Tag: spain
Russian Politician Who Reportedly Sent Millions To NRA Has Long History In Spain

Russian Politician Who Reportedly Sent Millions To NRA Has Long History In Spain

Reprinted with permission from ProPublica.

As the Spanish police investigated the presence of a notorious Russian organized crime group on the resort island of Mallorca in 2012, they realized that a key figure described by some of the suspects as their “godfather” was a powerful Moscow politician: Alexander Torshin.

Spanish prosecutors decided in the summer of 2013 to arrest Torshin, who was then a senator, officials say. Police set up an operation to capture him during a visit to Mallorca, but he mysteriously canceled the trip at the last minute, apparently as the result of a tip, authorities said. Torshin was never charged, while the other suspects were convicted of money laundering. Last year, he publicly denied any wrongdoing in the Spanish money-laundering case.

Now, Torshin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has reemerged as a potentially important figure in special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s inquiry into suspected Russian support for the campaign of President Donald Trump.

Yesterday, McClatchy Newspapers reported that the FBI is investigating whether Torshin, now a deputy governor of Russia’s central bank, funneled money to the National Rifle Association that was subsequently spent in support of the Trump campaign. The NRA reported spending $30 million on advertisements and other aid to Trump, part of a record $55 million that the group spent during the 2016 campaign cycle, according to the McClatchy story.

It is illegal for foreign groups and individuals to contribute directly or indirectly to political campaigns in the United States. A spokeswoman for the FBI declined to comment on the report Thursday.

Documents from the Spanish investigation make clear that the FBI had been looking closely for years at the Moscow-based organized crime group that Spanish authorities say was connected to Torshin. The FBI gave the Spaniards a memo about the group in 2013, and Spanish prosecutors provided information to FBI officials about Torshin, according to interviews and documents.

The gregarious 64-year-old Torshin has been able to cut an extraordinary swath through conservative political circles in the U.S. since then. A gun enthusiast and lifetime member of the NRA, he cultivated the gun lobby and political figures including Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., according to published reports. Torshin also made contact with the Trump presidential campaign and Trump’s inner circle, according to news reports, though at least one of his overtures was apparently rebuffed.

In congressional testimony released publicly Thursday, Glenn Simpson of Fusion GPS, the research firm whose investigative “dossier” in the Trump-Russia affair has caused considerable controversy, told the House Intelligence Committee that the Russian connections to the NRA were suspicious.

“It appears the Russians, you know, infiltrated the NRA,” Simpson said, according to a published transcript. “And there is more than one explanation for why. But I would say broadly speaking, it appears that the Russian operation was designed to infiltrate conservative organizations.”

The McClatchy report, which quoted two anonymous sources familiar with the FBI investigation, said it was unclear how much money Torshin might have donated to the NRA. The report said the NRA made most of its donations through campaign finance entities that are not required to disclose their donors. The NRA did not respond to a request for comment from ProPublica; the organization also did not comment in the McClatchy article.

ProPublica called and sent emails and text messages to the press office of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation to request comment from Torshin. A spokeswoman, Marina Ryklina, responded Friday to say that the bank had not been commenting on the matter, but would review the request.

As Torshin began building his political profile in the U.S., he also became the focus of a Spanish law enforcement crackdown on a wave of Russian mobsters who came to Spain in the 1990s and 2000s to escape violence at home, launder money in real estate and tourism enterprises, and extend their reach in international business. ProPublica reviewed case files and interviewed investigators in Spain last year for a report about Russian organized crime and power networks.

Although Spanish prosecutors ultimately decided not to charge Torshin, they considered him the top suspect in an investigation that included his intercepted calls to suspects in Mallorca, as well as information provided to Spanish authorities by the FBI, court documents and interviews indicate.

“The arrest of Torshin had been approved,” a senior Spanish prosecutor, José Grinda González, said in an interview. “The thesis in August 2013 was that he was at the top of a criminal structure dedicated to money laundering … We still consider him the investor who injected money into this structure in Spain.”

Torshin was a banker before becoming a leader of Putin’s United Russia party and being elected to the Russian Senate. In 2005, he oversaw a politically sensitive legislative probe into the Beslan massacre, a chaotic incident during which at least 330 people died after Chechen terrorists barricaded themselves in a school with more than a thousand hostages, many of them children. Despite allegations that Russian security forces botched the siege and showed little regard for the safety of the hostages, the inquiry absolved them of any responsibility. It was criticized as a result.

Spanish court documents allege that the roots of Torshin’s alleged ties to organized crime date back to the mid-1990s, when he first served at Russia’s Central Bank as a mid-level official and became friendly with one of his subordinates, Alexander Romanov. While Torshin went into politics, Romanov pursued a business career, serving as an executive at the Rosneft energy company and a distillery, according to court documents. But Romanov also ran afoul of the Russian authorities, according to Spanish court documents, which linked him to the powerful Taganskaya mob of Moscow.

