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Eastern Europe
September 7, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 20
Lavrov called the same day murder of Zakharchenko "an open provocation aimed to derail the Minsk agreements' implementation", according to Russian media.
Over the past two years, the Normandy format representatives (Germany, France, Ukraine and
FBI tried to recruit sanctioned Russian oligarch Deripaska
bne IntelliNews
FBI and the US Justice Department officials tried to turn Kremlin insider Oleg Deripaska into an informant, as they sought information on Russian organised crime and, later, on possible Russian aid to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, the New York Times reported on September 1.
Deripaska and his businesses, along with another Russian tycoon Viktor Vekselberg, were singled out in the April 6 round of sanctions, the most damaging sanctions to date that severely impaired his energy and metals major En+, the world's second largest aluminium producer Rusal, and other assets.
Reportedly between 2014 and 2016 the US agents "signalled that they might provide help with his trouble in getting visas for the United States or even explore other steps to address his legal prob- lems." Not only Deripaska, but about "half a dozen" of Russia's richest were approached by the FBI.
Unnamed current and former officials and associ- ates of Deripaska told the NYT that they hoped to
Russia) failed to secure any significant progress during talks on settling the conflict, which erupted in 2014 as pro-Russian separatists in East Ukraine broke away from Kyiv's central control. Around 11,000 servicemen, rebels and civilians have so far died.
The FBI and the US Justice Department officials tried to turn Russian and Kremlin insider Oleg Deripaska into an informant
obtain information on Russian organised crime and possible Russian links to Trump’s presiden- tial election campaign in exchange. In particular, the FBI agents reportedly pressed Deripaska on whether his former business partner and now convicted ex-chairman of Trump's campaign Paul Manafort was an intermediary between the cam- paign and the Kremlin.
None of the rich Russians approached by the FBI agreed to cooperate or offered any information, while Deripaska reportedly notified the Kremlin about the efforts to recruit him.
The NYT notes that Deripaska took out newspaper ads in 2017 volunteering to testify in any congressional hearings examining his work with Manafort, and sued the Associated Press for libel following the report that Manafort had secretly worked for him on a plan to “greatly benefit the Putin government” in the mid-2000s.
Previous reports indicated that Deripaska’s En+ and Rusal could be getting closer to striking a