Biden investment scheme in Russia’s Laundromat. But as I’ve emphasized many times, it is the kind of coincidence of timing and participants that prompts law enforcement investigators to look further for RICO-type evidence.
It certainly has the whiff of a scheme suited for Mykola Zlochevsky’s reported comment that it would take 10 years to unravel all the murky laundering paths for the foreign funds flowing to the Bidens.
Images: Pixabay. Author composition.
The Laundromat trickled off through November 2014, eventually seeing – for the period 2010-2014 – at least $20 billion demonstrably laundered, and some $71 billion in funds flowing into Moldova from Russian Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) nations. That amount far exceeded the same flow before or after the maximum money-laundering interlude.
But the Laundromat’s glory days ended in March 2014. Russian authorities cut off their banks’ participation in the Laundromat on 18 March 2014, a few weeks after the “little green men” invasion of Crimea was mounted.
Why did Elena Baturina propose to invest with Hunter Biden in 2012, during this period of turmoil with her just-sold bank, which was the major participant by far in an enormous money-laundering scheme that was undoubtedly being run by the Russian government?
You tell me.
The second vignette*
Russia’s move to formally end Russian participation in the Laundromat, on 18 March 2014, was a date with very obvious import, given the context of a host of other facts. The one relating specifically to Elena Baturina was her wire of $3.5 million to Rosemont Seneca on 14 February 2014. According to reporting from the period, cited by John Solomon, Baturina’s brother said Elena sought to establish a banking base in the U.S.
That sounds a bit suspicious in light of the singular money transfer at issue, and the chosen recipient (Hunter Biden). It’s not infeasible given the turmoil for Russia and the geographic setting of the Laundromat at the time (Moldova, on Ukraine’s southern border). But there’s no visible connection on that head.
In any case, she’d been heaving money at Rosemont Seneca throughout 2012, so if there was any truth to her brother’s claim, it was probably about turmoil for Baturina’s banking arrangements in Europe and Russia, as the invasion of Crimea ramped up.
The most general of the other surrounding facts is probably Hunter Biden’s trip with Vice President Joe Biden to China in 2013, during which Hunter made high-level contacts with CCP-linked businesses and state officials. Russia’s already high interest in a close-up view of what Hunter was doing with the Chinese would have kicked into overdrive at that point.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine six days after Baturina sent a sizable chunk of money to Hunter Biden is obviously, as noted, another contextual feature in neon. Joe Biden had been made Obama’s point man for Ukraine, and became the man of the hour in that international crisis.
But we have also been over, in exhausting detail, the timeline of Burisma-owner Mykola Zlochevsky’s graceless exit from Ukraine, an exit that took place on the Crimea invasion date of 20 February 2014.
As recounted previously, Zlochevsky had prepared to escape Ukraine with funds from Burisma intact, and to that end had sought to open an account with BNP Paribas in London back in April 2013. There’s no traceable reason – at least not one visible from where we sit – to link the surrounding set of facts to the Laundromat. (Kroll Associates UK, incidentally, a Russiagate hanger-on, performed a risk assessment on Zlochevsky for BNP in August 2013. Bill Priestap’s wife Sabina Menschel was employed by the U.S. parent of Kroll at the time.)
But to reiterate the finding cited above, the period of highest Laundromat activity by RZB began in June 2013.
Biden, Inc. wandering through all this, was involved at the time in two bracketed events. One was the Baturina money transfer in February 2014 with its still-warm link through Baturina to the Laundromat’s chief Russian bank. Shortly thereafter, in April 2014, the money-exchanging link to Burisma and Zlochevsky became evident. Zlochevsky, we now hear, is or was an SVR asset.
The common element here is actors with Russian government connections holding out money to Hunter Biden.
That’s context.
So is the story of Zlochevsky’s struggle with French bank BNP Paribas and British banking supervisors. The dates, as noted before, are remarkable.
