Eighth person in Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting is Russian money laundering figure Ike Kaveladze
The eighth person who attended Donald Trump Jr.’s campaign meeting with the Russian government has now been identified by name, and it’s raising red flags across the board. He’s a Russian immigrant to the United States named Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, and existing records show that he has a long history of alleged money laundering on a massive scale.
Kaveladze’s identity as the mysterious eighth attendee is now being officially confirmed by the Washington Post (link), just hours after Kaveladze’s attorney Scott Balber had told CNN that he wasn’t ready to reveal his client’s identity. Kaveladze is an employee of Russian father and son duo Aras and Emin Agalarov, who helped set up the meeting. But it’s Kaveladze’s past that will get far more attention.
According to a New York Times article from all the way back in the year 2000, Irakly Kaveladze immigrated from Russia to the United States in 1991 and proceeded to set up thousands of U.S. dummy corporations so he could launder Russian money through Citibank (link). He ended up moving more than $800 million through the bank before his scheme was exposed and shut down. The news of Kaveladze attending the meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and the Kremlin comes even as Russian money laundering has already become a central tenet of the Trump-Russia scandal.
There is no publicly available evidence yet that Irakly Kaveladze and Donald Trump have worked together in any business capacity. However, Congress is already investigating a money laundering scheme that was being run through the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City back when Donald Trump was still part-owner. And German bank Deutsche Bank was busted earlier this year for laundering billions of dollars of Russian money into places like New York City. Deutsche Bank has also loaned huge sums of money to Donald Trump.
