Is it bad when all your lawyers plead guilty to crimes?
Plus: What are the US plans for seized yacht AMADEA? And just how much intelligence has Trump given away?
Earlier this week, I published an excerpt from an early draft of VICTOR IN TROUBLE. It’s a fun peek into the writing process. I hope you’ll check it out.
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ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT
I didn’t go to law school, but if all your lawyers plead guilty to crimes in which you are a co-conspirator, I’m guessing that’s not good. In the age of Trump, the country most definitely needs a Strategic Lawyer Reserve. But even that seems to be running low.
Jenna Ellis is the most recent (as of this writing) former Trump lawyer who pleaded guilty to crimes involving her most famous client, hot on the heels of Sidney Powell and Kenneth Cheseboro. All their previous claims about how they had evidence the 2020 election was stolen (evidence they somehow could never produce for anyone, including a number of judges) have suddenly been dismissed. They were all misled, you see; not given the full information and they all regret their actions.
Which is a load of shit, of course. They did know what they were doing. I don’t even think they were mad they got caught, since that allowed them to up their grift by asking for more donations. I think they’re only upset they are being held accountable.
In the meantime, another former Trump lawyer, Michael Cohen, who actually went to prison for a crime in which Trump was a co-conspirator, testified against his former employer/client in the New York case that has already found Trump guilty of inflating his worth (sometimes by as much as 2300%). Inflated ego; inflated wealth.
Also this week, Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, was revealed to have been given some form of immunity by special counsel Jack Smith. Meadows has been telling the truth to the grand jury, which includes the fact that his memoir is fiction. In his autobiography, “The Chief’s Chief,” Meadows repeatedly defended Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and pushed the same conspiracy theories about election fraud.
That shit sells books. Once he was under oath, however, man, did his story change. Meadows told Smith and his team of prosecutors that he didn’t believe what he had actually written in his own book! Under oath, he was pretty fucking quick to say: the election was not stolen please don’t throw me in prison.
Great performances, everyone. But really, we all could have done without this circus.
A YACHT WATCH UPDATE
People keep asking me why we can’t just sell off detained Russian oligarch yachts and use the money to help Ukraine. The simple answer is: because we have rule of law; the government cannot just seize an individual’s property and do with it what they want. When it comes to seizing assets of sanctioned individuals, the burden is on the government to prove that those assets were involved in or are a result of a crime.
The Department of Justice took steps to do just that this week in regards to the yacht AMADEA. Quick recap: AMADEA is believed to be owned by Russian oligarch Suleiman Kerimov. When Russian yachts began their attempts to flee the long arm of the law, AMADEA left the Caribbean in a hurry and crossed the Pacific on her way—we believe—to the safe but cold waters off Vladivostok. The only problem was: the Pacific is a big ocean, so the yacht pulled into Fiji to resupply. Waiting for her on the docks were US officials, who promptly detained the vessel. Lawyers for the yacht’s on-paper owner fought through the Fijian courts to maintain possession, but ultimately lost, and AMADEA sailed to the US under an American flag. She’s been floating in San Diego ever since.
But the US doesn’t own the ship. It just possesses it and is paying all its maintenance and upkeep costs, which are not cheap (upward of a million dollars a month, according to court documents). Seems like a crappy deal: all the responsibility and costs, none of the fun.
The US looked to remedy that this week when it filed a forfeiture complaint, in an effort to have Kerimov forfeit the asset, at which point the US would own the floating palace (and thus be free to gift it to me!). In its complaint, the US lays out in intricate detail the various shell companies that own or have owned all or part of the ship, and the sales and transfers among them, all of which was done, the US alleges, to hide the fact that Kerimov is the ultimate beneficial owner.
The complaint alleges that Kerimov set up the shell companies, evaded sanctions, and laundered money through the vessel with the help of a yacht management company called Imperial Yachts and its CEO, Yevgeny Kochman.