The U.S. had had BNP Paribas under investigation for money-laundering since at least 2012, and by some reports earlier. Up until Zlochevsky tried to make the first transfer of funds from his BNP Paribas account (to destination Cyprus), the American probe had been not just lackadaisical but even kind of farcical. It smiled, among other things, on BNP Paribas involvement with sanctioned Iran, and indeed shoveled capital backing from the U.S. Export-Import Bank at BNP to enable U.S. company sales to Ukraine – all while BNP was “under investigation,” allegedly for as much as $30 billion in money-laundering.
BNP Paribas Headquarters, Paris (detail). Wikipedia: Tangopaso – Own work.
But then BNP Paribas red-flagged to UK authorities Zlochevsky’s first attempt at moving money from his BNP account in London – an action initiated for $23 million on 11 March 2014.
The BNP notification of suspicious activity to the British government occurred 11 days later, on 22 March 2014.
Between the two dates, Russia shut down Russian banks’ operation of the Laundromat on 18 March 2014. (We can assume this was not due to a sudden attack of integrity among Russian authorities, but was an effort to close off an efficient, high-traffic avenue for a host of non-privileged people affected by the Crimea invasion to spirit their money out of the line of fire. Control on a case-by-case basis would be far more profitable to Russia and the oligarch network at that point.)
On 16 April 2014 a UK investigator sought to freeze Zlochevsky’s assets at BNP Paribas. Next thing you know, Hunter Biden is receiving money from Burisma, and he and Devon Archer have been placed on Burisma’s board. Hunter’s appointment was on 18 April 2014.
At the exact same time, the U.S. Southern District of New York suddenly shifts into high gear on the BNP Paribas probe, and in the span of a couple of months catapults from “whatever, dudes, do anything you want with Iran” to threatening to impose the biggest deferred-prosecution fine in history on BNP Paribas. By 30 April, BNP is informing the media that its money-laundering fine in the U.S. could be as much as $1.1 billion.
By 30 May – a month in which UK investigators were gathering some 6,000 pieces of evidence on BNP Paribas activities – the potential fine in the U.S. had soared to $10 billion.
My analysis would be that the Obama administration was preparing to put a big hook in BNP. The likely reason: any outside investigation of BNP’s activity, and in particular any investigation of Zlochevsky and Burisma money, would expose information about the activities of Americans.
That might start with the Bidens, but if I were betting, I’d bet it didn’t end with the Bidens.
The SDNY entrance at the federal building, One Saint Andrew’s Plaza in Manhattan. Google Street View
The Obama administration really, really wanted that hook in BNP Paribas. The hook was established in mid-2014 with a deferred prosecution agreement for money-laundering – an arrangement that keeps a financial institution on an open-ended string to the DOJ – and a record-setting $8.97 billon fine.
By January 2015, in a somewhat deflated denouement, a UK court ruled out of the blue that the supervising authorities had never had a proper foundation for freezing Zlochevsky’s attempted transaction from March 2014. The UK’s BNP probe went quietly away, Zlochevsky got his money, and no Americans were exposed in any inconvenient court proceedings involving Zlochevsky or BNP Paribas in Britain.
You’d think a story this extensive would be all there is. But this is Burisma and its hydra-headed tentacles we’re talking about, and there is a least one more.
The other Burisma guy (and the other bank, and China, and the aggrieved U.S. senators)
It involves Burisma co-owner Serhiy Kurchenko, of whom we’ve heard far less to date than we have about Zlochevsky.
But in March 2014, Kurchenko was also looking to move money out of harm’s way in the wake of the Crimea invasion. His chosen method, to keep things brief, was to set up a Hong Kong shell company under a fake name – Adrian Matthew Bradley – and move funds to Hong Kong through global banking giant HSBC, Hong Kong’s iconic UK-linked bank.
