Year-End Update: Russia-linked Scandal

Our sources in Washington, D.C. tell us the allegations against Black Hall Aerospace a/k/a AAL USA Inc. were referred to investigators in Huntsville.

We strongly believe our conversations with the Office of the Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III may have spurred multiple probes.

Both the Military Criminal Investigations Command and a Special Inspector General of the Office of the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Defense are allegedly still probing the company.

The Special Inspector General is looking specifically at Afghanistan operations.

With the change of leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives, our outreach and debriefing of leading staff members, more questions may arise of what exactly Balch & Bingham did to successfully change Russian sanction in November of 2015, and why they engaged in a website scrub in 2017.

More importantly, Capitol Hill staffers are concerned about Russian-linked entities engage in alleged money laundering.

As we reported before, Black Hall Aerospace allegedly engaged in smurfing, the act of wiring money in amounts just below the reporting requirements to circumvent U.S. law.

Black Hall’s current CEO acknowledged to us that those hundreds, if not thousands, of wire payments were to employees in Afghanistan, Ukraine, and Russia.

The bank that processed those wire transfers is a Balch & Bingham client.

In recent weeks, we have heard from leading media in London who are interested in Soviet-immigrant Oleg Sirbu, the alleged ex-owner of AAL USA, Inc. who lives in Dubai.

2019 may bring some new surprises.