A new report in The Guardian has uncovered that Alexander Smirnov, the FBI informant facing charges for fabricating allegations about Joe and Hunter Biden's dealings with Ukrainian gas company Burisma, was on the payroll of a company with deep ties to a UK company owned by Donald Trump's business associates in Dubai. (The Guardian has a helpful follow-the-money flowchart.)
Smirnov, who is now indicted for lying to the FBI, began making false allegations against the Bidens the same year he received a $600,000 payment from Economic Transformation Technologies (ETT) in 2020.
According to The Guardian:
ETT's CEO is the American Christopher Condon, who is also one of three shareholders in ETT Investment Holding Limited in London. Other shareholders in the UK include Pakistani American investor Shahal Khan and Farooq Arjomand, a former chairman and current board member of Damac Properties in Dubai who is also listed as an adviser on ETT's American website.
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The exact business model of Texas-based ETT is murky. Its mission statement reads in part: "ETT set up the chess board to bring in top notch executives from those sectors to help implement its vision of love and social impact to improve the quality of human existence through the application of 'new age' technologies."
The current CEO, Condon, is a California man who has been involved in several civil lawsuits, including a civil Rico case in 2010 that he won on appeal. Condon's official biography says he is "a former professional tennis player, financial advisor, and currently is an entrepreneur focused on social-impact projects, public-private partnerships, and creating smart communities that benefit both individuals and governments".
Condon, Arjomand and Khan registered ETT Investment Holding Limited in the UK on 6 March 2020. Khan, an investor who purchased the Plaza Hotel in 2018, and Arjomand have ties to Donald Trump through Trump associates and Damac, a major Middle East developer that has partnered with Trump for a decade. Arjomand, Khan and Condon owned 34%, 33% and 33% of ETT Investment Holding Limited respectively, according to UK business filings. No other information on the UK company is readily available.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Condon was aware of Smirnov's link to the FBI:
In 2020, according to prosecutors' filings, ETT wired $600,000 to one of Smirnov's bank accounts. That payment was in exchange for a stake in an Israel-based crypto trading platform, called Bitoftrade, Smirnov was working on launching, a former business associate said.
Smirnov's FBI connections often came up in conversation as he hawked his services. Condon, the ETT chairman, also told people that Smirnov had "friends" in the FBI and described him as his protector who could help shield him from investigations, former associates said. Condon's lawyer said Condon didn't know the extent of Smirnov's FBI involvement, and Condon denied describing Smirnov as a protector.
It was Smirnov's bogus tales that Republicans like sex-abuser enabler Jim "Gym" Jordan seized on to justify their ludicrous impeachment crusade against Biden. They held him up as some kind of star witness, even as his story was unraveling faster than one of Trump's alibis. It is becoming clear that the real scandal isn't the one Trump and his minions have been peddling, but rather the one they have been desperately trying to cover up. The stench of corruption is overwhelming.