A number of Chinese connections are outlined in the TOC article linked above. We can be sure that the Russians, to whom Burisma was no mystery, were just as interested in Kurchenko’s fund transfers to China – and the connections of Americans to China, including those of the Bidens – as they were in Zlochevsky’s drama with BNP and its reverberations in the U.S.
Serhiy Kurchenko, BIHUS Info video, YouTube
But as noted in the article, there was one key difference between Kurchenko’s caper with HSBC and Zlochevsky’s with BNP Paribas. You have to be looking for it to see it, but it’s profoundly illuminating.
It’s this. In 2014, BNP reported Zlochevsky’s attempt at suspicious activity to UK authorities immediately. Zlochevsky initiated the funds transfer to Cyprus on 11 March 2014, and BNP had notified the British supervisors of it by 22 March.
Kurchenko’s series of fund transfers via HSBC started in March 2014 and continued for the next three years, eventually amounting to some $167 million.
But HSBC didn’t report any of the transfers as suspicious until 2017.
Yet as of March 2014, HSBC had been under a deferred-prosecution agreement (a DPA for money-laundering) with the Obama administration since January 2013, following a court order in December 2012. That meant the Obama DOJ and Treasury Department had a slew of on-site supervisors at HSBC, theoretically watching the bank’s highest-risk activities like a hawk.
Indeed, for a few months in 2013, James Comey was the most senior such supervisor, assuming a monitoring role as a member of HSBC’s board that year before he moved on to become the FBI director in September 2013.
But in spite of all this close supervisory attention from the Obama agencies, Burisma’s co-owner was able to move millions of dollars to China through HSBC from 2014 to 2017. Kurchenko was under EU and U.S. sanctions almost the entire time.
It’s rather glaringly obvious that what changed for HSBC in 2017 was the exit of Obama from office, and the entrance of Donald Trump. Suddenly, in March 2017, HSBC reported out three years’ worth of suspicious transactions by Kurchenko (which among other things revealed a cruel pyramid scheme run through Chinese interests in California that gutted the life savings of the investors).
All of this was taking place at the same time as other, Baturina-linked activity that we will inspect below. But one more event in 2018 gives us very enlightening perspective on what all this traveling money was about.
Social media
In December 2017, the Trump administration allowed the DPA with HSBC to sunset on its five-year expiration date. The Trump DOJ did this without fanfare, and went in and made a new, better-enforced agreement with HSBC – which had continued its chronic money-laundering throughout the Obama years – in January 2018.
In June 2018, Dianne Feinstein and Sherrod Brown were unpleasantly shocked to discover that the Trump administration had done this.
Beside themselves might be a better characterization. One of the chief players in the Obama-era DPA with HSBC departed his role in the shift: Michael Cherkasky, who has gained some fame among other things for being a Kroll consultant to MBNA in Delaware in the late 1990s, when Joe Biden was making a rather spectacularly advantaged home purchase from an MBNA executive, and Hunter Biden, recently out of law school, had landed a high-paying position with the financial institution.
Feinstein and Brown were indignant that the new Trump DPA had been concluded with HSBC without their supervision, and that a fixture like Cherkasky was no longer in the picture. Meanwhile, criminal prosecutions of HSBC executives, and U.S. lawsuits over Chinese activities linked to the Kurchenko transfers, combined with a criminal proceeding against Kurchenko launched in 2017 in Ukraine to shut the whole thing down.
If you had to hazard a guess as to why three years’ worth of money-laundering by a sanctioned individual like Kurchenko had gone unreported by HSBC, a bank under U.S. DPA supervision the entire time, two words probably sum it up: “Burisma” and “China.” Russia probably knows more about this than we do.
The third vignette
With 2015 rolling in, we’ll start as with the other vignettes where Elena Baturina comes in. The year 2015 is when she sent some $391,968 in a series of 11 transfers to Rosemont Seneca for investment in tablet manufacturing company in Buffalo, New York. The start-up in question in this unlikely transaction was BAK USA LLC.
