https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/anthonycormier/russian-agents-sought-us-treasury-records-on-clinton-backers
By Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold
BuzzFeed News Reporters
December 20, 2018
US Treasury Department officials used a Gmail back channel with the
Russian government as the Kremlin sought sensitive financial information
on its enemies in America and across the globe, according to documents
reviewed by BuzzFeed News.
The extraordinary unofficial line of communication arose in the final year
of the Obama administration -- in the midst of what multiple US
intelligence agencies have said was a secret campaign by the Kremlin to
interfere in the US election. Russian agents ostensibly trying to track
ISIS instead pressed their American counterparts for private financial
documents on at least two dozen dissidents, academics, private
investigators, and American citizens.
Most startlingly, Russia requested sensitive documents on Dirk, Edward,
and Daniel Ziff, billionaire investors who had run afoul of the Kremlin.
That request was made weeks before a Russian lawyer showed up at Trump
Tower offering top campaign aides "dirt" on Hillary Clinton -- including
her supposed connection to the Ziff brothers.
Russia's financial crimes agency, whose second-in-command is a former KGB
officer and schoolmate of President Vladimir Putin, also asked the
Americans for documents on executives from two prominent Jewish groups,
the Anti-Defamation League and the National Council of Jewish Women, as
well as Kremlin opponents living abroad in London and Kiev.
In an astonishing departure from protocol, documents show that at the same
time the requests were being made, Treasury officials were using their
government email accounts to send messages back and forth with a network
of private Hotmail and Gmail accounts set up by the Russians, rather than
communicating through the secure network usually used to exchange
information with other countries.
Analysts at an elite agency within Treasury first warned supervisors in
2016 that the Russians were "manipulating the system" to conduct "fishing
expeditions." And they raised fears that the Treasury's internal systems
could be compromised by viruses contained in emails from the unofficial
Russian accounts. But staff continued using the Gmail back channel into
2017, despite repeated internal warnings that Russia could be trawling for
sensitive financial records -- including Social Security and bank account
numbers -- to spy on, endanger, or recruit targets in the West.
[...]
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