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'Paradise Papers' Disclosures Of Trump Administration-Russia Ties Warrant Congressional Hearings

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Ties between two key Trump administration officials and Russia figure prominently in the newly disclosed “Paradise Papers” about the workings of secret offshore tax havens. (The papers were leaked from Appleby, one of the world's largest offshore law firms.) These warrant immediate congressional hearings.

First, the papers have unmasked the Kremlin connections of an investor with ties to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top adviser. Yuri Milner, a Russian tech mogul – and Russian citizen – who lives in Silicon Valley, invested $850,000 in Cadre, a real estate firm co-founded by Kushner.

The papers show that Kremlin-controlled financial firms bankrolled key U.S. deals for Milner. One of those firms, VTB Bank, let Milner have $191 million, which he quietly invested in Twitter. And a subsidiary of Kremlin-controlled energy giant Gazprom funded a shell company that invested in a Milner-affiliated company that held roughly $1 billion in Facebook shares. Milner reportedly forged a close relationship with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Coming on the heels of the revelations of Russia's attempts to influence the 2016 election through Facebook and Twitter, the Paradise Papers raise many questions. Congress should call in Kushner, Milner and the executives of Twitter and Facebook.

Second, the papers show that after his nomination to become Secretary of Commerce, Wilbur L. Ross Jr. retained a stake in a shipping firm with very dubious Russian connections. Ross held a large investment in Navigator Holdings, which transported gas for Russian natural gas firm Sibur. Sibur is owned by a Russia oligarch who is under American sanctions, Gennady Timchenko, and by Vladimir Putin’s son-in-law Kirill Shamalov. It is an extraordinary conflict of interest for Ross to have financial connections of this kind, at a time when the Trump administration has vigorously fought against the obviously necessary sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine.

Moreover, the papers reveal that much of Ross’s wealth, which may be over $2 billion, has been tied to investment vehicles like Cayman Island tax havens. Congress should demand full financial documents from Ross, including his offshore tax haven connections, and then bring him in for hearings.

Ross has been devious – at best – with the Senate, which confirmed him to his Cabinet post. His ethics agreement filed in January 2017 was supposed to be a clean breast of his financial holdings, and, one would think, particularly his Russian connections. It is now clear that it fell well short of that. The ethics agreement listed the partnerships he intended to keep, but not the investments they held. Navigator Holdings had been mentioned in a separate, 57-page description of his holdings for the year ending in December 2016, but with no hint of its ties to Sibur. Those who remember the rush confirmation proceedings will see that Ross must have figured that the Senate minority would not have the opportunity to dig through to his Russian ties and heavy use of tax havens.

Apart from those Russian ties, the Paradise Papers also show that a number of other Trump administration figures, including chief economic adviser Gary D. Cohn and Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, have participated in the offshore tax haven network.

Congress must sort out these Russian and tax haven ties to the Trump administration.