What happens when a person goes to a private Mar-a-Lago club black-tie Safari Night fundraiser for one of his sister’s, Elizabeth Trump Gau’s favored charity? There were Chinese dancers, a silent auction, and a some criminals. Not only that, there were a bunch of Russians speaking Russian.
Tickets cost $600, and for a cool $10,000 a person could claim “diamond benefactor status.” Safari Night benefitted a program “mentoring and motivating” young people, according to The Washington Post.
Russian Sergey Danilochkin , 47, rubbed shoulders with 250 attendees at Mar-a-Lago as he produced a documentary during the gala. One of them was Trump’s Food and Drug official Israel Joffee, who claimed that he was there as a private citizen.
Then, there was Li “Cindy” Yang, who used to own the Jupiter massage parlor where Patriots owner Robert Kraft was snagged in a sting. Yang has been selling meetings and photo shoots with the Trump family to Chinese business owners, The Miami Herald reported in an investigative article.
The Russian was only one of a growing number of his fellow exiles landing in Sunny Isles Beach. Moscow has sent out an international notice for his arrest. His former government tried him in absentia and sentenced him to 10 years in prison, but Danilochkin claims he was the fall guy.
Real estate investor turned journalist Danilochkin spoke Russian into a waiting video camera. He was doing a documentary making a plea for his innocence. The Russian moved to South Florida, because he had to leave his home country after a huge tax fraud, the “Magnitsky affair.”
Otherwise, the repatriated Russian was afraid he would ended up in a Russian gulag or dead after taking part in the $170 million tax fraud. He ended up in Trump’s social world.
Russian officials beat an attorney involved in the fraud, Sergy Magnitsky, to death in prison. He had been working for the American-born financier Bill Browder. Russian officials stole $230 million, and then laundered the money through banks and real estate deals all over the world.
Browder was incensed. He led the charge for Russian sanctions. As a result, in 2012 Congress signed into law a bipartisan bill to punish corruption in Russia by withholding their access to the American banking system. That was also part of what turned Secretary Hillary Clinton into Russia President Vladimir Putin’s enemy.
Russia’s metals industry businessman Andrei Bruevich asked Danilochkin to audit companies at the center of the 2009 tax fraud scandal:
‘He sternly warned me that I didn’t realize who I was dealing with. The job was contracted by very serious people and there was no option for me.’
Danilochkin said that someone planted mercury in his office in an attempt to poison him. In his video, the Russian said:
‘I survived, but fear never left me. I realized there was no way to survive. I didn’t care that I was slandered and that all the power of the (Russian) law enforcement system was thrown at me by high-ranking criminals. … I was anxious to simply stay alive.’
After he fled Russia, Bruevich was murdered.
‘The point is that the entire Russian jet set moves along the same routes: the same gatherings, restaurants and yacht clubs. I met Klyuev at these places. But this does not suggest that I had business with him or that I was his partner.’
The Washington Times printed an interview with Danilochkin as paid advertising.In it, he said:
‘By the will of fate, I was in the path of an octopus of corruption; very powerful people on their way to their dirty goals. I never did anything illegal. But I still found myself under the press of the system, just by chance. Whoever has lived in Russia understands how it happens.’
Documentary produced the documentary as a plea for his innocence. The National Press Club in Washington D.C. privately screened the 35-minute film.
Featured image is a screenshot via YouTube.
