Arrests under impeachment

At the center of the scandal, citizens of the former USSR were again: here you are Rashengate, Zelensky, and vice president Biden

Last Wednesday evening at the Washington Airport. Dulles was arrested by Soviet emigrants Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, who had long received American citizenship and lived in Florida. They had one -way tickets to the vein, where they recently frequented.

On the same day, San Francisco was taken into custody of their accomplice, also a naturalized American, Andrei Kukushkin. In the case, an indigenous American-44-year-old David Correy, who is put on the wanted list, is also held.

All four are characterized in a press release from the Federal Prosecutor's Office as businessmen. It is reported that the 47-year-old Parnassus is a broker by profession. He, 53-year-old Fruman and 46-year-old Kukushkin are accused of criminal conspiracy to violate the ban on financing by foreigners of American election campaigns, for which everyone threatens up to five years in prison.

Parnasu and Fruman are also conspired to finance from someone else's name of federal election campaigns (also up to five years), false statements (up to five years) and falsification of documents submitted to the Federal Election Commission (up to 20 years).

In connection with the preparation of the Ipication of President Trump, the name of his lawyer Rudy Juliani is on everyone's lips, because the American press brought into the headlines the fact that Parnassus and Fruman helped Juliani to push the reasons in Ukraine, why the son of the then US Vice President Joe Biden took in 2014 to the Board of Directors of the private gas company Burism Holdings »Mikolas Zlochevsky, although Biden Jr. knew little about Ukraine and energy carriers.

The impetus for the start of impeachment preparation was the July telephone conversation of Trump and the President of Ukraine, in which the American asked for help in investigating the circumstances of the mysterious employment of Biden Jr., who was paid in the region of 83 thousand dollars a month.

In May, Juliani said that Parnassus and Fruman are his clients. Now, however, they are not represented by him, but another former Trump lawyer, John Daud, who told Congress that they helped Juliani as part of his work on Trump.

Parnassus, for example, had breakfast in July with Juliani with the then US messenger in negotiations with Ukraine Kurt Volker. As Walker later showed at Congress, Juliani mentioned at the table that he was engaged in Biden.

Parnassus, who emigrated to the United States from Ukraine, told Washington Post that at the end of last year he and Fruman organized Juliani a conversation on Skype with the former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin.

Last year, Biden Sr. publicly boasted at how he forced the Ukrainian government to dismiss Shokin, threatening to deprive Kyiv of American guarantees for a billion dollars.

Trump’s camp says that Biden got rid of the prosecutor, because he was approaching his son. In early September, Shokin, under the oath, gave an application to the lawyers of the Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, awaiting extradition in Austria in the United States. The statement said that Shokin really got to Biden Jr. and was shifted under the pressure of the Americans.

According to Parnassus, in January of this year, he and Fruman staged a meeting with Judiani with the current prosecutor general of Ukraine Yuri Lutsenko, who came to New York.

Former co -owner of the Kyiv -Donbas holding Leonid Roitman informed me that in September his current co -owner Alexander Levin, the head of the Jewish community of Kyiv and the President of the World Forum of Russian -speaking Jewry, introduced Parnas and Fruman to oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, whom they asked to help them arrange a meeting of Juliani with President Zelensky.

According to Roitman, American guests did not inspire confidence in Kolomoisky. And he refused them, deciding that he would introduce Juliani to the President of Ukraine and without their participation. Acquaintance has not yet taken place.

The US press pays great attention to the connections of the arrested Juliani, although he is never mentioned in the 21-page indictment.

The most colorful place of this document is the story of how a certain Russian entrepreneur intended to earn money on the rapid liberalization of marijuana in the United States and get licenses for its retail sale in a number of states, in particular, in Nevada.

He transferred a million dollars to America to two ranges, which the accused generously sacrificed local politicians, while hiding the origin of the money.

In September 2018, the conspirators gathered in Las Vegas to discuss the operation in Nevada. According to the prosecutor’s office (which in the past was headed by no one more than Juliani), they took measures to conceal the source of money, since Kukushkin allegedly noted his “Russian roots and the current political paranoia around this”, referring to Rashenheate.

According to the prosecutors, Parnassus and Fruman had no interest in political life before, but he suddenly appeared in them in 2016, when the first one donated 50 thousand dollars to other Republicans.

Parnassus explained to Washington Post that he passionately wanted to help Trump because he grew up in New York and sold Trump cooperative apartments even under the father of the current president Fred Trump.

The indictment says that in March last year, he and Fruman and Fruman decided to urgently urgently and at the same time "ensure the political interests of at least one Ukrainian statesman with whom they cooperated."

“The Ukrainian figure,” the chief federal prosecutor of the Southern District of New York Jeffrey Berman added on Thursday at a press conference, “who sought the shift of the US ambassador in Ukraine.”

We are talking about Marie Jovanovich, which Trump really fired in the spring. The hand to her dismissal, according to Wall Street Jornel, was put by the Texas Congressman-Republican (now former) Pete Seans, to whom Parnassus allegedly turned for help. In May last year, Seashens sent a letter to the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, which stated that the ambassador Jovanovich Hulit Trump in private conversations.

If you believe the newspaper, Trump fired it after Juliani said that Jovanovich puts him sticks in the wheels abroad and prevents attempts to investigate the behavior of Bidenes in Ukraine.

Parnassus and Fruman donated no less than 325 thousand dollars to the American First Action by the political committee, which financed the Trump campaign, and 15 thousand to another similar committee. They borrowed money for this, but stated in the reports that they were donated by the Global Energy Production, which was allegedly engaged in export-imports of liquefied gas, founded a month before.

Last year, the public organization of Campaign Legal Center sent a complaint to the Federal Election Commission, saying that these 325 thousand have a suspicious origin and clearly came from another source. The complaint is still being considered.

According to the prosecutors, in order to confuse traces, Fruman purposely wrote his surname in the reporting incorrectly: "Furman."