An eight participant has been identified as attending the 2016 meeting where Donald Trump Jr. was promised dirt on Hillary Clinton: Ike Kaveladze, a vice president in a real estate firm owned by Russian billionaire Aras Agalarov.
According to his online biography, Kaveladze oversees commercial and residential real estate as well as international project structuring as Vice President for Crocus Group, which is owned by Agalarov.
His work features prominently in a 2000 government report on money laundering.
The General Accounting Office report states that his firm set up more than 2,000 Delaware corporations for Russians without even knowing who owned the companies.
Kaveladze called the report, which was detailed in the New York Times at the time, as a ‘witch hunt’ in an article identifying him as the person behind the transactions.
Investigators found Russians and other Eastern Europeans had moved more than $1.4 billion through New York and San Francisco banks.
Entities wired more than $800 million to 136 accounts that Kaveladze opened for Russian clients, according to the report.
”What I see here is another Russian witch hunt in the United States,’ Kaveladze told the Times after it got a copy of the report.
The GAO report, prepared at the request of a Senate oversight subcommittee, determined that a company called Euro-American Corporate Services Inc., which was established by Kaveladze, ‘had formed three of the Delaware corporations identified by the Subcommittee, as well as approximately 2,000 others, for Russian brokers. From 1991 through January 2000, more than $1.4 billion in wire transfer transactions was deposited into 236 accounts opened at 2 U.S. banks: Citibank (136 accounts) and Commercial Bank (100 accounts).’
The report is titled: ‘Suspicious Banking Activities: Possible Money Laundering by U.S. Corporations Formed for Russian Entities.
According to the report: ‘Over 70 percent of the Citibank deposits for these accounts was wire-transferred to accounts in foreign countries.
Of the remaining $600 million deposited in Commercial Bank, over 50 percent was similarly transferred into the U.S. banking system from abroad.
In addition, most of the $600 million was transferred out of the U.S. banking system.’
The report continued: ‘These banking activities raise questions about whether the U.S. banks were used to launder money.’
His identity was publicly revealed by the Washington Post after attorney Scott Balber confirmed it.
Donald Trump Jr. did not respond to requests for comment Monday.
According to his resume, Kaveladze has been at Crocus Group since 2004, which would put him there during the time the Agalarovs partnered with Donald Trump on the 2013 Miss Universe pageant that was held in Moscow.
His online resume states that he got a degree in economics from the Moscow Academy of Finance, then relocated to the U.S. to pursue his MBA at the University of New Haven in Connecticut, where he graduated in 2002.