BAK USA was reported at the time to have Chinese investors. This detail seems to have given observers to think that “Bak” is the name of a Chinese owner, or a name assigned by a Chinese owner. In fact, however, the company was started by the J. P. Bak family, a Danish-American immigrant family of “social entrepreneurs” that has been involved in a number of other business enterprises since the 1990s.
We’ll look more closely at the Baks’ interesting connections later. Meanwhile, we can note the dates of the Baturina fund transfers in 2015: 6 May to 8 December 2015. Baturina was long established as a resident of London at this point, and the participation of her former bank in the Laundromat had ended more than a year earlier, in March 2014. Her husband Yuri Luzhenko had not been mayor of London since September 2010.
But plenty was still going on in the Obama/Biden administration that would have interested the Russians. One possibility for the interest in BAK USA is that it was a U.S. IT venture with – reportedly – investors from China, and for one reason or another Russian intelligence thought it convenient to invest in it through Hunter Biden’s firm. We don’t know enough to have good insight into if or why Russia would want a privileged, investor’s window into this particular company.
But the random, one-off nature of Baturina’s occasional overtures to Rosemont Seneca suggests she was acting at the behest of the Kremlin, in an attempt to keep such a window open on Biden-linked enterprises for much of the period 2012 to 2016.
Hunter Biden’s arrangement with Burisma, initiated shortly after Baturina’s February 2014 money transfer and continuing through 2015, was of course one likely source of Russian interest. The nature of the Russian interest has yet to be clarified, but in light of the significantly larger 2012 transaction it was probably more than just keeping tabs on the Bidens’ multifarious activities out of general curiosity.
An obvious precursor to the Baturina money transfers of 2015 was the Bidens’ dinner at Café Milano on 16 April 2015 with Hunter’s Ukrainian and Kazakh business associates. Along with Kazakhs Kenes Rakishev and Karim Massimov, seen in the famous photo, Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi has been reported to be present, and Baturina was reportedly invited, along with husband Yuri Luzhenko.
The Bidens with Kazakh associates Kenes Rakishev (L) and then-Prime Minister Karim Massimov (R) at Cafe Milano, Washington, D.C. in April 2015. Social media via NY Post.
Photo evidence that Baturina was actually there hasn’t emerged.
But a source quoted by NY Post in 2023 had this to say about the dinner: “It was an odd dinner because there was [then-Kazakhstani Prime Minister Karim] Massimov, Luzhkov and his wife, and it was not a big table and then there was somebody there from some food charity making a pitch for support. I mean, it was, was — it was a little odd, the whole thing.”
Said the Post: “In an email at the time, Hunter wrote that the meal would be ‘ostensibly’ about his role a[s] chairman of the World Food Program (WFP) USA.”**
It isn’t clear how, if at all, the 16 April dinner was connected to Baturina sending money, starting on 6 May 2015, for the BAK USA start-up. It seems likely that it was, however. (Recall, as mentioned above, that Baturina and the Kazakhs weren’t strangers. She had honchoed the major urban complex development in Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, completed in 2010.)
A Chinese excursion
Other developments potentially related to continuing Russian interest in the Bidens (as opposed to BAK USA, per se) include the sequence that eventually culminated, in 2017, in a partnership of the Rosemont Seneca-linked Hudson West group and China’s CEFC energy conglomerate, of which Hunter associate Ye Jianming was the head.
Sometime in 2015 – there’s not a specific date that I’m aware of – Hunter Biden met with an aide of Ye Jianming, according to a New York Times article in 2018. The Russians would certainly have taken note of that meeting at the time.
On 10 August 2015, CEFC International, a CEFC entity registered in Bermuda, announced that a Hong Kong-based investment firm called Northern International Capital Holdings proposed to purchase a big block of shares (about 8.3%) in CEFC (document at Senator Chuck Grassley website).
On 4 September 2015, Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Limited registered the purchase by Northern International.
Northern International later became the instrument for CEFC’s connection to Hudson West in 2017, a sequence briefed from U.S. Senate findings in 2022.
