Translated material
Agents or just lovers?
The cohabitant of Maria Butina was arrested, and she continues to help the investigation
Former boyfriend of Russians Maria Butina, 56-year-old political strategist of Republicans and businessman Paul Erickson, was arrested for fraud and money laundering and quickly released under honestly, she herself continues to cooperate with the prosecutor's office.
In December, 30-year-old Butina pleaded guilty that she campaigned by the conservative circles of the United States for rapprochement with Russia on the instructions of the former deputy chairman of the Central Bank Alexander Torshin and did not register with the American Ministry of Justice, but at the same time agreed to cooperation with the investigation.
On February 12, Judge Tanya Chatken, listening to her case, was about to hold a meeting in order to set the date for the sentence. On Friday, February 8, however,
The prosecutor's office sent a petition to the judge to transfer the meeting to the 26th, since Butina continues to help her, and the need for this help has not yet exhausted.
After 40 minutes, Chatken agreed.
Immediately there were assumptions that the prosecutor’s office was expecting information about Erickson from the Russian woman. However, if she had such, Butina would have been sharing her with prosecutors for a long time. Secondly, the accusations brought against Erickson have nothing to do with her, and in court documents it is not mentioned either directly or indirectly.
Messages that Erickson is accused of fraud in several states of the country have been flashing in the press for a long time. For example, it was known that in 2014, Los Angeles lawyer Michael Barnes sued Erickson, which said that he convinced him to invest 50 thousand dollars in real estate in the Bakkensky oil deposit, but did not pay him at the appointed time.
The California court ruled that Erickson puffed up Barnes, and ordered him to pay compensation in the amount of 350 thousand dollars.
Information about this case could be easily found on the Internet. But journalists for a long time were excited not by the scams of Ericonon, but by his connection with Butina, which he met in 2013 in Moscow, where he accompanied the delegation of the National Rifle Association (NSA), which has a large weight in the conservative circles of the United States.
The love relationship between them began a little later, when they met on New Year's Eve in Tel Aviv. If the FBI sees in Butina the secret Russian agent, which was deftly introduced thanks to Erickson in the political circles of America, then the lawyer Driscall sees only a couple of penetration people with common interests.
They traveled a lot together and, in particular, flew to the southern Dakota and Siberia to get acquainted with relatives. In 2017, Butina came to the funeral of Erickson's mother.
In 2014, they were at Disney Cruise and visited Disney Warld two years later. Butina was so fond of Disney that he and Erickson somehow performed the main song in the Moscow studio from the “Beauty and the Beast” in the Moscow studio and recorded it on the video in which they looked at each other in love with in love. It was a gift to Erickson for a birthday.
The initial indictment in the case of Butina contained a number of statements that turned out to be false. The prosecutors, for example, wrote that she with deceiving pulled the American into “false relations”, because in fact she wanted to use it to cover and penetrate the republican top, where Erickson was well known. In 1992, he headed the national headquarters of the Republican Patrick Buchenin.
“I think that in a sense this is a classic Love Story,” objects Russian lawyer Robert Driscall, who said in August the ABC television company that Erickson came to Butina for a date in prison.
The prosecutors disappointed the press, abandoning the seductive version that Butina offered influential Americans sex from intelligence reasons.
The criminal case against Erickson was instituted in the Federal Court of South Dakota, where the accused was born and where they lived in the past with Butina.
Firstly, he was accused of deceit of investors whom he persuaded to invest in a company for the construction of nursing homes.
Secondly, Erickson is charged with the deceit of investors who invested money in a development company, which, as he promised, would bring them from 25 to 90% of profit for some three months.
The third scam was even more adventurous: Erickson collected investments to create a wheelchair, which would allow his owner to go to the toilet without getting out of his chair.
According to prosecutors, investors did not see either profit or invested capital, which Erickson promised to return them in case of failure of his undertakings.
Usually he slammed investors at conservative events.
As an example of the money laundering in the indictment incriminated to him, $ 20,472, which Erickson paid in June 2017 to an American university in Washington, is mentioned - the very same where Butin studied then in graduate school.