Five days earlier, on September 14, Christopher Steele had issued his Dossier Report 112 about that bank's owners -- which Steele spelled as Alpha Group.
There are hundreds of thousands of large businesses in Russia. There was no obvious reason why this particular Russian business -- Alpha Group -- had occupied Steele's attention, time and effort during the first half of September 2016. Nothing in this Dossier report seems to be related to Donald Trump or even to US politics.
It seems that Steele had been assigned to write a report urgently about Alfa Bank, but he could not find anything interesting to write about the bank itself. Rather, he could concoct only some insinuations about various Alpha Group officials who were alleged to be involved in some corrupt relationships with Vladimir Putin.
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The report's text :
PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION: KREMLIN-ALPHA GROUP OPERATION (SEPTEMBER 14, 2016)=======
Summary
- Top level Russian official confirms current closeness of Alpha Group-PUTIN relationship. Significant favours continue to be done in both directions and FRIDMAN and AVEN still giving informal advice to PUTIN, especially on the US
- Key intermediary in PUTIN-Alpha relationship identified as Oleg GOVORUN, currently Head of a Presidential Administration department but throughout the 1990s, the Alpha executive who delivered illicit cash directly to PUTIN
– PUTIN personally unbothered about Alpha’s current lack of investment in Russia but under pressure from colleagues over this and able to exploit it as lever over Alpha interlocutors
Detail
1. Speaking to a trusted compatriot in mid-September 2016, a top level Russian government Official commented on the history and current state of relations between President PUTIN and the Alpha Group of businesses led by oligarchs Mikhail FRIDMAN, Petr AVEN and German KHAN. The Russian government figure reported that although they had had their ups and downs, the leading figures in Alpha currently were on very good terms with PUTIN. Significant favours continued to be done in both directions, primarily political ones for PUTIN and business/legal ones for Alpha. Also, RIDMAN and AVEN continued to give informal advice to PUTIN on foreign policy, and especially about the US where he distrusted advice being given to him by officials.
2. Although FRIDMAN recently had met directly with PUTIN in Russia, much of the dialogue and business between them was mediated through a senior Presidential Administration Official, Oleg GOVORUN, who currently headed the department therein responsible for Social Co-operation with the CIS. GOVORUN was trusted by PUTIN and recently had accompanied him to Uzbekistan to pay respects at the tomb of former president KARIMOV. However according to the top level Russian government official, during the 1990s GOVORUN had been Head of Government Relations at Alpha Group and in reality, the ‘driver’ and ‘bag carrier’ used by FRIDMAN and AVEN to deliver large amounts of illicit cash to the Russian president, at that time deputy Mayor of St Petersburg. Given that and the continuing sensitivity of the relationship, and need for plausible deniability, much of the contact between them was now indirect and entrusted to the relatively low profile GOVORUN.
3. The top level Russian government official described the PUTlN-Alpha relationship as both carrot and stick. Alpha held ‘kompromat’ on PUTIN and his corrupt business activities from the 1990s whilst although not personally overly bothered by Alpha’s failure to reinvest the proceeds of its TNK oil company sale into the Russian economy since, the Russian president was able to use pressure on this count from senior Kremlin colleagues as a lever on FRIDMAN and AVEN to make them do his political bidding.
14 September 2016
When Steele finished his Report 112 on September 14, none of his Dossier reports had been officially delivered to FBI Headquarters.
According to the FBI's official story -- told in the Horowitz Report -- Steele had begun delivering his Dossier reports on July 5, 2016, to FBI official Michael Gaeta, who was based at the US Embassy in Rome, Italy. Then Gaeta sent the reports to the FBI's New York Field Office (NYFO), where they were stored by the NYFO Chief Division Counsel, who did nothing with them.
Not until September 19 -- the very same day that Sussman met with Baker -- were the first six Dossier reports officially delivered to FBI Headquarters in Washington DC. These six reports were 80, 94, 95, 100, 101 and 102. In other words, the delivered reports did not include Report 112, which Steele had finished four days earlier.
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In my previous blog articles about Gaeta, I have suggested that his Rome Embassy position -- in which he supposedly worked for the FBI Legate -- was a cover for his real assignment, which was to report secretly to the FBI Counterintelligence Chief. Gaeta actually sent all the Dossier reports immediately and directly to the FBI Counterintelligence Chief. Gaeta sent just a few of the Dossier reports to the NYFO as a plausible-deniability ruse about what he actually was doing -- which essentially was collecting dirt in Europe about Trump.
In mid-September, however, a decision was made within the FBI's top leadership to end this ruse. More specifically, a decision was made to begin sending the Dossier reports officially to FBI Headquarters. Report 112 still had not reached the NYFO office, so that particular report was not included in the first reports that were delivered to FBI Headquarters on September 19.
However, the FBI decision-makers had been told that Steele already had completed one report about Alfa Bank and intended to write more such reports. From now on, Gaeta would send Steele's reports immediately and directly to FBI Headquarters, which would officially log the reports in and then disseminate them widely to Intelligence analysts. Information about Alfa Bank and Trump had to be analyzed and developed by the US Intelligence Community with maximum efficiency.
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Continued in Part 2