Romanov and associates in the Taganskaya gang allegedly participated in criminal operations known as “raids,” in which gangsters used force to take over companies, according to court documents and interviews. In 2005, Romanov was convicted of financial crimes in Russia and served prison time, according to the Spanish documents.

Romanov remained a friend and business associate of Torshin, forging an alliance that bridged politics, business and crime in a manner typical of the Russian underworld, Spanish officials said. Another Russian lawmaker, Vladislav Reznik, faces trial in Madrid this year on charges of having a similar business and political relationship with a Russian crime boss, Gennady Petrov.

Torshin also did business and communicated with other suspected Taganskaya figures, according to the case file. On July 12, 2013, an FBI agent working on organized crime issues at the U.S. embassy in Madrid provided Spanish investigators with a memorandum on the Taganskaya gang, including figures identified by Spanish documents as associates of Torshin. The memo shows that the FBI had been tracking the Russian group since the 1990s.

The FBI described the Taganskaya mob’s involvement in illicit corporate “raids” in Russia and suspected money laundering in New Jersey, according to the memo. It also says that a Taganskaya figure described by the Spaniards as an associate of Torshin “may have been running financial operations for deceased thief-in-law Vyacheslav Ivankov” — a notorious mobster who during the 1990s spent time in New York and reportedly lived in Trump Tower for a while.

But the FBI memo does not mention Torshin. The FBI did not provide the Spanish with information about the Russian politician, Grinda said Friday. The Spanish authorities relayed their evidence and suspicions about Torshin’s role in the case to the FBI, he said.

Court documents in other cases show that, during the past 15 years, the FBI has often played a significant behind-the-scenes role supplying information to Spanish investigators about Russian gangsters and politically connected oligarchs with ties to Spain.

Spanish police zeroed in on Romanov in 2010, soon after he purchased the Hotel Mar i Pins, which stands atop a hill at the end of a beachfront promenade in the idyllic Mallorcan town of Peguera. Romanov spent at least $15 million on buying and renovating the four-star, 150-room hotel, and moved into a villa next door, according to court documents and interviews. Police quickly suspected that he was part of an influx of mob-connected Russians who came to Mallorca and other Spanish resort areas in the 1990s and 2000s, documents say.

The Spaniards’ surveillance soon detected Romanov’s relationship with Torshin, then a senator, according to documents and officials. Investigators intercepted a series of calls between the two men, some from Torshin’s Senate office in Moscow and others from cellphones belonging to Torshin and his wife, documents show. The intercepts and other evidence led investigators to believe that Romanov and other suspects helped launder Torshin’s money through the hotel and also scouted investment opportunities for him in Spain.

In some of the telephone calls, Romanov and his associates referred to Torshin as “the boss” and “the godfather,” according to an investigative summary of the intercepts. Romanov stated that “his godfather” secretly owned up to 80 percent of the shares in the hotel, according to court documents. In other calls, Romanov indicated that the politician was interested in acquiring another hotel and that “managing the hotel through third parties would be better” for Torshin.

In a conversation with Romanov in February of 2013, Torshin “clearly offers to ‘exert pressure’ to achieve what he, Romanov and Gavrilov want,” an intercept summary says. “Torshin tells him to call today or tomorrow first thing in the morning to talk about how and who to pressure because now he has new possibilities of talking [to someone] in a more ‘serious’ manner.”

By the summer of 2013, prosecutors concluded they had enough evidence to arrest Torshin, according to Grinda and other investigators. Investigators learned that the Russian senator planned to fly to Mallorca to celebrate Romanov’s birthday in August, officials said. Police planned to deploy officers at the airport and the hotel to arrest him upon arrival.

But for reasons that remain unclear, Torshin canceled his visit just two days before the flight, investigators said. Officials believe that a dispute in Spanish law enforcement about the decision to make such a diplomatically sensitive arrest may have led to a leak that reached Torshin. Torshin would have been the most powerful figure arrested in Spanish cases that have targeted Russian Cabinet ministers, elected officials, security chiefs and oligarchs.

Prosecutors decided not to charge Torshin because suspects cannot be tried in absentia in Spain and the case could have been paralyzed, Grinda said. In a plea deal in 2016, Romanov was convicted of lesser charges of money laundering and falsifying documents and was sentenced to three years and nine months in prison.

Torshin denied wrongdoing in a statement published last year by El País newspaper of Spain. He said, according to the newspaper, that Spanish authorities “have never provided either Mr. Torshin or Russian law enforcement agencies with any kind of information about the alleged ties of Mr. Torshin with organized crime. Mr. Torshin was acquainted with Alexander Romanov in the 1990s, their contacts were informal in nature and terminated seven years ago. Mr. Torshin has never intended to visit Alexander Romanov. Mr. Torshin has never had any business connections with Alexander Romanov. Mr. Torshin has never owned real estate or business in Spain.”

Sebastian Rotella is a senior reporter at ProPublica. An award-winning foreign correspondent and investigative reporter, Sebastian’s coverage includes terrorism, intelligence and organized crime. Email him via  Sebastian.Rotella@propublica.org. 

