Tag: Federal Security Service

Whelan, 48, who is head of global security for a Michigan-based auto parts supplier, was arrested on Friday. "His innocence is undoubted and we trust that his rights will be respected." David Whelan said in an interview that his brother had been to Russia several times previously, so when a fellow former Marine was planning a wedding in Moscow with a Russian woman he was asked to come along to help out. "It was extraordinarily out of character," he said. "I was looking for any stories about dead Americans in Moscow, so in a way it was better than finding out that he had died," he said. David Whelan said the family was told by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow they have not been able to speak to Paul Whelan. David Whelan said he has no idea why his brother was targeted by the Russian security services. Paul Whelan did multiple tours in Iraq with the Marine Corps, his brother said. She said BorgWarner does not have any facilities in Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed the case is fabricated and that Butina entered the guilty plea because of the threat of a long prison sentence.

The statement implied that he had been caught red-handed, saying that the arrest had occurred “during an act of espionage.” A criminal case has been opened against Mr. Whelan, said the statement from the F.S.B., or Federal Security Service, which gave no other details. The arrest comes during an extended period of tension in relations between Moscow and Washington, particularly over the issues of election hacking and influence peddling... A Russian citizen, Maria Butina, 30, pleaded guilty this month in Federal District Court in Washington to a single charge of conspiring to act as a foreign agent. She admitted to being involved in an organized effort, backed by Russian officials, to try to lobby influential Americans in the National Rifle Association and the Republican Party. The Russian government, while strenuously denying that Ms. Butina is a Russian agent, has organized a social media campaign to win her release. While there is no apparent connection between her case and Mr. Whelan’s, in the past, Russian authorities have arrested foreigners with an eye toward trading prisoners with other countries. Scenario 1: This is simply a brutal attempt at a Checkpoint Charlie maneuver. They want Butina back and they grabbed a handy American to trade and will hold onto said handy American until they get the deal they want. The president* is so hopelessly compromised that he has been pushed into a corner where anything he does is wrong. Scenario 2: The Russians have grabbed Whelan so that the president* can flex against Russia, thereby creating for himself a narrative within which he is Standing Up To Putin to throw up against whatever volumes of evidence Robert Mueller has compiled. In either case, this latest development illustrates nothing more than the fact that this administration* is hopelessly entangled with the authoritarian goon who is running Russia, and with his various cronies who are bleeding it dry.

Senior members of the National Rifle Association (NRA) met the wife of the Russian billionaire who allegedly gave financial support to a woman accused of being a secret agent for Moscow in the US. The NRA members met Svetlana Nikolaeva, who is the head of a gun company that supplies sniper rifles to the Russian military and intelligence services, during a trip to Moscow during the 2016 election campaign. Accused spy Maria Butina met with Russia's former US ambassador Read more Nikolaeva’s husband, Konstantin Nikolaev, allegedly provided funding to Maria Butina, a young Russian woman charged with carrying out an illicit spying operation in Washington. Nikolaev reportedly once invested in his wife’s gun company. US prosecutors allege Butina’s activities were directed by Alexander Torshin, a senior Russian state banker and an NRA member. Nikolaev has been involved in several business projects connected to allies of Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Sacha Baron Cohen's scheme to arm toddlers isn't far from reality Read more Nikolaev has been named in several Russian media reports in recent years as an early investor in Orsis’s parent company. In December 2015, an NRA delegation including Pete Brownell, then the NRA’s first vice-president, and David Keene, a past NRA president, visited Russia for an expedition partly funded by Right to Bear Arms, a Russian pro-gun group run by Butina with help from Torshin, her alleged government handler. Rogozin’s son was previously an executive at Orsis. The Guardian disclosed earlier this month that a former chief of staff to Putin had a previously unreported investment in American Ethane.