Attorney: FBI Informant Was Blocked by Obama Administration from Testifying on Uranium One Deal

They vetted the sale because it does NOT affect national security. If you'd actually READ the details and the time line instead of getting riled up and making stupid accusations....

 

The story starts with Frank Giustra, a Canadian mining financier and donor to the Clinton Foundation; Giustra’s company, UrAsia; and Uranium One, a uranium mining company headquartered in Toronto.

In 2007, Giustra sold UrAsia to Uranium One, which was based in South Africa and chaired by his friend, Ian Telfer. Giustra said he sold his personal stake in the deal in fall 2007, shortly after the merger with Uranium One, in the midst of Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and before Clinton realized Barack Obama would win the nomination and she would become his secretary of state.

In 2009, Russia’s nuclear energy agency, Rosatom, began buying shares in Uranium One as a part of a larger move to acquire mines around the world. Rosatom first bought a 17 percent share of Uranium One, which has holdings in the United States. In 2010, the Russians sought to increase their share to 51 percent.

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the deal. In 2013, Russia assumed 100 percent ownership.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-russian-uranium-deal/?utm_term=.a6f55e210b7e

 

Clinton’s role

The State Department was one of nine agencies comprising CFIUS, which vets potential national security impacts of transactions where a foreign government gains control of a U.S. company.

It was established by Congress in 2007 after the controversy over the planned purchase of seaports by a company in United Arab Emirates. The other agencies were the departments of Treasury, Defense, Justice, Commerce, Energy and Homeland Security, and two White House agencies (Office of the U.S. Trade Representative and Office of Science and Technology Policy).

The CFIUS can approve a deal, but only the president can suspend or stop a transaction. If the committee can’t come to a consensus, a member can recommend a suspension or prohibition of the deal, and the president makes the call.

 

Some Republican lawmakers in 2010 did raise concerns about the deal — but they sent their letter to then-Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner. (Treasury chairs the CFIUS.)

Final approval was given by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which noted that the mines would remain under the control of U.S. subsidiaries. “Neither Uranium One nor ARMZ [the Russian firm] holds an NRC export license, so no uranium produced at either facility may be exported,” the NRC said. (Some uranium yellowcake is extracted, processed in Canada and returned to the United States.)

 

If the sale wasn't CRITICAL to national security the CFIUS wouldn't have reviewed the sale, along with as many as 9 other agencies. You keep spamming us with irrelevant accounts of which we're already aware. What the FBI informant will provide, are the names of his own blackmailers, and what interests they had in the deal. He'll also name his FBI handlers, and who at the DOJ prevented him from informing FCIUS. Unless you have the names of the principles, and a list of charges that were dropped, by whom, and why, you're simply rehashing details already published. We need to know if persons suspected of bribery, donated to Clinton. It's not complicated.

 

CFIUS reviews sales to foreigners routinely.

I doubt that there is any FBI informant/businessman.

 

Except that you had a Russian convicted, and imprisoned, and fined $2 million for extorting the informant. We also have 2 congressional committees investigating the DOJ gag order placed on the informant. One of the links posted has the criminal complaint embedded. You've apparently invested all your time researching the wrong subjects.

 

peddle that absurd bull crap somewhere else
are you actually trying to excuse this by saying selling 20% of N. American uranium deposits to a Russian company that practices in bribery extortion kickbacks and money laundering isn't a security risk
I've heard of some insane crap on these forums but this wins first prize, congratulations

 

What is the Russian's name?

 

http://thehill.com/policy/national-...sian-bribery-plot-before-obama-administration

 

It will NOT load for me.. What's his name. The Hill rarely gets anything right.

 

Vadim Mikerin ... The Hill provides the court documents on the same page as the article. I'm having no issues with the link ... maybe you'd just prefer the page NOT loading?

