Day 516 Part III

Day 516 Part III

It’s still Tuesday June 19, 2018

There are still 1,062 Days to Go

Wilbur Ross and his lies, his ties to Russia, China, and shady financial dealings.

Wilbur Ross is our Secretary of Commerce. He seems to be more interested in his commerce than ours.

In a stunning report in Forbes, which I could no longer get to because it appears the site is down, old Wilbur (remember Mr. Ed? No? Nevermind.) who promised to get rid of all his holdings in shady Russian companies lied. He admitted now that he lied. He didn’t even try the newly minted defense of he forgot until his memory was refreshed lie.

As you may remember Wilbur Ross was involved with the bank of Cyprus, a favorite money laundering spot for Russian oligarchs and Vladimir Putin. In fact, the Russian companies that Ross promised to divest himself of were shipping companies tied to Putin, Russia, and Putin’s buds the aforesaid oligarchs. Ross claimed he divested himself of the companies. But not before he took out a huge position betting their stock would go down once he disclosed he was divesting himself, and not before a bunch of people close to him still held shares in these companies.

And when the “Paradise Papers” leaked (those are the ones from Panama) it showed Ross still owned interest in one of these companies. A company btw that is controlled by Putin’s son-in-law, whom I guess is married to the rock and roll gymnast daughter of Putin. But hey, Ross didn’t lie, according to his lawyers or spokesperson, he filed amended documents, just like Sessions after being confirmed clarified his comments to the Senate committee about his failed memory and lies to them.

So here’s what Ross did, in one instance, when the New York Times asked him about his holdings in a Kremlin linked shipping company, Ross sold the shares, and before the Times article was released to the public he took up a huge short position in that company. This would be called trading on insider information as far as I know, but hey, this is Trump world and it’s probably not called insider information by them, just because the public didn’t know. I mean it’s not like Ross lied to a judge under oath. He only lied to the New York Times. In fact, he didn’t even do that. He only took up an investment position because he knew something the rest of us (the public) didn’t know. What’s the big deal?

And yes, Ross did divest himself of much of these holding. How? By giving the shares to family members! What’s wrong with that? He got rid of the shares didn’t he? What I can’t understand is why hasn’t he blamed Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats yet? I mean come on.

And to round out the story, the Bank of Cyprus’ biggest shareholder is Victor Vekselberg. That was the guy stopped at the airport by Mueller’s folks. Vekselberg’s cousin, an American citizen, runs a firm of which Vekselberg is the majority owner, if not the only person with money in that firm. It was that firm that paid Michael Cohen $500,000 for real estate advice. Yeah, no big deal, nothing to see here. Right? Am I right?

This is our commerce secretary hard at work, not for you, but for himself.

Here’s a link to CNN’s reporting on it in an earlier post.

1,062 Days to Go