Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller III may be harboring a secret witness against Trump’s former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. According to published accounts. Flynn may now be snitching on his former crime partners in the Trump regime.
www.thedailybeast.com/...
The potential witness is Riza Zarrab, a debonair Turkish gold dealer with a TV star wife. He has disappeared from a New York jail. He missed his trial dates on charges of violating sanctions on dealing with Iran, and is potentially destined for the Witness Protection Program, according to published accounts.
Zarrab may have information about Flynn’s efforts to corrupt justice, and to kidnap an opponent of the Turkish government.
Please allow me to introduce Mueller’s prospective witness against Flynn, Riza Zarrab (aka Risa Sarraf). He holds four passports, and ran an $11 billion business that included shipping a ton a day of pure gold to launder payments for busting the sanctions against dealing Iranian oil. That’s remarkable for a once-common hoodlum from the underbelly of the Turk underworld.
Now his sworn testimony could help topple two or more governments, here and in Turkey. He may have information on Flynn’s dealings with the Turks, which potentially could shed light on corruption of justice, and a kidnapping plot.
Zarrab burst into the headlines in 2013, when Reuters obtained and published a 299-page Turkish prosecutor’s dossier on Zarrab. Zarrab was paying millions in bribes to several top Turkish politicians and law enforcement officers, to allow him to illegally sell sanctioned Iranian oil.
Earlier, after fog diverted a plane to an unexpected stop at Turkish airport, customs officers discovered a ton-and-one-half of pure gold in the plane. That was a single day’s laundered income for Zarrab’s sanctions busting scheme.
The bribery accusations almost toppled the Turkish government. But Zarrab continued to bribe his way out of any prosecutions. Investigating officers were reassigned to the dustiest corners of Turkey.
However, the US Department of Justice also read the dossier and instituted wiretaps. Zarrab and his Turkish goverment allies were trampling the US sanctions against purchasing Iranian oil.
And in late 2015, Zarrab blithely landed in Miami with 3 passports and $103,000 in cash in his pockets, on his way to Disney World. Instead, the feds busted him for crimes including bank fraud, and violating Iran Sanctions, which collectively carries a minimum 30-year prison sentence. The FBI soon charged a former Turkish cabinet minister and an officer in a Turkish bank as co-defendants.
In Turkey, the opposition parties hailed US attorney Prett Bharara as a hero for catching Zarrab. The Turkish government angrily objected to the arrests and Turkish prosecutors are investigating Bharara regarding how the US obtained the dossiers and wiretap transcripts used to indict Zarrab.
The Turkish government, who paid Flynn $530,000 during 2016, met with Flynn to investigate ways to spring Zarrab. Rudy Giuliani and former US Attorney General Michael Mukasey met with the Turks also, and began applying political pressure to get the US to drop the charges against Zarrab.
The news accounts portray Zarrab as a dapper jet-setter, a billionaire businessman who skirted the sanctions laws. He went on Turkish TV to defend himself while admitting he made billions violating the sanctions, and shipped a ton of gold a day to launder the proceeds. His wife wept for his fate on her own TV show, praying with the studio audience that this troubled period would end. She’s divorcing him now.
But a far darker story lurks in the original prosecutors’ dossier, and reveals damning details about the man who a former New York City Mayor, a former US Attorney General, and a former National Security Advisor all sought to free unpunished for helping iran arm Hezbollah.
Zarrab is more than a suavely dressed, darkly handsome playboy who ran afoul of international diplomatic intrigue.
He also trafficked in prostitutes and heroin, according to the leaked Turkish Prosecutor’s dossier. On May 25, 2016, the Department Justice filed portions of the the dossier as Exhibit G in his criminal case.
The Turkish Prosecutor’s dossier notes that “...an eighteen-wheeler trying to exit the country … with 202 kilograms of Heroin was seized.”
During that investigation, the Turkish police discovered that Zarrab’s companies “… were laundering money for drug and smuggling mobs … the source of (Zarrab’s) money was drugs and smuggling. The (laundered) money would then flow into the drug mobs. These individuals have been transferring …. drug barons’ money.”
Heroin’s bad enough. Zarrab’s operations also participated in sex trafficking of women as payoffs to corrupt Dubai law enforcement officials. Translated from Turkish, that's called “Intermediating the Prostitution crime.”
In summary, a former Attorney General, a former New York Mayor, and former National Security Advisor have taken Turkish money and frantically tried to spring a pimp and drug trafficker who helped arm our enemies.
And the fate of our own democracy could hinge in part on that pimp and dope dealer’s upcoming testimony.