A Wealthy Russian Businessman Is Helping Fund Trump’s Stupid Ballroom. Nothing Sketchy About That, Right?

2 min readThe history of the president's political career is so thoroughly shot through with various Russians that it's a wonder that the Bolshoi isn't doing three shows a night in the East Room. It is, of course, all a hoax according to the administration. That lasts until the next Volga Bagman shows up in the news.We're all still digesting the news that a Russian oligarch paid for the after-party at Junior's wedding, and here comes the good folks at the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with another entry in the accidental Russian derby.A company linked to a major Trump donor received authorization from the Treasury Department to complete an acquisition involving a sanctioned Russian bank, according to public records. The Texas-based Dynamic Frontier Holdings purchased Teghut, one of Armenia’s largest copper mines, this summer. Dynamic Frontier’s manager is Konstantin Sokolov, a Russian-American businessman who was one of three dozen private donors to ...... wait for it ...President Donald Trump’s $350 million White House ballroom project.That damned ballroom again. It is the key to so much of the White House corruption. Every editor of every newspaper should get on a big bus and drive to DC and look at the gouge in the land where the ballroom is supposed to be. There are something like 20 Pulitzers down in there waiting to be found.Russia’s state-owned VTB Bank was Teghut’s primary shareholder and creditor prior to the purchase. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned VTB Bank following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, describing it as a “critical artery” of the country’s financial system. The sanctions prohibit U.S. companies and individuals from transacting with VTB Bank. But on September 3, Dynamic Frontier said in a press statement that it had “received authorization from the U.S. Department of the Treasury” on June 1 to acquire all of Teghut’s shares and outstanding debt.The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, known as OFAC, can grant a license to individuals or companies to complete transactions that would otherwise be prohibited by sanctions. OFAC states on its website that it may grant a license to do business with sanctioned Russian entities when it is in the interest of the applicant and the U.S. government.I think that, in this case and in so many others, "the applicant" and the U.S. government ought to have radically different "interests." Da.