 

Mikerin was a director of Rosatom’s Tenex in Moscow since the early 2000s, where he oversaw Rosatom’s nuclear collaboration with the United States under the Megatons to Megwatts program and its commercial uranium sales to other countries. In 2010, Mikerin was dispatched to the U.S. on a work visa approved by the Obama administration to open Rosatom’s new American arm called Tenam.

Between 2009 and January 2012, Mikerin “did knowingly and willfully combine, conspire confederate and agree with other persons … to obstruct, delay and affect commerce and the movement of an article and commodity (enriched uranium) in commerce by extortion,” a November 2014 indictment stated.

His illegal conduct was captured with the help of a confidential witness, an American businessman, who began making kickback payments at Mikerin’s direction and with the permission of the FBI. The first kickback payment recorded by the FBI through its informant was dated Nov. 27, 2009, the records show.

In evidentiary affidavits signed in 2014 and 2015, an Energy Department agent assigned to assist the FBI in the case testified that Mikerin supervised a “racketeering scheme” that involved extortion, bribery, money laundering and kickbacks that were both directed by and provided benefit to more senior officials back in Russia.

“As part of the scheme, Mikerin, with the consent of higher level officials at TENEX and Rosatom (both Russian state-owned entities) would offer no-bid contracts to US businesses in exchange for kickbacks in the form of money payments made to some offshore banks accounts,” Agent David Gadren testified.

“Mikerin apparently then shared the proceeds with other co-conspirators associated with TENEX in Russia and elsewhere,” the agent added.

The investigation was ultimately supervised by then-U.S. Attorney Rod Rosenstein, an Obama appointee who now serves as President Trump’s deputy attorney general, and then-Assistant FBI Director Andrew McCabe, now the deputy FBI director under Trump, Justice Department documents show.

Both men now play a key role in the current investigation into possible, but still unproven, collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s campaign during the 2016 election cycle. McCabe is under congressional and Justice Department inspector general investigation in connection with money his wife’s Virginia state Senate campaign accepted in 2015 from now-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe at a time when McAuliffe was reportedly under investigation by the FBI. The probe is not focused on McAuliffe's conduct but rather on whether McCabe's attendance violated the Hatch Act or other FBI conflict rules.

The connections to the current Russia case are many. The Mikerin probe began in 2009 when Robert Mueller, now the special counsel in charge of the Trump case, was still FBI director. And it ended in late 2015 under the direction of then-FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired earlier this year.
Its many twist and turns aside, the FBI nuclear industry case proved a gold mine, in part because it uncovered a new Russian money laundering apparatus that routed bribe and kickback payments through financial instruments in Cyprus, Latvia and Seychelles. A Russian financier in New Jersey was among those arrested for the money laundering, court records show.

The case also exposed a serious national security breach: Mikerin had given a contract to an American trucking firm called Transport Logistics International that held the sensitive job of transporting Russia’s uranium around the United States in return for more than $2 million in kickbacks from some of its executives, court records show.

One of Mikerin’s former employees told the FBI that Tenex officials in Russia specifically directed the scheme to “allow for padded pricing to include kickbacks,” agents testified in one court filing.

Bringing down a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme that had both compromised a sensitive uranium transportation asset inside the U.S. and facilitated international money laundering would seem a major feather in any law enforcement agency’s cap.

But the Justice Department and FBI took little credit in 2014 when Mikerin, the Russian financier and the trucking firm executives were arrested and charged.

The only public statement occurred a year later when the Justice Department put out a little-noticed press release in August 2015, just days before Labor Day. The release noted that the various defendants had reached plea deals.

By that time, the criminal cases against Mikerin had been narrowed to a single charge of money laundering for a scheme that officials admitted stretched from 2004 to 2014. And though agents had evidence of criminal wrongdoing they collected since at least 2009, federal prosecutors only cited in the plea agreement a handful of transactions that occurred in 2011 and 2012, well after the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’s approval.

