
Russian whistleblower was assassinated after uncovering $200B scandal (2018) - krn
https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-whistleblower-assassinated-after-uncovering-dollar200-billion-dirty-money-scandal
======
thomasll
Uncover the theft of hundreds of thousands will get you a bonus.

Uncover the theft of millions will get you a big promotion.

Uncover the theft of billions by corrupt state actors and international crime
syndicates is only ever going to get you dead.

Perhaps I have a different mindset, but if I had been looking into this, I
think I would have stopped digging as soon as I got a hint of how deep this
rabbit hole actually was. Risk vs Reward.

~~~
mola
This is why humanity invented the Hero. We recognize that irrational
selflessness can be extremely beneficial for society. The more heroes we have,
the less corrupt the system, the stakes of corruption would be lower and the
price of heroism should decrease, thus society at large and these selfless
heros will probably benefit together.

~~~
mola
So we could call this guy stupid, or hail him as a hero. In which society
would you like you and your children to live in, the one where heroes are
acknowledged or the one they are dismissed as dumb and irrational?

Mind you, calling someone a hero cost you next to nothing in utility so I
think the choice is a no brainier.

~~~
Fnoord
> Mind you, calling someone a hero cost you next to nothing in utility so I
> think the choice is a no brainier.

People who express their homosexuality in Russia face repercussions. Someone
who opposes racism such as black face in The Netherlands gets repercussions.
Someone who leaks a video of war crimes faces repercussions. Expressing your
support _for_ these people likely has repercussions as well. They might not be
opaque, but think about something as being put on a list (hello Tor Tails) or
being bullied as two examples of repercussions.

I mean, murder is just one. There's one thing worse than murdering me, btw.
Murdering my offspring, my child. In North Korea they got that one covered.
Your whole family will suffer if/when you (attempted to) fled/flee. In our
more civilized societies the repercussions are (much) less severe, but I don't
believe there are none.

~~~
mola
I was assuming OP is not from Russia where stakes of corruption are higher and
the price for heroism is death.

~~~
chmod775
If there wasn't a risk of a high price to be paid by the heroic individual, it
wouldn't be very heroic.

Also a friendly reminder that, for instance, Edward Snowden is hiding in
_Russia_ of all places from a possible death penalty.

Capital punishment for an ultimataly selfless act, motivated by his moral code
and love for a country that very much would like to see him gone for good.

------
sunstone
Putin has a habit of reaching out and touching people that annoy him.

------
alexro
Is anyone able to explain how they have jumped from this

"Andrei Kozlov was gunned down in 2006, weeks after trying to shutter the
world’s biggest money-laundering scam"

to this

"—one reportedly used by Putin’s family and the FSB." ?

~~~
krn
[https://www.occrp.org/en/laundromat/the-russian-
laundromat-e...](https://www.occrp.org/en/laundromat/the-russian-laundromat-
exposed/)

~~~
alexro
Your source is jumping big between the facts too

~~~
krn
The last paragraph:

> FSB representatives served on the board of at least one of banks that wired
> billions out of Russia as did Igor Putin, Putin’s cousin. He was a manager
> and executive board member in the Russian Land Bank. This bank wired more
> than $9.7 billion to Moldindconbank in Moldova, most of which went on to
> Trasta Komercbanka and from there on to the world.

~~~
alexro
So, how this is considered to be corruption if money are moved to somewhere?
Isn't it what every government is doing, including various US funds helping
all kinds of crooks abroad?

~~~
krn
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_laundering)

> Money laundering is the illegal process of concealing the origins of money
> obtained illegally by passing it through a complex sequence of banking
> transfers or commercial transactions. The overall scheme of this process
> returns the money to the launderer in an obscure and indirect way.

~~~
alexro
How this proves that the money

1) has been moved 'illegally' (which authority is responsible)

2) linked to Putin's family personally

3) linked to the 'uncovered' scheme

This is what I call jumping between the facts

~~~
keymone
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrIsXKdjZdo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrIsXKdjZdo)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvAdZigHlhk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvAdZigHlhk)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXYQbgvzxdM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXYQbgvzxdM)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwlk7_GF9g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrwlk7_GF9g)

there's plenty more if you want to know how these crooks use shady schemes to
steal from russian citizens and move it semi-legally out of russia to have
nice places to retire to

of course if the only evidence you will accept is putin himself bringing you
incriminating documents with his signatures - i got nothing to offer.

------
mensetmanusman
The U.S. is not blameless in supporting money laundering through real estate:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-
kle...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-kleptocracy-
came-to-america/580471/)

~~~
tclancy
How is that relevant here and not just meaningless whataboutism?

~~~
chance_state
Is there a name for the phenomenon (eg. Poe's Law) where people leave comments
on random world politics topics that basically consist of "but America..."?

You can count on it on every single negative geopolitical story on most sites.
Sad to see it on HN.

~~~
magduf
>Is there a name for the phenomenon (eg. Poe's Law) where people leave
comments on random world politics topics that basically consist of "but
America..."?

Yeah, isn't it called "pot... kettle"?

------
jessaustin
Oh Wikileaks, why would you publish more material that harms the leaders of
the Russian state? It's as if you don't even care that you're contradicting
the constant media accounts of your pro-Russian bias. Corporate-media
stenographers have families to feed!

~~~
andreigheorghe
> According to a telegram that remained buried until now in the cache of
> 250,000 diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks in 2010

care to try that argument again, taking into account how time works?

~~~
jessaustin
That's the point; WL have never had any bias. They just publish genuine
documents. They don't care whose ox is gored. The ridiculous conspiracy
theorizing on display for the last three years says nothing about WL and
everything about USA.

~~~
andreigheorghe
Nice work moving the goalposts :)

If, being aware of everything that's happening around us, you still choose to
represent reality as "ridiculous conspiracy theorizing", then you're either in
a cult, or a dedicated troll, neither of which I'm interested in wasting my
time debating.

~~~
jessaustin
Russia have been accused of various things, few of which seem credible and
none of which have been associated with any evidence available to the public.
Even so, they haven't even been _accused_ of anything besides excessive
communication. That's 1A. No one has to be silent if they're talking about an
election. If this democracy can't handle $4700 in AdWords spend [0], it ain't
really a democracy.

[0] [https://9to5google.com/2018/12/11/numbers-sundar-pichais-
tes...](https://9to5google.com/2018/12/11/numbers-sundar-pichais-testimony/)

~~~
andreigheorghe
You're lying and gaslighting.

> The Mueller report contains new information about how the Russian government
> hacked documents and emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and
> the Democratic National Committee.

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/18/mueller-clinton-arizona-
ha...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/18/mueller-clinton-arizona-hack/)

> The Russian military intelligence unit known by its initials GRU targeted
> U.S. state election offices as well as U.S. makers of voting machines,
> according to Mueller’s report.

[https://www.rollcall.com/news/whitehouse/barrs-conclusion-
no...](https://www.rollcall.com/news/whitehouse/barrs-conclusion-no-
obstruction-gets-new-scrutiny)

~~~
jessaustin
The projection is strong in this one. No evidence has ever been introduced to
support any of these assertions. Mueller not only didn't write, but he never
_read_ his own report, as evidenced by his pathetic Congressional testimony
about it. This testimony was _almost_ as bad as his previous Congressional
testimony in support of the existence of WMDs in Iraq. At least in this case
he wasn't lying so much as struggling to follow a script he didn't understand.
We could _almost_ see Andrew Weissmann's puppet hand run up his ass. Every
time any assertion in any of these reports and indictments has been challenged
in court, the DoJ has declined to support it.

