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A Russian official accused of leading the operations abroad of Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who met with the highest officials of the Trump campaign in 2016, died in a motor vehicle accident. helicopter.
Russian Attorney General Saak Albertovich Karapetyan was exposed in a Swiss court this year for a conspiracy to enlist the law enforcement official of another country as a double Kremlin agent.
The media in Russia say that he died Wednesday night when his helicopter crashed into a forest during an unauthorized flight in the Kostroma region, northeast of Moscow.
Karapetyan, 58, was very familiar with some of the most notorious operations under Vladimir Putin. He worked closely with Veselnitskaya and led some of Moscow's best efforts to thwart international investigations into alleged crimes committed by Russia.
It was Karapetyan who signed a letter from the Russian government refusing to help the United States in civil proceedings related to the death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was trying to reveal a $ 230 million fraud in Russia. Emails that have leaked have since shown that Veselnitskaya helped draft the document sent with this letter.
Karapetyan has been involved in efforts to thwart international investigations for more than a decade. The Daily Beast said that he was present at a meeting in Moscow, during which British detectives claim to have been poisoned during the search for murderers of Alexander Litvinenko, who died after a dose of radioactive poison at London in 2006.
Despite the accusations they were trying to help, the Attorney General's Office did everything possible to block the Scotland Yard investigation.
Earlier this year, Karapetyan attacked Britain as a result of the Novichok attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal. He linked the cities of Skripal, Litvinenko and Boris Berezovsky, senior critic of Putin, who died of an alleged suicide in 2013.
"The British authorities have founded the anti-Russian campaign surrounding the poisoning of the former GRU officer, Skripal and his daughter, on a provocative scenario. A similar scenario was used in unfounded allegations that Russia allegedly attempted to murder Boris Berezovsky in London in the summer of 2003 and in the circumstances of the death of Alexander Litvinenko in the UK in November 2006. said Karapetyan to Interfax.
On Wednesday evening, the wreck of a helicopter likely carrying Karapetyan was found near the village of Vonyshevo. The video supposed to come from the scene shows the helicopter mutilated and burned in the middle of twisted tree trunks.
It is not known why the 54-year-old pilot Stanislav Mikhnov decided to take off at nightfall in adverse conditions without the approval of the authorities. A third man, Arek Harutyunyan, was also killed, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
Karapetyan's ties with Veselnitskaya appeared this year, when a case in Switzerland revealed the couple's operation to recruit a senior law enforcement official who was supposed to investigate the Swiss bank accounts of oligarchs and mobsters Russian.
The principal investigator was fired for "unauthorized clandestine behavior" and for allegations of corruption and violation of secrecy laws. The Swiss authorities discovered that the police officer – identified only as Victor K. – had met Karapetyan in Geneva and Zurich. Before Christmas 2016, Karapetyan phoned this manager and invited him to Moscow, where he was housed in a luxury hotel and invited to attend a meeting with Veselnitskaya.
It is likely that the meeting with Veselnitskaya concerned the fallout from the death of Magnitsky, who had used to denounce a massive fraud involving the Kremlin when he was incarcerated, beaten and left for dead.
Following his death, lawyer client Bill Browder campaigned to enact a series of anti-corruption laws on his behalf around the world. The Magnitsky law was passed in 2012.
Veselnitskaya was one of the main advocates of lobbying for the overthrow of these Magnitsky world laws, which would have absolutely angered Putin.
When she arranged to meet Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner at the infamous Trump Tower meeting in 2016, she offered Hillary Clinton dirt that was allegedly given to her by the Attorney General's Office. Karapetyan, according to introductory emails, which have been leaked since. Once inside, we now know that she has been trying to put pressure on Trump's senior officials on the Magnitsky affair.
Karapetyan and Veselnitskaya also worked together on another work related to Magnitsky. US authorities have filed a civil suit against a company called Prevezon for alleged links to money laundering discovered by Magnitsky.
In April, mails obtained by Dossier, an anti-Putin campaign set up by the former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and published by The New York Times, showed that Veselnitskaya had helped draft a document on behalf of the Russian government that explained why Moscow would not help the case of fraud against Prevezon.
Rather than bringing allegations against Prevezon, much of the document was a personal attack on Browder. The accompanying letter that accompanied the document was signed by Karapetyan.
The refusal to help provide documents from Russia – orchestrated by Karapetyan and Veselnitskaya – probably contributed to the authorities' final decision to settle the case. Prevezon agreed to pay $ 5.9 million, but did not admit any role in laundering the product of the fraud.
