“I remember him as a snake-oil salesman,”
.. He did not exhibit any special interest or expertise in Russia until 2014, when his academy was beginning to stumble financially. It was at that time a 24-year-old Russian intern, Natalia Kutepova-Jamrom, turned up in his office with an improbably impressive résumé.
Fluent in Russian, English, German and Chinese, Ms. Kutepova-Jamrom had worked in the Russian government as a legislative aide and would move on to a Russian state newspaper.
Ms. Kutepova-Jamrom introduced Mr. Mifsud to senior Russian officials, diplomats and scholars. Despite Mr. Mifsud’s lack of qualifications, she managed to arrange an invitation for him to join the prestigious Valdai Discussion Club, an elite gathering of Western and Russian academics that meets each year with Mr. Putin.
Mr. Mifsud’s inclusion in the group was “very, very strange,” said James Sherr, the former head of the Russian studies program at Chatham House in London and a member of Valdai for nearly a decade. It “might suggest he does have connections,” Mr. Sherr said.
Mr. Mifsud suddenly became a popular pundit with state-run news outlets in Russia, praising the country and Mr. Putin. At his first Valdai conference in 2014, he argued against Western sanctions that punished Russia for its annexation of Crimea that year.
.. In a recent interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Mr. Mifsud said the Russian woman who met Mr. Papadopoulos was “a simple student, very beautiful.” He suggested Mr. Papadopoulos hoped for a romantic involvement, adding, “Putin had nothing to do with it, a lovely invention.”
Mysterious Strangers Dog Controversial Insurer’s Critics
Chris Irons, an analyst at research firm GeoInvesting LLC, which has published several reports critical of AmTrust’s accounting practices, said he was contacted in July by a woman who identified herself as a London-based consultant to a European software multimillionaire seeking contributors to a new investment website. He agreed to meet at a Philadelphia-area restaurant.
Chris Irons, an analyst at research firm GeoInvesting LLC, which has published several reports critical of AmTrust’s accounting practices, said he was contacted in July by a woman who identified herself as a London-based consultant to a European software multimillionaire seeking contributors to a new investment website. He agreed to meet at a Philadelphia-area restaurant.
.. AmTrust, a fast-growing, New York-based insurance company with $5.5 billion in 2016 revenue, in recent years has attracted skepticism about its results from investors betting against its stock
.. Other AmTrust critics described similar odd approaches to The Journal, including an investor who is betting against AmTrust’s stock; a journalist who has published articles critical of AmTrust’s founders; and Mr. Irons’s boss, who said he had met two months earlier with a different “consultant” dangling a lucrative offer, who then brought up AmTrust.
.. Battles between companies and short sellers sometimes turn nasty and both sides in such disputes occasionally have used private investigators to dig up information, usually in a legitimate fashion. The investigators often are hired through law firms and the information sometimes is used in litigation.
.. An AmTrust spokeswoman said the company didn’t employ investigators to probe its critics. It declined to say whether its lawyers or others in its service had done so.
.. Investigators using fake identities and misrepresentations could run afoul of several state and federal laws, said Gavin P. Lentz, a Philadelphia attorney and former prosecutor, who isn’t involved in the matter. A company that hires such investigators potentially could be held civilly liable, Mr. Lentz said, because these are agents acting on their behalf
“Generally speaking, as a private investigator you can’t misrepresent yourself” in the U.S., said James Cesarano, vice president of ethics and compliance at Kroll Associates Inc., a corporate investigations firm.
.. AmTrust has been in a long-running battle with short sellers—investors who bet against its stock—and other critics, who have claimed the insurer burnishes its financials partly by underestimating future claims and through reinsurance transactions with overseas affiliates that had the effect of hiding losses.
A Harvey Weinstein Operative Played Another Role
Woman said to work undercover for the film mogul identified as also having dogged an insurer’s critic
“Diana Filip,” Israeli undercover operative, meet “Diana Ilic.”A private investigator reported to be working undercover on behalf of film mogul Harvey Weinstein was identified by two people as the same woman that The Wall Street Journal reported over the summer had used a different alias to wring information out of a critic of a large U.S. insurer.
The woman in the Journal article had given her name as “Diana Ilic.” The New Yorker, in an article published Monday about Mr. Weinstein’s use of private investigators to counter probes into his alleged sexual abuse, named “Diana Filip” as a pseudonym used by an operative for Black Cube, an Israeli investigative firm... The email address “Diana Ilic” used with Mr. Irons linked to a domain name established a few days before the meeting. The London address for her consulting firm turned out to be a mailbox drop.
Russian-American lobbyist joined Trump’s son’s meeting, too
Rinat Akhmetshin confirmed his involvement to The Associated Press in an interview. He had not been previously identified as a participant in the meeting at Trump Tower in New York, which was billed as part of a Russian government effort to help the Republican’s White House campaign.
Akhmetshin told the AP he served in the Soviet military in a unit that was part of counterintelligence but he was never formally trained as a spy.
.. He said he had learned about the meeting only that day when Veselnitskaya asked him to attend. He said he showed up in jeans and a T-shirt.
.. Akhmetshin said he recognized Kushner and Trump Jr. He also said he recognized Manafort because they worked in “adjacent political circles” but never together.
.. Schiff said Trump Jr.’s omission of Akhmetshin’s role in his public account of the meeting and the president’s son’s shifting explanations “paint a portrait of consistent dissembling and deceit.”
.. he was drafted but was not trained in spy tradecraft. He said his unit operated in the Baltics and was “loosely part of counterintelligence.”
.. in a March letter that Akhmetshin has “reportedly admitted to being a ‘Soviet counterintelligence officer’ and has a long history of lobbying the U.S. government for pro-Russia matters.”