Another Russian-linked Website Scrub
Are federal investigators finally scrutinizing Balch’s client Black Hall Aerospace, Inc. a/k/a AAL USA, Inc., the Russian-linked aerospace company tied to Soviet immigrant Oleg Sirbu?
In February, when the CDLU met with Sirbu’s attorneys Benjamin Coulter and Victor Hayslip, we were baffled why Sirbu had not gone to criminal investigators at the FBI. Allegedly U.S. management had stolen corporate assets and wrongfully spent corporate resources on personal items, including a home, an airplane, and a coffee bar. That looked like embezzlement to us.
The response had that unusually moment of silence and then a pivot to a discussion about the civil action being a priority.
On or about March 2, 2017, after we had exposed Balch & Bingham’s connection to Black Hall Aerospace in a public education campaign, Balch scrubbed their website of all references to their successful lobbying in D.C. of changing Russian sanctions for Black Hall Aerospace. The website scrub not only created a cover-up, it magnified to what lengths Balch would go to sugar-coat the past.
In addition, Balch’s top lobbyist in Washington, William F. Stiers, changed his resume, removing all references to his success in changing Russian sanctions.
As we outlined in our Russian-Linked Scandal page and in our correspondence to Office of the Special Counsel of the U.S. Department of Justice, besides the stealing of assets, Black Hall has had questionable revenue growth while having only one certified mechanic out of 400 alleged employees, going from less than $1 million in revenue with fewer than 20 employees in 2014 to growing to over 400 employees and $50 million in revenue by 2016, according to court filings.
Sirbu was running a website called aviationintelligence.org that contained all the corporate court documents and Russian aviation certifications in his fight against the alleged corporate thieves.
But yesterday, almost a week after the publication of a Real Clear Investigations article on Balch, the site was scrubbed and shut down. (See screenshot above).