According to the complaint, in 2020, Kerimov traveled with an associate to the United Arab Emirates to have a look at AMADEA. Then, in the summer of 2021, ownership of the vessel transferred from one company, Nereo, to another company, Millemarin, which had only been created thirty days earlier. Ownership of the ship then transferred again to a company called Errigal, which on paper was owned by Kochman and was created one week before the sale.
In the first transfer—between Nereo and Millemarin—the two companies agreed on a sales price of around 244 million euros. But when the sale was actually done, the sale took place for one euro.
When the ship was sold by Millemarin to Errigal, the price was 225 million euros. But even before that money was paid, the new owner (on paper, Kochman; but in reality, Kerimov) was allowed to use the yacht. Also, the title of ownership did not transfer immediately from Millemarin to Errigal. Rather, the following year, in 2022, Errigal purchased 100 percent of Millemarin’s shares from its holding company. This transferred ownership of the yacht to Errigal without the company ever having to inform government authorities where the yacht was registered that the title had transferred to a new owner. Tricky sons of bitches, aren’t they?
In short, Kerimov and Kochman employed a complex financial transfer to obscure ownership of the AMADEA (allegedly).
I’ve written about Imperial Yachts here and here, and this New York Times article gives some excellent background on the company and Kochman, who really seems likes he was involved in some shady ship shit.
Not mentioned in the DOJ forfeiture complaint is Eduard Khudainatov, whom lawyers for AMADEA had presented as the actual owner of the ship. The US called bullshit on that, since Khudainatov was also being held up as the owner of SCHEHERAZADE and CRESCENT, meaning the guy owned close to 2 billion euros worth of yachts but was only worth a few million on paper. It literally didn’t add up. The only thing that did make sense was that Khudainatov was not sanctioned, so it all looked like a ploy to keep possession of the yachts.
For some background on Khudainatov, read this twitter thread.
According to Reuters, Khudainatov’s lawyers filed a complaint last Sunday, anticipating DOJ’s Monday forfeiture filing. A lawyer for Khudainatov provided Reuters with a copy of the complaint, but the complaint does not appear in online court databases, so it unclear if it was actually filed. Are the Russians ready to stick to their “Kerimov is not the owner, Khudainatov is” story?
The bottom line here is: it took a lot of effort and resources by the US government to nail down all the shell companies and money laundering methods involved in running and maintaining AMADEA while evading sanctions. Now, they still face an uphill battle in court. We’ve seen the court battle for the yacht ALFA NERO drag on in Antigua and Barbuda for months. The Russians are keen to keep their yachts. How much are western governments ready to invest in battling them?
Also: how are the lawyers for the company that owns the yacht getting paid? Surely, that’s even more money flitting around these illicit financial networks.
If the US wins the court battle and actually takes ownership of AMADEA? They remain mum on their plans, although President Biden has made it clear his desire to sell off Russian assets to help finance Ukraine. We’ll see how this plays out in the courts.
JUST HOW MUCH INTELLIGENCE HAS TRUMP GIVEN AWAY?
Last week, the New York Times reported that Trump had given away super sensitive secrets about our submarines to an Australian billionaire. I won’t dwell here on all the reports we’ve now seen about Trump’s cavalier treatment of classified intelligence. I mean, he keeps boxes of it in a bathroom and on a stage at Mar-a-Lago. But there are two quick points I want to make about this story.
First, this is a private businessman who understood flattery and ego stroking would get Trump to do him favors and give him information. It worked. Imagine what a trained intelligence officer could (did?) get out of Trump.
Second, what’s remarkable in this particular report is how it highlights the transactional nature of this for Trump. He sees our national secrets as a commodity for him to trade for his own benefit.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of stories you should be reading
UNITED STATES
Trump Plots to Leave NATO, Given the Chance, If Demands Aren’t Met (Rolling Stone)
Housing affordability is getting worse (Axios)
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
