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Bank that Kushner met with paid Russian intelligence agent’s legal tab**
CNN
As federal prosecutors in New York prepared their case against a man accused of covertly working for
Russian intelligence two years ago, they began raising questions about an
unidentified “third party” paying the defendant’s legal bills.
The defendant’s benefactor turned out to be** VneshEconomBank, the same financial institution at the center of a recent controversy over its chairman’s meeting with Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and one of his top White House advisers.**
On the one it hand it should be no surprise that bank, also known as VEB, was paying for Evgeny Buryakov’s legal defense – Buryakov was one of its employees, after all.
But what made the matter more complicated was what
Buryakov was charged with illegally gathering intelligence on behalf of the Russian government and the Russian government owned the bank that provided his cover.
Prosecutors were concerned about a potential conflict in which the interests of the entity paying the bill may outweigh the interests of the defendant, resulting in an unfair trial and perhaps creating the basis for an appeal. The case was closely watched at the time by a top official at the bank and representatives of the Russian embassy in New York, one lawyer familiar with the matter told CNN.
The case offers a view into the murky world of Russian intelligence gathering at a time when that country’s efforts – and their potential intersection with the American political process – are under intense scrutiny…
…Following all the legal wrangling, Buryakov pleaded guilty in March 2016 to conspiring to act as an unregistered agent of the Russian Federation in the US. He was sentenced to two and half years in federal prison.
Prosecutors said Buryakov used his cover as a bank employee to work for Russia’s SVR, the country’s version of the CIA.