The final court case also made no mention of any connection to the influence peddling conversations the FBI undercover informant witnessed about the Russian nuclear officials trying to ingratiate themselves with the Clintons even though agents had gathered documents showing the transmission of millions of dollars from Russia’s nuclear industry to an American entity that had provided assistance to Bill Clinton’s foundation, sources confirmed to The Hill.

The lack of fanfare left many key players in Washington with no inkling that a major Russian nuclear corruption scheme with serious national security implications had been uncovered.

On Dec. 15, 2015, the Justice Department put out a release stating that Mikerin, “a former Russian official residing in Maryland was sentenced today to 48 months in prison” and ordered to forfeit more than $2.1 million.

Ronald Hosko, who served as the assistant FBI director in charge of criminal cases when the investigation was underway, told The Hill he did not recall ever being briefed about Mikerin’s case by the counterintelligence side of the bureau despite the criminal charges that were being lodged.

“I had no idea this case was being conducted,” a surprised Hosko said in an interview.

Likewise, major congressional figures were also kept in the dark.

Former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who chaired the House Intelligence Committee during the time the FBI probe was being conducted, told The Hill that he had never been told anything about the Russian nuclear corruption case even though many fellow lawmakers had serious concerns about the Obama administration’s approval of the Uranium One deal.

“Not providing information on a corruption scheme before the Russian uranium deal was approved by U.S. regulators and engage appropriate congressional committees has served to undermine U.S. national security interests by the very people charged with protecting them,” he said. “The Russian efforts to manipulate our American political enterprise is breathtaking.”

 

are you now trying to claim this informant doesn't exist that a lawyer is representing a phantom and the congress is seeking to interview a phantom
Wow and I didn't think it was possible you could get anymore absurdly conspiratorial

 

Is there any connection to Vadim Mikerin with Obama or Hillary?

 

I would certainly like to hear from this informant if he exists.

The internet is a wonderful place to get misinformation, lies, and half truths. With that in mind I will await for the informant to come out and tell us his story. Until then, this all propaganda

 

Yes
Obamas administration including Clintons state department allowed the sale of the control of 20% of N. American uranium to a Russian owned company Rosatom which Tenex is subsidiary of. Mikerin was the director of Tenex.
Rostom gave millions to the Clinton foundation

 

The FBI investigation wasn't completed.. Lots of people gave money to the Clinton Foundation including Canadian philanthropist Frak

 

That's how you do it Grokmaster, make um back pedal

 

Good...

 

you talking about Frank Giustra?
if you are he was an early beneficiary of Rosatom bid to corner the uranium market

I advise you to take a look at this chart drawn up by the NY Times
yes the NY Times so you cant accuse me of providing some right wing bias site to try to discredit it

Donations to the Clinton Foundation, and a Russian Uranium Takeover
Uranium investors’ efforts to buy mining assets in Kazakhstan and the United States led to a takeover bid by a Russian state-owned energy company. The investors gave millions to the Clinton Foundation over the same period, while Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s office was involved with approving the Russian bid.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive...n-foundation-donations-uranium-investors.html

and while you are at it read the related article that is also by the NY Times

Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/...s-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html

and lastly the investigation was complete they just slow walked it and didn't file charges to much later after the deal was complete as has been reported

 

Frank Guistra is a Canadian .. in the motion picture business and in mining. He's also a huge philanthropic.. and friendly with Bill Clinton... and he donated to the Clinton Foundation.

 

and he benefitted off of Rosatom bid to corner the uranium market

 

Yes, that's what businessmen do. He bought in Kazikstan .. pardon my spelling ...if you recall. He didn't defraud the US or Canada.

 

but it is in no way connect to him also donating to the Clinton foundation even thou Bill Clinton was involved with that deal accompanying him to Kazakhstan

you have four donations to the Clinton foundation worth tens of millions of dollars and one half a million dollar payout to B Clinton which all four are connected to the deal
and you want to play stupid and absurdly claim one in no way is connect to the other