Now, knowing that history of Northern International Capital Holdings, we may properly appreciate the import of the firm’s incorporation date in Hong Kong, which was 21 January 2015.
Northern International is 98% owned by Shanghai Tongtian Investment Holding Co., Ltd, which in turn is listed as 98% owned by Mr. Liu Wei, a private investor. (The trail goes a bit cold there; it’s likely that Liu Wei is a mere private investor only on paper, and actually represents less “private” interests behind the nominal investor’s very common name. There’s a possibility it’s this gentleman, but I don’t place any confidence in that. Even if it were, the CCP would have to approve any proposal of his to buy shares in CEFC, and in fact would probably be the instigator behind such a purchase.)
If you’re Russian intelligence, and you aren’t limited to front-door Internet searches to make discoveries, it’s quite possible that you’d know why to key on the formation of Northern International Capital Holdings in January 2015, right around the time it happened – and before Northern International did anything.
SCMP video, YouTube
Given the relative lack of other activity evident from the firm, it’s a reasonable bet that it was formed for the purpose of buying shares in CEFC. Combine that with a meeting of CEFC chairman Ye Jianming’s aide with Hunter Biden, and by August of 2015, or indeed before, we can assume machinations were going on around this arrangement that would attract the interest of foreign intelligence agencies.
The bottom line is that there was plenty of Biden activity during the period to prompt interest from Russia, whatever the exact nature of the 2015 monetary interactions involving Baturina. The one thing that would be off-the-charts fatuous is the idea that Baturina or any other Russian billionaire would be investing with Hunter Biden for purely commercial purposes.
Enter the Baks
What isn’t clear is what any of it had to do with the Baks.
Not that the Bak family and its New York-based enterprise is without its interesting features. The timeline on BAK USA goes like this:
BAK USA LLC was initially incorporated in New York on 25 April 2014.
There was a separate incorporation of a BAK USA, LLC (note the comma) on 28 May 2014 in Delaware.
According to local news reporting (NBC affiliate WGRZ in Buffalo), the following year, New York entrepreneur Tom Golisano bought a 50% stake in BAK USA on 7 May 2015. This would have been the day after Elena Baturina’s first funds transfer through Rosemont Seneca, on 6 May 2015. Golisano is the founder of Paychex (a payroll and HR services company) and was a former co-owner of the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres. His net worth was accounted to be about $5.2 billion at the time.
Timeline graphic: WGRZ Buffalo video
On 2 June 2015, an apparent subsidiary called BAK USA Technologies Corp. was formed in Delaware.
On 23 June 2015, a branch of BAK USA Technologies Corp. was formed as a New York corporation in Buffalo.
This was the entity that actually became the Buffalo-based start-up with products to sell. The Delaware BAK USA Technologies Corp. firm registered a group of trademarks comprising a company slogan (“BORN IN BUFFALO. BUILT FOR THE WORLD”) and product names “BAK” and “ATLAS.”
By 1 July 2015, the original BAK USA companies formed in 2014 had been merged out of existence.
In WGRZ’s interview with J. P. Bak in September 2020, Bak adamantly denied ever receiving funds from Elena Baturina, or having any link to Russian or Chinese investors. WGRZ noted that the U.S. Senate report on the Baturina fund transfers referenced a “confidential” document, presumably a summary of banking records (see footnote 307 on p. 70).
But another local-outlet report in 2016 did allude to Chinese involvement in the company’s development and manufacturing processes.
The hook for the March 2016 article was a partnership BAK had formed with Microsoft, which yielded, for example, this collaboration: “The partnership gave BAK entree into Microsoft’s network, gave it instant credibility in the marketplace, and allowed the company to bring its newest tablet, the Seal 8, to market with incredible speed. Microsoft partner engineers in China worked alongside the BAK development team to produce the technology…”
And BAK was importing some raw materials and components from China, such as “Gorilla Glass by Corning, which is shipped from China even though it is produced by the New York company.”