Donald Trump attends the National Rifle Association’s Leadership Forum during their annual meeting in Louisville, Kentucky, May 20, 2016. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein

Catalonia’s Separatists Win Parliamentary Elections

Catalonia’s Separatists Win Parliamentary Elections

By Hubert Kahl and Monica Raymunt, dpa (TNS)

MADRID — A coalition of separatists who promised independence for the Spanish region of Catalonia emerged as victors in parliamentary elections Sunday, preliminary results showed.

With 99 per cent of the votes counted, the separatist alliance led by Catalan leader Artur Mas captured 72 of the 135 seats in Catalonia’s parliament.

Of those seats, Mas’ Together for Yes coalition took 62, while its alliance partners Popular Unity Candidacy won 10.

But while the alliance won an absolute majority in parliament, it did not win the majority of votes cast, taking 47.8 percent.

“The separatists have lost the plebiscite,” Socialist opposition leader Pedro Sanchez said in reaction to the separatists’ failure to win the majority of votes.

Voters in Spain’s wealthy northeastern region cast their ballots in what was billed by Mas as a referendum on whether the region should secede from Spain.

Mas formed the separatist alliance before the elections, saying that his coalition’s victory would mean independence for Catalonia’s 7.6 million people within 18 months.

Mas’ liberal ruling party, the Democratic Convergence of Catalonia, joined longtime rivals in the Republican Left of Catalonia and other citizen groups to form the Together for Yes coaltion.

About 63 percent of the region’s 5.5 million eligible voters turned out for the election, beating the turnout for the last regional election in 2012 by nearly 7 percentage points.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has said his government would under no circumstances allow Catalonia’s secession.

“No one will destroy the unity of Spain,” he said.

European Union politicians have suggested that an independent Catalonia would have to be automatically cut out from the European Union and the eurozone currency bloc.

Mas wanted to hold a referendum for independence last November, but the Spanish Constitutional Court declared such a vote illegal after the national government filed a complaint.

(c)2015 Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH (Hamburg, Germany). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: hugefluffy

More People Quarantined Amid Ebola Fears In Spain, Officials Say

More People Quarantined Amid Ebola Fears In Spain, Officials Say

By Christine Mai-Duc, Los Angeles Times

Four more people have been placed under quarantine at a Madrid hospital as officials there try to stop the spread of Ebola beyond one confirmed case.

That case, a nursing assistant who was infected after helping care for 69-year-old Manuel Garcia Viejo, was the first known transmission of the disease outside of West Africa in the current outbreak.

The nursing assistant, identified in news reports as Teresa Romero Ramos, was diagnosed Monday and is being treated at the Carlos III Hospital in Madrid. Her husband has also been quarantined there.

In addition to Romero and her husband, one man and one woman, both nurses, were hospitalized Wednesday and are exhibiting “mild symptoms,” officials say. The nurses were part of the team that helped treat Viejo.

Two other doctors who have been helping treat Romero have also agreed to voluntary quarantine at the same hospital, bringing the total number of people under quarantine to six.

Officials with Spain’s Ministry of Health said in a statement that two other people who had been under quarantine have tested negative and were discharged. One was a nurse who had also treated Viejo, and the other was an unrelated person being monitored after developing symptoms after travel to Nigeria.

Spanish officials have faced mounting criticism that they did not do enough to stop the spread of the disease to health care workers who cared for Viejo. Health care workers are among the most vulnerable to contracting Ebola, which is spread by direct contact with bodily fluids.

On Wednesday, local health officials in Madrid confirmed that they had euthanized Romero’s dog, a mixed-breed named Excalibur, for fear that the pet could spread the disease to humans. The move prompted an uproar from animal rights activists.

AFP Photo/Curto De La Torre

Felipe Sworn In As Monarch As He Professes Love For Spain

Felipe Sworn In As Monarch As He Professes Love For Spain

By Hubert Kahl, MCT

MADRID — Spain’s newly proclaimed King Felipe VI in a speech before parliament Thursday said he loved his country with all his heart, calling Spain a “great nation.”

“I will always have the common good (of the country) in mind,” the new head of state said after being sworn in a ceremony in Madrid.

King Felipe VI swore an oath in parliament shortly after receiving a ceremonial sash from his father Juan Carlos representing the receipt of the command of the country’s armed forces.

Prince Felipe became the new Spanish monarch on Thursday in the wake of the abdication of his father, King Juan Carlos. The 46-year-old crown prince became King Felipe at midnight.

Juan Carlos’ nearly 39-year reign ended Wednesday when he signed an abdication law, which the Senate passed a day earlier. He appeared to choke back tears during the brief signing ceremony, in which he rose with the help of a cane to cede his seat to Felipe.

The 76-year-old monarch made a surprise announcement on June 2 that he would step aside for a “younger generation.” The move required parliamentary approval because no provision for abdication had existed under Spanish law.

Photo via WikiCommons

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