Russian Spies, Ukrainian Oligarchs, and America's Mayor

Giuliani doesn't give two Fuks, but he took $300,000 from one.

On July 15 this year, Jonathan Buma, a career counterintelligence officer with the FBI—with experience investigating, among other things, money laundering and election interference—filed a whistleblower complaint alleging FBI managers were suppressing his investigations into a number of Russian intelligence networks. The reason, he claims, is because his investigations kept picking up evidence that American political figures, including Rudy Giuliani, were cavorting with the bad guys he was investigating. As Buma said, “These matters relate generally to the Russian Intelligence Service (RIS) in the context of foreign influence over US elections and an apparent effort within FBI management to shield certain politically active figures and possibly also FBI agents who have a relationship with these figures.”

We’ll get into the details of whom Giuliani was cavorting with in a moment. First, I want to focus on what Buma’s testimony reveals about how Russian intelligence works.

Buma states:

My reporting identified and described an extensive transnational criminal network operating as an adjunct of the RIS [Russian Intelligence Services], which laundered billions of dollars derived from state funds intermingled with criminal activities. A significant portion of these funds flowed into Ukraine through the Russia-occupied Donbass region along the Russia/Ukraine border. In partnership with certain RIS-compromised Ukrainian oligarchs, these funds were laundered throughout the world utilizing a sophisticated criminal network composed of multiple shell companies and bank accounts. Through this network, hundreds of millions of dollars were laundered directly into the United States, where they were used to finance various covert operations. 

As I discuss in Class 2 of my Foreign Influence Operations course, Russia isn’t so much a state run by a government, but a state run by a mafia. As Buma’s testimony corroborates, Russian intelligence helps carry out state policy using criminal networks and activities. These networks launder money, evade sanctions, and help implement Russia’s influence operations. Again, it’s a mafia.

CLASS 2: PUTIN, OLIGARCHS, AND RUSSIAN INTELLIGENCE

The Oligarchs

Integral to this mafia are the oligarchs. And don’t be fooled; they may not all be Russian. Several pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarchs have done their part to push the Kremlin’s agenda.

One example of a pro-Russia Ukrainian oligarch is Pavel Fuks (variant Fuchs). Fuks is a native of Kharkiv, in eastern Ukraine. He made his fortune in Moscow real estate, has links to the mountains of money stolen by former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych (who fled to Russia during Ukraine’s 2014 revolution), and has extensive criminal ties. Buma described him as an asset of Russian intelligence and said Fuks “facilitated international money laundering through an established transnational criminal network on behalf of sanctioned entities.” Among those entities were Russian intelligence, Yanukovych, and other oligarchs.

Ukrainian oligarch and alleged Russian asset Pavel Fuks and America’s Mayor, Rudy Giuliani

Fuks also served as point man for Donald Trump’s efforts to build Trump Tower Moscow. Independent journalist Wendy Siegelman has connected Fuks to two apartments in New York’s Trump Tower.

According to Buma’s testimony, Fuks also participated in Russia’s information warfare. In one example, he helped carry out a false flag operation in his hometown of Kharkiv. Fuks, Buma alleges, paid locals on the ground in Kharkiv to paint swastikas and other Nazi symbols around the city, to back up Russia’s messaging that Ukraine was full of Nazis.

Buma drives home the fact that Russian intelligence operations, organized crime, and public corruption are all part and parcel of the same rot; the networks are the same. As he said:

After being prohibited from reporting on public corruption and criminal matters, my management told me they only wanted me to focus on Russian FCI [foreign counterintelligence investigations], for which they admitted I had “a unique skill set." I explained to them that, based on my more than 10 years of experience working Russian FCI, it is impossible to effectively work Russian FCI in isolation without also reporting on public corruption and organized crime. This requirement suggested that my managers had little serious understanding of how Russian FCI operated, of the intricate interrelationship between the RIS [Russian Intelligence Services] and Russian organized crime groups operating within the United States, of the channels used to finance Russian influence operations, or of the specific role played in influencing politically exposed persons in recent operations. [emphasis added]

These networks provide plausible deniability, which is useful when people start to ask if certain individuals are “Russian assets.” Much like it is difficult to uncover the true beneficial owner of an offshore asset, individuals that are assets to Russian intelligence are in contact with multiple players in various networks, making it very hard to unravel if they are simply doing business with kind of shady people or are tasked and owned by Russian intelligence. But their value is the same. They are assets.

America’s Mayor