WKBW Buffalo video
It’s possible the references to Chinese investors are a garbled allusion to the company’s development and supply-chain connections with China.
And it’s possible the money transfers from Baturina were sent to an account set up by a bank in BAK USA’s name, during the period when the parent company’s status was in flux in the first half of 2015. We’ve encountered account-holders before (e.g., here) who complained about accounts being set up in their names so money could be laundered through them by huge global banks.
Whatever the ground truth on that, BAK USA’s rosy picture of 2016 didn’t last long. The company “abruptly” shut down its operations in November 2018, and by the following spring was in Chapter 7 bankruptcy proceedings facing losses of some $39 million.
Investor Tom Golisano’s ownership had increased over time to 67%, and by April 2019 BAK owed him $25 million. (Golisano isn’t a down-the-line Democratic donor, as some might wonder. He’s actually a founding member of New York’s Independence Party, who attempted third-party runs for state office in the 1990s and has been recruited by both Republicans and Democrats in the 2000s. He’ll turn 82 this year and presumably isn’t eyeing political ambitions at this point.)
In the “Slightly Peculiar” column, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo made quite a bit of BAK USA’s status as a beneficiary of tax advantages under the START-UP NY program, touting the company in special announcements in 2015 and 2017. The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman, writing after the Senate report in 2020, seemed a bit bemused by that particular attention, and I confess to having the same sense about it.
But the bottom line sense on BAK USA is that there’s not much there there. The failure in the device manufacturing venture might seem to have some ragged edges, but if there’s a meaningful link to some purpose of Elena Baturina’s – or even Russia’s – it’s hard to see.
An earlier chapter in the Baks’ history is worth noting. The Baks invested in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake as part of their “social entrepreneurship” profile, and are partners in a computer tablet manufacturing company there named Sûrtab S.A. Sûrtab, interestingly enough, began operations in early 2014, just before BAK USA was formed as a company.
Bak’s main partner in Sûrtab is Maarten Boute of Digicel, whose company received a grant from USAID and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2011 to bring reliable mobile banking to Haiti. But the Baks also set up a foundation of their own in 2010, the Dania Foundation, to facilitate support in post-quake Haiti for “Housing, financing, education, banking.”
Bak is currently Chairman of the “Industry Five Group,” encompassing the USA, Denmark, South Africa, Ghana, and Democratic Republic of Congo, with a mission to bring computing technology to the African countries in the group.
Earlier, he founded the EMX Group, “a biomedical microchip manufacturing company in California,” which some readers will no doubt find interesting in light of the two-hop link to the Bill Gates Foundation. The Haiti and Africa connections aren’t attended by any known interactions with the Clinton Foundation, but readers would naturally wonder about that as well.
In general, the Baks’ profile would put them on the edge of familiar orbital paths around what George Soros and others refer to as “civil society”: the transnational world of grant-making foundations, government institutions, NGOs, think-tanks, and niche social entrepreneurs. That, again, doesn’t seem to point to any particular reason for Elena Baturina to send money to them via Hunter Biden and Rosemont Seneca.
We’ll have to wait for more to shake out on this one, I think.
*The source material for vignettes two and three comes from lengthy, fully documented previous articles at TOC on the topics. The links are in the main text. Rather than regurgitating the stories and importing all the links, I ask readers who are interested in seeing more of the background to visit those articles.
**In terms of interesting patterns, the “excuse” of the World Food Program for the Café Milano meeting is reminiscent of a similar excuse for Barack Obama to be in Milan, Italy in May 2017, for a separate meeting with a cast of characters connected to Link Campus University (including just-departed, former prime minister Matteo Renzi, whom Obama had feted at his final state dinner in 2016).
Feature image: The never-ending story. Pixabay; author composition.
https://theoptimisticconservative.wordpress.com/2023/06/23/the-baturina-chronicles/#more-8213