Headlines

 Apr.21.– Russian oligarchs Boris Rotenberg, Igor Rotenberg and Gennady Timchenko have been sanctioned by the U.K., along with five Russian banks, hours after President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine last February.

For more than a decade, ICIJ has tracked flows of money globally – stories that have commonly involved wealthy Russians with elite political connections. These projects included the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers, FinCEN Files, and the Pandora Papers.

Here are five oligarchs whose financial dealings have been uncovered by ICIJ investigations – and who have received additional scrutiny from authorities.

Alisher Usmanov

Politically connected Uzbek-Russian billionaire.

 Bucha, Apr.11.– The town of Bucha captured the world’s attention with its images of horror. They gave a glimpse into the terrible consequences of a conflict prosecuted without limits.

Today the drive into Bucha looks very different to those first hours after it was liberated.

A gruesome video showing the bodies of civilians left decomposing where they fell, was the first indication of the war crimes perpetrated here.

«There are good reasons to question the Russian armed forces’ ability to seize and hold the portions of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts that it does not currently control», reports the Institute for the Study of War with HQ in Washington, DC.

Washington DC, Apr. 9.– We assess that the Russian military will struggle to amass a large and combat-capable force of mechanized units to operate in Donbas within the next few months. Russia will likely continue to throw badly damaged and partially reconstituted units piecemeal into offensive operations that make limited gains at great cost. The Russians likely will make gains nevertheless and may either trap or wear down Ukrainian forces enough to secure much of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, but it is at least equally likely that these Russian offensives will culminate before reaching their objectives, as similar Russian operations have done.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) reported on April 8 that the Russian armed forces have lost 15-20 percent of the “combat power” they had arrayed against Ukraine before the invasion. This statement is somewhat (unintentionally) misleading because it uses the phrase “combat power” loosely. The US DoD statements about Russian “combat power” appear to refer to the percentage of troops mobilized for the invasion that is still in principle available for fighting—that is, that are still alive, not badly injured, and with their units. But “combat power” means much more than that.

• John Sipher, who served for decades as a senior operations officer at the CIA, had signed a letter in 2020 calling the allegations against Hunter Biden pure disinformation regarding the evidence found in Hunter Biden's laptop.
• The 51 signatories of that letter refuse to apologize for discrediting the true Hunter Biden story. 

Washington DC, Apr.2 (DP.net).– Even now that everything on that laptop is coming to light, John Sipher brags in a recent post on Twitter saying that “I take special pride in personally swinging the election away from Trump”.

On their part, the 51 signatories of the 2020 open letter are former members of the supposed nonpartisan group of top CIA operatives –or top spies– looking out for the best interest of the nation. However, they sowed doubt knowing the material evidence was true. Among them shines the popular figure of CNN pundit and professional journalist James Clapper who signed the letter publicly saying that the laptop “has the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

The letter was at the core of a story from the "Politico" framework that claimed the New York Post story about the laptop was “Russian disinformation.” Furthermore, former National Intelligence Director James Clapper claimed The New York Post’s Hunter Biden exposé was “a Russian information operation.” However, while the FBI picked up the computer and a hard drive from the store’s owner, the bureau’s apparent inaction in probing the matter prompted the store owner to pass on a copy of the hard drive to an attorney representing former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who, in turn, passed it to the New York Post. The computer repair shop owner explained that when no one returned to pick it up, he searched the hard drive and found information that could be incriminating to Hunter Biden and politically damaging to his father. Thus, he called the FBI.