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Oligarch of the Month: Dmitry Firtash

"[...]A Timeline of Paul Manafort’s Relationship with Donald Trump
They’ve known each other since the 1980s."


Simon Dawson/Bloomberg/Getty

The energy tycoon is a key player in Trump's Ukraine scandal.

By Alex Shephard
November 12, 2019

Rudy Giuliani’s cartoonishly inept dirt-digging operation in Ukraine would not have been possible without Dmitry Firtash, the shady Ukrainian natural gas magnate who has spent at least $1 million .. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-18/to-win-giuliani-s-help-oligarch-s-allies-pursued-biden-dirt .. investigating the Biden family.

Firtash has found himself at the heart of a sprawling international corruption investigation before. In 2006, he flew to India, where, according to American authorities, he offered officials an $18.5 million bribe .. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/six-defendants-indicted-alleged-conspiracy-bribe-government-officials-india-mine-titanium .. to acquire the mining rights for minerals integral to the production of Boeing 787 airplanes. That year, FBI officials began investigating Firtash; they knew then that he had ties to some of Eastern Europe’s most notorious mobsters .. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/doj-ex-manafort-associate-firtash-top-tier-comrade-russian-mobsters-n786806 , as well as a direct line to Moscow. Eight years later, Austrian authorities apprehended him outside his plush offices in Vienna. Firtash quickly made bail—an all-time Austrian record, $174 million, to be exact—and has been living comfortably in Vienna ever since, his fortune growing by the year.

President Trump’s spin doctors have said that Firtash was acting alone when he opened his investigation into Hunter Biden—he has a long-standing grudge .. https://www.thedailybeast.com/ukrainian-oligarch-dmytro-firtash-seethed-about-overlord-joe-biden-for-years .. against Joe Biden, whose push for reforms in the Ukrainian gas industry cost him hundreds of millions. But Firtash appears to have been following Trump’s lead. As early as March, the president had made it clear that he would reward whoever delivered him Hunter Biden’s head on a silver platter. Firtash, who was still fighting .. https://www.wsj.com/articles/fighting-extradition-ukrainian-tycoon-aligns-legal-strategy-with-trump-camp-11571736603 .. the Justice Department’s attempts to haul him back to the States for a trial, was listening. In July, he fired Hillary Clinton’s close friend, Lanny Davis, as his personal lawyer and replaced him with Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, Trump loyalists who had also worked for Giuliani. It was a shrewd calculation .. https://time.com/5699201/exclusive-how-a-ukrainian-oligarch-wanted-by-u-s-authorities-helped-giuliani-attack-biden/ , entirely of a piece with the blend of politics, business, and crime that Firtash used to amass a fortune after the fall of the Soviet Union.

In 2008, when he was thinking of buying Chicago’s Drake Hotel, Firtash told Time, “America is far away, it’s not ours.” But now, with a corrupt president in the White House, Firtash clearly feels America is closer than it’s even been before.

Alex Shephard is a staff writer at The New Republic.
@alex_shephard

https://newrepublic.com/article/155678/oligarch-month-dmitry-firtash

See also:

ForReal, Trump may not have been the mastermind behind Giuliani's 2016 Ukraine conspiracy theory, actually
[...]
Manafort Spread Ukraine Conspiracy Theory Months Before 2016 Election
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=152092342&txt2find=%22june|2016%22 ,
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=152240978

Read Alexander Vindman’s full opening statement on Trump and Ukraine
[...]
Criminality Taints Giuliani Role In Trump Ukraine Scheme | Rachel Maddow | MSNBC
Oct 11, 2019

MSNBC
Rachel Maddow reports on the arrests of two associates of Rudy Giuliani, Les Parnas and Igor Fruman, who were working on the Ukraine scheme that is now the subject of the Donald Trump impeachment inquiry, for FEC violations related to funneling foreign money to a Trump-supporting super PAC. Giuliani also consulted with convicted felon Paul Manafort and indicted oligarch Dmytro Firtash in his Ukraine work for Trump. Aired on 10/10/19.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tr1bGM_FFc
More - https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=151668802
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=152200146

IT IS NOT KNOWN WHO RECOMMENDED MANAFORT TO TRUMP.
[...]
Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko alleged in a lawsuit that “Firtash used CMZ as a front in order to
hide income illegally skimmed from his natural gas company RosUkrEnergo,” but a judge ultimately dismissed the suit.
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=143585543

Congress can have access to eight years of Trump’s tax records, appeals court orders
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=152265352