Even Navatek’s executives were surprised at how far their money went in D.C. “It was eye-opening for me, frankly. ‘Oh my God, all of it is for sale. It’s all for sale,’” Eric Schiff, a former Navatek executive, told ProPublica.
- Method: Utilized old-fashioned money laundering, forged invoices, and front companies to bypass sanctions.
- Purpose: Acted as a cross-border payment provider for imports and sensitive military/security purchases.
- Origins: Created in Russia and Kyrgyzstan by Moldovan oligarch Ilan Shor with backing from Promsvyazbank (PSB).
- Standard Chartered (Hong Kong): Received $1.1 billion (Late 2024–August 2025).
- DBS (Hong Kong): Received $273 million.
- Citigroup Clients: Received $74 million.
- Deutsche Bank Clients: Received approximately $18 million.
Oil Executives Say the Great Fuel Crisis Is Here
Wall Street Journal gift article: “Trump officials say the oil-market disruption is temporary, but Chevron’s Mike Wirth and others warn global supplies are running low, with no respite in sight American oil executives warned for months that the prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz was bound to cause a fuel crisis. Now, they say it is here. Commercial fuel stocks around the world have been depleting for more than six months, and strategic crude reserves can’t be tapped much further.
Attacks last week shut down a crucial crude pipeline in Saudi Arabia that bypassed the Strait, stranding at least 2.5 million barrels a day from an already tight global oil market, analysts estimate. “All these mechanisms helped to mitigate the price and supply risk,” Chevron Chief Executive Mike Wirth said Friday at an energy conference in Austin, Texas. “Those have largely now played out, and we don’t have nearly the buffers in the system that we did when it began.” It is hard to predict where oil prices will go, he added, but at the moment, it is difficult to envision prices coming back down quickly.
“I wish I could tell you that I saw some reason why things would ease, but it’s difficult right now to see that happen,” he said. Veteran energy advisers say that with no resolution to the Iran war in sight, the situation risks spinning out of control. Diesel prices have soared to a record $6.23 a gallon and gasoline prices, which slipped below $4 a gallon this summer, have rebounded to $4.32. Some energy analysts say they have been fielding investor questions about when consumers pinched by the high prices will start pulling back on new purchases.
The Trump administration has repeatedly promised Americans that prices at the pump would decline and that energy flows out of the Middle East would keep increasing. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said at a Houston G-20 event on Monday that “the prices in the prior administration were this high anyway” and that Americans would have paid those prices permanently because former President Joe Biden was “pursuing a policy of energy subtraction and shutting down refineries.” …
See also New York Times (Gift Article): Rising Fuel Prices Set Off Anger and Protests Around the World. “The world is furious — again — over rising energy prices caused by the American-Israeli war against Iran.
Since the latest surge pushed oil above $100 a barrel, protesters have burned tires and cars in Guatemala and Syria to express their rage. Portugal’s roads have featured cars crawling in protest with honking horns after diesel reached a record high of more than $9 a gallon. And especially in the developing countries of Asia, which are heavily reliant on Middle Eastern energy and deep in debt from earlier efforts to offset the war’s impacts, transport systems and governments are facing another round of enormous strain.”
‘DOJ seeking reporter’s LinkedIn records’ in secretive court fight
Politico: “A secret, months-long battle between tech titans and the Justice Department — over prosecutors’ effort to obtain details on a journalist’s LinkedIn interactions for use in a national security leak probe — spilled into view Tuesday during a federal court argument in Virginia.
Though the details of the case remain sealed, a panel of the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals described the stakes in stark terms: a fight to find balance between the government’s life-and-death national security interests and the First Amendment protections for reporters to maintain the secrecy of their sources, particularly when investigators seek to obtain them from third-party companies. Joshua Ferrentino, a Justice Department national security attorney, told the court that prosecutors are demanding details of about 1,900 LinkedIn interactions from six users as part of the unspecified probe…
The fight comes at a sensitive moment for national media, which has seen reporters targetedby subpoenas and search warrants in leak probes. Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel have said they aren’t seeking to prosecute journalists but don’t view their testimony or data as off limits when pursuing leaks of national security information. Courts have bristled at investigators’ tactics, contending that they have failed to follow procedures intended to make the pursuit of reporters’ information a last resort…”
