How this Trump thing is going to finally end is anybody's guess. The worst and most destructive way would be a second American Civil War. Too far-fetched? He and his inner circle-- including his children-- are headed for indictments, possibly prison sentences for the cronies and kids. Is a plateful of them headed to Russia seeking political asylum more far-fetched? Unimaginable? There are reasons why a federal judge confiscated Pau; Manafort's passports. I wonder if they got them all.Aside from being the head of Tibetan Buddhism, Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was the head of state of Tibet before China swallowed it up in 1959. India granted him asylum. The U.S. granted Stalin's daughter, Svetlana asylum in 1967. Earlier, one of the original heads of the Russian Revolution, Trotsky, was granted political asylum by Turkey (1929), France (1933), Norway (1935) and finally Mexico (1937), where he was assassinated in 1940. Who remembers Anastasio Somoza, the fascist dictator of Nicaragua? He was granted political asylum in Paraguay in 1979. And speaking about fascists who were American puppets-- Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Iranian dictator, was given temporary asylum by Egypt, Morocco, the Bahamas, Mexico, the U.S., Panama and, finally, Egypt again; and overthrown Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, who was given asylum first by the Dominican Republican (1959) and then by Portugal (both fascist states at the time). Currently Ed Snowden has found political asylum in Russia. So what about the Trump menagerie? Can you visualize it? I certainly can.Anna Nemitsova, a Moscow-based journalist writing for the Daily Beast and Newsweek, wrote a post yesterday from a very different, but not unrelated, perspective-- An Arrest in France Freaks Out the Kremlin Kleptocracy. 51 year old Russian oligarch (and, like all Russian oligarchs, criminal), Suleiman Kerimov, was counted as the 21st richest man in Russia, a Putin creation, like all the Russian billionaires. He's a member of Russia's Federation Council (roughly the equivalent of a U.S. Senator). She wrote that he's "part of the circle of businessmen known for their loyalty to President Vladimir Putin and the benefits they’ve reaped as a result, a billionaire member of Putin’s United Russia party who has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in important state projects to curry favor. Such 'pocket oligarchs' earn official status, even diplomatic immunity when they travel. When he was arrested when he de-planed in Nice this week, he didn't have his diplomatic passport with him. The charges: tax evasion and money laundering, crimes all Russian oligarchs are guilty of shocked the oligarchs back in Russia since "many of them, like Kerimov, have gotten used to keeping their fortunes, their luxury properties, their yachts, and indeed their families abroad."
Before this week they thought of the French Riviera, especially, as a safe haven where resorts like Cap d’Antibes, St. Jean-Cap Ferrat, and Beaulieu-sur-Mer are home to whole colonies of ultra-rich Russians.In the past couple of years, amid rising tensions between Russia and the West, Kerimov tried his best to protect his name, freedom, and fortune both in France and Russia.According to Russian regulations, the senator—who is worth some $6.3 billion in Forbes’ estimate-- has no right to own any villas abroad. So Kerimov told Moscow he had none. In France, meanwhile, he insisted that he, himself, had no property and that the villas where he and his family lived for much of the year belonged in fact to his lawyer, a Swiss citizen.French investigators did not buy the story and, suspecting a scam, searched his alleged properties repeatedly over the last several months, confiscating some of his wife’s jewelry and other valuable property.Olga Proskurnina, who has been covering Russian business news as an independent observer since 1992, keeps a close eye on Kerimov and many other Russian businessmen and officials enjoying their lives in the south of France.“Several thousand Russian millionaires and eight billionaires own properties in Monaco and on the French Riviera,” says Proskurnina. “Their real life is abroad, so they come to Russia just to make money, creating all sorts of schemes to cover up their true deals.”Both liberal and conservative experts believe that Russians keep around $1 trillion abroad in offshore banks accounts.“Kerimov’s case made many in the elite concerned, as he seemed to be safe with his Russian diplomatic immunity,” Proskurnina noted.French authorities were convinced that Kerimov actually owned four huge villas totalling more than 90,000 square meters in France. If that is true, Kerimov may have to pay fines and back taxes amounting to millions of euros in the tax evasion case. But wait-- then Moscow would find out that the senator had been lying about his property, and penalties of many kinds will accrue in Russia.In the future, Kerimov’s example probably will inspire other Russian residents in France to have their lawyers build even more sophisticated schemes for protection. But in the meantime Russian officials condemned the French government, calling Kerimov’s arrest “a planned provocation.”Rizvan Kurbanov, a State Duma deputy from the ruling United Russia party voiced what everybody had on their mind: “Any of us could find ourselves in such situation.”...“This elite has been supporting Putin for more than 17 years. They know all the secrets of political life, but their wives, their lovers, their beloved homes are on the warm beaches far from Russia, and they would hate to lose them.”
