A network of shell companies tied to sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska helped finance an Albanian conservative party’s hiring of a former Donald Trump campaign operative ahead of Albania’s 2017 general election, according to an investigation published Friday by Dutch outlet Follow the Money.
The report, based on leaked documents from the Pandora Papers and corporate records traced across Scotland, the United States, Hong Kong, and Liechtenstein, identifies the previously unknown owners of Biniatta Trade LP, a Scottish limited partnership that paid Washington lobbyist Nick Muzin to open doors for the Democratic Party of Albania (DPA) during the 2017 campaign.
Muzin, a former senior adviser to Republican Senator Ted Cruz and an operative on Trump’s first presidential campaign, was hired by then-DPA leader Lulzim Basha to raise the party’s profile in Washington, FTM reported. Muzin arranged a Breitbart news appearance for Basha, introduced him to Republican politicians and staged a photo-op with Trump at a U.S. rally. The DPA at the time reworked Trump’s slogan into “Make Albania Great Again.”
Muzin initially registered $75,000 in fees from the DPA under U.S. foreign-lobbying rules but later amended his filing to disclose $675,000, most of it paid by Biniatta Trade LP, the outlet reported. The amendment came two weeks after former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was indicted as part of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
The news agency said newly surfaced documents show Biniatta Trade LP was part of an evolving network of shell entities linked to Deripaska and his metals and energy conglomerate EN+. The company was managed by Moscow lawyer Eduard Blokhin through accounts at Bendura, a private bank in Gamprin, Liechtenstein, the outlet reported.
According to the investigation, Blokhin expanded the network in late 2017 by adding six subsidiaries, nearly all of which opened accounts at Bendura. Although the companies told the bank that future funds would come from grain and textile trading, the outlet said it documented roughly €55 million in loans and contracts between December 2017 and August 2018, about two-thirds of which traced back to Deripaska and his associates.
Transfers included an €11 million loan to a shell company owned by the then-CEO of EN+ and a €4 million payment to a firm chartering a private jet used by Deripaska’s wife and in-laws, according to the report.
Peter van Leusden, a former lead investigator with the Dutch anti-corruption authority ACC, told Follow the Money that some of the transactions bore “hallmarks of money laundering.” Referring to a €6.7 million loan guaranteed between the network and shell companies in Poland and Singapore, he said, “the use of so many different companies for such a simple transaction looks artificial.”
The U.S. Treasury sanctioned Deripaska and EN+ in April 2018, citing the Kremlin’s “global malign activities” and “attempts to subvert Western democracy.” The following month, an associate who had incorporated the six Seychelles-based shell firms urged Blokhin in an email obtained by FTM to rename the entities and install new proxy directors “so there’s no trail leading back.”
Biniatta Trade LP was renamed Agrotex Nemo International Trading LP before being dissolved in April 2019, the outlet said.
An Albanian prosecution investigation into the DPA’s payments to Muzin was suspended in 2019 without charges.
A 2022 declassified U.S. intelligence assessment concluded that Moscow had covertly directed more than $300 million to political actors worldwide and referenced unspecified allegations of a Russian influence operation in Albania, the report noted. Deripaska was examined but never charged by Mueller’s team, which cited evidence identifying him as a key figure in Russia’s influence efforts. He has consistently denied wrongdoing.
Read more at Follow the Money