Socialist Venezuela/Rosneft BRIBED $500,000 to Trump's inauguration

Socialist Venezuela chipped in $500,000 to Trump's inauguration

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/19/venezuela-donation-donald-trump-inauguration

"A Venezuelan state-owned oil company, heavily indebted to the Russian oil giant Rosneft, made a $500,000 donation to Donald Trump’s inauguration festivities, it has emerged.

Foreign donations are banned under US law, but the Venezuelan company, PdVSA, made the donation through a US affiliate, Citgo Petrol, soon after offering a nearly 50% stake in Citgo to Rosneft as collateral for a $1.5bn loan.

Under current circumstances, however, Rosneft could not take ownership of its shares in Citgo – which owns three refineries, as well as pipelines and oil terminals – because the Russian firm and its boss, Igor Sechin, are under US sanctions linked to Moscow’s military intervention in eastern Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea.

 A dossier put together last year by a former British intelligence officer, Christopher Steele, containing allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow over Russian intervention in the US presidential elections, mentions Rosneft as a central part of the supposed conspiracy.

 Steele claimed that Sechin, a close associate of Vladmir Putin, met one of Trump’s foreign policy advisers, Carter Page, and offered him brokerage in the sale of 19% of Rosneft shares.

Page has denied meeting Sechin, but his visit to Moscow in July is reported by the New York Times to have been a catalyst for the launch of a FBI investigation into Trump-Russia links. In December, Russia sold a 19.5% share in Rosneft for more than €10bn ($10.7bn).

 Some of it was bought by Qatar and Glencore, a Swiss-based oil trading company, but the new owners of most of the stake remain shrouded in mystery."